https://www.quora.com/In-Tesla-and-SpaceX-how-much-of-the-technical-designing-is-Elon-Musk-involved-in https://www.quora.com/In-Tesla-and-SpaceX-how-much-of-the

https://www.quora.com/In-Tesla-and-SpaceX-how-much-of-the-technical-designing-is-Elon-Musk-involved-in https://www.quora.com/In-Tesla-and-SpaceX-how-much-of-the-te... A number of years back I had an email from a bloke called Elon Musk. I was vaguely aware of who he was but not very. At the time I was the global expert in a very weird alloy (the market for it was perhaps 5 or 10 tonnes a year. A very weird and minority interest alloy). It was aluminium scandium, which the Russians had developed to compete with Nasa’s use of aluminium lithium. In many ways a better alloy too. And, obviously, there were possible uses in rockets and so on (rather more in something like a Shuttle than in simple rockets though). OK, so I get this email and it asks me whether this aluminium scandium is worth it, will it make my rockets lighter, asks Musk. No, not really, it’ll make them easier to weld but not lighter particularly. Which was pretty much the end of the exchange. So, when people ask me whether Musk does tech stuff I would have to say yes. Because he tracked down a one man company that knew the straight answer to the question he needed answering. OK, you might not think that is engineering, preferring to think of it as people using a slide rule to work it all out themselves. But finding the bloke who knows the answer and asking them is engineering to me - it’s still getting to the right answer, isn’t it?