fodeethal t1_j6htabd wrote on January 30, 2023 at 12:55 PM

Reply to comment by phyrros in Gautam Adani lost US$31 billion in one of the biggest weekly drops ever by hussmann

Lol if he (his company) can revolutionize space travel with a pet project... that's pretty damn good.

Seems like a vision with a massively successful follow through to me.

Can you Imagine if NASA still had to completely rely on Russia in this current geopolitical climate for space travel?

Edit: He may be a POS in ways and benefited off major public-funding support, but let's appreciate the nuance and reality of life.

SpaceX existing is critical for the USA. Unfortunately NASA couldn't do it alone thanks to their standard (lack of) funding levels.

Happy to be corrected if wrong.

phyrros t1_j6huo4f wrote on January 30, 2023 at 1:09 PM

>Lol if he (his company) can revolutionize space travel with a pet project... that's pretty damn good.

Absolutely - it is just not visionary. For somethign to be visionary i has to be novel 6 somewhat non-trivial . Musk literally just said "I will show it those aeronautic engineers!!" and then paid money for people to develop concepts.

Nice and dandy, not visionary.

PS: No,- spaceX existing isn't critical for the USA, it is symptomatic for the neo-liberal USA. Pushing development to private companies with hidden subventions is simply a suboptimal solution.

fodeethal t1_j6hwa7q wrote on January 30, 2023 at 1:24 PM

I appreciate the rebuttal and I'm sorry for continuing a semantics debate... but....

Does it not require a vision to believe you can not only enter, but revolutionize an existing 'cutting edge' industry?

I guess it depends on how close other firms were to implementing or even considering vertical landing and recovery technology.

To my knowledge, SpaceX shifted the paradigm of space logistics. (Obviously not without help of established industry tech and experts)

In conclusion, I believe that to be at least somewhat visionary.

phyrros t1_j6hzejb wrote on January 30, 2023 at 1:50 PM

>I guess it depends on how close other firms were to implementing or even considering vertical landing and recovery technology.

Aside of i being done in the 50s by russians and NASA having a working prototype ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X

But I meant a completely different point: Do look at the acomplishments in the 50s/60s and you will see the actual inventors/engineers being lauded for their visionary ideas. And now look at the last 20 years and you will see the managers/CEOs being lauded for the visionary ideas of their engineers.

So:

>Does it not require a vision to believe you can not only enter, but revolutionize an existing 'cutting edge' industry?

If I would believe that Elon Musk did any part of development I could accept "visionary" (somehow..) but as it is Musk seems to have about nothing to do with the development of SpaceX except being a posterboy for money. And no, this isn't what I call visionary because kids since the 19th century dreamed of flying to Mars....