Hacker News Reader

Comment by nickik | Hacker News Reader

Yes and he has often overruled his engineers and was right. Taking calculated risk to shorten development is reasonable. Even if you don't get it always right.

> Literally EVERYONE said the cement base was a stupid idea

They expected it to break but be ok for one launch. Its a reasonable risk to launch sooner.

> Every time he forces his idiotic ideas on his engineers he puts the future of the whole business at risk.

And yet the he has lead the business for 20+ years and the company has been getting more and more and more successful. I guess that just happens by magic.

> At least he’s been so distracted by the Twitter debacle the adults have been able to make decisions

When SpaceX does good its because Musk wasn't there, when it does bad its because of Musk. Classic.

View on HN

I wonder why Musk is always thrown into the ring with SpaceX, when its entire operation is mostly done by Gwynne Shotwell.

Because anybody that is actually informed about SpaceX knows that the 'Musk isn't involved, its all Shotwell' is a line that Musk-haters have been using for 10+ years now.

Of course everybody who leaves SpaceX tells a different story. Journalists and others who observe SpaceX tell a different story.

Musk has literally been the leader since the company had 5 people, and he always had control of the companies direction. Shotwell is one important part of the team. But she was recruited by Musk and promoted by Musk into the position she now has.

People also used to say 'Musk has nothing to do with engines its all Tom Mueller' of course then Tom Mueller responded saying that was false. And of course once Mueller left, SpaceX is still doing great things with engines.

So the reason why 'Musk is always throwing into the ring with SpaceX' is simply because its the truth and all Anti-Musk Twitter warriors are not actually informed about the topic they simply have to discredited Musk whenever they can. Often they don't even care about spaceflight, they care about being against Musk.

Because Elon is the product lead (and founder and owner), Shotwell does the business development.

Product is way more interesting in this case than BD, considering it's the most badass rockets ever made. But feel free to praise Shotwell too, that's great too.

You really think Elon is anymore than Product Lead / Chief Engineer in title?

Plenty of people with first-hand knowledge and/or their own independently earned reputations have attested to Musk being deeply knowledgeable and deeply involved in engineering at SpaceX. The evidence of his worthiness of the title is so plentiful that — absence some better information not in the public domain — casual doubt is wholly unjustified.

Of course as soon one says this, someone else will misconstrue this as some ridiculous claim that Musk is a singular genius responsible for inventing everything. This is of course silly. He's only one human with a limited schedule. There are surely thousands of things happening every day at SpaceX which he has zero involvement in.

As we often say in computing: ideas are easy, execution is everything. But the biggest successes of SpaceX weren't just about having ideas, they were about having the gumption to fund them, and an ability to recruit the best people so that execution is possible. In fields like rocketry, one might instead say ideas are easy, identifying when an idea should have a billion dollars thrown at it is hard, and execution is damn fucking hard.

Yes. Please read any of the official comments about him by people who have worked with him, or just answers on Quora, or read the new biography. Or watch his actual comments and behavior on everyday astronaut interviews.

If 4 of those data points don’t convince you, you obviously don’t want to be convinced even in the slightest

Reply on news.ycombinator.com