Originally Musk tried to acquire Russian ICBM rocket technology to kickstart his space technology ambitions but failed.
Musk then founded SpaceX to develop the rockets and spacecraft for travel to mars. His first employee was Thomas Mueller who is a rocket engineer and creator of the Merlin engines on Falcon 1 and 9 as well as the creator of the Draco’s on the Dragon capsule.
Since leaving SpaceX and starting his own company, Mueller himself said Elon was the primary engineer on all projects.
I see him as a marketer, sales person and a bullshit artist, with enough people willing to follow him and pay to support ‘his’ ideas.
Id say he’s quite intelligent, but had some stupid ideas also, such as the high speed tube to transport people
Doesn’t help me in the backyard!! 
I’d say there is an entire generation of very talented Engineers for whom working on Space technology is their dream job. Many of them would have landed at SpaceX. Not sure what other options are out there, satellite building companies? Government agencies? A lot of credit should go to them.
He certainly had the funds and risk appetite to get these things going. He’s probably also clever enough to understand the technology angles for anything he funds. Probably a bit more like Jobs than Woz for me, but I don’t know very much at all about how SpaceX got started.
He was also fortunate to jump on some very lucrative government subsidies when the federal government decided to outsource rocket design and launch outside of NASA. He definitely didn’t do it alone.
Not accurate at all.
SpaceX fully funded falcon 1 without any US government grants for development or contracts.
SpaceX fully funded falcon 9 development.
NASA via US Gov funding provided ~US$400 million under the COTS program for SpaceX to develop cargo delivery to the ISS. It cost SpaceX double that as a part of that cargo program development. It did make money out of it as there were 8 years worth of NASA contracts that followed to deliver the cargo.
For Crew Dragon capsule, SpaceX won a commercial contract worth ~US$2.4 billion. As a part of that they had to develop the capsule and deliver 6 Crew dragon flights.There have now been 9 successful crew dragon flights which NASA pays them for under fixed contract.
Boeing got ~US$4.6 billion as the same time as SpaceX for Crew dragon and we all know how successful Starliner has been.
For Starship NASA has funded SpaceX for 2 flights totaling ~US2.9 billion. Demonstration flight to the moon without astronauts and then Artemis 3 which includes landing astronauts and returning them to the Orion capsule.
SLS will cost NASA over US$6 billion which will end up close to US$8 billion for Artemis 3 alone. $3 billion for launcher and $3-$5 billion for SLS rocket. Cost plus contracts you see.
So SpaceX has received much less as a part of all its development programs for cargo, Crew dragon and Artemis than Boeing got for its failed Starliner.
NASA has received a far greater return in any development funding they have put into SpaceX than any other supplier they have had and to top it off is paying much less to get to orbit.
Thanks. That’s a great post.
Almost all of the best and brightest have left the legacy space providers for SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocketlabs and other smaller commercial space providers and startup.
The best hire that Elon made was hiring Gwynne Shotwell as chief operating officer and 8th employee of SpaceX.
She runs the day to day operations of SpaceX and manages the 1,000’s of employees. Elon is still the chief engineer.
Not saying you are but a lot of people on here hate on Elon for all the X and political things and that’s understandable.
I just hate seeing his actual accomplishments getting lumped in with all the other stuff.
Typically the Chief Engineer would be a direction-setting and sign off role. Much like a commander in chief. Not a criticism by the way.
Tesla was given half a billion in development funding by a US government environment fund.
There is no doubt that Tesla has been the biggest influence worldwide in the conversion to EV’s. Testa paid that money back with interest. None of the other traditional US car companies have paid back the billions they have received following the GFC or other subsidies.
Yeah. I really try to credit him for the good things he’s done. It just seems like the wins have gone to his head and he’s become his own worst enemy. What had been a solid reputation as a brilliant innovator has been tarnished with a metric ton of doubt. He might have had a crucial role in his successes, but the transparent incompetence displayed at Twitter suggest the wins are from those around him. It may not be fair, but we never saw his style at Tesla and SpaceX, we’ve only seen it in action at Twitter.
Howard Hughes was a brilliant engineer and ended up dying an eccentric shell of his former self. Musk to me is starting to get that vibe. A flawed and narrowly brilliant man who spirals later in life.
There is that possibility but he always been eccentric, wacky, insert your own word for him here.
I think it’s just more visible now as most people know him for twitter/X as that is what most people interact with of his.
Yeah. I don’t think his decision to make himself the most followed person on the largest social media network in the world was wise. He exposed himself to a level of attention that even the sanest in the world would crumble.
100% agree with that. He alienating a percentage of possible customer support for his products, government support and probably his health.
I spend around an hour a day on X and it does have an impact and I don’t post or make myself a target on there.
I don’t find anything he says eccentric or wacky. Contrarian and juvenile, unsophisticated clod thinking he’s the brightest bulb in the room he bought and made dark on purpose. His daughter has him square every time, awful creep.
No he isn’t. Anyone including Elon can think what they like but there is no entitlement to voice the bile and hate.
What he doesn’t understand in typical Musk fashion is that democracies are drawn to a 50:50 divide. If you added 2 million GOP voters, the Dems would shift to the right and the next election would remain a 50:50 contest. Same with the Dems getting a mythical 2 million votes, the GOP would be perfectly fine, just a little more blue.
It goes further than that in the mind of those like Mr Musk. For all his intelligence clearly he does not understand democracy where people have the right to vote how they wish.
One Party States do not actually exist in a democracy, only in generally despotic and authoritarian regimes where there is no democracy.
His real message is that the only people who should be able to vote are those like him, as they are superior.
