Starship Test Launch Thursday

[rkbabang]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Thats a very low bar you are setting. Doesnt take a "genius" to turn that company around from the shitter management this company had. And you are probably right, Elon can manage companies well but he is not a genius scientist that pushes the innovation these companies put out. Thats the entire point. He deserves credit where its due. Now on to discussing starship test launch! 

 

 

I couldn't disagree more.  Nothing that the engineers have accomplished at spaceX would have happened if Elon Musk hadn't existed.  Period.  Highly intelligent and talented engineers are more common than you think (MIT, WPI, RPI, Stanford, etc, etc, etc. graduate classes full of them every single year, year in and year out), and visionary leaders, who are intelligent enough to push technology to the limits of what's possible without being unrealistic crazies (like Tesla was) are so few and far between that you can count all of them in the last century and a half on one hand. (Edison, Ford, Jobs, Gates, & Musk). Sorry people don't like his politics or his bombasticness, but that says far more about his haters than him.

[UK]

https://stratechery.com/2024/elon-dreams-and-bitter-lessons/

[Spekulatius]

18 hours ago, LC said:

 

The majority of progress is a brutal push forward from thousands of people who I would gather most on this forum would argue are overpaid, worthless degree, career academics, blah blah blah.  

 

Martin Eberhard was the brains behind Tesla and the EV market in general. And of course his work was on the backs of hundreds, thousands of scientists and engineers before him. Elon Musk is a great salesman and industrialist - he took a proved technology and market - and married the two (and edged out the true founders as well - how shrewd). A true cynic would say he was simply in the right place at the right time. The story of Gates and Microsoft has similar themes. Not that these people were not smart - but let's not pretend Elon went from tinkering around with a soldering iron to inventing lithium batteries.

 

I guess my point is - it's easy to fall in love with personalities, less easy to attribute credit to the thousands of careers needed to develop and bring a revolutionary technology to market. 

 

People I think are real heroes? A good start are the scientists who discovered/invented human insulin, and then sold the patent for a dollar. Or Jonas Salk's famous "you cannot patent the sun". 

I don’t think that correct. He got very difficult things  to work too many times to be lucky.

I don’t think he did the design or engineering, but he put the team together , the funding, the vision and he has enough engineering knowledge to lead the business in the right direction. These are tremendous accomplishment second to none. There are a lot of smart people or even rocket scientists, but it takes the right team,  environemt, vision and outside thinking to make it work.

 

There are some pretty good teams working on space and taking an outside approach besides SpaceX - Rocket Labs or even some German ones like Main Aerospace and I expect so see great things eventually, but they are all far behind SpaceX at this point.

 

I think Lockheed probably has the engineering talent  to do something as well, but they would need to spin off any venture because it won’t work within a defense contractor organization.

Edited October 15 by Spekulatius

[rohitc99]

Inventing something and commercializing it are two different skills isn't it ? He may not be an inventor but taking it to commercial stage and on scale is equally difficult and equally important.

 

Smart engineers may be a necessary but not sufficient condition. You need someone with the drive and ambition to get it all together and make it work at scale

[james22]

History's greatest generals weren't its greatest soldiers!! 

 

 

[james22]

CEOs have six primary responsibilities—setting the organization's direction, aligning the organization, mobilizing the business through its leaders, engaging the board, connecting with stakeholders, and managing personal effectiveness. Excellent CEOs lead on all six at once and act as integrator across it all.

 

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-live/webinars/the-mindsets-and-practices-of-excellent-ceos

 

Technical skills don't rank.

[Dalal.Holdings]

3 hours ago, james22 said:

CEOs have six primary responsibilities—setting the organization's direction, aligning the organization, mobilizing the business through its leaders, engaging the board, connecting with stakeholders, and managing personal effectiveness. Excellent CEOs lead on all six at once and act as integrator across it all.

 

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-live/webinars/the-mindsets-and-practices-of-excellent-ceos

 

Technical skills don't rank.

 

You need technical skills if you run a technical company. Elon's got it. The recent Boeing CEOs didn't.

 

I don't trust McKinsey to tell me anything anyway

[james22]

7 minutes ago, Dalal.Holdings said:

You need technical skills if you run a technical company. Elon's got it. The recent Boeing CEOs didn't.

 

Sure, but the genius needs only lie in the six.

 

7 minutes ago, Dalal.Holdings said:

I don't trust McKinsey to tell me anything anyway

 

Blind squirrel.

[Spekulatius]

5 hours ago, james22 said:

History's greatest generals weren't its greatest soldiers!! 

 

 

But they generally were soldiers with real experience and not a paper strategists moving figures around on a table like a chess game.

[dealraker]

On 10/15/2024 at 10:14 AM, LC said:

 

Innovation and industry are two different things and take different skills to succeed.

 

The term I would use is industrialist. Elon Musk is a great industrialist. But his success is not due to innovation or genius - I would say circumstance and his own cunning play a larger role. 

 

I mean - removing middle management? Providing strong leadership to an organization? This is not innovation, but it is certainly very difficult to succeed in doing (look to Citi for how difficult it is).

 

My only point is that labelling Musk brilliant or genius I think is off-base. Strong willed? Cunning? Ruthless? Absolutely. Coincidentally these are skills he has in common with Trump - not shocking they are in bed together. 

÷1

[John Hjorth]

11 minutes ago, dealraker said:

÷1

 

Minus one, or plus one, Charlie [ @dealraker ] ? [I can't really see it.]

 

- Making it a minus one would certainly be a new creation, a missed opportunity for someone!

[james22]

2 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

But they generally were soldiers with real experience and not a paper strategists moving figures around on a table like a chess game.

 

Again, the genius needs only lie in the mindsets and practices of a general..

[dealraker]

8 hours ago, John Hjorth said:

 

Minus one, or plus one, Charlie [ @dealraker ] ? [I can't really see it.]

 

- Making it a minus one would certainly be a new creation, a missed opportunity for someone!

Plus - plus with a glass of wine effect evidently.

[dealraker]

On 10/15/2024 at 6:27 PM, Spekulatius said:

I don’t think that correct. He got very difficult things  to work too many times to be lucky.

I don’t think he did the design or engineering, but he put the team together , the funding, the vision and he has enough engineering knowledge to lead the business in the right direction. These are tremendous accomplishment second to none. There are a lot of smart people or even rocket scientists, but it takes the right team,  environemt, vision and outside thinking to make it work.

 

There are some pretty good teams working on space and taking an outside approach besides SpaceX - Rocket Labs or even some German ones like Main Aerospace and I expect so see great things eventually, but they are all far behind SpaceX at this point.

 

I think Lockheed probably has the engineering talent  to do something as well, but they would need to spin off any venture because it won’t work within a defense contractor organization.

+1

[dealraker]

On 10/15/2024 at 6:27 PM, Spekulatius said:

I don’t think that correct. He got very difficult things  to work too many times to be lucky.

I don’t think he did the design or engineering, but he put the team together , the funding, the vision and he has enough engineering knowledge to lead the business in the right direction. These are tremendous accomplishment second to none. There are a lot of smart people or even rocket scientists, but it takes the right team,  environemt, vision and outside thinking to make it work.

 

There are some pretty good teams working on space and taking an outside approach besides SpaceX - Rocket Labs or even some German ones like Main Aerospace and I expect so see great things eventually, but they are all far behind SpaceX at this point.

 

I think Lockheed probably has the engineering talent  to do something as well, but they would need to spin off any venture because it won’t work within a defense contractor organization.

+1

I think he is a master talent at getting from point A to point B.  It would be grand for America if he wasn't so needy of media attention.

[Xerxes]

15 hours ago, james22 said:

CEOs have six primary responsibilities—setting the organization's direction, aligning the organization, mobilizing the business through its leaders, engaging the board, connecting with stakeholders, and managing personal effectiveness. Excellent CEOs lead on all six at once and act as integrator across it all.

 

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-live/webinars/the-mindsets-and-practices-of-excellent-ceos

 

Technical skills don't rank.

six responsibilities only … what about capital allocation

 

Clearly the McKinsey boys have not read Thorndike’ outsider book

[Dalal.Holdings]

To be an Elon type CEO of a groundbreaking company, you have to be balls to the wall able to push limits and not care what others think. 

 

"Only the Paranoid Survive" -- Andy Grove

 

A shame to see what Grove's Intel has become, despite having talented engineers/employees, it lacked someone at the top who could keep pushing the company forward. Instead, the company moved from paranoia to complacency and now the results demonstrate that

 

[james22]

5 hours ago, Xerxes said:

six responsibilities only … what about capital allocation

 

Clearly the McKinsey boys have not read Thorndike’ outsider book

 

Capital allocation is downstream the first two.

[Luke]

I think Elon buying twitter was not that dumb after all, certainly an important platform for this election which basically enabled him now free reign for his enterprises...it was costly but the ROI now with the new administration for him isn't shabby either! Lucky or genius?

[John Hjorth]

SpaceX : Starship Flight 6.

 

Almost a complete success, though no tower grabbing of landing heavy booster!  Fly, fail, fix, fly!