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The mastermind behind SpaceX is not Elon. It's this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._G

The mastermind behind SpaceX is not Elon. It's this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career He gave Elon the ideas, initial team, govt connections, contracts, etc.. Elon was the company jester. Rocket landing work was taken from the DC-X

fsdjkflsjfsoij 4y ago
The criticisms are getting more and more comical. Michael is a friend of Elon and trusted Elon with many of his ideas and contacts. I'm sure Musk would say as much. Do you think Michael was sharing these ideas and contacts with just anyone? Why do you think he specifically chose to work with Elon?
- georgeg23 4y ago
  Mike saw Elon was good at recruiting Silicon Valley talent and selling the whole "save humanity by going to Mars" story (but even that was Mike's idea with Orbital).
- trident5000 4y ago
  "Elon hires people he doesnt do all the work!" Yes thats why you hire people...to not do all the work. Im pretty sure Elon is aware of this.
- devmor 4y ago
  There's nothing comical about it. They went to two different Russian firms to partner with before it was even called SpaceX and were turned down because Elon kept running his mouth on subjects he didn't understand and they lost all confidence in the project.
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
    That just shows confidence isn't always a predictor of success. They made a bad call, quite obviously.
    - devmor 4y ago
      No, it does not. His plan was to build greenhouses on mars. Their rejection of his idea is what inspired the pivot to build rockets instead.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    What was he running his mouth about? Crazy stuff like landing boosters back at the pad, or on barges in the middle of the Atlantic?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - devmor 4y ago
      No, his plan was to build greenhouses on Mars.
      - googlryas 4y ago
        Perhaps that's just because he was talking to people who think another literal moonshot was a figurative moonshot.
        devmor 4y ago
        Er, no. That was his stated goal as a member of the Mars Society's board of directors when these talks happened. He wanted to purchase a Dnepr ICBM and retrofit it for that purpose. When the deal was rejected, he discussed building his own rockets with Michael Griffin.
darawk 4y ago
Even if we were to accept that as true as stated, which I don't, that doesn't explain Paypal and Tesla. Even if you think this Michael Griffin guy did everything - why did Elon bet on him? Why didn't anyone else? Tons of people had the money to do it at the same time. None of them did.
- kiba 4y ago
  Nobody did everything. We all build upon the work of giants, Elon Musk and Michael Griffin included.
  - trident5000 4y ago
    Musk talks about his employees and how critical they were/are constantly. This whole notion that "Musk didnt do it all" is such a clown argument because theres no other form of attack from people who simply dont like him and his politics.
trident5000 4y ago
Its almost like Elon hired him knowing hes smart or something...
- georgeg23 4y ago
  ....and Griffin gave him ~$2B of taxpayer money. (DARPA and COTS contracts before SpaceX flew a single rocket and CRS for Falcon 9). All discussed in the link above.
  - trident5000 4y ago
    Why tax payer money? Where did that part come from.
baby 4y ago
There's really a recurring thread here, or elsewhere, which is that elon doesn't do shit, and deserve much credit for his success. To me he seems like a hard worker, and deserves credit
- andy_ppp 4y ago
  For someone who claims to work extremely hard he seems to spend a lot of time antagonising people on Twitter.
  - pishpash 4y ago
    Why do you assume the hard work to Twitter time ratio isn't the same as other people, but scaled up?
  - mjr00 4y ago
    It's absolutely a part of his job, though. One of the most valuable parts of Musk is his personal brand. He can raise money and hire talent in large part because he's a household name. Everything he does, from naming his child X Æ A-12 to producing a house track, is to proliferate the public perception that he is an eccentric genius, a modern-day polymath like the Da Vincis and Franklins of old. It may not seem like "real" work, but if Elon Musk and I both started different companies on the same day, who do you think is going to attract funding and top talent more quickly?
    - toss1 4y ago
      If so, he's doing an absolutely fabulous job of trashing his reputation inside of a week. Musk can be great when he does his homework and first principles analysis. It is obvious he hasn't done it here. Having advertisers take a huge step back because they seek minimal uncertainty and you spend the entire week maximizing uncertainty is bad (& shows incompetence). Having advertisers drop campaigns literally in the middle of the call to sell next year's baseline because you aren't even close to prepared for the questions is deeply arrogant incompetence [0]. Threatening "thermonuclear name and shame" on your advertisers [1] — your primary customers — is unnecessarily showing the entire world that you've lost it. Same goes for starting the week with the now-infamous claim that "a bunch of activists" are chasing away the revenue (would Musk accept that kind of excuse from any exec reporting to him?)[2], then having it explained WHY they are actually pausing by one of the people in the meeting [3], then blocking the guy you just spoke with the day before... I cannot begin to see how any of this is remotely good for Musk's brand. He's showing the world in real-time that he's in over his head, has no idea what is the business model and the key elements, and just thrashing about blaming everyone else, when literally he is entirely to blame for the chaos. Oh, and I've yet to read the other HN Pg1 headline [5] that Musk/Twitter is already asking some of the people it fired yesterday to return! If you can actually explain how any of this is remotely good for Musk, Twitter, or anyone, I'd be interested to hear it... Because it looks like he's trying really hard to sink Twitter faster than Digg sunk. (There's actually a good argument that his initial intent was to sink Twitter when he first made the comment and offer, to maximize uncertainty and tank their '23 sales, but then he was forced to buy it b/c he was too foolish to even have a proper excape clause in the contract, and here we are) [0] https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560 https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560 [1] https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1588718759098851328 https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1588718759098851328 [2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588538640401018880 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588538640401018880 [3] https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 [4] https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588622182066057216 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588622182066057216 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808
mirekrusin 4y ago
Why there has to be "one mastermind guy"? It seems safe to say that you need to dovetail at least dozens of people to have successful rocket launching, well, startup?
- georgeg23 4y ago
  Tom Mueller (recruited by Mike Griffin) also deserves credit. SpaceX hasn't built a reliable rocket engine since Tom left. But Mike probably was #1 reason for SpaceX success.
  - mirekrusin 4y ago
    It's hard to argue that SpaceX wouldn't happen without Elon's mom.
googlryas 4y ago
Why was Elon selected to become the richest person in the world and not one of the any thousands of other billionaires out there?

fsdjkflsjfsoij 4y ago

The criticisms are getting more and more comical. Michael is a friend of Elon and trusted Elon with many of his ideas and contacts. I'm sure Musk would say as much. Do you think Michael was sharing these ideas and contacts with just anyone? Why do you think he specifically chose to work with Elon?

georgeg23 4y ago
Mike saw Elon was good at recruiting Silicon Valley talent and selling the whole "save humanity by going to Mars" story (but even that was Mike's idea with Orbital).
trident5000 4y ago
"Elon hires people he doesnt do all the work!" Yes thats why you hire people...to not do all the work. Im pretty sure Elon is aware of this.
devmor 4y ago
There's nothing comical about it. They went to two different Russian firms to partner with before it was even called SpaceX and were turned down because Elon kept running his mouth on subjects he didn't understand and they lost all confidence in the project.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  That just shows confidence isn't always a predictor of success. They made a bad call, quite obviously.
  - devmor 4y ago
    No, it does not. His plan was to build greenhouses on mars. Their rejection of his idea is what inspired the pivot to build rockets instead.
- googlryas 4y ago
  What was he running his mouth about? Crazy stuff like landing boosters back at the pad, or on barges in the middle of the Atlantic?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - devmor 4y ago
    No, his plan was to build greenhouses on Mars.
    - googlryas 4y ago
      Perhaps that's just because he was talking to people who think another literal moonshot was a figurative moonshot.
      - devmor 4y ago
        Er, no. That was his stated goal as a member of the Mars Society's board of directors when these talks happened. He wanted to purchase a Dnepr ICBM and retrofit it for that purpose. When the deal was rejected, he discussed building his own rockets with Michael Griffin.

darawk 4y ago

Even if we were to accept that as true as stated, which I don't, that doesn't explain Paypal and Tesla. Even if you think this Michael Griffin guy did everything - why did Elon bet on him? Why didn't anyone else? Tons of people had the money to do it at the same time. None of them did.

kiba 4y ago
Nobody did everything. We all build upon the work of giants, Elon Musk and Michael Griffin included.
- trident5000 4y ago
  Musk talks about his employees and how critical they were/are constantly. This whole notion that "Musk didnt do it all" is such a clown argument because theres no other form of attack from people who simply dont like him and his politics.

trident5000 4y ago

Its almost like Elon hired him knowing hes smart or something...

georgeg23 4y ago
....and Griffin gave him ~$2B of taxpayer money. (DARPA and COTS contracts before SpaceX flew a single rocket and CRS for Falcon 9). All discussed in the link above.
- trident5000 4y ago
  Why tax payer money? Where did that part come from.

baby 4y ago

There's really a recurring thread here, or elsewhere, which is that elon doesn't do shit, and deserve much credit for his success. To me he seems like a hard worker, and deserves credit

andy_ppp 4y ago
For someone who claims to work extremely hard he seems to spend a lot of time antagonising people on Twitter.
- pishpash 4y ago
  Why do you assume the hard work to Twitter time ratio isn't the same as other people, but scaled up?
- mjr00 4y ago
  It's absolutely a part of his job, though. One of the most valuable parts of Musk is his personal brand. He can raise money and hire talent in large part because he's a household name. Everything he does, from naming his child X Æ A-12 to producing a house track, is to proliferate the public perception that he is an eccentric genius, a modern-day polymath like the Da Vincis and Franklins of old. It may not seem like "real" work, but if Elon Musk and I both started different companies on the same day, who do you think is going to attract funding and top talent more quickly?
  - toss1 4y ago
    If so, he's doing an absolutely fabulous job of trashing his reputation inside of a week. Musk can be great when he does his homework and first principles analysis. It is obvious he hasn't done it here. Having advertisers take a huge step back because they seek minimal uncertainty and you spend the entire week maximizing uncertainty is bad (& shows incompetence). Having advertisers drop campaigns literally in the middle of the call to sell next year's baseline because you aren't even close to prepared for the questions is deeply arrogant incompetence [0]. Threatening "thermonuclear name and shame" on your advertisers [1] — your primary customers — is unnecessarily showing the entire world that you've lost it. Same goes for starting the week with the now-infamous claim that "a bunch of activists" are chasing away the revenue (would Musk accept that kind of excuse from any exec reporting to him?)[2], then having it explained WHY they are actually pausing by one of the people in the meeting [3], then blocking the guy you just spoke with the day before... I cannot begin to see how any of this is remotely good for Musk's brand. He's showing the world in real-time that he's in over his head, has no idea what is the business model and the key elements, and just thrashing about blaming everyone else, when literally he is entirely to blame for the chaos. Oh, and I've yet to read the other HN Pg1 headline [5] that Musk/Twitter is already asking some of the people it fired yesterday to return! If you can actually explain how any of this is remotely good for Musk, Twitter, or anyone, I'd be interested to hear it... Because it looks like he's trying really hard to sink Twitter faster than Digg sunk. (There's actually a good argument that his initial intent was to sink Twitter when he first made the comment and offer, to maximize uncertainty and tank their '23 sales, but then he was forced to buy it b/c he was too foolish to even have a proper excape clause in the contract, and here we are) [0] https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560 https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560 [1] https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1588718759098851328 https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1588718759098851328 [2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588538640401018880 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588538640401018880 [3] https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 [4] https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588622182066057216 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588622182066057216 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808

mirekrusin 4y ago

Why there has to be "one mastermind guy"? It seems safe to say that you need to dovetail at least dozens of people to have successful rocket launching, well, startup?

georgeg23 4y ago
Tom Mueller (recruited by Mike Griffin) also deserves credit. SpaceX hasn't built a reliable rocket engine since Tom left. But Mike probably was #1 reason for SpaceX success.
- mirekrusin 4y ago
  It's hard to argue that SpaceX wouldn't happen without Elon's mom.

googlryas 4y ago

Why was Elon selected to become the richest person in the world and not one of the any thousands of other billionaires out there?