5 ms·

It's Gwynne Shotwell, COO of SpaceX, who makes the rockets fly.

raverbashing 2y ago
I hadn't noticed that particular nominative determinism before, interesting
mike_hearn 2y ago
And yet Shotwell didn't create SpaceX, define its mission, establish its products, create Starlink or recruit the core team. Musk did all of that and tons more as well. It's fascinating how nobody was making this claim of a non-technical Musk up until the moment he stopped being loyal to one particular wing of US politics. Now we see a concerted effort to diminish his achievements. Do you people really think this will work? There is endless testimony from people - independent of Musk and in the space industry - saying that the dude is an honest to god rocket scientist who single-handedly made SpaceX happen through sheer force of will, engineering ability and personal investment. He routinely displays a fluent understanding of orbital mechanics well beyond what any normal CEO would be expected to display. Anyone can read his bio or the testimony of people who work in the space industry and understand that Musk was (and still is) intimately involved in every aspect of SpaceX, down to detailed engineering decisions. Shotwell meanwhile is regularly described as managing the business development side. She negotiates with customers and oversees day to day operations. This is critical work that she clearly does very well, and she has an engineering background. But I can't find examples of people claiming that she drives product development or overall strategy for SpaceX.
- tarsinge 2y ago
  He is diminishing his achievements all by myself on Twitter. Like before there was doubts he was technical. Now it's clear he is not and was acting (at least regarding software). If Steve Jobs was claiming he also did the iPhone engineering don't you think people would challenge that? He lies, he gets caught up, that's it. Look at his recent exchange with LeCun, is it really politics or has he simply too much ego and lost touch and people are calling it?
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    > Like before there was doubts he was technical. Now it's clear he is not and was acting (at least regarding software) ... He lies, he gets caught up, that's it Says you, random HN poster. Here's the assessment of a NASA astronaut who spent time on the ISS and who has a PhD in mechanical engineering and a degree in applied mechanics: "[Musk is] able to have conversations with our top engineers about software, and the most arcane aspects of that and then he'll turn to our manufacturing engineers and have discussions about some really esoteric welding process for some crazy alloy" But sure, him and the software engineers at NASA are all dumbasses who are fooled by an actor. Happens all the time. Again - do you guys really think this will work? You are saying what you want to be true, not what actually is true. It's really not necessary. You can loathe the guy for political reasons and still accept that he is in fact an engineer, and does in fact know how to write software. These things are not mutually exclusive. As for "he lies, he gets caught up". Really. Nobody making this claim is in in any position to attack someone else for getting caught up in a lie, given how brazen this claim is, how many people with direct experience have lined up to say the exact opposite, and how obvious it is that it can't be true given his achievements. Please, stop claiming Musk isn't technical or that Gwynne Shotwell is the real leader of SpaceX. It doesn't work and makes all criticism of Musk look like ideologically motivated reasoning. There are plenty of genuine ways to criticize Musk! Attack him for being way too over-optimistic about FSD in Tesla cars if you want. Attack him for requiring logins to Twitter. But don't spread obvious lies about him - it lowers the credibility of all criticism.
    - tarsinge 2y ago
      Curious for your take on this: https://venturebeat.com/ai/elon-musk-and-yann-lecuns-social-media-feud-highlights-key-differences-in-approach-to-ai-research-and-hype/ https://venturebeat.com/ai/elon-musk-and-yann-lecuns-social-... Or this: > I personally wrote the first national maps, directions, yellow pages & white pages on the Internet in the summer of 1995 in C with a little C++. Didn't use a "web server" to save CPU cycles (just read port 8080 directly). Couldn't afford a Cisco T1 router, so wrote an emulator based on a white paper. Or maybe this: > I mean, man, you’re in charge of the servers and the programming and whatever,” Brown continued. “What is the stack, Elon? Take me from top to bottom. What does the stack look like right now? What’s so crazy about it? What is so abnormal about this stack versus every other large-scale system on the planet, buddy? C’mon! To which he answered: > Jackass Or this: > They took one look at Zip2’s code and began rewriting the vast majority of the software. Musk bristled at some of their changes, but the computer scientists needed just a fraction of the lines of code that Musk used to get their jobs done. They had a knack for dividing software projects into chunks that could be altered and refined whereas Musk fell into the classic self-taught coder trap of writing what developers call hairballs—big, monolithic hunks of code that could go berserk for mysterious reasons. Again I’m not speaking for rocket science, but as for software engineering and ML it seems he only has surface knowledge but does enough name dropping to maintain the illusion.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  It’s not his politics but his takeover and self-sabotage of Twitter. I think most people when they get that much wealth and power turn into assholes because they think they are indestructible (and in a way they are).
  - nradov 2y ago
    Why does anyone here care what happens to Twitter? It's just another social network. We have lots of them. Even if Elon Musk bought it just to burn it down, so what? Anyone who cares can build a replacement. And as a casual Twitter/X user who doesn't give a damn about Musk one way or the other, I don't see the sabotage. The web site and mobile app seem to be working fine. Community Notes is great. I understand that advertising revenue is down but that has no impact on users.
    - insane_dreamer 2y ago
      I don't care what happened to Twitter now that I'm off it, but having an egomaniac not only owning but actively controlling, answerable to no one but himself, the most important digital public square in the world, is very problematic from a democratic (not the party) standpoint. > Anyone who cares can build a replacement. Technologically, sure; nothing special about it. But in terms of adoption and reach, no, Twitter is unique and extremely difficult to replace.
      - nradov 2y ago
        Come on, be serious. Twitter/X has never been the "most important digital public square in the world". Time to get out of the bubble and live in the real world. And while I'm no fan of concentrated media ownership, let's not pretend the previous management was any better: they actively censored and suppressed accurate, legal information in order to promote their favored political narratives. That was equally bad in a different way.
        insane_dreamer 2y ago
        - which other social media network was as globally widespread and used for public communication by public and private actors alike the way Twitter was? - there's a huge difference between a set of executives who are accountable to a board and shareholders, and a single person who is not, and doubly so when that person is among the wealthiest in the world, likes to shoot their mouth off, has a huge ego, and likes to exercise a great deal of control

I hadn't noticed that particular nominative determinism before, interesting

And yet Shotwell didn't create SpaceX, define its mission, establish its products, create Starlink or recruit the core team. Musk did all of that and tons more as well. It's fascinating how nobody was making this claim of a non-technical Musk up until the moment he stopped being loyal to one particular wing of US politics. Now we see a concerted effort to diminish his achievements. Do you people really think this will work? There is endless testimony from people - independent of Musk and in the space industry - saying that the dude is an honest to god rocket scientist who single-handedly made SpaceX happen through sheer force of will, engineering ability and personal investment. He routinely displays a fluent understanding of orbital mechanics well beyond what any normal CEO would be expected to display. Anyone can read his bio or the testimony of people who work in the space industry and understand that Musk was (and still is) intimately involved in every aspect of SpaceX, down to detailed engineering decisions. Shotwell meanwhile is regularly described as managing the business development side. She negotiates with customers and oversees day to day operations. This is critical work that she clearly does very well, and she has an engineering background. But I can't find examples of people claiming that she drives product development or overall strategy for SpaceX.

tarsinge 2y ago
He is diminishing his achievements all by myself on Twitter. Like before there was doubts he was technical. Now it's clear he is not and was acting (at least regarding software). If Steve Jobs was claiming he also did the iPhone engineering don't you think people would challenge that? He lies, he gets caught up, that's it. Look at his recent exchange with LeCun, is it really politics or has he simply too much ego and lost touch and people are calling it?
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  > Like before there was doubts he was technical. Now it's clear he is not and was acting (at least regarding software) ... He lies, he gets caught up, that's it Says you, random HN poster. Here's the assessment of a NASA astronaut who spent time on the ISS and who has a PhD in mechanical engineering and a degree in applied mechanics: "[Musk is] able to have conversations with our top engineers about software, and the most arcane aspects of that and then he'll turn to our manufacturing engineers and have discussions about some really esoteric welding process for some crazy alloy" But sure, him and the software engineers at NASA are all dumbasses who are fooled by an actor. Happens all the time. Again - do you guys really think this will work? You are saying what you want to be true, not what actually is true. It's really not necessary. You can loathe the guy for political reasons and still accept that he is in fact an engineer, and does in fact know how to write software. These things are not mutually exclusive. As for "he lies, he gets caught up". Really. Nobody making this claim is in in any position to attack someone else for getting caught up in a lie, given how brazen this claim is, how many people with direct experience have lined up to say the exact opposite, and how obvious it is that it can't be true given his achievements. Please, stop claiming Musk isn't technical or that Gwynne Shotwell is the real leader of SpaceX. It doesn't work and makes all criticism of Musk look like ideologically motivated reasoning. There are plenty of genuine ways to criticize Musk! Attack him for being way too over-optimistic about FSD in Tesla cars if you want. Attack him for requiring logins to Twitter. But don't spread obvious lies about him - it lowers the credibility of all criticism.
  - tarsinge 2y ago
    Curious for your take on this: https://venturebeat.com/ai/elon-musk-and-yann-lecuns-social-media-feud-highlights-key-differences-in-approach-to-ai-research-and-hype/ https://venturebeat.com/ai/elon-musk-and-yann-lecuns-social-... Or this: > I personally wrote the first national maps, directions, yellow pages & white pages on the Internet in the summer of 1995 in C with a little C++. Didn't use a "web server" to save CPU cycles (just read port 8080 directly). Couldn't afford a Cisco T1 router, so wrote an emulator based on a white paper. Or maybe this: > I mean, man, you’re in charge of the servers and the programming and whatever,” Brown continued. “What is the stack, Elon? Take me from top to bottom. What does the stack look like right now? What’s so crazy about it? What is so abnormal about this stack versus every other large-scale system on the planet, buddy? C’mon! To which he answered: > Jackass Or this: > They took one look at Zip2’s code and began rewriting the vast majority of the software. Musk bristled at some of their changes, but the computer scientists needed just a fraction of the lines of code that Musk used to get their jobs done. They had a knack for dividing software projects into chunks that could be altered and refined whereas Musk fell into the classic self-taught coder trap of writing what developers call hairballs—big, monolithic hunks of code that could go berserk for mysterious reasons. Again I’m not speaking for rocket science, but as for software engineering and ML it seems he only has surface knowledge but does enough name dropping to maintain the illusion.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
It’s not his politics but his takeover and self-sabotage of Twitter. I think most people when they get that much wealth and power turn into assholes because they think they are indestructible (and in a way they are).
- nradov 2y ago
  Why does anyone here care what happens to Twitter? It's just another social network. We have lots of them. Even if Elon Musk bought it just to burn it down, so what? Anyone who cares can build a replacement. And as a casual Twitter/X user who doesn't give a damn about Musk one way or the other, I don't see the sabotage. The web site and mobile app seem to be working fine. Community Notes is great. I understand that advertising revenue is down but that has no impact on users.
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    I don't care what happened to Twitter now that I'm off it, but having an egomaniac not only owning but actively controlling, answerable to no one but himself, the most important digital public square in the world, is very problematic from a democratic (not the party) standpoint. > Anyone who cares can build a replacement. Technologically, sure; nothing special about it. But in terms of adoption and reach, no, Twitter is unique and extremely difficult to replace.
    - nradov 2y ago
      Come on, be serious. Twitter/X has never been the "most important digital public square in the world". Time to get out of the bubble and live in the real world. And while I'm no fan of concentrated media ownership, let's not pretend the previous management was any better: they actively censored and suppressed accurate, legal information in order to promote their favored political narratives. That was equally bad in a different way.
      - insane_dreamer 2y ago
        - which other social media network was as globally widespread and used for public communication by public and private actors alike the way Twitter was? - there's a huge difference between a set of executives who are accountable to a board and shareholders, and a single person who is not, and doubly so when that person is among the wealthiest in the world, likes to shoot their mouth off, has a huge ego, and likes to exercise a great deal of control