Elon Musk needs his own thread because he's in every damn thing/positive Elon Musk

Jack Welch, actually. He is the one that is largely responsible for the current CEO culture that shareholder value and short term gains are more important than the long term survival of a company.

 

Pretty much. Musk is a salesman and while he might not have invented EVs and rocketry, he's the guy that made them sexy and was able to attract the top talent and money to push those industries forward.

 

Didn't the Nissan Leaf pre-date the Model S by a couple of years? Musk got the government to fund a national charging network with his name on it.

 

Not only sexy, but functional/practical enough to legitimately become the only/main vehicle for millions of households.

The sexy was the icing.

 

Elon is weird and has some dangerous ideas, but dude is very smart.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Elon Musk and @xAI

“Never been done before – xAI did in 19 days what everyone else needs one year to accomplish.

That is superhuman – There's only one person in the world who could do that – Elon Musk is singular in his understanding of engineering.” pic.twitter.com/oNZuH97RhJ

— ALEX (@ajtourville) October 13, 2024

 

The leaf was the first mainstream EV, by several years. But it's use case was extremely limiting. That was pioneering Musk did in this area. He made EVs accessible at a tipping point.

 

Landing rockets has been done before, the idea of the hyperloop is old.

What Elon accomplished is making the reusable rocket economically feasible.

Not so much for the Hyperloop, he has failed on that one so far.

 

Romney made it sexy

 

Is it economically feasible? It's supposed to be launching 10 times a day by now.

 

And the Tesla Roadster pre-dated the Leaf. But, yes, the Leaf was the first mass-market EV, but it largely landed with a whimper. That isn't to say it didn't sell. It's sales were roughly the same as the Model S, but it was largely a background character. The Model S, on the other hand, was very visible and, even though it was out of most people's price range, people were champing at the bit to get their hands on a more affordable version. The Model 3 pretty much exploded on the market and is selling more per year than the Leaf has sold in its entire life.

And yes, getting a national charging network built was a huge part of that. There is no other charge network as large as Tesla's and Tesla's chargers are among the best in the industry. Road trips with a Tesla is largely a breeze. Any trip along major highways (and, increasingly, minor highways) will have Tesla chargers every few hundred miles. The government did provide some subsidies for that, but that money was available for any other company interested in doing it, but none have...

 

He does bullshit with his timelines for sure.

But what happened yesterday was very impressive and it was only accomplished because of Musk.

 

There is a reason why around 3/4 of satellites are launched on SpaceX rockets.. And that's non-Starlink launches.

 

SpaceX is probably cheaper than Chinese rockets.

 

Chinese rockets are very explodey and rely on a toxic mix for their rocket fuel..

https://universemagazine.com/en/dam...et-with-toxic-fuel-crashed-in-populated-area/

 

I feel obligated to point out that Henry Ford was a proto Nazi and Thomas Edison was a thieving asshole.
Carry on.

 

Here is Elon describing how they hoped it would work.

Explaining the crazy idea over a year ago. pic.twitter.com/2Mvh2NM1Qr

— Jacob Vega (@JacobtheVega) October 13, 2024

 

Right, but we can still give Ford credit for implementing the assembly line.

 

Another story about Elon, a California government regulator is refusing to approve an increase in number of launches in the state.

Elon is suing because he thinks is political and some of the regulators made comments that indicate Elon is right.

So he is using this legal fight to campaign in favor of Trump.

This seems wrong to me, SpaceX will have a much easier time partnering with a Harris administration to bring the California Coastal Commission (which to be clear is extremely stupid) into line than they will working with Trump. pic.twitter.com/gQoObWO9zI

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 14, 2024

 

Well, he is in Texas so he can basically dump rocket fuel in the ocean with minimal blowback.

 

There are some legitimate reasons to limit the number of launches for sure.

'To get to mars... first we musk poison Earth' -Elon Musk....
water discharge starship launch into protected wetlands: 20x max allowable limit of mercury....35x aluminum 3x arsenic 30x barium 300x zinc 5x copper..... what a nice guy (no. spacex application) https://t.co/HkLNZ3aKU8 pic.twitter.com/PXpLIWSKre

— thunderf00t (@thunderf00t) October 14, 2024

 

He's just trying to turn earth's landscape into Mars. Then we'll already be there!

Genius!

 

Truth or myth?

But a story on how Elon brain works

Elon crunching the cost to manufacture a rocket in a spreadsheet during a plane ride in 2002 and realizing SpaceX could do it at 1/50th the cost is the most productive use of a spreadsheet on a plane ride ever pic.twitter.com/oxcumgxeLa

— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) October 13, 2024

 

Middle-school parking lot vs Wankpanzer pic.twitter.com/sTZItOHeMC

— Go Bluesky (@StrictlyChristo.bsky.social) =🦤➡️🦋 (@StrictlyChristo) October 14, 2024

 

$3 billion is 142 × $21 million.

 

This is what Elon is competing against.

NASA just like the military industrial complex, is just a way to hand over billions of dollars to the private sector for shit.

SpaceX is catching rocket boosters with chopsticks while the Space Launch System (SLS) is just a steady stream of subsidies to incompetent government contractors pic.twitter.com/ATPSStiIay

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) October 14, 2024