People who think Musk is eccentric/unhinged/unstable/etc should consider a much simpler possibility: He's just a regular guy, and simply does not filter himself like his peers do.
Other people in his position adopt the public/private persona and for the most part just plain shut up. They don't tweet anything than platitudes, they don't joke, they don't speak with random people on Twitter. They probably do this to minimize their downside exposure, but that might not be very effective. Bezos's bland Twitter feed hasn't stopped anyone from making into a villain.
Musk OTOH, makes Monty Python references, fart jokes, strikes up random conversations, shittalks randos etc. Ie, things normal people do. So the downside is a deluge of tusktusktusking at his "unstable" behaviour, but the upside is that a lot of people like him because he comes across like a real person rather than a PR bot.
Underlying this perspective is an implicit assumption that conventional social filtering - a practice as old as we can remember - serves no social good; that it's all just smoke and mirrors.
At the very least that's a remarkable assumption. We've been doing this for essentially ever, and it impacts all kinds of stuff. In some sense, musk is to CEO's what trump is to the presidency: all that diplomacy is just nonsense.
And - perhaps there's a kernel of truth to that; after all, the way we communicate has changed more radically than I think we really like to admit. I don't just mean the technology and the means, nor the social fashions: just read (transcripts of) old communication: I think we really think differently now than a few generations back. So perhaps old norms no longer apply completely.
But I'm not quite willing to assume that without at least some careful thought. I think it's at least as plausible that trump and musk (to be fair to musk: they differ in most ways, and trump is way more extreme) simply don't communicate very strategically at all. Despite all the hot air there's little upside; it's mostly mess.
Sure, it's entertaining. And as entertainment, that's fine. But would you want to actually deal with people like that? And if the world has changed in many ways, what hasn't is that you're going pretty much nowhere alone. You need cooperation and help to amount to anything constructive.
So: maybe there's a small chance this is the new norm and humanity has changed in pretty basic ways under the influence of todays pressures and technology. But there's also a considerable chance it hasn't.
>Underlying this perspective is an implicit assumption that conventional social filtering... serves no social good
There's a middle you're excluding here: that some parts of conventional filtering serve a valid social good, and that some parts don't.
Obviously this will vary on a case-by-case basis based on personal values. Which specific filters to accept/reject (and on what basis) make the difference between "abrasive CEO on twitter" and "guy throwing poop in Central Park."
Rather than looking at it in absolutes, you can look at it in terms of Evolutionarily Stable Strategy. In a world populated by PRBot CEOs, the one who speaks and acts like a real person will stand out, get attention, followers, detractors etc. In a world where everybody runs their mouth, the CEO that acts like a "Grownup" will achieve the same outcome.
Amassing a loyal army of followers (and, inevitably, an army of detractors) has worked out very well for him and could be one of the main reasons why Tesla has gotten as far as it has.
I certainly prefer a world where people can be their honest selves and live openly according to their values, regardless of their level of power or visibility. (For better or worse.)
Calling calculated, dulled down communication designed to influence others (as opposed to convey one's views or feelings) as "strategic" is about as nice a way as one could put it.
I can't speak for PR as I have no qualifications there.
I'm brutally honest and open with people who can accept that. I've tried to work that into every relationship I've had (family or significant other). It is a lot of work to culture that kind of relationship, but it is worth it (and it has failed many times, don't get me wrong). Maybe you haven't had a scenario like this, but I'm sure you could imagine it: holding onto your emotions for far too long, not communicating them, until they become a major problem and are blown out of proportion.
It's the strangest thing about the human instinct, we think that we're making things simpler through our actions but we often make them more complicated. If we think about what we truly want, instead of what gives us immediate gratification (revenge), we'd make better decisions. Next time you're about to initiate a fight, step back and think about how you'd communicate exactly what you need.
Occam's Razor doesn't only apply to science, it applies to humanity. Musk is a "simple" person and, despite all his flaws (there are many), that's why he's a role model for this adult. All power to him for this PR experiment.
I think we all have different skills and Elon Musk skill certainly isn't social filtering. I agree he is bad at this and this is bad for business. But he is good at other things. So.. maybe you just can't have both.
The practice of “conventional social filtering” of mass media is less than a century old. It’s telling that people’s expectations are to have public figures scripted more like characters than human beings.
being astronomically rich and being a regular guy are mutually exclusive.
in fact, you listed the actions that he (and maybe his PR wrangler, much like George Carlin did during his career renewal) participates in in order to keep the 'regular guy' charade afloat.
also 'shitttalks randos' isn't something to aspire to want to do, especially in your context where it's being listed as a tool used by Musk to get people to think he's a 'regular guy'.
All that said : I like Musk, and I like his endeavors. What i'm against is painting a world-mover individual as 'another one of the guys'. He's not -- it's nothing but a PR move that capitalizes on his candor and perceived honest; two traits that many nerd/geek types have issues hiding in business context. It just happens to work for him and his wranglers.
Yeah nah: Musk does so much off-the-wall shit that any putative PR wrangler would be having heart attacks on an hourly basis. Consider the whole Thai cave rescue/pedophile accusation saga -- do you really think this was a carefully orchestrated publicity stunt?
> also 'shitttalks randos' isn't something to aspire to want to do, especially in your context where it's being listed as a tool used by Musk to get people to think he's a 'regular guy'.
Everyone does this. At family gatherings, the grocery store, etc. You all do it. I'm sure one or two people will chime in and say they've never badmouthed a random person at the post office who was taking too long, but everyone knows the truth.
He clearly understands the value of PR. Take Tesla cars for instance, they are certainly good electric cars, but they are even better sold. It is a car you want even if you've never seen one. SpaceX launches are shows, they even managed to make failures look awesome.
How a man that puts so much attention in his companies image can forget about his own. His unhinged nature is his public persona. In fact, the only time I think he messed up was with the "pedo" accusation. It is possible that the joint incident was planned: if you consider it carefully, he smoked where it is legal, just once, and then came out saying that he doesn't like the high. It totally matches the adventurous, laid back but clear minded image he wants to project.
Jeff Bezos on the opposite doesn't really care about PR. His Twitter is generic, I'm not even sure if he actually reads it, let alone write it. For a company dealing directly with consumers, Amazon is rather low profile, they simply deliver, and make money. As for Blue Origin, they are quite secretive, completely unlike SpaceX. That's this lack of PR that made him a villain.
Populism is overtaking this country's feelings about society, government, and wealth. It doesn't matter what rich people do, it is inevitable they will all be made out to be villains who exploit human capital and do nothing good for us.
Gates has avoided some of it but not all. Everyone remembers where he came from and never lets him forget it. There is no atoning for him.
Larry Ellison on the other hand is just the devil incarnate and people treat him as such. At least he expends no energy pretending otherwise.
Musk also replies to user comments all the time and turns their suggestions into reality. He participates in conversations and provides a ton of valuable info on Twitter. That makes him a hell of a lot more interesting than other CEOs.
This is a slightly misguided view given that Musk himself has on several occasions suggested that he might be suffering from a mood disorder. If that’s true, then there is a very clear psychiatric explanation for his behavior. Bipolar disorder may also account for some of what we perceive as “genius”. Kanye West is another excellent example of this.
FWIW I’m not denying he’s a highly intelligent person. But that doesn’t exclude the possibility of bipolar.
"Class clown" is a type that goes back a long ways, online or offline, but the audience appeal of that type isn't "this is a real person," it's because they can often be entertaining.
Where things get interesting is when someone continues to play that role even when in a position with more to lose. Gambling is fairly normal, but people might get worried about you if you're gambling with very high stakes.
Right... and "others" do that because it turns out when you're the CEO of a PUBLICLY traded company, you are subject to being judged by the public.
If he were only in charge of private companies, he'd essentially be free to say/act however he wants. The second you IPO and are CEO, you have muzzled yourself, or you should expect to face the wrath of your shareholders.
Why would you expect people who have millions of dollars invested in your company to expect you to do anything OTHER than act like a professional? If my retirement is in your hands I expect you to act like an adult, not a 16-year-old bruh having a good time on twitter.
There's a limit to how much this can be accepted though - he has broken rules before and this has consequences not just for him but also other stakeholders.
That's a fair comment, but it should be noted that with greater power comes greater responsibility.
It's also possible that he's an attention seeker, that this is part of his schtick, and that he can't help himself.
He's attacked the SEC publicly several times, very unprofessionally, if I were an investor I'd be pissed; it's one thing if he were to have data indicating he's being mistreated but mostly it's but Trumpish attacks on the SEC ... which could get him in serious trouble.
edit: OK maybe not the best two things to compare (although the original vision for the space shuttle was that it would launch all US payloads, due to projected re-usability). But FH is still way cheaper than any contemporary competitors, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18706762
The Shuttle was expensive, but its abilities are still unmatched. No other spacecraft has ever been able to launch a half dozen people into orbit, capture a satellite, and return it to earth for repairs. That kind of world leading, "best at any cost" mentality is what made the US so technologically dominant globally from the 1950s until recently. Falcon Heavy is definitely more efficient for getting things into orbit, but it still feels frustrating knowing that regardless of cost, we can't actually do the things we used to be able to.
> No other spacecraft has ever been able to launch a half dozen people into orbit, capture a satellite, and return it to earth for repairs.
The problem is that almost everything Space Shuttle could do, could have been done more effectively by a classic modular spacecraft and a large rocket. Even more, Space Shuttle was fairly limited and inflexible in its capabilities due to its complex in-orbit thermodynamics, monolithic design and available delta-v. Jack of all trades, master of none.
Don't get me wrong, the Shuttle was a great engineering achievement and a great pride point for any American. But it's also a huge waste of resources, which resulted from enormously inflated requirements, particularly military ones. Buran was the same. It's better not to repeat such mistakes.
> That kind of world leading, "best at any cost" mentality is what made the US so technologically dominant globally from the 1950s until recently.
And left it without modular space stations, in this particular case. (and many more)
It's abilities at killing astronauts are unmatched too... I don't see why people still think positively of the shuttle program after all the lives that were lost. It's like people fawning over how great the Titanic was.
"The average age the night we had splashdown (Apollo 11) was 28. When Space Shuttle Atlantis left Earth on May 11, 2009, the average NASA civil servant's age was 47." [1]
There were risk takers, now they are protecting their ability to pay for 2 kids to go to Ivy League. Who can blame them?
> The shuttle isn't really designed to put basic stuff in space
The shuttle was absolutely designed to "put basic stuff in space". By being partially reusable it was meant to be cheaper than all other "expendable" US rockets and replace them all even even for simple satellite launches.
The fact that the original goals couldn't be met was only made clear after the Challenger disaster.
The space shuttle was to be America's "pickup truck to space". It was designed to haul everything from polar-orbiting spy satellites to interplanetary scientific missions, as well as being an on-orbit research platform. In fact, naively for the first few years it even looked like it hit those goals. At first.
Shuttle was specially designed to put basic stuff in space. It was designed to be launched 50 times per year (once a week) as a space truck. Shuttle failed spectacularly from the engineering perspective and ate NASA's budget for decades. It was failure turned into success story with clever PR.
* But they developed lots of cool tech is not a good defense. Failing to deliver did not bring the tech. It was inevitable.
* But there were missions that only Shuttle could do is not right either when you think it over.
When you talk about launch costs, you care about the cost to get “the stuff you really want in orbit”.
The formal term for that stuff is “payload”. So cost per kg of payload is the relevant figure of merit.
The mass of the space shuttle is not payload. It is a means of delivering payload. As such, you do not get credit or establish launch efficiency by launching it.
It is not inefficiency to launch without carrying the space shuttle; just the opposite.
So on incremental costs its about 12 times cheaper per kg to LEO
Or if you think thats still not fair, and want to treat the shuttle orbiter itself as payload - a bit abstract, but lets go with it - the shuttle launch comes out as about $4400 per kg of orbiter-and-payload, so Falcon Heavy is still 3 times cheaper than that.
edit: And its still not really a fair comparison because Shuttle could do more and carried people etc. But there it is.
While Musk has personally been a bit odd lately[0], SpaceX as a company seems to be in good hands with Gwynne Shotwell. They're launching very regularly[1], haven't had a customer-impacting failure in years[2] and they've got the market cornered. They have customers lined up for years, and continually make huge gains by reducing costs. They've got a head start by at least 5-10 years over all new entrants (Blue Origin, Electron, etc) and are massively undercutting the legacy competitors (ULA).
If I could invest in SpaceX, I would.
[0] I think he's overworked and burned-out himself out but can't recognize it. Who am I to judge- I've been there.
[1] They were going to launch about 20 minutes ago actually, but scrubbed at the last minute. They'll probably launch it tomorrow.
[2] Two failures recently were Falcon Heavy middle core doing a dive instead of a landing due to running out of igniter fluid, and the much-watched booster 'water landing' recently, where they fully recovered the booster afterwards. Both were successful launches.
I think Musk has shown something a little higher than eccentricity for as long as he's been in the public eye. I wouldn't want to be his friend, date him, marry him, or have him as a family member.
If we take a step back to look at what Musk has done at scale:
* Tesla has tremendously accelerated electric car deployments. I am going to count Solar City in this bucket as well. It was not a smashing success as Tesla or SpaceX are, but it helped to accelerate solar deployments.
* SpaceX proven out booster re-usability and lowered launch prices.
* Helped start open AI which is pushing limits of building machine intelligence by tackling progressively harder problems.
Whatever you think about the man, you can't ever take away those accomplishments. All of the current controversy looks so small and insignificant compared to them.
> I wouldn't want to be his friend, date him, marry him, or have him as a family member.
There are people great for depending on, and there are people great for following. Even if from far away. They are still great. Just in a different way.
> I wouldn't want to be his friend, date him, marry him, or have him as a family member.
I fail to see the merit of such a condemnation without additional context.
Though I question the validity of it to begin with unless you at least also claim that there are people who you have a similar level of optics on (i.e. "I see them on TV") and actually DO want to have them in one of those roles based on this perception.
I generally agree, but I also think it's important to note that SpaceX has underperformed its target on launches and therefore revenue in 2018: It had a target of 30 launches, and has only seen about 20 this year, roughly the same as 2017. The increase of $3billion+ dollar on it's valuation since its last round therefore appears to be despite underperforming targets rather than actual increase in either revenue or profits (to the best such are publicly discernible for a private company)
The increased valuation also has to do with its Starlink satellite-based network access service, quite possibly a larger and much more profitable business than rockets, making huge strides.
How do you say they have a 5-10 year advantage over Electron/Rocket Lab? They've already done a commercial launch and have 11 launches scheduled for 2019. They could very well be a viable competitor with a strong cost and time flexibility advantage in 2020.
SpaceX has a huge payload advantage over Rocket Lab, but small satellites currently pay a lot of the bills at SpaceX...
> but small satellites currently pay a lot of the bills at SpaceX
No, they really don't. SpaceX makes most of their money launching 3-ton+ geostationary satellites. The second-most important workload has been launching the Orbcomm and Iridium constellations. Iridium satellites won't fit on Electron. Orbcomm ones would, but the constellation is complete.
Of all their commercial launches, on only one would the Electron rocket have undeniably been better: The SmallSat Express was a kind of a clusterfuck because there were too many customers on one launch, each with their own problems and delays.
As of IAC2018, they had a $12B launch manifest. They can afford to lose a few smallsat payloads.
I am eagerly awaiting a future larger Electron. The principle of 3d-printing a rocket using only parts that are cheap to make is quite interesting, and might have room to move up to payloads larger than smallsats.
SpaceX has been launching the Falcon 9 for the past 6 years straight with only two launch failures and one partial failure out of 65 flights. Their older Falcon 1 didn't do great, only last flight survived out of five tries. However, SpaceX has had near consecutive launch success for the past 10 years. They threw themselves into the deep end with space. They do things the cheap and quick way and hope that it works. When it fails, they can quickly reconfigure and try again, their investment is low. This model helps you get really far really quick, so much so that they are now competing with ULA. ULA's tech has heritage all the way back to the Convair days when slapping a satellite onto an ICBM was a new idea. All of those small companies like Rocket Lab are just starting their success but this is literally where SpaceX was 10 years prior, launching small stuff with mixed results. If SpaceX can get off the ground with 20% success rate of their first design, I doubt Rocket Lab will have trouble with 80%.
Despite a lot of small satellites going up on SpaceX rockets, they aren't the ones pulling in large amounts of money for SpaceX. Most of the small satellite launches (with the exception of the recent SSO-A mission) are secondary payloads on a larger launch.
There is a lot of demand for smaller launchers. With smaller launch vehicles you can get more flexibility in what orbit you want to go in to. On the larger launches, the small satellite manufacturers have to adapt somewhat to the launches that are available. There is demand from both the commercial and DoD [1].
Electron and Falcon 9 have have entirely different capabilities. Electron may be more flexible but it's unable to launch geosynchronous satellites, which are by far the most profitable in the launch industry.
Reusability will eventually give SpaceX such an edge that they'll be able to launch BFR at Electron-level prices. Same cost, an order of magnitude more capability.
This is quite a ways out, however, so Rocketlab will enjoy being the only dedicated provider at the $6M price point for quite a while.
Electric motor fuel pumps simply cannot scale any larger than they already are on the Electron craft. Rocket labs is not going to be taking any of SpaceX's profitable marketshare.
I think the company is great and it's been a big inspiration.
I'm a bit worried, however, about the CEO using it as a piggy-bank for other projects only partially related to SpaceX, and whether I'd see any payback on that risk if I were an investor (See: Boring Company using SpaceX folks to dig tunnels).
I'm perfectly fine not being an investor and instead just being a fan.
If you want to perform at the absolute limit of your ability, you must regularly go past your limits. If you want to bring your whole self to that job, you must push limits in every aspect of your life.
It's not for everyone, but it's the reason why Musk is so successful. He goes right up to the line, and then tries to step just a tiny bit over. Sometimes he ends up flagrantly in the danger zone, but just as often he finds out the line was much further out than anyone suspected.
You can do the same thing socially, by letting crazy people randomly test boundaries, and then using a social network to filter best practices down to you. That way you get the benefit of random testing, without risking any of your personal health or reputation. But that takes decades, whereas Elon's strategy gives immediate feedback.
He has so much privilege that he can be quite risky without actually "betting the farm" so to speak. If he was a little less mentally healthy, a little less white, a little less male, a little less rich parents, a little less educated, etc he'd probably have flamed out with this strategy. Having that intersection of privilege gives him a nice safety net when his experiments blow up. There's a whole other layer of support beyond the business fundamentals.
That’s demonsratably a bad idea when it comes to exercise and likely most other things in life. Limits are not binary, you are causing harm when you approach them. Going over just means the injury is more noticeable.
What’s really interesting is if you study the absolute top athletes is they treat down time as both nessisary and productive.
Absolute peak performance is simply not sustainable, you need to adjust to a huge range of tradeoffs.
If you want to perform at the absolute limit of your ability, then knowing where you might benefit from pushing your limits is far more useful than mere recklessness.
And a 47 year old tweeting about "420" and his critics being "pedos" isn't someone with a "strategy" seeking "immediate feedback" where others "take decades", even where their tweets are in a sufficiently harmless space for them not to lose a measure of control over their company and find themself on the end of bad press and lawsuits as a result. It's someone who somehow managed not to learn something the majority of other 47 year olds learned three decades ago and/or someone who has failed to exercise control of their behaviour in an arena where they had little to gain and everything to lose.
You can make a case for assholery over details being integral to getting results even at the expense of relationships, but not self-destructive social media tomfoolery Musk didn't even indulge in for most of his career.
I guess above all I'm just glad nobody hero worships me enough to rationalise my own acts of utter stupidity as next-level, boundary-pushing genius. (I guess the flip side is I didn't found SpaceX, but you win some, you lose some :-)
I wouldn't because I don't trust Elon Musk's honesty with investors.
Also, I don't understand the argument "I would invest because positive thing X" - how does it imply that buying the company at market price is more profitable than buying a stock index?
I should rephrase: if I could buy SpaceX with the company valued at only $30B, I would buy stock in it. That seems undervalued to me, given the above. I believe the company will be worth more than that in both the short and long term and therefore it's a solid investment.
For the same reasons that some people choose to divest themselves from companies which they have personal moral disagreements with, some people want to invest in companies that directly or indirectly align with their views. I don't believe the comment above was meant to be taken as a purely financial move.
I dunno, I don't think he's "burned out" in the same sense that you or I get burned out, but I do think he's "over exposed", which for him is probably basically the same.
It just looks like he's gotten comfortable expressing the thoughts and feelings that most of us try to apply at least a small filter to, and it's hard because he's the boss of his world, so there's no one to reel him in.
>> massively undercutting the legacy competitors (ULA)...
I think that has been a mistake. Undercut them sure, but if they charged more they might not be seeking funding right now. They should be optimizing profit at this point (to fund new developments) and it's not clear that's what they're doing. I've never heard them talk about pricing other than what they charge and how they hope to lower those costs.
Hard to sell your workers on changing the game when you've got that mindset. They get some of the best because they actually want to change the way access to space works.
Delivering a 100(starting a billion
USD company successfully ? ) times smaller projects on time can give nightmare for years. What he is doing is borderline impossible.
I have been impressed with how up-to-date Spaceflight Now is. I work in the satellite industry and once Spaceflight Now had an updated launch schedule before we actually got word from SpaceX that our launch was delayed.
If the BFR happens they'll be unstoppable. Not because of what that rocket is but for building a company that's capable of producing something like that whilst operating a normal ongoing launch business.
Liquidation events do happen every so often, but finding someone with the connections to connect a seller and buyer requires a strong network and a substantial net worth.
> Wish I could find some SpaceX shares on the secondary markets
Unless you’re willing and able to commit at least $5 million (at the very least, $1 to 2 million) it’s not worth exploring. You’re better off buying some merchandise [1] and sticking what you were going to invest in some bonds or a broad-market index.
I'd even say that $5mil is on the low end of what would come up during a liquidation event. However, now there are probably more shares that have been bought and sold a few times, so there might be some more smaller investors willing to cash out.
Readit News
Other people in his position adopt the public/private persona and for the most part just plain shut up. They don't tweet anything than platitudes, they don't joke, they don't speak with random people on Twitter. They probably do this to minimize their downside exposure, but that might not be very effective. Bezos's bland Twitter feed hasn't stopped anyone from making into a villain.
Musk OTOH, makes Monty Python references, fart jokes, strikes up random conversations, shittalks randos etc. Ie, things normal people do. So the downside is a deluge of tusktusktusking at his "unstable" behaviour, but the upside is that a lot of people like him because he comes across like a real person rather than a PR bot.
At the very least that's a remarkable assumption. We've been doing this for essentially ever, and it impacts all kinds of stuff. In some sense, musk is to CEO's what trump is to the presidency: all that diplomacy is just nonsense.
And - perhaps there's a kernel of truth to that; after all, the way we communicate has changed more radically than I think we really like to admit. I don't just mean the technology and the means, nor the social fashions: just read (transcripts of) old communication: I think we really think differently now than a few generations back. So perhaps old norms no longer apply completely.
But I'm not quite willing to assume that without at least some careful thought. I think it's at least as plausible that trump and musk (to be fair to musk: they differ in most ways, and trump is way more extreme) simply don't communicate very strategically at all. Despite all the hot air there's little upside; it's mostly mess.
Sure, it's entertaining. And as entertainment, that's fine. But would you want to actually deal with people like that? And if the world has changed in many ways, what hasn't is that you're going pretty much nowhere alone. You need cooperation and help to amount to anything constructive.
So: maybe there's a small chance this is the new norm and humanity has changed in pretty basic ways under the influence of todays pressures and technology. But there's also a considerable chance it hasn't.
There's a middle you're excluding here: that some parts of conventional filtering serve a valid social good, and that some parts don't.
Obviously this will vary on a case-by-case basis based on personal values. Which specific filters to accept/reject (and on what basis) make the difference between "abrasive CEO on twitter" and "guy throwing poop in Central Park."
Amassing a loyal army of followers (and, inevitably, an army of detractors) has worked out very well for him and could be one of the main reasons why Tesla has gotten as far as it has.
Calling calculated, dulled down communication designed to influence others (as opposed to convey one's views or feelings) as "strategic" is about as nice a way as one could put it.
I'm brutally honest and open with people who can accept that. I've tried to work that into every relationship I've had (family or significant other). It is a lot of work to culture that kind of relationship, but it is worth it (and it has failed many times, don't get me wrong). Maybe you haven't had a scenario like this, but I'm sure you could imagine it: holding onto your emotions for far too long, not communicating them, until they become a major problem and are blown out of proportion.
It's the strangest thing about the human instinct, we think that we're making things simpler through our actions but we often make them more complicated. If we think about what we truly want, instead of what gives us immediate gratification (revenge), we'd make better decisions. Next time you're about to initiate a fight, step back and think about how you'd communicate exactly what you need.
Occam's Razor doesn't only apply to science, it applies to humanity. Musk is a "simple" person and, despite all his flaws (there are many), that's why he's a role model for this adult. All power to him for this PR experiment.
Edit: paragraphs.
being astronomically rich and being a regular guy are mutually exclusive.
in fact, you listed the actions that he (and maybe his PR wrangler, much like George Carlin did during his career renewal) participates in in order to keep the 'regular guy' charade afloat.
also 'shitttalks randos' isn't something to aspire to want to do, especially in your context where it's being listed as a tool used by Musk to get people to think he's a 'regular guy'.
All that said : I like Musk, and I like his endeavors. What i'm against is painting a world-mover individual as 'another one of the guys'. He's not -- it's nothing but a PR move that capitalizes on his candor and perceived honest; two traits that many nerd/geek types have issues hiding in business context. It just happens to work for him and his wranglers.
Everyone does this. At family gatherings, the grocery store, etc. You all do it. I'm sure one or two people will chime in and say they've never badmouthed a random person at the post office who was taking too long, but everyone knows the truth.
He clearly understands the value of PR. Take Tesla cars for instance, they are certainly good electric cars, but they are even better sold. It is a car you want even if you've never seen one. SpaceX launches are shows, they even managed to make failures look awesome.
How a man that puts so much attention in his companies image can forget about his own. His unhinged nature is his public persona. In fact, the only time I think he messed up was with the "pedo" accusation. It is possible that the joint incident was planned: if you consider it carefully, he smoked where it is legal, just once, and then came out saying that he doesn't like the high. It totally matches the adventurous, laid back but clear minded image he wants to project.
Jeff Bezos on the opposite doesn't really care about PR. His Twitter is generic, I'm not even sure if he actually reads it, let alone write it. For a company dealing directly with consumers, Amazon is rather low profile, they simply deliver, and make money. As for Blue Origin, they are quite secretive, completely unlike SpaceX. That's this lack of PR that made him a villain.
Gates has avoided some of it but not all. Everyone remembers where he came from and never lets him forget it. There is no atoning for him.
Larry Ellison on the other hand is just the devil incarnate and people treat him as such. At least he expends no energy pretending otherwise.
FWIW I’m not denying he’s a highly intelligent person. But that doesn’t exclude the possibility of bipolar.
Where things get interesting is when someone continues to play that role even when in a position with more to lose. Gambling is fairly normal, but people might get worried about you if you're gambling with very high stakes.
If he were only in charge of private companies, he'd essentially be free to say/act however he wants. The second you IPO and are CEO, you have muzzled yourself, or you should expect to face the wrath of your shareholders.
Why would you expect people who have millions of dollars invested in your company to expect you to do anything OTHER than act like a professional? If my retirement is in your hands I expect you to act like an adult, not a 16-year-old bruh having a good time on twitter.
It's also possible that he's an attention seeker, that this is part of his schtick, and that he can't help himself.
He's attacked the SEC publicly several times, very unprofessionally, if I were an investor I'd be pissed; it's one thing if he were to have data indicating he's being mistreated but mostly it's but Trumpish attacks on the SEC ... which could get him in serious trouble.
edit: I think thats based on programme lifetime costs, if you look at incremental costs per launch its about 12 times cheaper -see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18706930
edit: OK maybe not the best two things to compare (although the original vision for the space shuttle was that it would launch all US payloads, due to projected re-usability). But FH is still way cheaper than any contemporary competitors, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18706762
edit: I've been looking at old pics of the space shuttle and lamenting that its the only thing we've ever put into space that actually looked like a proper spaceship. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-13719297/u...
The problem is that almost everything Space Shuttle could do, could have been done more effectively by a classic modular spacecraft and a large rocket. Even more, Space Shuttle was fairly limited and inflexible in its capabilities due to its complex in-orbit thermodynamics, monolithic design and available delta-v. Jack of all trades, master of none.
Don't get me wrong, the Shuttle was a great engineering achievement and a great pride point for any American. But it's also a huge waste of resources, which resulted from enormously inflated requirements, particularly military ones. Buran was the same. It's better not to repeat such mistakes.
> That kind of world leading, "best at any cost" mentality is what made the US so technologically dominant globally from the 1950s until recently.
And left it without modular space stations, in this particular case. (and many more)
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There were risk takers, now they are protecting their ability to pay for 2 kids to go to Ivy League. Who can blame them?
[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a4288/4318625/
The shuttle was absolutely designed to "put basic stuff in space". By being partially reusable it was meant to be cheaper than all other "expendable" US rockets and replace them all even even for simple satellite launches.
The fact that the original goals couldn't be met was only made clear after the Challenger disaster.
* But they developed lots of cool tech is not a good defense. Failing to deliver did not bring the tech. It was inevitable.
* But there were missions that only Shuttle could do is not right either when you think it over.
Mass is mass. It’s a perfectly fair comparison. If we were talking about people, sure, that would be unfair.
Not trying to say Space Shuttle wasn't extremely expensive, but comparing two different things isn't exactly fair.
When you talk about launch costs, you care about the cost to get “the stuff you really want in orbit”.
The formal term for that stuff is “payload”. So cost per kg of payload is the relevant figure of merit.
The mass of the space shuttle is not payload. It is a means of delivering payload. As such, you do not get credit or establish launch efficiency by launching it.
It is not inefficiency to launch without carrying the space shuttle; just the opposite.
Incremental cost of each Shuttle flight was $18,000 per kg to LEO (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle...). Price per KG of a FH launch is about $1411 to LEO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy.
So on incremental costs its about 12 times cheaper per kg to LEO
Or if you think thats still not fair, and want to treat the shuttle orbiter itself as payload - a bit abstract, but lets go with it - the shuttle launch comes out as about $4400 per kg of orbiter-and-payload, so Falcon Heavy is still 3 times cheaper than that.
edit: And its still not really a fair comparison because Shuttle could do more and carried people etc. But there it is.
If I could invest in SpaceX, I would.
[0] I think he's overworked and burned-out himself out but can't recognize it. Who am I to judge- I've been there.
[1] They were going to launch about 20 minutes ago actually, but scrubbed at the last minute. They'll probably launch it tomorrow.
[2] Two failures recently were Falcon Heavy middle core doing a dive instead of a landing due to running out of igniter fluid, and the much-watched booster 'water landing' recently, where they fully recovered the booster afterwards. Both were successful launches.
I think Musk has shown something a little higher than eccentricity for as long as he's been in the public eye. I wouldn't want to be his friend, date him, marry him, or have him as a family member.
* Tesla has tremendously accelerated electric car deployments. I am going to count Solar City in this bucket as well. It was not a smashing success as Tesla or SpaceX are, but it helped to accelerate solar deployments.
* SpaceX proven out booster re-usability and lowered launch prices.
* Helped start open AI which is pushing limits of building machine intelligence by tackling progressively harder problems.
Whatever you think about the man, you can't ever take away those accomplishments. All of the current controversy looks so small and insignificant compared to them.
There are people great for depending on, and there are people great for following. Even if from far away. They are still great. Just in a different way.
Which is perfectly fine as long as he keeps inspiring employees (and the world at large) so that they are even ready to "follow him into the gates of hell carrying suntan oil..." (https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-for-Elon-...)
I fail to see the merit of such a condemnation without additional context.
Though I question the validity of it to begin with unless you at least also claim that there are people who you have a similar level of optics on (i.e. "I see them on TV") and actually DO want to have them in one of those roles based on this perception.
When I asked him what he was like to be around, he said it's been over 10 years and all I remember about him is thinking "this guy is fucking weird".
Your life wouldn't be boring.
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A year ago, Falcon Heavy still hadn't launched. Will that happen in 2018? Ever? We didn't know.
A year ago, we were still barely a year since the 2016 pad explosion- is this going to happen again? How often? What if it happens tomorrow?
And most importantly, we've doubled (ish?) the number of landings. With more data, we've got a better estimate on the expected future success rate.
SpaceX is becoming a less risky investment. There was always a valuation hit because of that risk.
SpaceX has a huge payload advantage over Rocket Lab, but small satellites currently pay a lot of the bills at SpaceX...
No, they really don't. SpaceX makes most of their money launching 3-ton+ geostationary satellites. The second-most important workload has been launching the Orbcomm and Iridium constellations. Iridium satellites won't fit on Electron. Orbcomm ones would, but the constellation is complete.
Of all their commercial launches, on only one would the Electron rocket have undeniably been better: The SmallSat Express was a kind of a clusterfuck because there were too many customers on one launch, each with their own problems and delays.
In any case, hypotheticals about SpaceX losing customers in the future always need to be answered with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IU41zpzWUE&t=75s
As of IAC2018, they had a $12B launch manifest. They can afford to lose a few smallsat payloads.
I am eagerly awaiting a future larger Electron. The principle of 3d-printing a rocket using only parts that are cheap to make is quite interesting, and might have room to move up to payloads larger than smallsats.
There is a lot of demand for smaller launchers. With smaller launch vehicles you can get more flexibility in what orbit you want to go in to. On the larger launches, the small satellite manufacturers have to adapt somewhat to the launches that are available. There is demand from both the commercial and DoD [1].
[1] https://spacenews.com/pentagon-procurement-chief-ellen-lord-...
Reusability will eventually give SpaceX such an edge that they'll be able to launch BFR at Electron-level prices. Same cost, an order of magnitude more capability.
This is quite a ways out, however, so Rocketlab will enjoy being the only dedicated provider at the $6M price point for quite a while.
I'm a bit worried, however, about the CEO using it as a piggy-bank for other projects only partially related to SpaceX, and whether I'd see any payback on that risk if I were an investor (See: Boring Company using SpaceX folks to dig tunnels).
I'm perfectly fine not being an investor and instead just being a fan.
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It's not for everyone, but it's the reason why Musk is so successful. He goes right up to the line, and then tries to step just a tiny bit over. Sometimes he ends up flagrantly in the danger zone, but just as often he finds out the line was much further out than anyone suspected.
You can do the same thing socially, by letting crazy people randomly test boundaries, and then using a social network to filter best practices down to you. That way you get the benefit of random testing, without risking any of your personal health or reputation. But that takes decades, whereas Elon's strategy gives immediate feedback.
He has so much privilege that he can be quite risky without actually "betting the farm" so to speak. If he was a little less mentally healthy, a little less white, a little less male, a little less rich parents, a little less educated, etc he'd probably have flamed out with this strategy. Having that intersection of privilege gives him a nice safety net when his experiments blow up. There's a whole other layer of support beyond the business fundamentals.
What’s really interesting is if you study the absolute top athletes is they treat down time as both nessisary and productive.
Absolute peak performance is simply not sustainable, you need to adjust to a huge range of tradeoffs.
And a 47 year old tweeting about "420" and his critics being "pedos" isn't someone with a "strategy" seeking "immediate feedback" where others "take decades", even where their tweets are in a sufficiently harmless space for them not to lose a measure of control over their company and find themself on the end of bad press and lawsuits as a result. It's someone who somehow managed not to learn something the majority of other 47 year olds learned three decades ago and/or someone who has failed to exercise control of their behaviour in an arena where they had little to gain and everything to lose.
You can make a case for assholery over details being integral to getting results even at the expense of relationships, but not self-destructive social media tomfoolery Musk didn't even indulge in for most of his career.
I guess above all I'm just glad nobody hero worships me enough to rationalise my own acts of utter stupidity as next-level, boundary-pushing genius. (I guess the flip side is I didn't found SpaceX, but you win some, you lose some :-)
I wouldn't because I don't trust Elon Musk's honesty with investors.
Also, I don't understand the argument "I would invest because positive thing X" - how does it imply that buying the company at market price is more profitable than buying a stock index?
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It just looks like he's gotten comfortable expressing the thoughts and feelings that most of us try to apply at least a small filter to, and it's hard because he's the boss of his world, so there's no one to reel him in.
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I think that has been a mistake. Undercut them sure, but if they charged more they might not be seeking funding right now. They should be optimizing profit at this point (to fund new developments) and it's not clear that's what they're doing. I've never heard them talk about pricing other than what they charge and how they hope to lower those costs.
If you are flying a $20 million dollar satalite, do you fly with the 6 million dollar proven launch, or the 5.999 million dollar unproven launch?
Now if the unproven guy cuts the price to 3 million dollars, the math changes (insurance can step in, etc).
I don't think they could have charged much more and gotten to where they are.
So true! I would love to invest in SpaceX
Still sure?
Genius, yes. Ambitious, yes. Good governance, no!
I'll say. hits blunt
It’s just PR he’s not sleeping under desks or delusional from sleep deprivation or etc
It’s just PR to get to this moment, raising a huge round for SpaceX.
GPS III SV01 Mission
https://www.spacex.com/webcast
New Shepard NS-10
https://www.blueorigin.com/
CSO-1
http://www.arianespace.com/mission/ariane-flight-vs20/
Delta-IV NROL-71
https://www.ulalaunch.com/missions/delta-iv-nrol-71
https://spacelaunchnow.me/
It includes locations, payload information, launch company and rocket, links to livestreams, notifications for launch updates, and more.
[0] https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_spaceflight
Click the links on the right to get lists for specific years, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_in_spaceflight
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Unless you’re willing and able to commit at least $5 million (at the very least, $1 to 2 million) it’s not worth exploring. You’re better off buying some merchandise [1] and sticking what you were going to invest in some bonds or a broad-market index.
[1] https://shop.spacex.com/accessories.html
https://fundnel.com/investor/deal-feed/funded