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> we need more like him. Not Musk bashing, I am genuinely curious as to why you think that?

• mgiannopoulos 8y ago
  Not many billionaires putting their money on space exploration and renewable energy? Sounds like a good reason.
  • sdinsn 8y ago
    Lots of billionaires are. They just tend to keep to themselves. Also, Bezos has Blue Origin.
    • eduah 8y ago
      Which one are landing orbital class rockets again? FYI, Blue Origin has been at it longer that spaceX has existed. But SpaceX, spending at least 5X less money is landing orbital class rockets and whilst Blue Origin is doing suborbital flights.
      • nopriorarrests 8y ago
        >SpaceX, spending at least 5X less money not to argue, but both Blue Origin and SpaceX are private and don't disclose ther financial information, to my best knowledge. So where is this number coming from?
        • greglindahl 8y ago
          There was a study comparing NASA's development costs to SpaceX's, which SpaceX has commented on. BO has never reached orbit, and doesn't say much about how much they've spent, so no one knows what their costs will be.
        • derekp7 8y ago
          For Blue Origin, they don't have any customers yet, so no income there. And it is public that Bezos just sold what, about a gigadollars worth of Amazon stock, presumably to dump into Blue Origin (which I think he's done about once a year?).
          • sdinsn 8y ago
            > For Blue Origin, they don't have any customers yet, so no income there. You couldn't be more wrong. They've had payload customers for their test flights. They also have 4 large customers signed up for their New Glenn rocket (in development).
      • sdinsn 8y ago
        > Which one are landing orbital class rockets again? Blue Origin is also developing VTVL rockets. BO is expecting to have passenger flights by the end of 2018.
  • kitsunesoba 8y ago
    I think more precisely, plenty of billionaires put money into these things, but it’s too often to little effect due to lack of direction/clarity in the organizations the money is being poured into, too little money being put in, or both. What makes Musk (and Bezos) different is the laser focus and zero hesitation to commit huge amounts of cash to said goal. Where others would be happy to say, “oh well, maybe tomorrow” Musk is always asking, “why didn’t this happen today?” and acting on the answer for better outcomes in the future.
• nickik 8y ago
  He started 3 billion $ companies and was involved in basically creating another one. All of these companies are doing pretty good things at least compared to the alternatives. The space industry was terrible state and he disrupted it in many ways and is leading the charge on a new space industry totally chaining not just industry, but basically forcing change down governments throats including DoD, NASA and others. Much the same could be argued about the car industry. He simply thinks about problems differently. Listen to the interviews with the people that work with him, specially engineers.
  • masterjack 8y ago
    Which 3? He didn’t start PayPal and didn’t start Tesla.