Post #1584692

2026-03-09 23:36 UTC

@rorystarr Which makes SpaceX‘s other achievements all the more impressive. Despite being led by a the personified midlife crisis, their engineers have created the Falcon 9 which is the first partially reusable rocket ever and one of the most reliable rockets we currently have. I still have hope for Starship (though not as part of a Mars mission) but it could probably get done much more efficiently if Elon just learned that his contribution is money, not engineering.

Replies (2)

@rorystarr@mstdn.social 2026-03-09 23:51

@dfyx there was an article some years ago about how Tesla basically succeeded in spite of Elon. Given how the cybertruck, his personal project, went I think that is probably true. Any success we see from "his" company occurs in spite of him. I remember a dude was trying to tell me why Elon was so special and he said "there was this exploding clip that cost $30,000 at NASA and he pointed at the engineer and said, 'make it for $1,000'. They did!" And I was like, "how is that his accomplishment?"

Open ##1584693
@BillySmith@social.coop 2026-03-10 15:07

@dfyx @rorystarr There was a story floating around that the reason SpaceX is so successful is that they have a team where their entire job is managing Musk, so he doesn't get in the way of the actual engineers doing the real work.

Open ##1584695