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Citing Elon Musk in this context is definitely not making the point you think it’s making.
by CPLX 7y ago
Citing Elon Musk in this context is definitely not making the point you think it’s making.
- lend000 7y agoName one aeronautical engineer phD who deserves more credit for giving America the ability to put humans in space next month than Musk. He's quite involved with technical decisions. His social media behavior is irrelevant here -- this is about the ability to innovate outside of physics or economics, which is what he learned about in college.
- pjc50 7y ago> putting humans back on the moon next month Wait what? Despite the pandemic?
- lend000 7y agoOops. Edited, misread the last launch headline. Just Earth orbit, although still an important milestone for America to have shuttle capability again.
- luckylion 7y ago> Name one aeronautical engineer phD who deserves more credit for giving America the ability to put humans in space next month than Musk. Why limit it to them? Without the Internet, there would have been no X.com, no PayPal, no billion dollar paycheck. If "funding" a large project is the equivalent of "being a scientific genius", I think we'll add a lot of geniuses to the books, and we should probably include every government official that makes decisions about funding large projects. And really ... who deserves more credit for putting a man on the moon than Karl Marx? Without Marx no communism, without communism no Soviet Union, without SU no American fear of losing dominance, and without that no ambitious and well-funded space program.
- lend000 7y agoMarx was a bit further removed from day to day decisions on rocket architecture than Musk if I understand correctly.
- post_below 7y agoWhy not? It doesn't matter if he's... Elon Musk. What he's accomplished in fields he wasn't trained in is significant. I think that makes OPs point just fine.
- fsh 7y agoUnlike the other people in the list, Musk (and Huges) have never made a significant scientific discovery or invention.
- febeling 7y agoHe seems to have a rare skill for building large successful innovative companies with revolutionary products. Not sure if that’s below or above the level of accomplishment of the reference group.
- CPLX 7y agoBecause Elon Musk has made a series of incorrect, misleading, and ignorant statements about the Coronavirus crisis in order to benefit himself personally.