5 ms·

Takes one to know one

spaceman_2020 4y ago
I'm amazed that a man can build a company that literally created a reusable rocket and people will still call him a "bullshit artist". Also incredible how everyone on the left turned on Musk so quickly because he...tweeted some bad jokes? Strange reality we live in where your actions seem to matter so much less than your words. I thought it was the other way around.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Yizahi 4y ago
  People are acting towards him like that exactly because they praised him before and were holding him at high esteem. I certainly did. Now he started to disappoint people, multiple times. Nobody cares (much) about CEO of Comcast, or BP, or Electronic Arts. They have bad reputation and when they do something bad again, people just shrug and move on. While people with good reputation doing same things are discussed a lot. Also note that Comcast, BP, EA etc. are all successful businesses. They just shitty to humans, but successful. So founding a big successful technology company is a big achievement, but not a unique one.
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    >Also note that Comcast, BP, EA etc. are all successful businesses. They just shitty to humans, but successful. So founding a big successful technology company is a big achievement, but not a unique one. What nonsense. If Comcast didn't exist, some other company would provide cable service to its customers, and NBC would have another owner. If BP didn't exist some other oil company would be searching for petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico and northern Alaska. If EA had gone the way of Epyx, Synapse, SSI, or 99% of other video game companies founded in the early 1980s, its video games would have appeared under another publisher's banner. If Tesla[1] didn't exist, would the global e-car industry be anywhere close to what it is today? If SpaceX didn't exist, the odds are very, very high that the rocket industry would still be 100% expendables into the foreseeable future. [1] Yes, yes, I know Musk didn't found Tesla
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Founding multiple big successful companies in nascent industries that had been starved of capital before is a unique AND big achievement. Nobody cheers on Bezos because of Blue Origin. They praise him for building Amazon when e-commerce was still new (or when dot coms had gone out of favor). Same with Musk. There are multiple major private space ventures now. Ever car company has a heavily funded EV division. When Musk started, EVs were considered a joke and private space tech had little to no capital. Musk is unique because he put his money into industries no big money would touch before him.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > Nobody cheers on Bezos because of Blue Origin. I honestly think they would, if Blue Origin actually did anything worth cheering. Their best achievement so far is stalling ULA's Vulcan Centaur for years. By the time it flies it will most likely be utterly obsolete, because Blue Origin has fumbled the BE-4 severely. Vulcan Centaur was supposed to fly in 2019 but Blue Origin only delivered some engines about a few weeks ago. They're years late and it's hurting ULA badly. Because of Blue Origin, SpaceX's Starship will probably fly before Vulcan Centaur. Vulcan Centaur is meant to be a HLV marginally more performant than Falcon 9, but Starship should wipe the floor with both.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  Just to explain as someone that was initially a fan of Musk but now highly critical of him: SpaceX owes a great deal of it's success to the people around Elon, particularly Shotwell, minimizing his bad behaviors. Compare this to Tesla and now Twitter, where Elon has unilateral power. At the first he managed to get in trouble with the SEC in the dumbest way possible, as well as continues the Fully Self Driving saga that many of us regard as fraud, the solar tiles debacle, etc. At the latter he's treating employees in an utterly reprehensible and illegal way. He's currently under investigation for similar behaviors at Tesla but involving far fewer employees. The left hates Elon more for his union busting and abusive labor practices than bad jokes, but bad jokes certainly don't help Elon any when it comes to PR. I can give Elon credit for advancing the timelines of both EVs and solar power, and applaud SpaceX for their innovation, while also being highly critical of Elon's general behavior and treatment of the people who work for them. Put more bluntly: I AM judging Elon on the basis of his actions. Your position is actually that SpaceX is so cool it forgives all wrongs.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    The EV industry as well as the spacetech industry would have none of the momentum they currently have if there was no messianic figure like Musk leading the pack. Industries need charismatic evangelists to attract capital. Musk made investing in serious hardware ventures cool. Now all the billionaires have their own space companies just to compete with Musk. All in, a net positive. Otherwise Bezos billions might have gone into yet another superyacht. If you get an abrasive personality with it, that’s a decent bargain.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > Now all the billionaires have their own space companies just to compete with Musk. Do they? The only other billionaire-owned space company that comes to mind is Blue Origin, but they were founded years before SpaceX. (Which incidentally, seems to debunk the common argument that any billionaire funding a space program would have success similar to SpaceX/Musk. If success with such funding were inevitable, Blue Origin would have gotten to orbit years ago but in reality they still haven't.)
- memish 4y ago
  You get a lot of internet points and clicks for jumping on the hate bandwagon and cynically tearing people down. Maybe if they weren't so focused on a manufactured villain, and people and the media had put even a tiny fraction of this scrutiny on SBF, an actual fraud might have been mitigated. But no, let's go after the guy putting rockets in space and producing millions of electric cars in the real world. He's the real bad guy!
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Just surprised that HN has been flooded with the same low tier takes on Musk and tech culture in general. This audience usually understands nuance better
    - kingkawn 4y ago
      It is my understanding of nuance that leads to my dismissal of someone who’s success is entirely the result of US political culture where we can’t directly fund NASA so instead find a private parasite to funnel the money through so that the republicans don’t kill the program.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

I'm amazed that a man can build a company that literally created a reusable rocket and people will still call him a "bullshit artist". Also incredible how everyone on the left turned on Musk so quickly because he...tweeted some bad jokes? Strange reality we live in where your actions seem to matter so much less than your words. I thought it was the other way around.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Yizahi 4y ago
People are acting towards him like that exactly because they praised him before and were holding him at high esteem. I certainly did. Now he started to disappoint people, multiple times. Nobody cares (much) about CEO of Comcast, or BP, or Electronic Arts. They have bad reputation and when they do something bad again, people just shrug and move on. While people with good reputation doing same things are discussed a lot. Also note that Comcast, BP, EA etc. are all successful businesses. They just shitty to humans, but successful. So founding a big successful technology company is a big achievement, but not a unique one.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >Also note that Comcast, BP, EA etc. are all successful businesses. They just shitty to humans, but successful. So founding a big successful technology company is a big achievement, but not a unique one. What nonsense. If Comcast didn't exist, some other company would provide cable service to its customers, and NBC would have another owner. If BP didn't exist some other oil company would be searching for petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico and northern Alaska. If EA had gone the way of Epyx, Synapse, SSI, or 99% of other video game companies founded in the early 1980s, its video games would have appeared under another publisher's banner. If Tesla[1] didn't exist, would the global e-car industry be anywhere close to what it is today? If SpaceX didn't exist, the odds are very, very high that the rocket industry would still be 100% expendables into the foreseeable future. [1] Yes, yes, I know Musk didn't found Tesla
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Founding multiple big successful companies in nascent industries that had been starved of capital before is a unique AND big achievement. Nobody cheers on Bezos because of Blue Origin. They praise him for building Amazon when e-commerce was still new (or when dot coms had gone out of favor). Same with Musk. There are multiple major private space ventures now. Ever car company has a heavily funded EV division. When Musk started, EVs were considered a joke and private space tech had little to no capital. Musk is unique because he put his money into industries no big money would touch before him.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > Nobody cheers on Bezos because of Blue Origin. I honestly think they would, if Blue Origin actually did anything worth cheering. Their best achievement so far is stalling ULA's Vulcan Centaur for years. By the time it flies it will most likely be utterly obsolete, because Blue Origin has fumbled the BE-4 severely. Vulcan Centaur was supposed to fly in 2019 but Blue Origin only delivered some engines about a few weeks ago. They're years late and it's hurting ULA badly. Because of Blue Origin, SpaceX's Starship will probably fly before Vulcan Centaur. Vulcan Centaur is meant to be a HLV marginally more performant than Falcon 9, but Starship should wipe the floor with both.
jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
Just to explain as someone that was initially a fan of Musk but now highly critical of him: SpaceX owes a great deal of it's success to the people around Elon, particularly Shotwell, minimizing his bad behaviors. Compare this to Tesla and now Twitter, where Elon has unilateral power. At the first he managed to get in trouble with the SEC in the dumbest way possible, as well as continues the Fully Self Driving saga that many of us regard as fraud, the solar tiles debacle, etc. At the latter he's treating employees in an utterly reprehensible and illegal way. He's currently under investigation for similar behaviors at Tesla but involving far fewer employees. The left hates Elon more for his union busting and abusive labor practices than bad jokes, but bad jokes certainly don't help Elon any when it comes to PR. I can give Elon credit for advancing the timelines of both EVs and solar power, and applaud SpaceX for their innovation, while also being highly critical of Elon's general behavior and treatment of the people who work for them. Put more bluntly: I AM judging Elon on the basis of his actions. Your position is actually that SpaceX is so cool it forgives all wrongs.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  The EV industry as well as the spacetech industry would have none of the momentum they currently have if there was no messianic figure like Musk leading the pack. Industries need charismatic evangelists to attract capital. Musk made investing in serious hardware ventures cool. Now all the billionaires have their own space companies just to compete with Musk. All in, a net positive. Otherwise Bezos billions might have gone into yet another superyacht. If you get an abrasive personality with it, that’s a decent bargain.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > Now all the billionaires have their own space companies just to compete with Musk. Do they? The only other billionaire-owned space company that comes to mind is Blue Origin, but they were founded years before SpaceX. (Which incidentally, seems to debunk the common argument that any billionaire funding a space program would have success similar to SpaceX/Musk. If success with such funding were inevitable, Blue Origin would have gotten to orbit years ago but in reality they still haven't.)
memish 4y ago
You get a lot of internet points and clicks for jumping on the hate bandwagon and cynically tearing people down. Maybe if they weren't so focused on a manufactured villain, and people and the media had put even a tiny fraction of this scrutiny on SBF, an actual fraud might have been mitigated. But no, let's go after the guy putting rockets in space and producing millions of electric cars in the real world. He's the real bad guy!
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Just surprised that HN has been flooded with the same low tier takes on Musk and tech culture in general. This audience usually understands nuance better
  - kingkawn 4y ago
    It is my understanding of nuance that leads to my dismissal of someone who’s success is entirely the result of US political culture where we can’t directly fund NASA so instead find a private parasite to funnel the money through so that the republicans don’t kill the program.