Musk won’t be remembered for SpaceX, and that’s largely because he has essentially removed himself from its day-to-day operations out of the necessity of delivering government contracts without external interference.
That, at least, is not true. Musk isn’t just a facilitator at Twitter, he’s a very prolific user, and he is continually making the place worse by using his enormous reach to amplify crazy evil ■■■■, and personally intervening to make sure that the worst elements of twitters user base a) don’t get banned, and b) have a say in how the thing is run.
However, you’re 100% right in saying that musk’s legacy will be more than Twitter. But he’s still relatively young and his legacy is yet to be written. People change. Bill Gates, for instance, is much more involved in his charitable foundations and 3rd world vaccine programs now than with the rapacious monopolistic capitalism of early Microsoft. Right now, Musk’s legacy is mixed, but dominated by Tesla, starlink and spaceX. But every day he careens faster into nutbar far right territory and spends more of his time and effort on that stuff, and if that trajectory continues then it’s getting more and more likely that this stuff is what’ll define him in the history books.
Yeah I’m sure that Gwynne Shotwell will be the person remembered for any SpaceX success. Not. Hardly anyone knows who she is even though she is critical as COO as SpaceX continues to grow and increase its output.
Elon started SpaceX and is the CTO and lead engineer of SpaceX. Many key employees and engineers that are there or have left acknowledge that. His vision and business acumen resulted in SpaceX getting to a certain level. Of course it’s not him alone and as SpaceX has grown he has had to delegate and has delegated what he doesn’t enjoy as much as being involved in the engineering and tech.
Not to mention him forcing his first wife to stop her career to be a stay at home wife then divorcing her and hiding his assets so no equitable alimony was had.
The legacy of a company often supercedes the legacy of an individual involved in that company. Just because he helped found it, doesn’t mean he’ll be remembered as a critical component to its sustained success
People die or move on to other thing so sustained success of a company does not depend on the individual.
It’s the initial activities and achievements of individuals that can define a company and build a legacy.
That is what I’m saying with musk and Spacex and Tesla. In 200 years he will be long dead but his legacy might be that he was an initial driver of humans living on mars or that the climate was saved by his activities in electric cars.
Einsteins legacy is assured through his works in general relativity and the most famous equation of all time. Been dead for a while now. People remember him for this even though others are using his work from the early 20th century to expand knowledge of mankind.
Musk could be the same.
Not sure why people want to diminish what he has achieved to date or what he may achieve in the future.
