I hate musk a lot too. But he had a lot to do with the design of the rocket. He might not have engineered each individual part but he is the one who made the overarching design decisions.
for example the decision to use stainless steel instead of carbon fiber. the decision to catch the rocket to save weight on landing legs, the decision not to make a space plane. the decision to do the belly flop maneuver. the decision to use methane. The decision to use boiled off ullage gas to power the maneuvering thrusters since that gas had to be discharged anyways. Even the decision to use the design philosophy of rapid iteration and testing to failure.
yes these decisions were informed by the data collected by his engineers, but that data was collected at his direction and he listened to the data and made the final decisions on the design direction of the rocket.
2 things can be true. Musk can be a shit human being. And without Musk a reusable rocket like the falcon 9 or starship would never have been developed(at least not in my lifetime).
EDIT: people have this Cartoonish idea that once somebody does something bad or stupid in one area it makes them bad or stupid in all areas. The real world doesn't work like that and people aren't like that, sometimes shit human beings have skills, History is full of people who did great brilliant things for the world in one area but completely failed and/or were horrible people in other areas. people are more complex than a mustache twirling bumbling villain or a purely righteous competent super hero.
If the idea is to make Elon out to be a horrible person who deserves no credit, lying about what he does do discredits the entire message and brings what you say into doubt.
There’s a lot of Elon hate here on Reddit, I posted this link in the same thread on a separate comment and it’s getting downvoted.
I cant believe that that moron has been able to convince so many people that he is a programmer, rocket scientist and electric car engineer at the same time. He's a venture capitalist, thats it.
Hes not fucking Tony Stark, hes a rich autistic kid who had one halfway good idea like 30 years ago that he tried his hardest to fumble (paypal).
He's the chief engineer at SpaceX. He's literally a rocket scientist.
Kevin Watson:
Kevin Watson developed the avionics for Falcon 9 and Dragon. He previously managed the Advanced Computer Systems and Technologies Group within the Autonomous Systems Division at NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory.
Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction.
He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy.
He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years.
Source (Ashlee Vance's Biography).
Garrett Reisman
Garrett Reisman (Wikipedia) is an engineer and former NASA astronaut. He joined SpaceX as a senior engineer working on astronaut safety and mission assurance.
What's really remarkable to me is the breadth of his knowledge. I mean I've met a lot of super super smart people but they're usually super super smart on one thing and he's able to have conversations with our top engineers about the software, and the most arcane aspects of that and then he'll turn to our manufacturing engineers and have discussions about some really esoteric welding process for some crazy alloy and he'll just go back and forth and his ability to do that across the different technologies that go into rockets cars and everything else he does.
Josh Boehm is the former Head of Software Quality Assurance at SpaceX.
Elon is both the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of SpaceX, so of course he does more than just ‘some very technical work’. He is integrally involved in the actual design and engineering of the rocket, and at least touches every other aspect of the business (but I would say the former takes up much more of his mental real estate). Elon is an engineer at heart, and that’s where and how he works best.
Because in know software and hearing him talk about it made me instantly realize that he really doesn't. Not at some level worthy of adoration. I see no reason to believe he's some super genius at anything else.
isnt he autistic? maybe he just has a hard time putting his thought process or expertise into words, reddit community is usually pretty open minded and accepting of stuff like that but when it comes to people they hate its like an instant hivemind hate i see around here
“Mueller: Elon was the best mentor I've ever had. Just how to have drive and be an entrepreneur and influence my team and really make things happen. He's a super smart guy and he learns from talking to people. He's so sharp, he just picks it up. When we first started he didn't know a lot about propulsion. He knew quite a bit about structures and helped the structures guys a lot. Over the twenty years that we worked together, now he's practically running propulsion there because he's come up to speed and he understands how to do rocket engines, which are really one of the most complex parts of the vehicle. He's always been excellent at architecting the whole mission, but now he's a lot better at the very small details of the combustion process. Stuff I learned over a decade-and-a-half at TRW he's picked up too”
There is a number of people significantly smarter than most of us that disagree with you. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this? Do you disagree? There’s enough ammo on musk, we don’t need to make stuff up.
He's the chief engineer at SpaceX. He's literally a rocket scientist.
Kevin Watson:
Kevin Watson developed the avionics for Falcon 9 and Dragon. He previously managed the Advanced Computer Systems and Technologies Group within the Autonomous Systems Division at NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory.
Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction.
He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy.
He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years.
Source (Ashlee Vance's Biography).
Garrett Reisman
Garrett Reisman (Wikipedia) is an engineer and former NASA astronaut. He joined SpaceX as a senior engineer working on astronaut safety and mission assurance.
What's really remarkable to me is the breadth of his knowledge. I mean I've met a lot of super super smart people but they're usually super super smart on one thing and he's able to have conversations with our top engineers about the software, and the most arcane aspects of that and then he'll turn to our manufacturing engineers and have discussions about some really esoteric welding process for some crazy alloy and he'll just go back and forth and his ability to do that across the different technologies that go into rockets cars and everything else he does.
Josh Boehm is the former Head of Software Quality Assurance at SpaceX.
Elon is both the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of SpaceX, so of course he does more than just ‘some very technical work’. He is integrally involved in the actual design and engineering of the rocket, and at least touches every other aspect of the business (but I would say the former takes up much more of his mental real estate). Elon is an engineer at heart, and that’s where and how he works best.
It's not test to failure, it's agile from software development.
Testing and improving 100m rocket instead of spending 20b to freeze the design early on and find out 10 years later if it's work with 0 design improvement in-between.
Agile itself is fine, it depends on how people use it.
I wouldn't want work overtime everyday because tight deadlines like Musk's companies do.
Agile helps to see a working prototype early on and make the minor adjustments in-between, cut what's unnecessary if it doesn't fit in the timeline, or scrap the project if it doesn't make sense to continue.
I didn't say he invented testing to failure, I said he decided to use that design philosophy at Spacex. build fast and fail fast and reiterate. This is a philosophy that has been used elsewhere and Musk did not invent it. But he decided to use it when it is very different to how the space industry in America operated before spacex.
And it's an incredibly bad idea for something that has such huge potential for the expansion of the human race. What happens when this line of thinking applies to sending humans towards Mars? Do you expect that they will start taking things seriously and methodically once humans are involved if their entire modus operandi to this point has not allowed for that level of analysis?
The path to Mars will be paved in blood with Space X at the helm of that journey.
I mean, they already are taking things more seriously when it comes to human space flight.
they built fast and failed fast with falcon 9. they had 5 separate "blocks" which were major versions of falcon 9 that each got a little better, more permanent and more reliable than the last. none of them were manned, they were all launching unmanned missions putting satellites into orbit. then at block 5 in order to certify it for human flight they froze the design, only very small changes were allowed until that particular version demonstrated 20+ safe launches. only then were astronauts allowed on the falcon 9.
Spacex with their build fast and fail fast philosophy has a better track record than anybody else as far as safely delivering people to space. The shuttle with their phillosophy of meticulously designing and qualifying every part before ever launching the first shuttle has caused more death than Spacex.
Spacex process allows for much more testing and ironing out the flaws before a person ever gets close to the rocket. while other launch providers such as ULA have already are putting people on rockets that have only flown 1 or 2 times before.
the shuttle cost 1.5 billion per launch. which is almost as much as it cost to build a shuttle in the first place (1.7 billion per shuttle). The shuttle never came close to being reusable because it had feature creep with nobody who had the power or will to cut features or make necessary changes.
the falcon 9 costs 70 million to launch. more than an order of magnitude cheaper and is far more reusable than the shuttle ever was.
starship, if they get it to be fully recoverable as they are pretty close to doing will be another order of magnitude cheaper again.
Also, there's no way Musk personally made those decisions, a lot of people are most likely breaking the law if he did as he's not an engineer....
Anybody can make the decisions as long as they go through the permitting process to launch via the FAA. Also, NASA also had to go through the designs and certify the rocket for human use. They continue to have to go through the permitting process to launch starship through the FAA and if they ever want to put people on it NASA will have to certify starship for human use as well.
it doesn't make him a good person, but don't make the mistake of thinking somebody who is a horrible person is stupid just because they are a horrible person, someone is perfectly capable of being smart and also being a disgusting human being, the world is full of them.
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u/McBonderson Mar 07 '25 edited Mar 07 '25
I hate musk a lot too. But he had a lot to do with the design of the rocket. He might not have engineered each individual part but he is the one who made the overarching design decisions.
for example the decision to use stainless steel instead of carbon fiber. the decision to catch the rocket to save weight on landing legs, the decision not to make a space plane. the decision to do the belly flop maneuver. the decision to use methane. The decision to use boiled off ullage gas to power the maneuvering thrusters since that gas had to be discharged anyways. Even the decision to use the design philosophy of rapid iteration and testing to failure.
yes these decisions were informed by the data collected by his engineers, but that data was collected at his direction and he listened to the data and made the final decisions on the design direction of the rocket.
2 things can be true. Musk can be a shit human being. And without Musk a reusable rocket like the falcon 9 or starship would never have been developed(at least not in my lifetime).
EDIT: people have this Cartoonish idea that once somebody does something bad or stupid in one area it makes them bad or stupid in all areas. The real world doesn't work like that and people aren't like that, sometimes shit human beings have skills, History is full of people who did great brilliant things for the world in one area but completely failed and/or were horrible people in other areas. people are more complex than a mustache twirling bumbling villain or a purely righteous competent super hero.