Comment on Why are people impressed with SpaceX?

I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• greedytacothief@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  So I was teaching some kids snowboarding, one kid started talking to me about musk on the chairlift. He tells me that musk is the greatest engineer to ever live. I say that he’s really more of a business man buying up companies. Kid is not convinced. I tell him that the only engineering that musk may have done was software engineering on PayPal. Kid thinks that’s great support of his claim.

  Adults and 11 year olds are pretty much the same, so I would say there’s lots of people that think musk is a super genius. Probably a dwindling amount, but there’s a lot of people on earth.

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  • turmacar@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    He bought co-founder status at Paypal too IIRC. He was ousted in part because he wanted to rename it “x.com”. Weird that.

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  • Furbag@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Unfortunately, a lot of smart people are under his spell too. I had to listen to the CEO of a medium sized company wax poetic about how he’s a super genius and the greatest boon to human ingenuity in a century, desperately trying to hold my tongue as I rolled my eyes into the back of my skull.

    I think he’s an okay businessman. That’s about as much praise as I’m willing to afford him. He’s definitely charismatic enough to convince a room full of investors that the ideas he’s pitching are worthwhile. Part of that is that his passion for these projects are genuine, and when you put somebody in a room with a passionate guy, the enthusiasm tents to rub off on them just a little.

    Most of his investments that garnered him his wealth are just him being at the right place at the right time. Getting in on PayPal when Ecommerce was in it’s infancy and partnering with Ebay to take advantage of shopaholics who just couldn’t help themselves. Buying his way into Tesla right when EVs were primed to take off and pushing hard for an economy class variant that could be mass produced rapidly (in an already-made factory that Toyota closed down, no less!). Founding SpaceX and pouring a shit ton of his own money into rocket and aeronautics R&D right around the time the U.S. Government was looking for cheap contractors to take over the space program. I think the only projects he miscalculated on were buying Twitter for way too much money when social media was really starting to stagnate.

    His politics are fucking weird, though. I find him to be personally pretty repugnant. I already didn’t like him because back in the early days of Tesla he pushed all the management to essentially become slavedrivers for the line workers. I live in California near the plant and I had friends who worked there in production that got nearly worked to death, extreme overtime and weekend shifts, few breaks, the only saving grace was the above average pay that kind of kept them trapped in that hell of a job for way too long. Then the whole Thai soccer team incident happened and I was so over him. Haven’t heard anything about him since that has made me feel like he deserves to be the richest cunt in the fucking universe.

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  • Tabooki@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    He’s literally the chief ticket designer as well as CTO. Deeply involved in the engineering.

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    • Tabooki@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Rocket not ticket. Lol

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• NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  these amazing fears of engineering

  😱

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• ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  you know he’s not personally involved in the design or manufacture of these things right?

  He actually is. Everyday astronaut has done several interviews with him and the dude knows about rockets and engineering.

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  • FlembleFabber@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    True, he appears to be closely involved and does seem to know what he talks about. Especially compared to jeff bezos lol.

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  • Tabooki@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    He’s the chief rocket designer as well as chief technology officer. He’s deeply involved and is well regarded as an incredible engineer

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• Anticorp@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What did people see that was so cool?

  I personally don’t really care how big of a douche Musk is, as long as he’s willing to fund these kinds of things.

  He’s not funding this, dude. We are. Space X gets massive government contracts. The rest comes from income streams like Starlink.

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  • Strykker@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Catching starship booster was pretty fucking cool.

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• Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Like, you know he’s not personally involved in the design or manufacture of these things right

  Not everybody does. I’ve seen some threads, mostly on insta, where people were getting on their fucking knees to slob on Elon’s nob. I get that the average insta user isn’t the brightest, but people like that do exist.

  And it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, because there is a chance that the hard work of the engineers, laborers, and Shotwell will be used for Elon’s fame throughout history.

  So yeah, fuck Elon. The tech is cool as fuck though.

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• neveraskedforthis@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Like, you know he’s not personally involved in the design or manufacture of these things right?

  Just don’t look up who made the design changes to stainless steel, aerodynamic flaps or tower capture.

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