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idiotsecant 4 days ago

Elon Musk is one nepobaby with poor emotional regulation. SpaceX is an enormous number of very smart, very driven, very dedicated professionals who all work ridiculous hours in not great working conditions because they believe in the outrageous idea of humanity out among the stars.

It's ok to not like the guy at the top, but still marvel at the achievements of the people he pays.

coldpie 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I understand that perspective, but I can't agree with it. There are many important and meaningful jobs out there that those people could be doing, which don't involve giving financial & political power to one of the worst people alive today. Choosing to work for him after the many, many, many red lines Elon Musk has crossed taints all of the work those people are doing.

foobarian 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Entire human history has been like this. How many Bachs, Mozarts, Michelangelos, etc. got to do great things just because of a sympathetic ruler who held all the pursestrings?

riffraff 4 days ago | parent [-]

I don't think you can rightly compare "rich people who spend money on art" and "rich people who employ people and become richer".

I agree that plenty of good has happened because of the profit motive but SpaceX is not patronizing the sciences, NASA is.

idiotsecant 3 days ago | parent [-]

The point is that over the course of human history all science is done at the whim of or in the service of bad people. Do you think Galileo didn't have wealthy patrons that descended from a long line of brutal warlords not afraid to crush some skulls to get ahead? This is how humans operate. You have to make progress where you can, how you can. We don't have the luxury of waiting for mister Rogers to start a rocket company.

coldpie 3 days ago | parent [-]

There's a whoooole lot of breathing room between Elon Musk and Mr. Rogers. More ethical employment opportunities exist now, today; SpaceX employees are choosing not to take them.

idiotsecant 3 days ago | parent [-]

Sure, name them. Tell me where this hypothetical rocket building brain power is better spent.

rockemsockem 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

If you want to work on manned spaceflight specifically or Mars colonization even more specifically, where exactly could you better spend your time?

olddustytrail 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I certainly hope the people at SpaceX don't do that because it's not cool to neglect your family and friends no matter how cool your job is.

I appreciate their work however and it's a shame that Musk has tainted their efforts. He could be a decent man if he tried but he's clearly chosen a different path.

FridayoLeary 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You don't give him enough credit. No one else was lunatic enough to back spaceX and build it into a genuinely innovative and successful company like he has. Of course he had a leg up but i see in him a genuine drive to succeed. He thinks he can do things better then anyone else, and in some ways that's true and he gets frustrated when things don't go his way.

You see the same sort of thing in F1 drivers. Even in the most casual of driving competitions they are competetive to the point of pettiness. My theory is that's part of what makes them an F1 driver - the inability to lose. it can easily be turned to destructive purposes, see all the avoidable crashes but it gets harnessed and turned to useful purposes.

On a more loaded tangent, see Trump. His lifelong ambition was to be famous and become president and i thinkthat, more then his billions gave him the drive to run for office and get reelected (you can argue that it was to satisfy his overwhelming ego but that doesn't change my point). Even if you despise them and everything they stand for i think everyone can learn something from them in how to succeed in their goals. it's not being narcisstic and elbowing everyone out of the way, but it is about having goals, wanting them enough and a healthy dose of self belief.

idiotsecant 3 days ago | parent [-]

Elon Musk's primary contributions to his companies are funding them and staying out of the way. When he gets involved in actually leading them bad things happen. See: Twitter.

panick21_ a day ago | parent [-]

People have gone off the deep end on this. Its just factually false by every historical fact we know. He does not 'funding and staing out', that's mostly the opposite of what he does. That's just an objectively false claim.

And if you actually study SpaceX and Tesla, then you figure out that they are actually very smart with their capital investments, and therefore didn't need nearly as much funding as his competitors.

And not being able to do one thing, running twitter, doesn't mean magically that its the same at other companies. Morris Chang failed at running a consumer facing job at TI but do we therefore conclude that he is bad?

imoverclocked 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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rockemsockem 4 days ago | parent [-]

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tomhow 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

imoverclocked 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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rockemsockem 4 days ago | parent [-]

You're borderline saying "the present US administration, elected democratically, is equivalent to the Nazis".

That's insane. We used to have a rule on the Internet for people like you.

I'm no Trump fan, and people making alarmist statements like yours only help people like him get elected.

So, you know, stop. Especially if you think they're Nazis.

SpaceX exists because the US wants access to space and they are the cheapest way to space in history. They can continue to exist because starlink and their commercial launch services are massively profitable.

imoverclocked 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Still calling me insane and saying, “people like you.” Hmm.

You didn’t call out anything substantive in my previous comment so I’ll assume those points are not disputed.

As to the profitability of Starlink:

> Starlink is projected to generate between $11.8 billion and $12.3 billion in revenue in 2025, according to analyses from Quilty Space. This projected growth is driven by increasing subscriber demand and significant government contracts, particularly with the U.S. military.

You’ll likely find similar when looking up SpaceX profitability in 2025.

So, again, these things only exist because of the US government.

Do we agree on this yet or do we need to delve further somehow?

rockemsockem 3 days ago | parent [-]

I feel like you're trying to misunderstand.

Let's review the easy to parse things that have been said

> I suppose you could say the same thing of Germany in the 1930s. The parallels aren’t even that hard to find as there are literal rockets being built in both cases.

You're obviously comparing both Elon and the current admin to Nazis. Which is insane, i.e. a view of things incompatible with reality, if you actually believe that.

> We used to have a rule for people like you on the Internet.

It's obviously Godwin's law. You aren't part of some oppressed class that I'm singling out, idiots have tons of power these days (look at the Whitehouse).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

> You’ll likely find similar when looking up SpaceX profitability in 2025.

> So, again, these things only exist because of the US government.

> Do we agree on this yet or do we need to delve further somehow?

If you read carefully you'll see that I said that SpaceX would not have existed from its conception if not for the US government. But I asserted that it is no longer necessary and that is absolutely true. You pointing out that a basket of money includes dollars from the government (i.e. starlink revenue) doesn't even come close to disproving that. Google gets paid from government contracts too and their existence is not contingent on those contracts.

This conversation is over. I hope you will investigate facts and appreciate nuance more in the future.

imoverclocked 3 days ago | parent [-]

> I feel like you're trying to misunderstand

That's easy to feel when you are passionate about an opposing viewpoint. What's hard is to see clearly enough to change your own viewpoint based on facts.

> You're obviously comparing both Elon and the current admin to Nazis

He did sieg heil twice on stage. He funds far-right parties internationally. His family heritage is literal nazis.

> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

Directly from the article: Godwin's law can be applied mistakenly or abused as a distraction, a diversion, or even censorship, when miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole even when the comparison made by the argument is appropriate.

> This conversation is over.

Agreed.

oezi 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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