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Why can only Elon do stuff like this and not BlueOrigin or the hundreds of other aerospace startups? Does he just have a 1/100000000 combination of intelligence

Why can only Elon do stuff like this and not BlueOrigin or the hundreds of other aerospace startups? Does he just have a 1/100000000 combination of intelligence, tenacity, and directionality that can't be matched by anyone, even those trying to emulate him as closely as possible?

neom 2y ago
Isn't BlueOrigin going after at totally different market segment, I thought it was focused on things like space tourism and more "space base" type stuff? Also pretty sure BlueOrigin is almost all funded by Jeff B, SpaceX has a lot of external funding and focused on tangible markets vs just "people will want to do stuff in space" - I think it was only very recently they started to work with NASA.
- skissane 2y ago
  > Isn't BlueOrigin going after at totally different market segment, I thought it was focused on things like space tourism They have New Shepard, a crew-rated suborbital spacecraft, primarily targeted at tourism, but it has also done some science payloads for NASA, university and commercial clients. But they also are doing a lot of non-tourism stuff: they designed and manufacture first stage engines for ULA’s new Vulcan launch vehicle; they have their own reusable orbital launch vehicle (New Glenn) due to launch soon (planned for next month, but might slip to early next year); they have a contract with NASA to build a lunar lander to compete with SpaceX’s; they are part of one of the teams NASA has chosen to compete for the contract to build a commercial ISS replacement. And SpaceX is involved in space tourism too: both directly, and indirectly via resellers such as Axiom. It is just that the most publicly noticeable thing Blue Origin has achieved is space tourism, which makes people think it is primarily a space tourism company; meanwhile, SpaceX has had numerous publicly visible achievements other than tourism, so people view tourism as just another thing they do, not their main thing.
thisisthenewme 2y ago
Why do we think its Elon 'doing' this? Just curious, since it could just as well be that its the engineers and other leaders who could be the differentiator.
- atleastoptimal 2y ago
  I would agree with that if it weren't the case that the collection of engineers and other leaders working under Elon consistently outperform their competition in multiple domains.
- bottlepalm 2y ago
  Because it's Elon who said "ok, build it." There's no one else except him with that power and/or the guts. Even landing a rocket the government had given up on, and no company was even trying until he did. People were calling the 'chopstick' landing system a dumb idea until today. It's not like engineers don't come up with wild ideas all the time to their leadership, but is the leadership good enough to understand the good ideas from bad ones? Take the risk, spend billions to actually execute? Elon has enough of a physics/engineering background to ask the right questions, understand the trades engineers put in front of him, and make the risk/reward calculation to make the right decisions the ends up winning. To get what SpaceX has you need strong technical leadership all the way up the chain. Many companies don't. Their CEOs are experts in legal, PR, finance, etc... They make poor technical decisions.
- kaliqt 2y ago
  Because he is the kingpin. He chooses the staff, he guides them, he does everything at a high level. You can hire new executives, you can't easily find a new Musk, and then you will fail. See the problem?

neom 2y ago

Isn't BlueOrigin going after at totally different market segment, I thought it was focused on things like space tourism and more "space base" type stuff? Also pretty sure BlueOrigin is almost all funded by Jeff B, SpaceX has a lot of external funding and focused on tangible markets vs just "people will want to do stuff in space" - I think it was only very recently they started to work with NASA.

skissane 2y ago
> Isn't BlueOrigin going after at totally different market segment, I thought it was focused on things like space tourism They have New Shepard, a crew-rated suborbital spacecraft, primarily targeted at tourism, but it has also done some science payloads for NASA, university and commercial clients. But they also are doing a lot of non-tourism stuff: they designed and manufacture first stage engines for ULA’s new Vulcan launch vehicle; they have their own reusable orbital launch vehicle (New Glenn) due to launch soon (planned for next month, but might slip to early next year); they have a contract with NASA to build a lunar lander to compete with SpaceX’s; they are part of one of the teams NASA has chosen to compete for the contract to build a commercial ISS replacement. And SpaceX is involved in space tourism too: both directly, and indirectly via resellers such as Axiom. It is just that the most publicly noticeable thing Blue Origin has achieved is space tourism, which makes people think it is primarily a space tourism company; meanwhile, SpaceX has had numerous publicly visible achievements other than tourism, so people view tourism as just another thing they do, not their main thing.

thisisthenewme 2y ago

Why do we think its Elon 'doing' this? Just curious, since it could just as well be that its the engineers and other leaders who could be the differentiator.

atleastoptimal 2y ago
I would agree with that if it weren't the case that the collection of engineers and other leaders working under Elon consistently outperform their competition in multiple domains.
bottlepalm 2y ago
Because it's Elon who said "ok, build it." There's no one else except him with that power and/or the guts. Even landing a rocket the government had given up on, and no company was even trying until he did. People were calling the 'chopstick' landing system a dumb idea until today. It's not like engineers don't come up with wild ideas all the time to their leadership, but is the leadership good enough to understand the good ideas from bad ones? Take the risk, spend billions to actually execute? Elon has enough of a physics/engineering background to ask the right questions, understand the trades engineers put in front of him, and make the risk/reward calculation to make the right decisions the ends up winning. To get what SpaceX has you need strong technical leadership all the way up the chain. Many companies don't. Their CEOs are experts in legal, PR, finance, etc... They make poor technical decisions.
kaliqt 2y ago
Because he is the kingpin. He chooses the staff, he guides them, he does everything at a high level. You can hire new executives, you can't easily find a new Musk, and then you will fail. See the problem?