Seriously? Like Are you actually serious when you write this? You seriously believe that the only difference between Musk and the huge number of people working on startups is that he is investing more money?

You do not think that it has something to do with working on hard problems that nobody thinks are worthwhile until later on. You also do not think it has to do with him actually solving said hard problems. You also do not think it has anything to do with him being smart enough to manage multiple fields like a physics, computer science, engineering and design and have in depth discussions about rockets and space explorations at the same level as he can about electric cars and software? You also seriously believe that someone who is motivated by money would go and try to start a private rocket company that can deliver people to Mars and is reusable? Seriously? They wouldn't just go make some web app and "flip it"? This response is atypical for me but it's hard for me to read this sort of response and respond normally.

If you only have $10k to your name, that $10k might the difference between being homeless or not. If you have $50M, even in an extreme worst-case scenario (say your investment suffers a 99% loss) you still have $500,000, more than most people accumulate in a lifetime!

One way to understand this is to include employment capital in your calculations. A person with $10k in the bank has considerably more employment capital than investment capital. A person with $50M in the bank has insignificant employment capital compared to their investment capital. So risking 99% of their investment capital would be considerably more, as a percentage of their total capital, than the first person risking their entire $10k.

Is that really true? I guess I've never been that rich, so I don't have any personal experience, but it seems to me like the lifestyle impact of going from $10M to $1M would be a lot less significant than going from $10k to $1,000.

I agree with your analysis of "total capital", but I think you're neglecting the real lifestyle factors.

$10M is, as they say, 'FU money'. $1M could be, maybe, but with a much different standard of living. Where I live you could easily blow the million just on a fairly standard upper middle class house. Losing most of your 10k on the other hand, while unfortunate, would hardly be life changing because it's not enough to do much with in the first place.

Now, if you reliably earn $1M a year, then sure, losing the 9M probably wouldn't be a huge issue. But that isn't the case if you're sitting on $10M from selling your startup.

Uh...I mean, $10k would pay my rent for slightly more than a year (I don't live in SF). That's more than enough time for me to find a new job. On the other hand, $1,000 would pay my rent for less than 2 months. That's plenty of time for me to get evicted and be out on the street.

This isn't a hypothetical. As the article describes, there was a point when he was begging or borrowing every cent he could. I don't know what his personal financial situation would have been had it failed, but I doubt he held much back.

It is a bit more nuanced than that. When a 3 lb terrier starts barking and growling at you, you have one reaction, when a 175 lb rottweiler does the same you have a different reaction. Those situations are, on their surface, exactly the same. You are being threatened by a dog. But the realities of the two situations are very different because what is at stake. The terrier can be kicked across the room, the rottweiler will likely kill you. It is really impossible to know how you are going to respond until you're actually in the situation.

Perhaps not surprisingly, for a lot of people there are things worse than dying. And for many of the people I've known letting down people who are depending on them ranks pretty high on that list.

Musk is very different from "most" people. We know this because he has been in the fire and we've seen the result. Look at the stories of the fall of the twin towers on 9/11. Most people paniced and froze, a small number of people took action and evacuated.

At the critical stress level, when your limbic system cannot take it any more, it takes over. Some people become rabbits, some people become tigers, and the really weird thing is that I don't think you can really have any idea which way you'll go until you experience it. You can believe you will do one thing or another, but you don't really know. Scott McNealy shared with me that all you could do as a leader was to put people into really stressful situations, to see where they broke, and then note which side of the coin they fell on. It is why the armed forces put new recruits in to actual life threatening situations, to watch them panic and evaluate their response.

I don't know Elon, but if he is as characterized in interviews and by third party accounts, I don't think he altruistic so much as he is driven. The most amazing person I have ever met in person who is truly driven was Dean Kamen at one of the FIRST competitions in San Jose. It seemed like he could live to be 150 and still not get done all of the things he was driven to do before he passes. It isn't about altruism and it isn't about wealth, it is all about getting the important thing done. What ever that is. And someone who is driven AND functional in the face of extreme stress, is, in my experience, a rare individual.

Yes, most will agree. But having ambition, taking risk and being successful is a rare, rare thing. Especially after you made your fortune AND having the gut to risk it all. Now THAT is a rare thing.

I find all his stuff to be completely uninspiring.

China and India are also making cheap rockets. So what? Who cares?

And SpaceX is making cheapER rockets. IN California, one of the most expensive state to do business in.

American satellites aren't even allowed to launch from Chinese rockets.

the space program that he created would be unshackled from the states desires, be they good or bad.

It's no different than when Rockwell/North American built the Space Shuttle.

The biggest problem is that his ideas are just so boring and uninspiring. How about a new idea for a change? (Hyperloop isn't more exciting than High-Speed rail)

Being known for someone that "did something for slightly cheaper" isn't exactly awe-inspiring. Sucks that millennials are stuck with him for inspiration.

I want to see new ideas from our tech innovators.

The Mars Curiosity lander is an amazing example.

It DOES matter. :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...

Everything they're doing, and are planning on doing, has already been done.

So landing a rocket after launch to re-use that rocket has already been done? Going to be interesting when they are the first to do so but it's already been done. I'd love to hear how you reason that.

Doing things in a more efficient, cheaper manner means innovating new ways of development, testing, and building. More 'affordable' ventures into space can lead to an array of improvements. More research satellites being sent into space, as an example, because instead of costing $12 million to ship into space it costs $4 million [0].

I'm sorry you don't see the value in such things, but rest assured it is there.

[0] figures made up, can't be bothered searching for accurate pricing

And how about Tesla?

How about building inflatable space stations? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Commercial_Space_Stati...

Or mining asteroids?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources

For my money, either of those is more "visionary" than "a rocket booster that costs somewhat less than previous rocket boosters".

Now granted, they're both a lot less practical, and it's true that making things cheaper is often a crucial first step towards making them better.