Elon himself would agree, since he once said in an interview: "“No, I’ve never aspired to be an astronaut–I have aspired to invent things,” “In fact, I think an error was made in the Apollo program in that there was too much lionizing of the astronauts. Not that they don’t deserve to be lionized, but the real difficulty was the creation of the rocket–it was the engineering and the invention of rocketry.”
Kids should aspire not to be astronauts but to be engineers."
Elon doesn't explicitly state on most interviews how awesome his engineers are, but he did express it when the space station docking mission was successful during the post-interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjuvIlskUf4#t=7m20s
Also, he recently delivered a speech at Caltech. He told the grads to go out there and change the world with engineering. His speech was really focused on the Arthur C Clarke quote: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And who wouldn't want to be a magician?"