I was relating that same thought to an acquaintance earlier today. I'm happy that Musk helps provide the infrastructure for a bunch of talented people to accomplish what they have but that's about the extent of it.
I'll second that. Elon is a big arrogant douche. But Starlink is awesome for us Aussies, and SPACEX is pretty cool.
What concept, sending man to mars? That has been floating around for decades. There are a lot of people that could have made this happen a long time ago, if they would have had the resources.
I wish the really smart people that are making this happen would move to somewhere else and remove themselves from the musk taint.
Re-using rockets and GETTING it to work.
Being able to control hundreds of tonnes of hardware so it slowly lands back to earth, pointy end up and firey end down.
I'm afraid in this "modern" world people do not appreciate the engineering, it appears too easy, and it isn't.
Unfortunately Elon is the only one with the resources to do it.
Tom..
Why do you guys not like Elon Musk? I don't get it, he's made it seem easy to make a reusable rocket when we all know it's far from easy, and the other rocket makes said it was impossible (well, they would, wouldn't they?). Not to mention taking the idea of an electric car from a bit of a joke to a serious, world beating product. Ok, maybe he's got some personality flaws, and you haven't? Give the guy a break. I just wish I could afford a ride on one of his rockets. Maybe one day.
That's one reason I don't like him. As far as the other things go I already said I appreciated his financing the platform for a bunch of truly talented people to accomplish what they have. As far as the ideas go, many of us have had similarly inspired dreams that would have come to fruition with that kind of cash behind us.
A rocket ride would be swell!
You need to look at the economic/money side of his enterprises.
From a number of articles I have come across he should be in jail for fraud when it comes to promises and out comes with respect to his stocks and shares.
If the US government did find him guilty of any major misnomer the effect on all the "investment" the US government has made in him could be catastrophic to the country.
So they don't do anything, Elon is backing Trump for the protection he can offer if Trump get power again.
Sorry, I am not a conspiracist.
Musk's Fellow Investors in X Are Part of a $24 Billion Loss Since 2022 - Inc. Australia.
Its not tall poppy syndrome.
So I like the man's ideas and effort, but not the financial activity behind it and he is standing on the technical efforts of others.
Tom..
PS. Here endeth the lesson according to St Thomas....
PPS. I hope I haven't opened a can of worms.
While a little off topic I am glad you posted the references.
I believe the nationalities of the people discussing this are British, American and Australian. The legal systems of each country are different, but they are related as all are descendants of the British system a few hundred years ago. All have the principle of innocent until proven guilty. What exactly has Elon Musk been found guilty of?
He's definitely an A-hole in the court of public opinion.
Do you have any evidence for that claim?
I don't think anyone has done a poll. Trump seems to like him. That's all the evidence I need.
He has too much money to be found personally guilty of anything significant.
Who is responsible for shipping beta software that kills?
I think at this point, the discussion about Elon Musk should be moved to a new topic as it's definitely off topic and definitely worth continuing.
The champion of free speech, unless it is something he disagrees with.
The reality is Tesla has the safest batteries.
As for the self driving, it is a good deal better then other companies but obviously hasn't reached the level of genius design in the human body.
This man is always able to find the brightest and most brilliant people for his projects.
It's nice to have a "crazy billionaire" (also capable of scraping up additional billions in investment) willing to put a lot of money behind causes that traditional powers (large corporations, governments) have decided are too outrageous to support, when they can just milk more conservative approaches and ... not make a lot of progress. (This is also my argument for "allowing" hecto-billionaires, BTW.)
That was probably the case with paypal and online payments/"banking."
That was even more likely to be the case with Electric Cars.
It was certainly the case for "Commercial Space" (especially WRT "drive down launch costs.")
It's too bad that "the crazy" tends to spread in what "many" are likely to consider undesirable directions. Twitter/X was/is a disaster, and "a forum with no controls or censorship" wasn't a new idea - many who were around for the early days of the ARPANet/Internet believed in that sort of thing, and could relate stories of how it all went wrong ("let's have an eMail protocol with no authentication and easy-to-forge content!" Sigh.) (OTTH, it's not clear that Musk "ruined" Twitter - it was having plenty of problems before he offered to buy it.)
Split from SpaceX Starship Launch at the request of @EmilyJane