Was the last Starship launch actually covered or reacted to differently? New York Times basically said "it exploded but experts agree that this was an important step forward" and all coverage and reactions I saw were "gosh, this is awesome, better luck next time". The negative comments I saw were the same I have been seeing since Falcon 9 was learning how to land.

Not sure if this will add much, but I've never seen any negative comments before this - perhaps because I'm not really in this space (no pun intended) and don't follow these events. I saw plenty this time around.

Elon is a great salesman, but I think SpaceX is far enough along that it would be fine without him. Maybe better than fine, given how reckless he can be.

Without Elon, SpaceX could surely succeed as a business, making good money from launch services and Starlink.

They wouldn't get to Mars, though. Starship needs the 'recklessness' of being prepared to fail rapidly, repeatedly, dramatically, and incredibly publicly, while learning from each failure.

So far they've managed to ensure that no humans have been injured during launch/landing failures (although the delayed flight termination of the recent launch was worrying, and should probably be more of a concern than the launch site damage)

> Without Elon, SpaceX could surely succeed as a business, making good money from launch services and Starlink.

Sure, now that he's pushed them to where they are with his vision. Would we even be talking about landable rockets today without his involvement?

A focus on Mars could itself bankrupt SpaceX. There's no money to be made from a Mars base. If it distracts from pursuing prospects that actually have economic demand, it will be a disadvantage that competitors will exploit.

Well, a focus on being able to get to Mars basically means "figure out how to launch stuff extremely cheaply". I think they've been clear that SpaceX is not going to build a Mars base, they just count on it happening once you've driven the cost for getting stuff to Mars sufficiently low. And if you can launch enough things into orbit that a Mars base is feasible, you'll certainly beat everyone else on commercial launches, too.

SpaceX plows all its profits into this goal. (Its shareholders aren't getting any returns, not for a long time. The SpaceX investors are playing an extremely long game.) And if you constantly use all your profits to improve your capability, you have a huge long-term advantage over companies that exist to make a profit for their shareholders.

"Figuring out how to launch stuff extremely cheaply" is not some kind of secret sauce or competitive strategy, it's literally what every rocket company is also working towards. The ability to specifically target Mars risks optimizing for a rocket that is extremely wasteful relative to what the market is willing to bear. Case in point, what companies want is not shipping material on Mars, the moon, or any deep space capability; they want satellites in Earth orbit. You don't need Starship for that, instead you need to double down on Falcon, and every dollar spent on the former is a dollar that's not spent on the latter.

Traditional aerospace is not -- ULA has shown zero incentive towards driving down launch costs, their interest is more in keeping prices up on their USG gravy launches.

Falcon is not fully reusable, there's a hard cost floor from the need to throw away a second stage for every launch, and there's no reasonable prospect to avoid doing so. The idea is that Starship will beat Falcon on launch costs long term. SpaceX itself is chomping at the bit getting Starlink to launch on Starship instead of Falcon, because it will be cheaper.

His recklessness is exactly what got him results. He is basically saying "fuck it lets blow up rockets until it works". And it does end up working because he was able to surround himself with people that are able to integrate teaching from each "failed" launch and improve the product. The day SpaceX swaps a reckless CEO for a careful one is the day they will stop blowing up rockets. It is also the day the competition will start to catch up.

Yes. It's hilarious seeing proponents of agile who are not able to recognize it when it is applied in a non-software context. "Haha look at the fool! He can't get it right the first time."

How sure are you that the proponents of agile and those criticizing Elon are the same people? In my limited experience, they are definitely not.

I agree that a certain amount of RUD is both expected and quite good for SpaceX. I mean, clearly they're doing quite well, so it seems pretty obvious that this is true?

When I said 'reckless', I was referring more to the repeated WTFs in his handling of the twitter acquisition, including but not limited to the acquisition itself.

I was told that Elon does very little at SpaceX now, it is effectively run by Gwynne Shotwell. Is that wrong?

Its so fucking dumb to call Musk a salesman. Sales were handled by Shotwell and SpaceX had other expert at dealing with costumers. Sales is about the last thing Musk does for SpaceX.

I didn't mean to imply that he is or was literally A Salesman For SpaceX. I meant that he's good at promoting things, and even in inspiring feverish loyalty amongst his followers.

So who did the actual leading of these company, if Musk was just promoting things. Who made the important technical and financial choices? Who hired the important people?

Maybe its more accurate to say that Musk is simply good at leading technical companies?

> feverish loyalty amongst his followers

You mean his employees? Most of them don't seem feverish.

And if you mean people that are not his employees how does that have anything to do with SpaceX?

You said it yourself: Shotwell does. Elon Musk does as much for SpaceX as Ronald McDonald does for McDonald's.

No, it is Elon. He makes all the final decisions, business and technical. Gwynne is working on Starship now because Elon decided it.

Gwynne is not now 'working on Starship'. The South Texas base was simply integrated into the normal organizational structure rather then being a Skunk works kind of thing. Gwynne always helped with work on Starship.

Its simple a restructuring that was always gone happen after a while and had nothing to do with 'Gwynne' taking over management from Musk or whatever spin Musk-Haters wanted to put on it.

Its always funny when Musk haters have to scratch out arguments to not give him credit. Funny how neither Shotwell or any other of the leaders of SpaceX would agree with you. But I guess you know better.

Shotwell famously has a team of handlers to occupy Musk and keep him from counterproductively terrorizing his employees. There are dozens of firsthand reports of petulant harassment and petty self-aggrandizement at the hands of Musk upon employees at Tesla and SpaceX. Things like firing employees at random in order to instill fear, only for the real adults in the room (like Shotwell) to quietly re-hire the fired person the next day. You don't need to be a "Musk hater" to recognize what a shitty CEO he is (in fact, you only need to pay attention to the disaster that has been his Twitter acquisition), although flippantly denouncing any critics as mere "haters" sure is a favorite tactic of those begging to lick Musk's bootheels.

> Shotwell famously has a team of handlers to occupy Musk

I'm sure you have source for that. And I'm sure she already did that when she was Head of Sales right?

And its funny how Tom Mueller, Hans Königsmann, Garrett Reisman and every other higher up in SpaceX talks about lots and lots direct interaction with Musk.

Funny how 'Liftoff' the book about SpaceX doesn't mention anything about that. And the author of this book is currently writing about the the Falcon 9 days, and I think that book will confirm the same thing again (and the author of those books interviewed literally 100s of current and former SpaceX people).

And again, pretty much every single person in leadership positions at SpaceX would disagree with you. But its great that you know so much more.

> to recognize what a shitty CEO he is

Ok, so how do you define a good CEO if not based on the company he leads are successful. Sure if its a short term success maybe you can point to other factors. Musk has been in his position longer then pretty much every other CEO in both the space and the car industry and both companies are absurdly successful.

Look, you personally dislike him and you don't like his style. But that is just irrelevant. By any actual objective measure Musk is one of the most successful CEOs in history. The results speak for themselves and its not even really debatable.

That you have to bring up individual practices that you dislike, shows that you can't actually point to any aggregate results to make your point.

> you only need to pay attention to the disaster that has been his Twitter acquisition

If you actually think that in a 30+ year career the only thing relevant is one acquisition then you are actually delusional. Any fair assessment takes into account a whole career and not one acquisition.

And in terms of Twitter, the results should be judged after 5-10 years and not the first year.

i remember an interview with Tom Mueller (sorry no link) where he was talking about Musk and how he insisted on face sealing pintle injectors for the Merlin engine. Everyone was telling him it couldn't be done but, as Tom put it, "it turns out, it got done."

may not have that exactly right but hte point is Elon, at least in the early days of SpaceX, was definitely more than a salesman.

>salesman

Yeah he was somehow able to start both Tesla, a wildly successful paradigm shifting hard tech company, and then go on to start SpaceX, an even more paradigm shifting, wildly successful hard tech company that has absolutely blown out every single competitor on earth to the point of embarrassment.

What does it take for people to just accept that he’s a genius? Is that seriously so difficult? Clearly he’s doing something and it isn’t sales.

He started neither of those companies.

Oh really? I thought he started Tesla. So what was Tesla before he bought it? A successful car company producing cars?

Elon is a terrible salesman. It's beyond me how you can call someone so hated a good salesman.

Elon brought that on himself. Fortunately SpaceX will be fine even without him at this point.

Elon going all-in on politics is one of the most disappointing and surprising events in my adult life. Certainly a good lesson in hero worship though. Agreed on SpaceX at this point. Although it would be different, not sure there is a business case for Mars for example.

What do you mean going 'all-in' on politics. He still doing the exact same thing as before, running SpaceX and Tesla.

By 'all-in' you mean make a few statements on twitter about his opinion? Because that is very different definition for 'all-in' then I have. Going 'all-in' would be to try to get elected president or some dumb shit like that.

> He still doing the exact same thing as before, running SpaceX and Tesla.

I think we are living in different realities, which is the new normal I suppose. You missed one company he has recently purchased. You know, the one that is 100% political in nature? Jeez, just imagine the space telescopes or moon bases he could have invested in, but instead we got Twitter allowing self-described Nazis back on the platform. What a tragic waste of Musk's resources, both mental and financial.

What I meant by "all-in" was jumping headlong into the hyper-partisan political fray - and loudly choosing a side!

Musk 2021: Elon Musk said he prefers to stay out of politics [0]

Musk 2022: Elon Musk says he’ll vote Republican, bashes Democrats [1]

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/09/elon-musk-tesla-spacex-spend...

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/elon-musk-says-hell-vote-rep...

Yes running Twitter and Boring as well, but practically the waste majority of his time is Tesla and SpaceX.

I believe Musk fought buying Twitter would be both good politically and he could lead the company more successfully. Hence he wanted to get out of it when it was clear that it was a huge as shares dropped.

> Musk 2022: Elon Musk says he’ll vote Republican, bashes Democrats [1]

I'm not disagreeing that Musk go more political, but calling it 'all-in' is LITERALLY wrong.

All-in would be doing politics as his primary occupation.

Elon Musk went all-in on the culture war of American politics and has vocally sided with the political party on an authoritarian and minoritarian track. He has put his thumb on the scale on more ways than one, including seemingly bad-faith actions e.g. his banning of journalists and unbanning of much less savory characters.

He's not running for office, but he's inserted himself part of the larger political narrative.

Again, this word 'all-in' simply doesn't mean what you think it means.

He is not doing a TV show on Fox News 5 days a weak, he isn't running for president.

He occasionally tweets something that is political or runs arguable runs Twitter in a political (not sure if its possible to run Twitter in a politically neutral way).

His actual job that he spends 95% of his time on is running SpaceX and Tesla, just like before he bought Twitter.

> Again, this word 'all-in' simply doesn't mean what you think it means.

Ah, you're the "semantic guy" at parties. In this case it did mean exactly what I thought it meant, but not what you wanted it to mean. I didn't realize I had to speak in literal terms and not common parlance.

Clinical and sterile: Elon Musk has used his elevated platform as the CEO of Twitter to advance authoritarian agenda, support and endorse authoritarian leaders (in the US and outside of it), make hate speech easier, and make journalism harder. He's endorsed conspiracy theories, he's adjusted the algorithm to ensure you see more content from himself and the people's he's "blessed".

> to advance authoritarian agenda

> make journalism harder

Quite the opposite, as far as I can see.

Things that Elon has done that make this comment absurd:

- Banned journalists (among others he didn't care for)

- Discrediting journalism accounts with "state sponsored media" labels

- Require journalism organizations to pay to provide they are an actual source (I doubt they were targeted in the checkmark fiasco, but they were impacted)

- Elevating his own platform into your feed where posts half-truths and elevates authoritarian right-wing talking points and conspiracies. Speaking of...

- Publicly espousing conspiracy theories about globalists that need reining in (hear the dog whistle?)

- Literally mocking journalists

- Auto-replying to legitimate inquiries with a poop emoji

- Selectively using right-wing voices for his politically-laden "Twitter Files" disclosure

- Providing near-zero pushback to requests for content removal from authoritarian governments

But sure, see what you want to see. And before you turn around and tell me I'm doing the same, my opinion on Elon was positive as he was buying Twitter. I've observed him, I've read what he was to say. Either I never knew him (more likely) or buying Twitter has changed him substantially.

He spent 44 billion to be a right wing twitter troll.

I think you find some of these people “getting political” because they’ve been cornered and/or burned by media/government/politicians/ngos, badly. It destroys a lot of illusions they have/had about establishment politicians/media. Once you see through it - the cynical opportunism, hypocrisy, double standards, and assumption of power, abuse of groupthink - it’s not something you unsee. And the multi-modal pressure campaigns of that cabal to try and force compliance cause a certain personality type to push back harder rather than bend over (especially if they have fu money). There’s a list of people in the public sphere like this in the last ten years - Musk, Rogan, Brett Weinstein, Peterson, and I dare say Trump was one too. Contrarian voices. Love ‘em or hate ‘em because reasons, but I think their individualist, critical, and contrarian voices are a necessary feature rather than a bug.

Edit: that’s not to say you need to treat these people as heroes - I’m reflexively suspicious of that because human nature will always be what it is, but I applaud their ability to give the finger to convention, that’s all.

Who cares what some people want to see? All that matters is what they can actually help to make happen. And Elon being "destroyed" is only gonna happen through his own actions. He's his own worst enemy, and yes, buying Twitter and all of his subsequent actions with it were a huge mistake, a big unforced error. He's turned a lot of people against him, and for what. Hell, I'm very enthusiastic about space travel and yet he's even turned me against him somewhat, as I absolutely hate the waves of layoffs across tech his actions have precipitated. Him and Zuck basically gave everyone else "permission" too, and us tech workers have suffered severely for it.

For saving discourse on the internet. You don’t have to agree with his positions but there is no denying he has brought back the ability to discuss sensitive topics without a throng of zealots having their reports result in quick censoring.

It’s like you all forgot we just spent three years calling anyone who disagreed on an untested therapeutic that doesn’t even work a racist.

None of that is remotely reflective of reality.

What do you mean? Alex Berenson was kicked off of twitter in the summer of 2021 because of factually correct tweets about covid [1].

[1] https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607382645603704834

> It’s like you all forgot we just spent three years calling anyone who disagreed on an untested therapeutic that doesn’t even work a racist.

Please be more specific because I have no idea what you're referring to.

That's sort of shooting the messenger. Tech was overvalued for a long time. A lot of make-work.

You’re blaming Musk for a wave of layoffs in the tech industry? That he gave permission to other companies to do it? Are you saying the layoffs made good business sense but somehow these companies were prevented from doing so? What was preventing them? Was that factor “correct” or “healthy”?

The wave of layoffs in tech had started before his layoffs at Twitter. By the time the Twitter layoffs started people here were already talking about how tech companies in general were about to have large waves of layoffs.

> See the incredibly negative reaction to the Starship launch attempt compared to the much more positive reaction to previous test flights that ended with a boom.

You are rewriting history. The same fucking thing happens everytime a rocket explodes. The same reaction happened with the earlier test flights again.

Some dumb idiots in the media and twitter right bullshit. A few dumb politicans try to cash in and do a bunch of saber rattling in congress.

Same game over and over, it doesn't matter and doesn't change anything.

SpaceX or Musk will not be destroyed by this nonsense.

Eh, I do think the dumb flak was worse with this one, possibly only because it got wider press than previous launches, but that itself might be due to tribal concerns, with Musk generally having more eyes on him. I've been sort of following SpaceX for years, and I definitely saw more dumb stuff about the recent test than any previous one.

While I tend to agree I think even those in the know were in shock about the amount of damage to the pad. And subsequent disclosure by musk that control was lost at ~30s is also rather shocking compared expectations of an issue occurring later at stage separation or reentry.

Oh, sure, there are real reasons to be worried about the launch, but it took a stupid amount of time for the peanut gallery to say anything more sensical than "rocket go boom, haha fail", which is definitely not a real reason. I still think the failure of the FTS is by far the most important problem.

I don't know where you get your information but from my perspective the peanut gallery noticed the failure of the flight termination system earlier than the non peanut gallery.

Interesting. Maybe I live in a weird bubble, but the "lol fail" types I saw didn't appear to notice it until much later. Scott Manley was the first I saw talking about it (and he says he got a lot of pushback on that, even).

the media wants to see elon go down

every time i touch grass while talking about elon people are always amazed with him, why is that?

What does "touch grass" in this context mean?

If you mean "every time I am smoking a joint and talking about Elon" I guess I'm not surprised. If you mean "every time I go outside and talk to people about Elon" I definitely am. There are large parts of my (quite liberal) state where a Tesla gets a pretty negative reaction.

i'm basically saying every time i go out and am included in a discussion involving elon. for the past 2 years this has been my experience, i've been traveling throughout 3 different very liberal cities and i don't find people who are as disgusted with his as the media implies. i think that echo chamber is a small one meant to deceive people.

if he was such a bad person, why is he doing so much good in the world?

I think the reaction varies a lot based on two things:

1. How much actual knowledge people have of Elon. Speaking from personal experience there is very much a "familiarity breeds contempt" thing going on here, and I suspect the same is true more generally. People exposed only to his early (positive) press will likely like him. People exposed only to his later (negative) press will likely hate him.

2. What part of Elon's portfolio they care most about. No matter how a space nerd feels about Elon they are going to have some positive vibes about SpaceX. Even people at competitors felt their hearts flutter when they saw the first double F9 landing, or first saw Starlink high in the night sky. But people who love cars... not so much. Plenty of folks who would sooner key a Tesla than own one, and will tell you so to your face.

I also think that while lots of liberals are annoyed at Elon, the bulk of the hate comes from conservatives. Hard to erase a decade-long lead in pissing people off.

my understanding is this is flipped in a few ways, the conservatives love him over twitter now. imo its the high achieving liberals that still ~like him while maybe disliking some things he said, and its the lower-rungs on the liberal ladder that are more susceptible to the negative news they see as its not really their problem who they dislike, its a social thing.

and for the cars, teslas are selling quite well, its the only profitable ev according to recent business report apparently.

Because the media doesn't want to see Elon go down. That is in your head.

all the countless articles about him, and everything he does all being painted in a massively negative light is just a fairy tale. its not because he gave a platform to people countering their narratives

thanks i didn't realize