Both SpaceX and Tesla nearly went bankrupt multiple times, we could just as easily be talking about an Elon Musk who had every advantage (government contracts, huge tax breaks and a fantastically wealthy family) and still failed. Maybe this is a case of fortune favoring the bold and I admire his perseverance/grit/marketing ability a lot. I've never heard him explain anything technical in any interview he's ever given and instead just starts behaving autistic if he's asked any detail about things. When he does stray into technical subjects like Twitter code he seems to talk nonsense that any engineer who has worked at a Twitter scale company would laugh at.