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> Back when I was at SpaceX, Elon was basically a child king. He was an important figurehead who provided the company with the money, power, and PR, but he didn

> Back when I was at SpaceX, Elon was basically a child king. He was an important figurehead who provided the company with the money, power, and PR, but he didn’t have the knowledge or (frankly) maturity to handle day-to-day decision making and everyone knew that. He was surrounded by people whose job was, essentially, to manipulate him into making good decisions. This is the conclusion anyone who works or has worked at a Musk corp eventually realizes, those are all necessary components of a business and should be lauded, but its the cult of Elon followers who are insufferable and truly believe a single person can be able to be involved on the day aspects of just SpaceX and hold the title of chief Engineer and ave it mean anything more than a figurehead title. This experience is also worth noting before anyone ventures off to Mars under the guise of following 'the will of Elon' and is willing to endure what life under his management would actually look like rather than misguided fantasy that it will be a sort of egalitarian Space-camp playground. He is a remarkably talented Marketer/PR and Fiance guy but it's beyond delusional to think he has anything but a cursory (albeit respectable understanding for a non-specialist) beyond that due to the sheer amount of complexity and specialization in a single department (AI development for FSD) at one of these corps has, let alone all of them. This is isn't a damning and sensationalist take if being objective with the collection of evidence and anecdotes who saw the sausage get made, it's just what seems to be a consistent outlook and the cost of admission to work on such amazing projects with amazing people and is best summarized as follows: Managing Elon was a huge part of the company culture. Even I, as a lowly intern, would hear people talking about it openly in meetings. People knew how to present ideas in a way that would resonate with him, they knew how to creatively reinterpret (or ignore) his many insane demands, and they even knew how to “stage manage” parts of the physical office space so that it would appeal to Elon. I sincerely hope Gwynne Shotwell, chief operating officer of SpaceX, starts to get way more recognition for the work! I just hope the next round of funding for SpaceX isn't negatively impacted because of the chaos that Twitter has become under Elon as it was valued at ~$150 Billion this month [0]. 0: https://archive.ph/cqGSH https://archive.ph/cqGSH

techdragon 4y ago
Absolutely, Elon has the balls to put money on the table and push for audacious goals like the sort of fully reusable, high cadence, rocket technology that was all but abandoned as all but a science fiction dream as the aerospace industry slowly transformed through the 70s slowly into the 80s. Yes there were hold outs trying to make it happen still, keeping the dreams alive, but it clearly wasn’t going anywhere. We had a couple of good attempts in the 90s with the desire to build a shuttle replacement putting some money on the table but it was never going to be feasible for a federally funded program to build a fully reusable rocket, being fully reusable might lead to people loosing jobs and pork barrel politics will “fix” that very quickly! It took crazy Elon and his wild dreams of Mars colony building to put enough private capital behind building a really reusable rocket. But it’s absolutely Gwynn’s Shotwell who has made his vision possible she’s a damn global treasure and if we ever have a space colony because of Elon’s vision, she deserves a statue on the surface of another planet for making that vision happen!

techdragon 4y ago

Absolutely, Elon has the balls to put money on the table and push for audacious goals like the sort of fully reusable, high cadence, rocket technology that was all but abandoned as all but a science fiction dream as the aerospace industry slowly transformed through the 70s slowly into the 80s. Yes there were hold outs trying to make it happen still, keeping the dreams alive, but it clearly wasn’t going anywhere. We had a couple of good attempts in the 90s with the desire to build a shuttle replacement putting some money on the table but it was never going to be feasible for a federally funded program to build a fully reusable rocket, being fully reusable might lead to people loosing jobs and pork barrel politics will “fix” that very quickly! It took crazy Elon and his wild dreams of Mars colony building to put enough private capital behind building a really reusable rocket. But it’s absolutely Gwynn’s Shotwell who has made his vision possible she’s a damn global treasure and if we ever have a space colony because of Elon’s vision, she deserves a statue on the surface of another planet for making that vision happen!