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He deserves at least some credit, considering that he and Bezos are the only billionaires actually willing to put their wealth into chasing a vision. Books docu

He deserves at least some credit, considering that he and Bezos are the only billionaires actually willing to put their wealth into chasing a vision. Books documenting SpaceX's early days make it pretty clear that Musk had a pretty significant role in putting in place the kind of thinking that has allowed SpaceX to blow open the commercial space market. Both also have at least some understanding of what they're paying for considering the tours and testimony from former employees. They also frequently thank the employees for their successes.

gtowey 1y ago
> He deserves at least some credit, considering that he and Bezos are the only billionaires actually willing to put their wealth into chasing a vision. As much as I love space exploration, I think it's actually a problem that so few people get to decide where so much money goes. Imagine if instead we as a society could put it towards better education, healthcare, public transportation so that the downstream effect is a society with many more aerospace engineers and astrophysicist, who dont have to instead focus on working corporate jobs just to afford housing. We might foster a society where space exploration is an ongoing societal goal instead of a playground for the elite.
- DoesntMatter22 1y ago
  We put far more money into healthcare and education, by a literal order of magnitude. US spends 1.75 trillion on education per year, and 2.12 trillion on healthcare. People make it out like we aren't putting a ton of money into this stuff when those are literally are two biggest expenses. Space X is a drop in the bucket compared to that.
- dotnet00 1y ago
  I would love such a society, but I think the way space funding has been in most parts of the world shows that most people are just not good judges of what is and is not worth spending on. It seems very few people actually understand the importance of funding R&D that isn't directly improving their life, such that it takes some stubborn rich people to actually show that something is worth doing. Kind of like other countries all working on Falcon and Starship inspired rockets after seeing that the concepts can work. As other examples, we have particle accelerators (everyone knows about the colliders like LHC and assumes they're luxury projects with no relevance to improving lives, yet they led to the development and side-by-side refinement of synchrotron light sources, which are very important for modern science) and medical tech like what led up to mRNA vaccines and Ozempic. I would say we need a society that trusts experts and also holds said experts accountable, but then again, most of SpaceX's founding employees were not conventional aerospace experts, which was part of why they were able to question a lot of the corrupt/inefficient practices that traditional aerospace people dismissed as being standard and necessary practice.
- shkkmo 1y ago
  > Imagine if instead we as a society could put it towards better education, healthcare, public transportation The amount of money we already spend on thos problems absolutely dwarfs the amount of money that SpaceX has raised. Spending a fraction of a percent more on any of those things isn't going to move the needle much. On the flip side, space access is one of those great economic accelerators and making that access dramatically more affordable will open up new realms of possibility.
potato3732842 1y ago
>considering that he and Bezos are the only billionaires actually willing to put their wealth into chasing a vision. Sometimes I wonder if the peasants got exited watching the European crowns compete to survey trade routes around Africa the way we get exited about space.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > I wonder if the peasants got exited watching the European crowns compete to survey trade routes around Africa the way we get exited about space You’re seriously arguing the descendants of those peasants aren’t better off for it?
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    I'm not arguing anything. I'm wondering if they were fascinated and exited by it the way we are today. But HNers love being told what to think so once one person took it the wrong way the NPCs followed.
oskarkk 1y ago
> He deserves at least some credit, considering that he and Bezos are the only billionaires actually willing to put their wealth into chasing a vision. Musk was worth ~$300M when he started SpaceX and Tesla, and he bet nearly all of that money on SpaceX and Tesla, and that's why he's a billionaire. His big share of SpaceX makes up like half of his wealth, so from today's perspective he's not putting his wealth into a vision, he's wealthy because of that vision. That's different from Bezos, who made his big money from Amazon and then started putting billions into Blue Origin (which was rather inspired by SpaceX success). That said, Blue Origin was actually founded before SpaceX, but they were very slowly working on their suborbital rocket for a decade before Bezos gave them big cash, while SpaceX started sending satellites to space and supplying the ISS in that time. SpaceX has made 500+ orbital flights so far, while Blue Origin just one.
- dotnet00 1y ago
  By putting his wealth into a vision, I mean all the test flights, being much more tolerant of failure, betting everything on Starlink. We're at flight 13, and likely at least flight 16 before anything orbital, likely into the upper 20s before reliable refueling and non-Starlink payloads. Most other rich people haven't done much besides minimally funding small startups or dead end joyrides. Bezos has been somewhat similar, he has been pouring billions into BO, and while BO has moved at a slower pace, he's clearly committed for the long term too, considering all the investments into things that only make sense if New Glenn acheives reliable booster reuse (the giant futuristic rocket factory, Project Jarvis, the lunar cargo lander).
  - oskarkk 1y ago
    Yeah, I agree with what you said about Elon's tolerance for risk and continuously betting the company on ever larger projects. I just dislike the common characterization of "billionaire space race", when one of the billionaires is a billionaire because of that "race", while for the other it's just a small side project (relatively to his wealth). But I root for Blue Origin too. Thanks to Bezos' commitment and the real work they have done, they will be flying frequently at some point, and that's good. Everything that keeps up the space boom that SpaceX started is good, from my space nerd perspective. And it wouldn't be good if SpaceX became a monopoly (if we don't consider it a monopoly already).

gtowey 1y ago

> He deserves at least some credit, considering that he and Bezos are the only billionaires actually willing to put their wealth into chasing a vision. As much as I love space exploration, I think it's actually a problem that so few people get to decide where so much money goes. Imagine if instead we as a society could put it towards better education, healthcare, public transportation so that the downstream effect is a society with many more aerospace engineers and astrophysicist, who dont have to instead focus on working corporate jobs just to afford housing. We might foster a society where space exploration is an ongoing societal goal instead of a playground for the elite.

DoesntMatter22 1y ago
We put far more money into healthcare and education, by a literal order of magnitude. US spends 1.75 trillion on education per year, and 2.12 trillion on healthcare. People make it out like we aren't putting a ton of money into this stuff when those are literally are two biggest expenses. Space X is a drop in the bucket compared to that.
dotnet00 1y ago
I would love such a society, but I think the way space funding has been in most parts of the world shows that most people are just not good judges of what is and is not worth spending on. It seems very few people actually understand the importance of funding R&D that isn't directly improving their life, such that it takes some stubborn rich people to actually show that something is worth doing. Kind of like other countries all working on Falcon and Starship inspired rockets after seeing that the concepts can work. As other examples, we have particle accelerators (everyone knows about the colliders like LHC and assumes they're luxury projects with no relevance to improving lives, yet they led to the development and side-by-side refinement of synchrotron light sources, which are very important for modern science) and medical tech like what led up to mRNA vaccines and Ozempic. I would say we need a society that trusts experts and also holds said experts accountable, but then again, most of SpaceX's founding employees were not conventional aerospace experts, which was part of why they were able to question a lot of the corrupt/inefficient practices that traditional aerospace people dismissed as being standard and necessary practice.
shkkmo 1y ago
> Imagine if instead we as a society could put it towards better education, healthcare, public transportation The amount of money we already spend on thos problems absolutely dwarfs the amount of money that SpaceX has raised. Spending a fraction of a percent more on any of those things isn't going to move the needle much. On the flip side, space access is one of those great economic accelerators and making that access dramatically more affordable will open up new realms of possibility.

potato3732842 1y ago

>considering that he and Bezos are the only billionaires actually willing to put their wealth into chasing a vision. Sometimes I wonder if the peasants got exited watching the European crowns compete to survey trade routes around Africa the way we get exited about space.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> I wonder if the peasants got exited watching the European crowns compete to survey trade routes around Africa the way we get exited about space You’re seriously arguing the descendants of those peasants aren’t better off for it?
- potato3732842 1y ago
  I'm not arguing anything. I'm wondering if they were fascinated and exited by it the way we are today. But HNers love being told what to think so once one person took it the wrong way the NPCs followed.

oskarkk 1y ago

> He deserves at least some credit, considering that he and Bezos are the only billionaires actually willing to put their wealth into chasing a vision. Musk was worth ~$300M when he started SpaceX and Tesla, and he bet nearly all of that money on SpaceX and Tesla, and that's why he's a billionaire. His big share of SpaceX makes up like half of his wealth, so from today's perspective he's not putting his wealth into a vision, he's wealthy because of that vision. That's different from Bezos, who made his big money from Amazon and then started putting billions into Blue Origin (which was rather inspired by SpaceX success). That said, Blue Origin was actually founded before SpaceX, but they were very slowly working on their suborbital rocket for a decade before Bezos gave them big cash, while SpaceX started sending satellites to space and supplying the ISS in that time. SpaceX has made 500+ orbital flights so far, while Blue Origin just one.

dotnet00 1y ago
By putting his wealth into a vision, I mean all the test flights, being much more tolerant of failure, betting everything on Starlink. We're at flight 13, and likely at least flight 16 before anything orbital, likely into the upper 20s before reliable refueling and non-Starlink payloads. Most other rich people haven't done much besides minimally funding small startups or dead end joyrides. Bezos has been somewhat similar, he has been pouring billions into BO, and while BO has moved at a slower pace, he's clearly committed for the long term too, considering all the investments into things that only make sense if New Glenn acheives reliable booster reuse (the giant futuristic rocket factory, Project Jarvis, the lunar cargo lander).
- oskarkk 1y ago
  Yeah, I agree with what you said about Elon's tolerance for risk and continuously betting the company on ever larger projects. I just dislike the common characterization of "billionaire space race", when one of the billionaires is a billionaire because of that "race", while for the other it's just a small side project (relatively to his wealth). But I root for Blue Origin too. Thanks to Bezos' commitment and the real work they have done, they will be flying frequently at some point, and that's good. Everything that keeps up the space boom that SpaceX started is good, from my space nerd perspective. And it wouldn't be good if SpaceX became a monopoly (if we don't consider it a monopoly already).