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Comment by SEJeff | Hacker News Reader

People said the exact same thing when Musk announced SpaceX. Then they said no big deal after the Falcon 1 worked, and laughed when Musk said he was going to land the Falcon 9 on a barge in the ocean, then he did. Next they said there was simply no way SpaceX would be able to refly a used first stage, which they've now successfully done twice.

History of his accomplishments show us "industry knowledge" doesn't really matter as he's trying to do things explicitly different than the rest of the industry.

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Musk seems to set high goals with the full intention of meeting them, but shrugging it off if he's wrong in the end so long as progress was made. In the end the goal doesn't matter, just the progress, which was certainly affected positively by the goal.

Very well said.

Some goals are more strategic than realistic, and I think anyone can learn what strategic goals look like from Musks' ventures.

In my view strategic goals don't have the same form as SMART goals:

Traditional Smart - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound

Strategic Smart - Specific, Measurable, Advancing, Relevant, Terminable

The two differences, Advancing and Terminable, reflect the idea that strategic goals are geared towards innovation, not iteration. Advancing means that you don't actually know whether it is Attainable. Terminable means that the goal may be cancelled without major disruption to the business.

Entirely agreed. He loves to set lofty goals, and he does not always achieve them, but sometimes he does! Either way, he's unafraid to challenge virtually any status quo or existing understanding of things. This is why industry experience while relevant, doesn't always matter. Also, he moves his top talent between his companies at will, giving him an edge over other companies.

I've got a friend who has worked for Aerospace Corporation for close to 11 years as a structural engineer. He people when they have to stop removing things to prevent rockets from exploding (aka a rocket scientist). He told me ~5 years ago there was literally no way SpaceX could land orbital class rockets. Yeah, he doesn't say that anymore.

What's more, a lot of the materials science and metalworking "lessons learned" (particularly when it comes to working with aluminum) at SpaceX are available to Tesla.

Really not the case. Space X have built, um, not many rockets. Tesla are planning to churn out hundreds of thousands of cars.

The key isn't being able to do it (as someone else said joining metals is a solved problem), it's being able to do it with high quality and in a reliable way. Do you think Space X joining techniques are optimised for making 100k joints in a factory environment?

You are entirely incorrect. SpaceX perfected friction stir welding for large sheets of aluminum for their fuel tanks. That tech was transferred that technology entirely to Tesla, who happen to make cars from large pieces of aluminum (Model X and S).

https://electrek.co/2015/05/24/spacex-transferred-novel-weld...

There is no way that they are using friction stir welding in a high volume line. It's a very slow process, visually it's horrible (big scar along the joint) and, though I've no experience with it I would have thought that pushing a spinning piece of metal at high temperatures through two thin abutting pressings would be highly unreliable.

"though I've no experience with it" - aka you're not qualified to answer whatsoever. At least you're honest in your trolling :)

SpaceX did not invent friction stir welding, but they did develop a mastery of the technique. Luckily, unlike you, they hire people who have experience in it. The strength of friction stir welds is one of the reasons they use it in the Model X and Model S vehicles, both which blew it out of the park regarding NTHSA safety standards.

Musk himself describes it here (for SpaceX):

https://www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/

They even mention a few of the aerospace bits they have in the Model S:

https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-model-s-achieves-best-safet...

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