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practical_romantic  2yr ago (text post)   3914 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 23, 2022

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He's a dude who guessed right three times and who's early/mid/late career fuckups were either prevented by his partners or bailed out by the government, and now he thinks every one of his ideas is gold.

Dude looks at his track record of having the biggest social credit score and thinks he is jobs/gates/ford/carnegie; not realizing that he really, really isn't.

Steve Jobs delivered inconsequential slick electronics mostly now notable as vectors for addictive apps and weird egregores and destructive social networks, Musk staked his personal wealth at saving space launch business and somehow did not fail at that, and wasn't "bailed out" by government.

If you win a contract for launches for the government at a competitive price, that's not a bailout.

They are really not comparable at all.

SpaceX has never and probably will never make a profit without government contracts; and it is also the thing I love most that musk has ever spearheaded. It is a frankly stupid business idea though, and if he stopped making decisions about his fucking moronic dick extension heavy lifters the company would probably be much more functional. Him being in charge of space X instead of just writing the checks almost certainly has made the company worse, not better.

Basically, I really really REALLY hope that crewed starship only exists in rendering software and isn't eating up attention and capital.

He (IMO) has three meaningful contributions to human progress; with every other action he has taken of neutral or negative value: He has succefully marketed EVs as sexy instead of lame, he has plowed a big pile of money into decreasing dollars/ozs to orbit, and he has made some long bets on innovative manufacturing techniques re. casting large structural members that I think will pay off long term.

Everything else he has done ranges from boondogle ->scam -> half-baked->purely exists to siphon public money.

He has succefully marketed EVs as sexy instead of lame

This one is interesting because of how little it actually took. A large part of it was just making a regular ass sedan at a time when other manufacturers were making their EVs conspicuously ugly (so you can show everyone how much you care about the environment).

So little, but apparently impossible for those existing manufacturers.

SpaceX has never and probably will never make a profit without government contracts;

You have some good write-up on why their business model with Starlink is inherently unprofitable ? It does seem somewhat preposterous.

Also, I don't think you are right, they have something like 2/3rds of the commercial launch market.

his fucking moronic dick extension heavy lifters the company would probably be much more functional.

Why? The engines work, are vastly better than anything else on account of the physical properties of methane. Amazing lsp too.

If the system works, it's going to be possible to put 100 tons of cargo, on the moon, for cca 60 million dollars (you have to refuel in high orbit like 4 times), so something like 1% of the cost of a Saturn V launch.

Him being in charge of space X instead of just writing the checks almost certainly has made the company worse, not better.

HOW!! He founded the company, it's his baby. That company now launches the most into orbit, more than the United Launch Alliance (founded by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, known for their reliance on govt contracts). At some points he's been launching more or less than the entire Chinese space industry.

People use the argument 'oh the engineers do the work and Musk took credit' - well who hired the engineers? Who set the standards and made the big decisions? Who created the culture? Musk did. I won't say he's a paragon of virtue but he clearly knows how to found and run a rocket company. He personally interviewed the first few hundred employees.

SpaceX has never and probably will never make a profit without government contracts

Yeah, it's the government who funds the space industry, they're the biggest costumer. If he got the contracts out of corruption I get criticizing him for this, but he just offered the best product to the buyer. The buyer just happens to be the government.

Him being in charge of space X instead of just writing the checks almost certainly has made the company worse, not better.

There are lots of groups working on space projects, but SpaceX stands out. I don't actually know what exactly his role is, but it could just be finding talented people and putting them in important roles to make decisions for him, and that'd still be a very valuable contribution.

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