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.