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Space X lands Falcon 9 stage 1 on drone ship (picture)
- sixQuarks 11y agoElon Musk, within the same week, sold 300,000+ preorders for the Model 3 (the largest dollar-figure launch of ANY product in history), AND landed a friggin rocket on a drone ship for the first time in history. He is hands down the greatest entrepreneur within our lifetime, and possibly the greatest in modern history. PS - yes, I'm a fanboy - jesus christ how can you not be? and yes, it goes without saying he couldn't have done it without all the hard-working employees at both companies.
- jaxomlotus 11y agoYes, he is innovating and by far the most inspirational living entrepreneur in the tech world. But he's not even close to the most successful from a financial P&L standpoint yet. That honor would have to go to Larry Page.
- bpchaps 11y agoAnd here lies the problem.. edit: By problem, I mean the strong push for P&L over Making Shit Better.
- maratd 11y ago> And here lies the problem.. What problem? Google is something that helps billions of people every day in substantial ways. No, it isn't revolutionary and exciting, but things that make the greatest impact rarely are. You either want to help people or you want to do flashy things that grab peoples' attention. Linus had a great TED about this today. http://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_linux#t-911069 http://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_linu... BTW, Linus has done more for humanity than Musk ever will. Teslas run on Linux and I would be surprised if his rocket didn't use it in some way as well. But yes, we all love Elon Musk.
- bpchaps 11y agoYeah... I should've been more clear. I mean to say that the poster I responded to is focused more on money rather than, "Holy shit, we landed a fucking rocket from the sky on a fucking barge in middle of the ocean. Fuck yeah!" p&l is a silly goal when it comes to "Fuck yeah, progress!"
- jaxomlotus 11y agoNot when you are an investor in Musk's projects (which I am). If investors don't see a return on "Fuck yeah, progress" type investments, they will stop making those investments and opportunities for progress to succeed will diminish.
- maratd 11y ago> p&l is a silly goal when it comes to "Fuck yeah, progress!" Is it though? We don't throw money at people for building useless shit. If you make a lot of money, it's because you helped a lot of people.
- bpchaps 11y agoYou throw money at these sorts of companies to build knowledge and skill. You're investing in the future's economy and not the now's. It's selfish to think otherwise. Why does making money have to be intrinsic to helping people? Ugh. Ugh, I say.
- stcredzero 11y agoI doubt you can concretely define this "problem." And that is the actual problem!
- gozur88 11y agoNot unless you're an investor. And you're probably not an investor in SpaceX, since it's a private company.
- jaxomlotus 11y agoA good entrepreneur needs to do both.
- sixQuarks 11y agoI don't think you should be downvoted. It's true, perhaps entrepreneur is the wrong word to use here because the goal of most companies is to maximize profits/shareholder value. how about "most inspiring entrepreneur"? The two people that come closest in recent times, in my opinion, are Steve Jobs and Howard Hughes.
- noir_lord 11y agoJobs wouldn't even make my top 3. Manoj Bhargava for example is way more inspiring (to me) than Jobs ever was, the other two are Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
- wlesieutre 11y ago(Manoj Bhargava being best known for "5-Hour Energy" and pledging 99% of his wealth to philanthropic causes)
- noir_lord 11y agoThat and he is investing a lot of money into projects that will have a real world impact using technology we have now to solve problems. For example a state of the art desalination plant that can be mass manufactured.
- hyperbovine 11y agoElon might be able to take personal credit for booking 300k pre-orders (which is of debatable merit), but it was an army of incredibly dedicated SpaceX employees who landed that rocket. Credit where credit is due.
- noir_lord 11y agoNone of who would be working at SpaceX if he didn't dump a shit tonne of his time, skill and money into starting the thing. The employees are incredibly skillful but Musk is the lynchpin.
- aerovistae 11y agoIf Elon can't take credit for the landing, he can't take credit for the pre-orders either. Both companies' achievements are the result of thousands of people doing incredibly high-quality work, all overseen and directed and urged on by Elon. The credit goes to him and to them, for both.
- sixQuarks 11y agothat's why I mentioned it in the "PS". To take a corny line from the Steve Jobs movie, Elon Musk is the conductor. Without him, none of this is possible. Look at Apple after Steve Jobs. Still got the same hard-working people there. Do we still have the same inspirational products coming out? Not even close.
- Mz 11y agoPS - yes, I'm a fanboy - jesus christ how can you not be? I am not a fanboy. (Perhaps it helps that I am not a boy.) But, whatevs. We all have our heroes. No need to justify yours, but also no need to make sweeping statements about what other people should be into.
- serge2k 11y ago> yes, I'm a fanboy - jesus christ how can you not be? Do you really want an answer for that? It doesn't matter, HN is pretty much the church of Elon.
- aerovistae 11y agoI'm the biggest Musk fan there is, so don't take this the wrong way, but I have some serious doubts about that "largest launch" proclamation. That sort of statement needs some serious qualification. I think it's just a marketing thing. Has anyone really researched this claim?
- sixQuarks 11y agoyeah, there's definitely a bit of marketing hype there, but still incredibly impressive.
- vkou 11y agoIn the Soviet Union, people would pre-order cars, and wait for decades for them to be delivered. Given that these orders will take years to fulfill, we seem to be hearkening back to an older, simpler time.
- gozur88 11y agoWell, yes, but they're getting Teslas, not Ladas.
- vmorgulis 11y agoI see him as a moderm Edison (without Menlo Park). Maybe his company will become the biggest in the world like GE. A small posthumous revenge for Nikola Tesla.
- Ftuuky 11y agoI'm not even american but still so proud of what humans can achieve.
- yborg 11y agoNeither is Elon Musk. And the SpaceX team is multinational as well, talent knows no borders.
- ryanhuff 11y agoHe is a US Citizen.
- Nadya 11y agoAnd the company is a US company. I imagine its also because "SpaceX" is awkward to chant. Chanting too fast or with too many people and it will start sounding like "Space sex". Don't believe me? Say "Space X" ten times fast...
- bwilliams18 11y agoAnd that's a bad thing?? Space Sex sounds amazing.
- dogma1138 11y agoSounds actually quite hard and frustrating and I expect quite allot of bruises also.
- yincrash 11y agoElon Musk is a naturalized American citizen since 2002[1]. Referring to him as American would be appropriate. [1] http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a16681/elon-musk-interview-1212/ http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a16681/elon-musk-interv...
- dustinmoorenet 11y ago
- t0mislav 11y agoThis landing is epic!
- Diederich 11y agoI grabbed this from another tweet: https://www.realms.org/pics/spacex-successful-barge-landing.html https://www.realms.org/pics/spacex-successful-barge-landing.... I'm so damn excited I can hardly contain myself.
- r0m4n0 11y agoHere is footage of the Falcon 9 stage 1 landing and the celebration that ensued... (if you missed it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKDr7YwRR7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKDr7YwRR7Y
- gt565k 11y agoHere's the video starting at the landing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pUAydjne5M&feature=youtu.be&t=35m52s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pUAydjne5M&feature=youtu.be...
- myth_buster 11y agoGif from the other thread... http://i.imgur.com/lH4qRaK.gifv http://i.imgur.com/lH4qRaK.gifv
- sevenless 11y agoHere it is in reverse! http://i.imgur.com/kpXtp9g.gifv http://i.imgur.com/kpXtp9g.gifv