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This is the kind of response I expect on Reddit not here. To me it is indicative of being influenced more by personal bias than truth and reason. To answer yo
by theonething 4y ago
This is the kind of response I expect on Reddit not here. To me it is indicative of being influenced more by personal bias than truth and reason.
To answer your point though, Zubrin does not and never has worked for any of Musk's companies. Watson did work at SpaceX 8 years ago, but works somewhere else now so he has nothing to lose or gain from Musk.
And here is an account of a top NASA engineering official's interactions with Musk who also has never worked for Musk.
> He dispatched one of his lieutenants, Liam Sarsfield, then a high-ranking NASA official in the office of the chief engineer, to California to see whether the company was for real or just another failure in waiting.
Most of all, he was impressed with Musk, who was surprisingly fluent in rocket engineering and understood the science of propulsion and engine design. Musk was intense, preternaturally focused, and extremely determined. “This was not the kind of guy who was going to accept failure,” Sarsfield remembered thinking.
Throughout the day, as Musk showed off mockups of the Falcon 1 and Falcon 5, the engine designs, and plans to build a spacecraft capable of flying humans, Musk peppered Sarsfield with questions. He wanted to know what was going on within NASA. And how a company like his would be perceived. He asked tons of highly technical questions, including a detailed discussion about “base heating,” the heat radiating out from the exhaust going back up into the rocket’s engine compartment—a particular problem with rockets that have clusters of engines next to one another, as Musk was planning to build.
Now that he had a friend inside of NASA, Musk kept up with the questions in the weeks after Sarsfield’s visit, firing off “a nonstop torrent of e-mails” and texts, Sarsfield said. Musk jokingly warned that texting was a “core competency.” “He sends texts in a constant flow,” Sarsfield recalled. “I found him to be consumed by whatever was in front of him and anxious to solve problems. This, combined with a tendency to work eighteen hours a day, is a sign of someone driven to succeed.” Musk was particularly interested in the docking adapter of the International Space Station, the port where the spacecraft his team was designing would dock. He wanted to know the dimensions, the locking pin design, even the bolt pattern of the hatch. The more documents Sarsfield sent, the more questions Musk had.
“I really enjoyed the way he would pore over problems anxious to absorb every detail. To my mind, someone that clearly committed deserves all the support and help you can give him.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
- nolok 4y agoNot parent nor have I contributed to this thread in anyway beside this post, but I have to say for someone who so easily accuse others of having personal bias you seem to be really deeply invested into proving how great Elon is. Your messages in this entire subthread add essentially nothing beside quote without context about how great and smart Elon is. In an era where online manipulation is becoming ubiquitous, when talking about someone who has a clear ego issue and the desperate need to be seen as awesome (to the point he has several cases of acting against his best interest just to protect his ego, across several companies), and in the context of that person acquiring one the platform most forward in the whole social media space that pushed those issues forward... I find that interesting. I am not accusing you of anything, I'm merely saying your messages have the opposite result on me than the one you intend.
- panick21_ 4y agoMany people who are in fact awesome have egos. Anybody who follows sports knows this. Elon as a person certainty has lots of flaws, but he is also quite clearly really good at a lot of things people who try to downplay that and claim its all 'luck' or 'failing upwards' usually just don't like his personality.
- theonething 4y ago> Your messages in this entire subthread add essentially nothing beside quote without context That's not true. I invite you to read my messages again and note that I've made 5 comments, all of them timestamped before yours, and only in 2 of them have I referenced quotes. > about how great and smart Elon is That's not exactly accurate and seems tinged with your interpretation of my intentions. I've supplied quotes to show that Elon is well versed in rocket science. > add essentially nothing beside quote without context A commenter claimed that Musk did not understand rocketry. I replied with quotes from industry experts declaring the exact opposite. What more context do you need? I'm not a fanboy and have anything invested in proving how great he is. Personally, I think he can be a big jerk at times and at others brilliant. The issue I'm trying to address that I see over and over again are the false claims that Musk has no idea what he is doing technically and steals credit from the engineers he hires. When I see a ubiquitous false claim that is easy disproven in 3 minutes with a Google search and copy and paste, then why not? I believe HN is a place where truth and reason are valued and misinformation corrected, so I think my comments and references have been valuable in that respect and apparently so do the 30+ people that have upvoted my first comment with the quotes even though they are "without context." > your messages have the opposite result on me than the one you intend My intention has been to present information to counter misinformation about Musk's technical skills. If you still believe he doesn't have technical skills, that's your prerogative of course. I'm just supplying information that looks authentic to me and leave it up to the reader to decide.