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There is so much negativity about Tesla. Watching Tesla reminds of the the quote "We hoped for flying cars, but what we got was 140 characters" (or something

There is so much negativity about Tesla. Watching Tesla reminds of the the quote "We hoped for flying cars, but what we got was 140 characters" (or something similar, I don't remember it verbatim) Every time I think about Tesla, I am reminded of the thousands of brilliant engineers toiling away in Silicon Valley trying to optimize online advertising. Maybe we could be a bit more closer to Fusion energy, maybe we could be a bit more closer to lesser carbon footprints. That small bit really is crucial, especially when we are fighting a losing battle with mother earth. Perhaps the world has too much information. When information flow is cheap, the cost of propaganda is low enough to create legitimate confusion. Imagine a world without Google, FB or Twitter, perhaps there would be concerted efforts by governments towards educating the masses about global warming. Perhaps such efforts could not be subverted by foreign governments or fringe groups. Looking back, the true value addition by SV will be companies like Tesla, Solar City & SpaceX. Here is a guy who is scarily close to being a real-life Iron Man, doing something that has shown verifiable results and actually progresses humanity far more than FB/Twitter and to some extent Google. But all I feel is constant negativity. I really feel sorry for Musk. I sincerely admire him for what he is struggling for and I really wish he'd get more support. Note : I do understand his background and that the seed money for SpaceX was from paypal and all, but even then, paypal was a different business than just online ads.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Your comment strongly reminds me of this comment (and the thread) of 4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7885128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7885128 Nothing has changed. To quote 'natural219 from what I just linked, the words I 100% support: "Godspeed, Musk. (...) I'm behind you 100%. I just hope you can finish your work before our shitty, myopic, destructive society tears you down. Here's to faith."
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
hnarn 9y ago
It's always been my sincere opinion that even if Musk fails miserably I'll still admire him more than most other "tech idols". There are people that say he's all talk, but I don't care. Even if he's 75% talk and delivers on the rest, whatever he does achieve is still better than a face-detecting smartphone or a social network that makes money by profiling your personality for advertisers. I don't care about the money, I like his vision and in the end that's what makes a leader.
- chronic193 9y ago
  > I don't care about the money You must not be an investor.
- kumarvvr 9y ago
  > There are people that say he's all talk I really wish there is stronger support for him against these sorts of people. How can he be all talk when we see his rockets going up and coming back down.
  - andrepd 9y ago
    Well first of all they're not his rockets. The engineers and scientists did it, he supplies the money, arguably a meritless in ck prison. Second, there are many promises he still hasn't delivered on: SpaceX targets not met, Tesla still running at a massive loss, Hyperloop being doomed to failure, etc etc. I can definitely see why people say he is mostly talk, even though admittedly he has achieved some successes.
    - kumarvvr 9y ago
      It's really his push, his vision and his risk. NASA had tremendous resources for decades, with some of the best minds of 21st century working there. They didn't produce self landing rockets, and on top of that, it makes complete business and economic sense too.
    - Strom 9y ago
      > Well first of all they're not his rockets. Am I understanding this correctly, that the criticism of Elon Musk being all talk is because he didn't personally perform all the work in achievements like Falcon 9 and Model S?
      - nightski 9y ago
        He is a brilliant business man and gave all of the engineers at spacex the opportunity and freedom to achieve great things. For that he should be commended - we need more business leaders like him in this world! I think at the end of the day though in idolizing Musk you are taking away from the hard work and brilliance of all the other employees at his companies. America has this iron man style obsession with one guy changing the world by himself. But at the end of the day we achieve greatness by working together as a team.
Fej 9y ago
The negativity is because Tesla has some truly abhorrent business practices. For me, it's out of love, not hate. Of course, there's a lot of people who stand to gain from Tesla failing.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ianai 9y ago
  I’ve heard he doesn’t pay well. It would be a lot easier to support a “visionary” if they believed in treating their employees well. Henry Ford did it a century ago. We probably got a golden age (of sorts) out of that.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
  The negativity precedes the talks of low pay etc. And it might sound callous but plenty of companies have similar practices (and are not creating anything of earth-shattering value), so judging Tesla more than the others is a bit unfair.
graphitezepp 9y ago
Musk DOES have a lot of support. I personally suspect much of the negativity comes from backlash caused by him having a legion of fanboys. Whenever someone gets idolized like I have often seen Musk as, haters come out in reaction.
- lumberjack 9y ago
  Tesla's marketing is always misleading. That irks people and from there comes the "negativity". When the Model S came out, they tried to claim that they had "solved EVs". When they introduced their self driving tech, they pretty much implied that keeping your hands on the wheel was only a legal technicality. They are always trying to claim they are two more steps ahead than they really are. I understand that it is their job to do just that, but we don't have to believe them, and if we don't, that is not really "negativity". For example with the Model 3, they achieved just about what what Chevy did with the Bolt, in terms of price and range, which is good, but if you believed their marketing, you'd expect them to be far ahead of their competition.
  - sharpercoder 9y ago
    I think Model S solved electric driving. Car reviewers seem to think so, the industry seem to think so (most manufacturers announced electrical models). Range, comfort, charging locations, safety, all solved problems. How is Tesla's supposed claim they solved electrical driving misleading?
    - lumberjack 9y ago
      For the past 15 years people had been trying to make the mass market EV. The envisioned future was that the every day man would be driving this basic EV instead of their $15k ICE commuter car. That was the goal, obviously influenced to a great extent by both fuel prices and climate change concerns. All EV car models before the Tesla Roadster were trying to target this market. The Model S targeted a new market entirely. Nobody had tried to do a luxury sedan EV and kodus to Tesla for spotting that niche, but that was not the goal that everyone else was chasing. It was something else entirely. From an economics and from a technology point of view, building an $80k EV with decent range is insanely easier than building a $15k EV. Even if it has to be a luxury car and look good. It still gives you that $20k leeway to equip you car with a massive battery. The misleading part was trying to claim that they had solved the problem that everyone else was working on, when in fact they had not. And they still have not today as evidenced by the $35k price tag of the Model 3.
gibasmaciej 9y ago
Where does information about negativity come from? It's not negativity if other people don't care about topic.
tgarma1234 9y ago
One thing that put me off about tesla, if you overlook all of the manufacturing issues that pretty much every analyst says will doom the company, is that for some bizarre reason the models were intentionally named in order to spell out S3XY. After Harvey Weinstein I think we all need to take a good hard look at the men who are in charge of things and ask, "why?" People don't get a free pass on being creeps just because they are blowing a lot of money anymore.
- tzahola 9y ago
  Congrats! Elon could have got away with it, but you connected the dots. He will be forced to resign any day now.
  - cornholio 9y ago
    He's the last technology patriarch. Practically a dinosaur from the age where women were not allowed to study STEM. AND HE MARRIES ONLY SUPERMODELS, how's that for a smoking gun of oppression?
    - Robotbeat 9y ago
      The President (i.e. the highest position other than Elon himself) of SpaceX is Gwynne Shotwell; please tell me how Elon is all about oppression of women.
      - cornholio 9y ago
        sheesh... take a joke people
        Robotbeat 9y ago
        Poe's Law.
- timmonsjg 9y ago
  >People don't get a free pass on being creeps just because they are blowing a lot of money anymore The man wants his car designs to evoke an image of being sexy and you consider him a creep? That's a way over-dramatic interpretation.
VeejayRampay 9y ago
Even stranger to me: I'm French and we're world-class haters. Like, culturally conditioned to be dismissive of success, always seeing something negative when people achieve big things (they must have been crooked in some shape or form along the way, they exploited others, etc). There used to be a time where American people were different in that regard. Celebrating success, entrepreneurs, daring mavericks, etc. Now all I see is jealousy, smirk, poo-pooing. Have you guys turned French?
- junkscience2017 9y ago
  America? No. HN? Definitely yes.
- nemo44x 9y ago
  Postmodernism has been en vogue in the USA since the late 1950's. You only need to look to American literature since then and you'll notice much of what is considered the "most important" fiction is Postmodern. Which means it is cynical, ironic and skeptical of all the things you associate with the French. This is not a fringe philosophical concept bound to popular novel's either. Look to the background of villains in mainstream super hero movies, to our politics (many call Trump the first Postmodern president), and the drive to be "authentic" in every aspect of the self for reasons of self promotion in some kind recursive cynical loop which other view as a perfect specimen of our contemporary irony, nearly perfected! I'm not an expert on French culture or any culture per-se, but perhaps Americans (of which I'm one) do have a more superficial embrace of sentimentalism and a less critical approach to hero worship and "getting rich" and maybe it isn't driven by cynicism as much as naiveté but that's only one aspect of the culture as a whole. Even still, I'd argue most people are driven by the Postmodern philosophy wether they know it or not; are more cynical then they even know and skeptical of our institutions (universities, churches, etc) on one side or another.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > Look to the background of villains in mainstream super hero movies This. I sometimes wonder if I'm the only one to notice that villains in popular movies/TV shows increasingly present reasonable positions (even if crooked methods), while it's the protagonists who seem to live by simplistic, populistic, feelings-based morality.
jimbokun 9y ago
"But all I feel is constant negativity. I really feel sorry for Musk." The negativity is so bad, his car company is worth more than Ford, with a minuscule fraction of the sales. Elon will be just fine.
zerohm 9y ago
You are sort of getting into "we would be better off without the internet" territory, which is a very difficult argument to make for either side. Tesla and Space X engineers would not have been able to achieve what they have without Google. The Arab Spring might not have happened without Twitter. But yeah we can just throw FB in the trash...
thisisit 9y ago
Inside that negativity there is some truth too. Tesla for one is leveraged 7:1 and that too in a time of easy and near zero interest rate credit. With Feds changing rates they might be painted into a tight box. I am sure situation is same for SpaceX too. And then the whole SolarCity acquisition which didn't go down well. That said, yes you have to hand it to Musk. Even if these companies go belly up, they have brought in lot of new technology.
- Robotbeat 9y ago
  Elon Musk always plays pretty close to the line. If Tesla wasn't so leveraged, doubtless Musk would immediately start trying to expand to more and more Gigafactories until it was. The situation for SpaceX is different. SpaceX got 18 successful launches last year, several of them with reused rockets and most of them recovered afterward (no unsuccessful landing attempts, though a few were intentionally expended for performance reasons). Their only real domestic competitor ULA which launches Atlas and Delta, long held as the giants in American space launch, only had a total of 8 launches, all expended of course. Not only does SpaceX have a huge technological moat in the form of operational space launch reuse, but operationally their Falcon 9 (which had complete success in 2017) is out-launching everything else, including both the Chinese DF-5 (which had a failure) and the Russian R7/Soyuz (which also had a failure). And their future products build tremendously on this already sizable lead: 1) Falcon Heavy, completed pad fit checks by the end of the year and now getting ready for a static fire and launch in a couple weeks, is even MORE reusable (3 cores recovered, counting for 27 out of 28 of the engines) and MORE powerful than any other rocket launching today. Dragon Crew also nearing completion and will be the first (of 3 total vehicles nearing completion) to return Americans to orbit on a domestic vehicle, likely this year. 2) A satellite constellation which is readying satellite prototype launch in the next month or two, has the potential of making SpaceX a telecomm giant. The scale of this constellation would not be feasible without the reusability tech they've developed. 3) And BFR, which will further cement their space launch tech moat, make launching the full version of the potentially-extremely-profitable satellite constellation WAY cheaper, and potentially open several new markets. SpaceX is like Tesla after a full ramp-up of the Model 3 selling as many cars as Toyota does but in a world where no one else has an electric car for sale. So understandably (for Musk), he's leveraging this position to make things like BFR a reality. Both companies are in extremely good positions compared to 2008 when both companies nearly went under. SpaceX in particular. And given the fact that Elon was able to save both, it means a market down-turn is something he has seen before and he has some powerful strings to pull in case the market has some major problems.
indescions_2018 9y ago
$TSLA will sell a lot of cars this year, irrevocably altering the EV game. Price target $350 by Jan 2019. But it pales in comparison to the watershed moment SpaceX and the entire spaceflight community will have. There is a real possibility for 28 launches, including two Falcon Heavy's. NASA TESS on track to discover an explosion in habitable zone exoplanets. Vector, Electron, TechShot and other private space data leading a push for commercial apps in space, including pharma, stem cells and materials foundries. And there is decent chance of someone landing on the moon for the first time in 45 years ;) Will we Go Back to the Moon in 2018? https://audioboom.com/posts/6573043-dec-29-2017-will-we-go-back-to-the-moon-in-2018 https://audioboom.com/posts/6573043-dec-29-2017-will-we-go-b... 69TH International Astronautical Congress Bremen 1-5 OCT 2018 https://www.iac2018.org/ https://www.iac2018.org/
- reaperducer 9y ago
  > NASA TESS on track to discover an explosion in habitable zone exoplanets. Not a factor. Until we can travel many multiples faster than light, it doesn't matter how many things we can see far, far away. You and I will both be centuries dead before that happens.
  - arcticfox 9y ago
    > it doesn't matter how many things we can see far, far away. Why does it "not matter" since we can't land on them in our lifetimes? It's still interesting.
    - cornholio 9y ago
      The GP meant to say "it doesn't matter for SpaceX that we find new planets, since no rocket company will send anything there in the forseeable future". The GGP was pointing out that TESS itself is launched by SpaceX.
dmode 9y ago
A lot of negativity towards Elon comes from the fact he has taken on a lot of deeply entrenched interests and conventional wisdom. I know a "car guy" who deeply hates Elon and hopes for Tesla's collapse, because he has invested his whole life learning about the "beauty" of the Internal Combustion Engine, how to tune it, how to improve it etc. And here comes a guy who wants to disrupt all of that with an engine that is much much simpler and challenging 100 years of research and development. Then there are people who believe electric and solar are for "greenies" and have been trained to viscerally react against anything that is related to renewable energy. He has also taken on the dealership model, the fossil fuel industry, utilities, launch companies etc. You get the picture.
mikrosift 9y ago
>There is so much negativity about Tesla. We must live on different planets, because I can't go a single day without hearing about some product they may or may not build at some point in the future. This is one of the most hyped up companies I've ever seen (mostly deservedly). >Here is a guy who is scarily close to being a real-life Iron Man Really? Scary close? I'd say not remotely close. >I really feel sorry for Musk. Really? >Looking back, the true value addition by SV will be companies like Tesla, Solar City & SpaceX SpaceX for sure. Tesla, maybe. SolarCity? What did they do except destroy a bunch of investor's money? Edit: Downvoted before I could even fix a typo. This place is embarrassing to read sometimes..."Real life Iron Man", "feel sorry for Elon Musk".
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
I think any reasonable observer is impressed by what he's done and optimistic about even some of his more outlandish claims. I think the issue is you've got rabid fanboys, so as a response to that, you get rabid haters as well. For every circlejerk, there is an equal and opposite counter-jerk. Don't forget that, at least with Tesla, there's lots of money involved. Even people that aren't actively FUDing, if they aren't long on Tesla, then criticism is reassuring to them.
DesiLurker 9y ago
everytime someone says that to me I say.. He's the dude that landed a freakin rocket back to earth and then again! most other things he's done can be termed as ruthless execution but to attempt stuff he's doing with SpaceX requires real vision and strong faith in that vision. This is real engineering. I do feel that his critics often lose perspective. for instance he gets a lot of heat for not ramping up M3 production as fast as promised but in the grand scheme of things I fail to see what impact that has whether EVs ramp up to a million cars a year a few quarters earlier or later. only thing that matters is tesla/spacex/etc lives to fight another day. That said I would never invest my money in tesla stock. Its simply because I dont think its His ultimate goal to make money & that will always reflect in the decisions he make.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

Your comment strongly reminds me of this comment (and the thread) of 4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7885128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7885128 Nothing has changed. To quote 'natural219 from what I just linked, the words I 100% support: "Godspeed, Musk. (...) I'm behind you 100%. I just hope you can finish your work before our shitty, myopic, destructive society tears you down. Here's to faith."

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

hnarn 9y ago

It's always been my sincere opinion that even if Musk fails miserably I'll still admire him more than most other "tech idols". There are people that say he's all talk, but I don't care. Even if he's 75% talk and delivers on the rest, whatever he does achieve is still better than a face-detecting smartphone or a social network that makes money by profiling your personality for advertisers. I don't care about the money, I like his vision and in the end that's what makes a leader.

chronic193 9y ago
> I don't care about the money You must not be an investor.
kumarvvr 9y ago
> There are people that say he's all talk I really wish there is stronger support for him against these sorts of people. How can he be all talk when we see his rockets going up and coming back down.
- andrepd 9y ago
  Well first of all they're not his rockets. The engineers and scientists did it, he supplies the money, arguably a meritless in ck prison. Second, there are many promises he still hasn't delivered on: SpaceX targets not met, Tesla still running at a massive loss, Hyperloop being doomed to failure, etc etc. I can definitely see why people say he is mostly talk, even though admittedly he has achieved some successes.
  - kumarvvr 9y ago
    It's really his push, his vision and his risk. NASA had tremendous resources for decades, with some of the best minds of 21st century working there. They didn't produce self landing rockets, and on top of that, it makes complete business and economic sense too.
  - Strom 9y ago
    > Well first of all they're not his rockets. Am I understanding this correctly, that the criticism of Elon Musk being all talk is because he didn't personally perform all the work in achievements like Falcon 9 and Model S?
    - nightski 9y ago
      He is a brilliant business man and gave all of the engineers at spacex the opportunity and freedom to achieve great things. For that he should be commended - we need more business leaders like him in this world! I think at the end of the day though in idolizing Musk you are taking away from the hard work and brilliance of all the other employees at his companies. America has this iron man style obsession with one guy changing the world by himself. But at the end of the day we achieve greatness by working together as a team.

Fej 9y ago

The negativity is because Tesla has some truly abhorrent business practices. For me, it's out of love, not hate. Of course, there's a lot of people who stand to gain from Tesla failing.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ianai 9y ago
I’ve heard he doesn’t pay well. It would be a lot easier to support a “visionary” if they believed in treating their employees well. Henry Ford did it a century ago. We probably got a golden age (of sorts) out of that.
kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
The negativity precedes the talks of low pay etc. And it might sound callous but plenty of companies have similar practices (and are not creating anything of earth-shattering value), so judging Tesla more than the others is a bit unfair.

graphitezepp 9y ago

Musk DOES have a lot of support. I personally suspect much of the negativity comes from backlash caused by him having a legion of fanboys. Whenever someone gets idolized like I have often seen Musk as, haters come out in reaction.

lumberjack 9y ago
Tesla's marketing is always misleading. That irks people and from there comes the "negativity". When the Model S came out, they tried to claim that they had "solved EVs". When they introduced their self driving tech, they pretty much implied that keeping your hands on the wheel was only a legal technicality. They are always trying to claim they are two more steps ahead than they really are. I understand that it is their job to do just that, but we don't have to believe them, and if we don't, that is not really "negativity". For example with the Model 3, they achieved just about what what Chevy did with the Bolt, in terms of price and range, which is good, but if you believed their marketing, you'd expect them to be far ahead of their competition.
- sharpercoder 9y ago
  I think Model S solved electric driving. Car reviewers seem to think so, the industry seem to think so (most manufacturers announced electrical models). Range, comfort, charging locations, safety, all solved problems. How is Tesla's supposed claim they solved electrical driving misleading?
  - lumberjack 9y ago
    For the past 15 years people had been trying to make the mass market EV. The envisioned future was that the every day man would be driving this basic EV instead of their $15k ICE commuter car. That was the goal, obviously influenced to a great extent by both fuel prices and climate change concerns. All EV car models before the Tesla Roadster were trying to target this market. The Model S targeted a new market entirely. Nobody had tried to do a luxury sedan EV and kodus to Tesla for spotting that niche, but that was not the goal that everyone else was chasing. It was something else entirely. From an economics and from a technology point of view, building an $80k EV with decent range is insanely easier than building a $15k EV. Even if it has to be a luxury car and look good. It still gives you that $20k leeway to equip you car with a massive battery. The misleading part was trying to claim that they had solved the problem that everyone else was working on, when in fact they had not. And they still have not today as evidenced by the $35k price tag of the Model 3.

gibasmaciej 9y ago

Where does information about negativity come from? It's not negativity if other people don't care about topic.

tgarma1234 9y ago

One thing that put me off about tesla, if you overlook all of the manufacturing issues that pretty much every analyst says will doom the company, is that for some bizarre reason the models were intentionally named in order to spell out S3XY. After Harvey Weinstein I think we all need to take a good hard look at the men who are in charge of things and ask, "why?" People don't get a free pass on being creeps just because they are blowing a lot of money anymore.

tzahola 9y ago
Congrats! Elon could have got away with it, but you connected the dots. He will be forced to resign any day now.
- cornholio 9y ago
  He's the last technology patriarch. Practically a dinosaur from the age where women were not allowed to study STEM. AND HE MARRIES ONLY SUPERMODELS, how's that for a smoking gun of oppression?
  - Robotbeat 9y ago
    The President (i.e. the highest position other than Elon himself) of SpaceX is Gwynne Shotwell; please tell me how Elon is all about oppression of women.
    - cornholio 9y ago
      sheesh... take a joke people
      - Robotbeat 9y ago
        Poe's Law.
timmonsjg 9y ago
>People don't get a free pass on being creeps just because they are blowing a lot of money anymore The man wants his car designs to evoke an image of being sexy and you consider him a creep? That's a way over-dramatic interpretation.

VeejayRampay 9y ago

Even stranger to me: I'm French and we're world-class haters. Like, culturally conditioned to be dismissive of success, always seeing something negative when people achieve big things (they must have been crooked in some shape or form along the way, they exploited others, etc). There used to be a time where American people were different in that regard. Celebrating success, entrepreneurs, daring mavericks, etc. Now all I see is jealousy, smirk, poo-pooing. Have you guys turned French?

junkscience2017 9y ago
America? No. HN? Definitely yes.
nemo44x 9y ago
Postmodernism has been en vogue in the USA since the late 1950's. You only need to look to American literature since then and you'll notice much of what is considered the "most important" fiction is Postmodern. Which means it is cynical, ironic and skeptical of all the things you associate with the French. This is not a fringe philosophical concept bound to popular novel's either. Look to the background of villains in mainstream super hero movies, to our politics (many call Trump the first Postmodern president), and the drive to be "authentic" in every aspect of the self for reasons of self promotion in some kind recursive cynical loop which other view as a perfect specimen of our contemporary irony, nearly perfected! I'm not an expert on French culture or any culture per-se, but perhaps Americans (of which I'm one) do have a more superficial embrace of sentimentalism and a less critical approach to hero worship and "getting rich" and maybe it isn't driven by cynicism as much as naiveté but that's only one aspect of the culture as a whole. Even still, I'd argue most people are driven by the Postmodern philosophy wether they know it or not; are more cynical then they even know and skeptical of our institutions (universities, churches, etc) on one side or another.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > Look to the background of villains in mainstream super hero movies This. I sometimes wonder if I'm the only one to notice that villains in popular movies/TV shows increasingly present reasonable positions (even if crooked methods), while it's the protagonists who seem to live by simplistic, populistic, feelings-based morality.

jimbokun 9y ago

"But all I feel is constant negativity. I really feel sorry for Musk." The negativity is so bad, his car company is worth more than Ford, with a minuscule fraction of the sales. Elon will be just fine.

zerohm 9y ago

You are sort of getting into "we would be better off without the internet" territory, which is a very difficult argument to make for either side. Tesla and Space X engineers would not have been able to achieve what they have without Google. The Arab Spring might not have happened without Twitter. But yeah we can just throw FB in the trash...

thisisit 9y ago

Inside that negativity there is some truth too. Tesla for one is leveraged 7:1 and that too in a time of easy and near zero interest rate credit. With Feds changing rates they might be painted into a tight box. I am sure situation is same for SpaceX too. And then the whole SolarCity acquisition which didn't go down well. That said, yes you have to hand it to Musk. Even if these companies go belly up, they have brought in lot of new technology.

Robotbeat 9y ago
Elon Musk always plays pretty close to the line. If Tesla wasn't so leveraged, doubtless Musk would immediately start trying to expand to more and more Gigafactories until it was. The situation for SpaceX is different. SpaceX got 18 successful launches last year, several of them with reused rockets and most of them recovered afterward (no unsuccessful landing attempts, though a few were intentionally expended for performance reasons). Their only real domestic competitor ULA which launches Atlas and Delta, long held as the giants in American space launch, only had a total of 8 launches, all expended of course. Not only does SpaceX have a huge technological moat in the form of operational space launch reuse, but operationally their Falcon 9 (which had complete success in 2017) is out-launching everything else, including both the Chinese DF-5 (which had a failure) and the Russian R7/Soyuz (which also had a failure). And their future products build tremendously on this already sizable lead: 1) Falcon Heavy, completed pad fit checks by the end of the year and now getting ready for a static fire and launch in a couple weeks, is even MORE reusable (3 cores recovered, counting for 27 out of 28 of the engines) and MORE powerful than any other rocket launching today. Dragon Crew also nearing completion and will be the first (of 3 total vehicles nearing completion) to return Americans to orbit on a domestic vehicle, likely this year. 2) A satellite constellation which is readying satellite prototype launch in the next month or two, has the potential of making SpaceX a telecomm giant. The scale of this constellation would not be feasible without the reusability tech they've developed. 3) And BFR, which will further cement their space launch tech moat, make launching the full version of the potentially-extremely-profitable satellite constellation WAY cheaper, and potentially open several new markets. SpaceX is like Tesla after a full ramp-up of the Model 3 selling as many cars as Toyota does but in a world where no one else has an electric car for sale. So understandably (for Musk), he's leveraging this position to make things like BFR a reality. Both companies are in extremely good positions compared to 2008 when both companies nearly went under. SpaceX in particular. And given the fact that Elon was able to save both, it means a market down-turn is something he has seen before and he has some powerful strings to pull in case the market has some major problems.

indescions_2018 9y ago

$TSLA will sell a lot of cars this year, irrevocably altering the EV game. Price target $350 by Jan 2019. But it pales in comparison to the watershed moment SpaceX and the entire spaceflight community will have. There is a real possibility for 28 launches, including two Falcon Heavy's. NASA TESS on track to discover an explosion in habitable zone exoplanets. Vector, Electron, TechShot and other private space data leading a push for commercial apps in space, including pharma, stem cells and materials foundries. And there is decent chance of someone landing on the moon for the first time in 45 years ;) Will we Go Back to the Moon in 2018? https://audioboom.com/posts/6573043-dec-29-2017-will-we-go-back-to-the-moon-in-2018 https://audioboom.com/posts/6573043-dec-29-2017-will-we-go-b... 69TH International Astronautical Congress Bremen 1-5 OCT 2018 https://www.iac2018.org/ https://www.iac2018.org/

reaperducer 9y ago
> NASA TESS on track to discover an explosion in habitable zone exoplanets. Not a factor. Until we can travel many multiples faster than light, it doesn't matter how many things we can see far, far away. You and I will both be centuries dead before that happens.
- arcticfox 9y ago
  > it doesn't matter how many things we can see far, far away. Why does it "not matter" since we can't land on them in our lifetimes? It's still interesting.
  - cornholio 9y ago
    The GP meant to say "it doesn't matter for SpaceX that we find new planets, since no rocket company will send anything there in the forseeable future". The GGP was pointing out that TESS itself is launched by SpaceX.

dmode 9y ago

A lot of negativity towards Elon comes from the fact he has taken on a lot of deeply entrenched interests and conventional wisdom. I know a "car guy" who deeply hates Elon and hopes for Tesla's collapse, because he has invested his whole life learning about the "beauty" of the Internal Combustion Engine, how to tune it, how to improve it etc. And here comes a guy who wants to disrupt all of that with an engine that is much much simpler and challenging 100 years of research and development. Then there are people who believe electric and solar are for "greenies" and have been trained to viscerally react against anything that is related to renewable energy. He has also taken on the dealership model, the fossil fuel industry, utilities, launch companies etc. You get the picture.

mikrosift 9y ago

>There is so much negativity about Tesla. We must live on different planets, because I can't go a single day without hearing about some product they may or may not build at some point in the future. This is one of the most hyped up companies I've ever seen (mostly deservedly). >Here is a guy who is scarily close to being a real-life Iron Man Really? Scary close? I'd say not remotely close. >I really feel sorry for Musk. Really? >Looking back, the true value addition by SV will be companies like Tesla, Solar City & SpaceX SpaceX for sure. Tesla, maybe. SolarCity? What did they do except destroy a bunch of investor's money? Edit: Downvoted before I could even fix a typo. This place is embarrassing to read sometimes..."Real life Iron Man", "feel sorry for Elon Musk".

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago

I think any reasonable observer is impressed by what he's done and optimistic about even some of his more outlandish claims. I think the issue is you've got rabid fanboys, so as a response to that, you get rabid haters as well. For every circlejerk, there is an equal and opposite counter-jerk. Don't forget that, at least with Tesla, there's lots of money involved. Even people that aren't actively FUDing, if they aren't long on Tesla, then criticism is reassuring to them.

DesiLurker 9y ago

everytime someone says that to me I say.. He's the dude that landed a freakin rocket back to earth and then again! most other things he's done can be termed as ruthless execution but to attempt stuff he's doing with SpaceX requires real vision and strong faith in that vision. This is real engineering. I do feel that his critics often lose perspective. for instance he gets a lot of heat for not ramping up M3 production as fast as promised but in the grand scheme of things I fail to see what impact that has whether EVs ramp up to a million cars a year a few quarters earlier or later. only thing that matters is tesla/spacex/etc lives to fight another day. That said I would never invest my money in tesla stock. Its simply because I dont think its His ultimate goal to make money & that will always reflect in the decisions he make.