Did you know that von Braun was jailed by the SS because he was spending too much time dreaming about planets and not enough about weapons? Von Braun was a dead man if he didn't do what they said. What would you do in his shoes?

As for Mars, I've advocated in this forum numerous times that a more practical goal was a Moon base. I doubt I'll live to see a man on Mars.

If Musk has 10 amazing goals, and delivers on 3 of them, is he a success or a con man? I say success. So what has he delivered on? Tesla, X, Grok, AI, Neuralink, The Boring Company (yes it is profitable!), reusable cheap rockets, and Starlink. Any one of those would be a storied lifetime achievement for anyone else.

Platitude alert: If you're not failing, you're not trying.

Who would you say is a more successful entrepreneur than Musk?

Musk can be both an successful entrepreneur and a conman. Just like how Musk can be a successful entrepreneur and an absolutely terrible father.

These things often go together like peanut butter and jam.

Ten amazing goals, and delivers on three is exactly how a con works -- The con-man over promises massively, delivers on the easier or more profitable stuff and then glosses over the stuff that they didn't deliver on.

The key difference between an overly ambitious but honest person and a conman is that a conman has absolutely no intention of folowing through on any of the things promise if they don't have to. They only deliver on what they have to to keep the con going and that's what Musk has been doing for well over a decade. I'm sure at some point he genuinely believed that self driving cars are right around the corner but he's come to realize that htey aren't and it doesn't matter because he can just make that same promise ove rand over and rubes fall for it time and time again.

As for your point regarding Von Braun, I highly recommend this biography[0] of him if you haven't read it. It contains details about that episode of his life and many more fascinating ones. I'm glad that you chose to defend Von Braun in your reply because it is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. People in the space community have been reflexively minimizing the hrm done by 'great men' for decades simply because they think space stuff is cool.

Just be honest with yourself about why you like Von Braun. You don't need to paint him in a sympathetic light becauase his persuit of something cool resulted in him making a pact with the devil that almost resulted in his death.

The question isn't whether or not a person like Musk is a successful entrepreneur or whether or not someone like Von Braun was a spectacular project manager. The question is whether not his current slate of promises -- space data centres, domestic robots, robotaxis etc... are credible.

I think that your choice to omit commenting on them is illuminating -- you know they're not credible. You know they exist to serve his financial interests and bolster his upcoming IPO with little regard for veracity or legality.

So yeah the question in my mind isn't "Does he do cool stuff?" but "is the cool stuff he does worth the negative externalities that he dumps on society?" and I think the answer to that is likely to be no.

Musk like all the other current crop of American oligarchs are weakening America's grip on the world and it will have calamitous effects on the American people.

[0] https://www.amazon.ca/Von-Braun-Dreamer-Space-Engineer/dp/03...