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Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?

#11

Post by anovikov »

Zigurd wrote: post #10
anovikov wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Starship is going to add another order of magnitude to an already overwhelming domination (SpaceX launches 80+% of all payloads by weight, even corrected for orbital energy). This isn't cheap and it did a lot of things that seemed impossible or unlikely already. There is no reason to say that its development is slow. Falcon 9 took 8 years from concept to first flight and another 8 years to high cadence, reliabl…

Rocket companies aren't high value. The vast majority of Falcon 9 lunches are for Starlink. They're not bringing in outside money. There are lots of financial shenanigans in the capitalization of satellites with short lifespans, and hiding the football on Falcon 9 refurbishment costs. "Dominating" the launch of your own payloads makes AI circular market participants blush.

Well, but at least it shows his engineering and management skills. Both US incumbents and Russians struggled to create new viable launch vehicles and Russians even lost capability to produce old ones (Zenit, then Proton). SpaceX seemed to have no problem doing it.

Falcon 9 refurbishment costs can't be high because whole thing takes under 2 weeks with less than a week spent in hangar for any refurbishment work... There may be no refurbishment at all on many flights, just some checks.

And yes, they ate entire worldwide commercial launch market and it wasn't enough... So there's Starlink. They appear to have no war around creating demand for themselves with their own payloads because others are not up to that task - there is too much rot and dysfunction everywhere in the space business worldwide except SpaceX, so they are kinda forced to vertically integrate.

Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?

#13

Post by pixel_popping »

anovikov wrote: post #7
pixel_popping wrote: post #2

You might not like the guy, but anyone thinking Elon Musk is "dumb" is out of his mind and just straight up narrow-minded, we are talking about one of the richest person on the PLANET,you don't accidentally become the richest man on the planet by being dumb. That takes brains, vision, and an INSANE amount of risk-taking that 99.9% of people on this earth could never even fathom (even if they pretend so).

I don't get why are you being downvoted. People seem to forgot that he started out as an engineer and visionary, and built pioneer companies in at least two industries that were deemed impossible to enter from outside - cars and space launch - and succeeded in both.

HN is turning into a politic cesspool mixing things that are independent, that's why.

Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?

#14

Post by bigyabai »

pixel_popping wrote: post #13
anovikov wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why are you being downvoted. People seem to forgot that he started out as an engineer and visionary, and built pioneer companies in at least two industries that were deemed impossible to enter from outside - cars and space launch - and succeeded in both.

HN is turning into a politic cesspool mixing things that are independent, that's why.

Oh, you're one of those people that bought into the "businesses can't be political" lie, huh?

Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?

#15

Post by pixel_popping »

bigyabai wrote: post #14
pixel_popping wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is turning into a politic cesspool mixing things that are independent, that's why.

Oh, you're one of those people that bought into the "businesses can't be political" lie, huh?

I understand that powerful people build projects for political and control purposes, but I just don't care who manages a platform, do you care about who runs your OVH servers? Same way I don't care about the background of an artist behind a song. Could be a total dirtbag, I still don't care.

I can despise someone while appreciating what they built or their prowess in a given field. Pretty sure you can find plenty of people throughout history whose accomplishments genuinely impressed you (and useful for humanity) while simultaneously thinking that same person belongs in prison.

Projects are composed of many people. This idea that it's all "1 person" is nonsense. Companies that big are mostly ran by employees and leaders,not just the CEO sitting on top supervising and giving directives

Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?

#17

Post by bigyabai »

pixel_popping wrote: post #15
bigyabai wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you're one of those people that bought into the "businesses can't be political" lie, huh?

I understand that powerful people build projects for political and control purposes, but I just don't care who manages a platform, do you care about who runs your OVH servers? Same way I don't care about the background of an artist behind a song. Could be a total dirtbag, I still don't care. I can despise someone while appreciating what they built or their prowess in a given field. Pretty sure you can find plenty of…

> do you care about who runs your OVH servers?

Yes? If they're from a sanctioned country then I could be held criminally liable or have my service interrupted without warning. I would not evaluate professional infrastructure if the owner refused to tell me where they were located.

> This idea that it's all "1 person" is nonsense.

It's the basis of how all C-suite operations work, do you need to see an org chart for a reminder? The idea that it's "all 1 person" is baked into the concept of private capital. Arrangements that give the employees or leadership executive priority is far, far in the minority of how businesses are ran today.

Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?

#18

Post by phatskat »

pixel_popping wrote: post #2

You might not like the guy, but anyone thinking Elon Musk is "dumb" is out of his mind and just straight up narrow-minded, we are talking about one of the richest person on the PLANET,you don't accidentally become the richest man on the planet by being dumb. That takes brains, vision, and an INSANE amount of risk-taking that 99.9% of people on this earth could never even fathom (even if they pretend so).

> you don't accidentally become the richest man on the planet by being dumb

The accident of the whom and where he was born did play into it, but I will echo another commenter that he is an amazing capitalist - and I do mean that as an insult to Elon. He has done an amazing job of playing the game in a system that rewards shrewdness, cutthroat action, and manipulation. He managed to get enough clout to be able to lie about just about anything and pay for the echo chamber that makes it real enough.

Overrated? In most aspects yes. In being everything that is wrong with capitalism he’s right on point.

Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?

#19

Post by anovikov »

bigyabai wrote: post #17
pixel_popping wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that powerful people build projects for political and control purposes, but I just don't care who manages a platform, do you care about who runs your OVH servers? Same way I don't care about the background of an artist behind a song. Could be a total dirtbag, I still don't care. I can despise someone while appreciating what they built or their prowess in a given field. Pretty sure you can find plenty of…

> do you care about who runs your OVH servers? Yes? If they're from a sanctioned country then I could be held criminally liable or have my service interrupted without warning. I would not evaluate professional infrastructure if the owner refused to tell me where they were located. > This idea that it's all "1 person" is nonsense. It's the basis of how all C-suite operations work, do you need to see an org chart for a…

I probably don't understand you in full but the idea of private capital is based on the opposite - that there is no dependency on a single person.

This was seen as a major risk of Apple ("what's going to happen if Steve dies, last time they got rid of him it almost went under"), and held its stock back for a considerable time before market accepted that dependence on that 1 person wasn't as big as feared.

This is seen as a major risk of SpaceX now, too. Companies are not people. A company that's worth something - not just makes a profit - shouldn't be dependent on one person, because you can't sell a person due to 13th Amendment, but being worth something means that one can buy and sell.

Re: Ask HN: Is Elon Musk Overrated?

#20

Post by pixel_popping »

phatskat wrote: post #18
pixel_popping wrote: post #2

You might not like the guy, but anyone thinking Elon Musk is "dumb" is out of his mind and just straight up narrow-minded, we are talking about one of the richest person on the PLANET,you don't accidentally become the richest man on the planet by being dumb. That takes brains, vision, and an INSANE amount of risk-taking that 99.9% of people on this earth could never even fathom (even if they pretend so).

> you don't accidentally become the richest man on the planet by being dumb The accident of the whom and where he was born did play into it, but I will echo another commenter that he is an amazing capitalist - and I do mean that as an insult to Elon. He has done an amazing job of playing the game in a system that rewards shrewdness, cutthroat action, and manipulation. He managed to get enough clout to be able to lie…

hmm, you call him "overrated" in the same breath as acknowledging he's one of the most effective capitalists alive, isn't this a direct contradiction? It's like saying Escobar was overrated in his field of work, that makes no sense, if you are at the top like few on earth, the man built the largest drug empire on Earth. You can find that repugnant but you can't call it overrated.
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