I don't get this hero worship. Elon Musk didn't build and launch this rocket. Thousands of engineers, scientists and technicians did. Elon wrote their salary checks, but anyone with gobs of money could do that.
People are prone to either giving Musk too much credit or too little.
Musk isn't Tony Stark, single-handedly building everything. But then again, that's not how most innovations work.
Engineers who worked directly with Musk, such as Tom Mueller, have spoken about Musk's technical acumen and involvement in managing projects.
There have been many rocket programs, both public and private, that have accomplished less with more money. Bezos's Blue Origin, for example, started earlier than SpaceX and had a much richer backer for most of its existence, but is only now hoping to launch its first orbital rocket (and I hope they succeed).
> “Never been done before – xAI did in 19 days what everyone else needs one year to accomplish.”
It's a lot less impressive being the second person to fly a plane. Grok was released in November 4, 2023; Llama was released freely in February 2023. They had plenty to build off.
> He’s a twat? What are your credentials?
What credentials would be relevant to determining that?
I credit Musk for a lot of the vision behind SpaceX, but I'm glad he seems a bit distracted from it right now with X etc. It's possible to be both visionary and a twat simultaneously. Howard Hughes serves as a similar example.
> I credit Musk for a lot of the vision behind SpaceX
For sure. Outstanding vision. I'll give him credit. But vision doesn't launch a rocket or finance a business. There are probably thousands of people out there with sufficient "vision" to build a space program, but only one of them is a billionaire willing to finance it. Musk is not some one of a kind unique person. He just happens to be one of the few who have the means ($$) to hire people who can actually bring his vision to life.
"There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it is thoroughly finished yields the true glory." -- Sir Francis Drake
Sure. As a human he's (at best) a deeply-flawed agent of chaos (aren't we all to some degree?)... but at the same time we DO need a lot more people like him to put blinders on and act as undeniable agents of change.
For better or worse, he's single-handedly facilitated watershed progress in more areas than just about any individual we can name from recent times. All the "cringe" and human shit he does that we hate and clown on will be erased by history and forgotten when the stuff that -other people- create, as a byproduct of him starting and funding these companies, pushes us forward and eclipses the clickbait and/or questionable personal behavior of the man himself.
Teamwork makes the dream work, and I believe sometimes we need gigantic egos to set the ball firmly in motion.
Why don’t they deliver, in spite of them being decades more experienced in this area? Why don’t they deliver in spite of getting much more money from the government and from your mentioned complex?
Outstanding engineers care of doing engineering and making progress. And having a leader they can see burning for a mission and a goal. A leader who gets down and dirty with them.
