I keep seeing people say that Musk had little to do with SpaceX's technical side, and I wonder where this meme (in the original Dawkins sense of the word) is coming from.

If you watch the EverydayAstronaut interviews with Musk it shows that he has a deep understanding of the engineering tradeoffs and design reasons for many components of the rocket, and in fact is being quite careful with what he can share due to not wanting to leak company secrets. In fact, some of the questions that were asked in the earlier interview were re-referenced in a later interview as having been considered and leading to design changes.

I think Musk is a smart engineering type who sees finance, PR, politics etc as just another engineering problem, with all the pros and cons that creates. He's had a ton of success in hard-tech fields just by not being an idiotic pointy-haired-boss in a world where finance and political people are repeatedly being put in charge of projects and companies whose tech they don't understand. This doesn't mean he is likeable, or someone you'd want to have a beer with, or moral, or anything else. But it does mean he is capable of managing a tech company better than most, if we use the success of the company as our capable-of-managing-a-company metric.

Musk sounding smart in a friendly interview is not the same as actually designing rockets.

I'm happy to see information to the contrary, but so far this is the closest I've seen to actual human/work style interactions with him. What would you suggest as alternative data sources which could be used to build a more accurate opinion?

Engineering optimism, even egregious optimism, is not the same as a con job.

Musk is smart enough to know those were lies.

This is absolutely despicable. There is no way Musk doesn't know that what he posted is a lie.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/30/elon-musk...

No, but it is very close to creating an intellectually friendly atmosphere for smart people who want to design rockets.

> If you watch the EverydayAstronaut interviews with Musk it shows that he has a deep understanding of the engineering tradeoffs and design reasons

Which interview specifically? from https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Everyday+Astron...

The Starbase Tour videos are excellent, and there is a more recent follow-up.

No, his main skill is believing that big things are possible, and then being willing to commit resources and to be patient to let those possibilities come to reality when many others are will not.