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Comment by uejfiweun | Hacker News Reader

People constantly shit on Musk for how he runs his companies, among other things. But if his legacy is to create competitive industries in areas where there were previously none (this, EVs, reusable rockets, etc), that's a great legacy indeed. Even if Tesla, SpaceX, etc go bankrupt tomorrow, you'll still be able to get satellite internet or buy an EV, and that's largely thanks to Musk.

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Other than SpaceX there's no one flying reusable rockets yet. If SpaceX did go bankrupt we'd have a big problem, since almost no one else still flies in the US or Europe at all. Partly that's because there's such a small demand for launches but it's also an industry with a huge technical barrier to entry. But for sure SpaceX hasn't led to a competitive market in space launch, it's just moved from one dominant player to another.

This doesn't strike me as a strong argument because there are multiple companies attempting to make reusable rockets, they just haven't succeeded yet.

EVs are largely because of government regulation in particular from the EU.

Emissions need to come down at some point to meet agreed targets.

Seems like revisionist history. At least I don't see any impact of EU regulation on the US market, which is where the Tesla saga began.

It would be even better if he launched new industries and also executed well enough to keep them from failing.

OK, sure. It would also be better if we had world peace and no more hunger.

Yeah, it would. But I’ll take normal, uninspired professional management as a consolation prize.

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