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> Musk has a very deep understanding of tech of his companies Like with his white paper for the Hyperloop which was fundamentally wrong and couldn't have worke

> Musk has a very deep understanding of tech of his companies Like with his white paper for the Hyperloop which was fundamentally wrong and couldn't have worked? Or with his idea of putting Hyperloop segments on.... Wheels? Or with his idea to make the whole rocket reusable, until SpaceX accepted reality and pivoted to at least partial reusability? Or to cite current examples: full self driving that doesn't actively kill drivers when...? And while I'd love to have one, his idea for that household robot is straight out impossible with current technology. If anything, musk is an example of the parent, as all of his companies improved after they got over his original technical ideas. I don't understand why people keep wanting to put celebrities on high pedestals with completely unrealistic expectations. He's a successful businessman and extremely talented influencer, he has enough achievements to his name without randomly adding more to it.

snovv_crash 4y ago
Watch his interviews on Everyday Astronaut, he actually does have a deep understanding of the tech side of SpaceX as well.
Beltalowda 4y ago
Musk has a "I am very smart and thus can never be wrong"-problem, has gravitational bending amounts of arrogance, and seems to have some personality issues. But he's not stupid or ignorant, and has a better understanding of tech than most CEOs. I don't think that's putting him "on a high pedestal".
- ben_w 4y ago
  > Musk has a "I am very smart and thus can never be wrong"-problem Outside his own domains of expertise he certainly comes across that way, but he does also say "yeah I reckon there's only like a 60% chance of our latest rocket not exploding".
- arlcode 4y ago
  A few years back a popular claim was that Musk is personally programming features into the Tesla codebase. Whether that actually happened or not isn't that important but the fact that people thought it was a good thing always struck me as odd. It's really bad if the boss of a multinational company focuses on such minute details and hints at major management failures. All signs point to him being a very talented businessman and organizer who manages to get a lot of people producing innovative and popular products. It seems like people underestimate just how much of a challenge that is and feel the need to "give" him some more tangible skills. He has good understanding of the broad strokes of their technology and carries the vision forward but an Engineer-CEO he isn't and shouldn't be.
  - krsrhe 4y ago
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Well, SpaceX is quite notable for how swiftly it alters its designs and abandons semi-finished work if a better idea comes along. Few technical corporations avoid the sunk cost fallacy as efficiently as them. They seem to be absolutely willing to throw away an expensive prototype and innovate again if it makes technical sense. Musk has a lot of negatives and comes off as arrogant sometimes, but I never heard a story about him forcing the SpaceX engineers to keep some design flaw there because it was his precious idea and thus can't be wrong. IDK about Tesla, I am not that interested in cars.
  - specialist 4y ago
    I like your sunk cost fallacy framing. Munro Assoc's teardowns and analysis suggest that Tesla both innovates and increments at an astonishing clip. Tesla makes plenty of mistakes, for sure. Often existential. Like attempting fully automated manufacturing. But somehow they manage to pivot. One notable exception, that I'm aware of, is Telsa's full self driving car effort, especially without LIDAR. That one baffles me. So stubborn. While it might have been about cost at some point, expense and risk hasn't deterred Tesla's other audacious moon shots. Like investing in the gigapress to make huge castings. Total game changer. Tesla's AI team was recently sacked. I'd love to know the inside baseball. Does it signal a change in strategy? Were they pushing back too hard, like maybe insisting on adopting LIDAR? Maybe Musk just wanted a fresh team for fresh start? I think the reason would be very revealing. -- Like you, I also have little interest in cars. But I'm junkie for all the process, improvement, Peter Drucker, Edward Deming type stuff. And right now that means trying to figure out what TMSC, Apple, Haier, Tesla, and SpaceX are doing. I don't care if Musk is a genius, poseur, whatever. If I did care, regardless of his past actions, I'd worry about his escalating self-destructive behavior sabotaging Tesla and SpaceX going forward. Musk very obviously has to live right on the edge of chaos, always has to double down. Musk's compulsion sorta reminds me of cyclist Graeme Obree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree The way I heard it; part of Obree's internal drive, beyond all ration limits, was he truly believed he'd die if he didn't succeed. Literally racing for his life. From a very far away, I wonder if Musk's mania is like Obree's in some ways.
ben_w 4y ago
I will not deny that he spouts a lot of nonsense, but I would like to point out that all the famous old-school rocket companies also spout a lot of nonsense, the difference is they deliver even less of their less ambitious goals than SpaceX does.
inglor_cz 4y ago
"Or with his idea to make the whole rocket reusable, until SpaceX accepted reality and pivoted to at least partial reusability?" What do you dislike about this particular idea? It is not inherently wrong, it is "only" very technically challenging. What SpaceX did was not a pivot, rather introduction of an intermediate step because full reusability proved too hard at that point. But they never gave up on the ultimate goal of full reusability and the Starship rocket that is now under development is intended to be fully reusable.
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  It's not that I dislike the idea. it's just simply impossible to do so with combustion engines/rocket engines that carry any load. The energy expenditure to reach LEO is too stressful to materials known to man, and the tiniest issue causes full destruction. It will always be more effective to recreate relevant parts instead of full disassembly, in-depth quality assurance and then reassembly
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    "impossible", "always" These predictions do not tend to age well. I am not an aerospace engineer, but Starship seems to be fairly hopeful. Already Falcon 9 shows that you do not need to fully disassemble engines etc. to be sure that they are OK. A static fire with enough sensors will do, and nowadays they don't even do that. If you look at the table of booster reuses of Falcon 9, failures happen, but they are infrequent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b...

snovv_crash 4y ago

Watch his interviews on Everyday Astronaut, he actually does have a deep understanding of the tech side of SpaceX as well.

Beltalowda 4y ago

Musk has a "I am very smart and thus can never be wrong"-problem, has gravitational bending amounts of arrogance, and seems to have some personality issues. But he's not stupid or ignorant, and has a better understanding of tech than most CEOs. I don't think that's putting him "on a high pedestal".

ben_w 4y ago
> Musk has a "I am very smart and thus can never be wrong"-problem Outside his own domains of expertise he certainly comes across that way, but he does also say "yeah I reckon there's only like a 60% chance of our latest rocket not exploding".
arlcode 4y ago
A few years back a popular claim was that Musk is personally programming features into the Tesla codebase. Whether that actually happened or not isn't that important but the fact that people thought it was a good thing always struck me as odd. It's really bad if the boss of a multinational company focuses on such minute details and hints at major management failures. All signs point to him being a very talented businessman and organizer who manages to get a lot of people producing innovative and popular products. It seems like people underestimate just how much of a challenge that is and feel the need to "give" him some more tangible skills. He has good understanding of the broad strokes of their technology and carries the vision forward but an Engineer-CEO he isn't and shouldn't be.
- krsrhe 4y ago
inglor_cz 4y ago
Well, SpaceX is quite notable for how swiftly it alters its designs and abandons semi-finished work if a better idea comes along. Few technical corporations avoid the sunk cost fallacy as efficiently as them. They seem to be absolutely willing to throw away an expensive prototype and innovate again if it makes technical sense. Musk has a lot of negatives and comes off as arrogant sometimes, but I never heard a story about him forcing the SpaceX engineers to keep some design flaw there because it was his precious idea and thus can't be wrong. IDK about Tesla, I am not that interested in cars.
- specialist 4y ago
  I like your sunk cost fallacy framing. Munro Assoc's teardowns and analysis suggest that Tesla both innovates and increments at an astonishing clip. Tesla makes plenty of mistakes, for sure. Often existential. Like attempting fully automated manufacturing. But somehow they manage to pivot. One notable exception, that I'm aware of, is Telsa's full self driving car effort, especially without LIDAR. That one baffles me. So stubborn. While it might have been about cost at some point, expense and risk hasn't deterred Tesla's other audacious moon shots. Like investing in the gigapress to make huge castings. Total game changer. Tesla's AI team was recently sacked. I'd love to know the inside baseball. Does it signal a change in strategy? Were they pushing back too hard, like maybe insisting on adopting LIDAR? Maybe Musk just wanted a fresh team for fresh start? I think the reason would be very revealing. -- Like you, I also have little interest in cars. But I'm junkie for all the process, improvement, Peter Drucker, Edward Deming type stuff. And right now that means trying to figure out what TMSC, Apple, Haier, Tesla, and SpaceX are doing. I don't care if Musk is a genius, poseur, whatever. If I did care, regardless of his past actions, I'd worry about his escalating self-destructive behavior sabotaging Tesla and SpaceX going forward. Musk very obviously has to live right on the edge of chaos, always has to double down. Musk's compulsion sorta reminds me of cyclist Graeme Obree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree The way I heard it; part of Obree's internal drive, beyond all ration limits, was he truly believed he'd die if he didn't succeed. Literally racing for his life. From a very far away, I wonder if Musk's mania is like Obree's in some ways.

ben_w 4y ago

I will not deny that he spouts a lot of nonsense, but I would like to point out that all the famous old-school rocket companies also spout a lot of nonsense, the difference is they deliver even less of their less ambitious goals than SpaceX does.

inglor_cz 4y ago

"Or with his idea to make the whole rocket reusable, until SpaceX accepted reality and pivoted to at least partial reusability?" What do you dislike about this particular idea? It is not inherently wrong, it is "only" very technically challenging. What SpaceX did was not a pivot, rather introduction of an intermediate step because full reusability proved too hard at that point. But they never gave up on the ultimate goal of full reusability and the Starship rocket that is now under development is intended to be fully reusable.

411111111111111 4y ago
It's not that I dislike the idea. it's just simply impossible to do so with combustion engines/rocket engines that carry any load. The energy expenditure to reach LEO is too stressful to materials known to man, and the tiniest issue causes full destruction. It will always be more effective to recreate relevant parts instead of full disassembly, in-depth quality assurance and then reassembly
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  "impossible", "always" These predictions do not tend to age well. I am not an aerospace engineer, but Starship seems to be fairly hopeful. Already Falcon 9 shows that you do not need to fully disassemble engines etc. to be sure that they are OK. A static fire with enough sensors will do, and nowadays they don't even do that. If you look at the table of booster reuses of Falcon 9, failures happen, but they are infrequent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b...