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> Anyone who was less good at turning hype into money would not have gotten to that point. FTFY: Anyone who was less good at turning hype into money into signi

> Anyone who was less good at turning hype into money would not have gotten to that point. FTFY: Anyone who was less good at turning hype into money into significant achievements ... Musk might not hit his target time tables. He might not deliver everything he plans to. But he still delivers things other entities have yet to match, or took a serious amount to time to match. Investors, and people who care about his projects, don't care about him keeping every promise. They care about results. If a CEO and his team get motivated by impossible time tables, then let them motivate themselves with impossible time tables. (Counter example? FWIW, any benefits of his foray into Twitter are not yet clear to me.)

pclmulqdq 4y ago
You didn't need to fix it - I meant what I said. Given the money, the achievements are not that hard. According to people I know who worked at SpaceX, there is a whole layer of management that exists to handle Musk the way you would handle a boy king. They basically insulate him from making any decisions that can really hurt the company. I have heard of one instance where they spent 3 weeks quietly convincing him out of a wrong decision before announcing that he made the other choice (once he changed his mind and agreed to it). It doesn't sound like a company that needs such a management layer is getting their ability to accomplish things from the boy king, just the name and the money. AFAICT this management scheme is shotwell's doing, and you should probably credit her for the accomplishments. Also, we're seeing this dynamic play out in electric cars. Once they became economical to make (and no, Tesla wasn't really responsible for that), other carmakers are now out-competing them.
- Nevermark 4y ago
  > Given the money, the achievements are not that hard. I have no idea what you would think would be hard. What SpaceX has done with their investors money hasn't been matched by anyone in the rocket industry. Many attempts have ended in complete failure. The closest competitors in recent years, in terms of a consistent string of steady solid advancements, have been the Chinese. And they are still far behind. Whether Musk is a challenging person to work for, doesn't add or subtract from that.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Nobody in the rocket industry has had anywhere near that level of money invested in them, so they haven't gotten the results. SpaceX outspends them 100:1 or more on R&D. Everyone else in the industry has to make a profit on their services, too. If you want to see companies with comparable levels of spending to Musk companies, you have to look outside rockets. By the way, I'm not knocking the man: getting that much money to spend on rockets is an incredible achievement. Someone who did something comparable literally won a Nobel prize (the administrator responsible for making sure LIGO got enough money). Actually spending it on rocket technology once you have it isn't hard. Edit: Hard projects in the space sector would be things like landing and operating a massive rover or a human colony on mars (or the moon for that matter), or building very new instruments like the JWST - doing things that are fundamentally new. Starlink with cubesats would have been pretty revolutionary (instead of car-sized, 1-ton monsters), and absolutely crushed the economics. The current version of starlink is basically LeoSat (one of a fee companies Musk probably heard about before starting the Starlink project) with enough initial capital to not go broke. If they can get starship launches up and running with the economics they promise, that would be hard. The first vertically-landing rocket did it in the 1960's. Commercializing from that point was just a matter of investment. SpaceX has contributed meaningfully to rocket engine technology, but I doubt Musk knew anything about that.
    - Nevermark 4y ago
      Well China has outspent Tesla by a massive margin. So has Russia. So has NASA. Same with Europe. Not to mention Boeing, ULA, or other long time rocket technology suppliers. So there are examples of large extended spending budgets (on rocketry programs, specifically) with nowhere near as much progress as SpaceX has done with far fewer people, less time, and less money. The difference really begs the question of how he did it. And I think the answer is he did many things differently. He didn't just have a clear vision of reusability, but also the time, cost and complexity savings of vertical integration, the faster progress that comes of tolerating intermediate failures as a source of fast feedback, and casting his overworked employees as crusaders in a meaningful mission to best the best, and turn sci-fi into reality, all with contagious enthusiasm. He also seems to have a secret superpower for plowing through government red tape and bureaucracy. I have no idea how he does that, but both with Tesla and SpaceX it has made a significant difference. Easy not to notice that, but a lot of ambitions have been ground down with resource attrition on that mountain.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

You didn't need to fix it - I meant what I said. Given the money, the achievements are not that hard. According to people I know who worked at SpaceX, there is a whole layer of management that exists to handle Musk the way you would handle a boy king. They basically insulate him from making any decisions that can really hurt the company. I have heard of one instance where they spent 3 weeks quietly convincing him out of a wrong decision before announcing that he made the other choice (once he changed his mind and agreed to it). It doesn't sound like a company that needs such a management layer is getting their ability to accomplish things from the boy king, just the name and the money. AFAICT this management scheme is shotwell's doing, and you should probably credit her for the accomplishments. Also, we're seeing this dynamic play out in electric cars. Once they became economical to make (and no, Tesla wasn't really responsible for that), other carmakers are now out-competing them.

Nevermark 4y ago
> Given the money, the achievements are not that hard. I have no idea what you would think would be hard. What SpaceX has done with their investors money hasn't been matched by anyone in the rocket industry. Many attempts have ended in complete failure. The closest competitors in recent years, in terms of a consistent string of steady solid advancements, have been the Chinese. And they are still far behind. Whether Musk is a challenging person to work for, doesn't add or subtract from that.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Nobody in the rocket industry has had anywhere near that level of money invested in them, so they haven't gotten the results. SpaceX outspends them 100:1 or more on R&D. Everyone else in the industry has to make a profit on their services, too. If you want to see companies with comparable levels of spending to Musk companies, you have to look outside rockets. By the way, I'm not knocking the man: getting that much money to spend on rockets is an incredible achievement. Someone who did something comparable literally won a Nobel prize (the administrator responsible for making sure LIGO got enough money). Actually spending it on rocket technology once you have it isn't hard. Edit: Hard projects in the space sector would be things like landing and operating a massive rover or a human colony on mars (or the moon for that matter), or building very new instruments like the JWST - doing things that are fundamentally new. Starlink with cubesats would have been pretty revolutionary (instead of car-sized, 1-ton monsters), and absolutely crushed the economics. The current version of starlink is basically LeoSat (one of a fee companies Musk probably heard about before starting the Starlink project) with enough initial capital to not go broke. If they can get starship launches up and running with the economics they promise, that would be hard. The first vertically-landing rocket did it in the 1960's. Commercializing from that point was just a matter of investment. SpaceX has contributed meaningfully to rocket engine technology, but I doubt Musk knew anything about that.
  - Nevermark 4y ago
    Well China has outspent Tesla by a massive margin. So has Russia. So has NASA. Same with Europe. Not to mention Boeing, ULA, or other long time rocket technology suppliers. So there are examples of large extended spending budgets (on rocketry programs, specifically) with nowhere near as much progress as SpaceX has done with far fewer people, less time, and less money. The difference really begs the question of how he did it. And I think the answer is he did many things differently. He didn't just have a clear vision of reusability, but also the time, cost and complexity savings of vertical integration, the faster progress that comes of tolerating intermediate failures as a source of fast feedback, and casting his overworked employees as crusaders in a meaningful mission to best the best, and turn sci-fi into reality, all with contagious enthusiasm. He also seems to have a secret superpower for plowing through government red tape and bureaucracy. I have no idea how he does that, but both with Tesla and SpaceX it has made a significant difference. Easy not to notice that, but a lot of ambitions have been ground down with resource attrition on that mountain.