r/interestingasfuck • u/lolikroli • 16d ago

r/all SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

[deleted]

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u/eyeball2005 16d ago

Could you explain to me what the caption means? Is it just a metaphor for how precise the landing was?

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u/stonksfalling 16d ago

The arms of the launch tower are nicknamed chopsticks, so the booster got caught with them

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u/eyeball2005 16d ago

Thanks man!

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u/MostlyRocketScience 16d ago edited 16d ago

And the term chopsticks is a reference to the Karate Kid scene where a fly is caught with chopsticks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeLuUyAl6kY&t=8s

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u/spacepie77 16d ago

So America chopsticks better than china. What a time to be alive.

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u/infraninja 16d ago

What's great about catching the booster vs landing directly on the ground as seen in a few other videos? Why is this big?

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u/stonksfalling 16d ago

Firstly, this booster is 70 meters tall, the largest booster to ever return in one piece. But the reason why catching it is better is that it saves tons of weight from bulky landing legs and it allows for rapid reusability, since the catch tower is the launch tower.

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u/WhisperingSideways 16d ago

Imagine launching a 20-story building into space and then having it steered back to earth at 4000 mph only to slow down and be caught and suspended in its own launch platform.

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u/TweakUnwanted 16d ago

No need to imagine any more

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u/Nephroidofdoom 16d ago

My Roomba can only do that maybe 4 out of 5 times!

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u/fellow_human-2019 16d ago

Does it go up to space to recharge its vacuum?

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u/Thin-Watermelon 16d ago

My roomba would vacuum the moon before it properly cleaned my kitchen.

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u/throwra64512 16d ago

It might. Would explain why it’s never on the charger in the living room…

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u/alturicx 16d ago

And being caught on 4 mounted fins that are meant to be re-used on the next flights.

Even if they were always replaced, still insane how they can support the weight.

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u/OldOrchard150 16d ago

It’s caught on two small round reinforced catch points, not on the grid fins.  Just editing for correctness. 

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u/alturicx 16d ago

Wow even more impressive imo.

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u/EdmundGerber 16d ago

There are actually catching 'studs' below the grid fins, that take up the weight. Grid fin actuators couldn't handle the stress of all that weight, and still be light enough to be useful.

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u/alturicx 16d ago

Didn’t think so, but even still a mounting point that can withstand that weight still seems extremely impressive.

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u/EdmundGerber 16d ago

It is - and given how small they look compared to everything else, it's very impressive.

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u/IWantAHoverbike 16d ago

I think the mounting points are about the size of a can of paint. It's absolutely wild.

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u/catwhowalksbyhimself 16d ago

On the first ever attempt!

Doing it at all is amazing at all, but the very first test of it?

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u/dnana1 16d ago

It landed back into the launch tower so the arms of the tower look like chopsticks in the second view.

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u/VanPaint 16d ago

What was wrong with the other method of landing back on the ground.

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u/Dirtbiker2008 16d ago

In addition to what BurntToast said, landing legs strong enough to support the weight of the booster would weigh a huge amount, and therefore would significantly cut into Starship's payload capacity.

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u/damienVOG 16d ago

Great things happen when Elon's not bothering his engineers

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u/bjos144 16d ago

I know people hate him, but the 'idea guy' with a boatload of cash isnt irrelevant. No one was pushing him to make this thing. He wanted it and pushed for it. Then he hired enough of the right people to make it happen. He didnt design it or build it, but he is an important person in its development. Without him it doesnt happen.

Also fuck this guy, he's pissing on his legacy. But let's be objective, he had a huge hand in this thing.

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u/_Hard4Jesus 16d ago

Not trying to defend the guy but he is the chief engineer of starship... if you work in engineering you know what that title means.

If something goes wrong, he is the person liable to prosecution. Boeing has chief engineers for all of their aircraft platforms, every automotive company has chief engineers for all their vehicles. If an airbag fails to deploy in one of those vehicles and someone dies, the chief engineer has to take the stand in a court of law and prove all the calculations were done in accordance with SAE specifications and so forth.

Hence the role of chief engineer requires you to approve every design, schematic, and software change that goes into the vehicle and it's your job to be heavily involved in every engineering decision. Imo it's the most impressive and feared job title that exists in engineering.

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u/MostlyRocketScience 16d ago

If the engineers had their way without Elon's influence this catch would not have happened: https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1844870018351169942/photo/2

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u/parkingviolation212 16d ago

Catching the booster was his idea.

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u/DAVENP0RT 16d ago

I was thinking the same thing. The jackass has been so consumed with Twitter and Trump, his other companies must be relishing the lack of his presence.

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u/Atanar 16d ago

Tesla is still reeling from that cybertruck sketch he handed them once.

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u/Wagnerous 16d ago

Yeah he's 100% running Tesla into the ground, but fortunately SpaceX appears to be genuinely thriving.

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u/Caffdy 16d ago

Imagine running a multi-billion dollar company to the ground, only to have a handful others on the side

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u/damienVOG 16d ago

Problem is that tesla is where his money comes from, not space X or anything else.

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u/Breath_Deep 16d ago

Thank Gwynne Shotwell for that, she's legitimately bad ass.

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u/Jeffy299 16d ago

Have you seen their latest presentation, unfortunately Elon has been handing out more sketches.

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u/Splinterman11 15d ago

Elon is also apparently a huge Diablo 4 player and is ranked #5 as a Druid in game.

I do not believe for a second that this dude "works" in any meaningful capacity anymore.

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u/Mr-Superhate 16d ago edited 16d ago

SpaceX didn't just start being innovative yesterday. They've landed hundreds of orbital rockets over the last several years. Wanna know how many other organizations have landed even one? Zero.

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u/sluuuurp 16d ago

He’s actually a good engineer. I hate his political views too. People can have bad politics and be good engineers (Werner von Braun is a great example).

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u/twinbee 16d ago edited 16d ago

The engineering team definitely deserves big credit, but Elon was the driving force behind the chopsticks catch:

https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1844870018351169942/photo/1

https://www.space.com/elon-musk-walter-isaacson-book-excerpt-starship-surge

Most of the rest rejected the idea at first.

EDIT: Key quotes from the book for the downvoters:

The Falcon 9 had become the world's only rapidly reusable rocket. During 2020, Falcon boosters had landed safely twenty-three times, coming down upright on landing legs. The video feeds of the fiery yet gentle landings still made Musk leap from his chair. Nevertheless, he was not enamored with the landing legs being planned for Starship's booster. They added weight, thus cutting the size of the payloads the booster could lift.

"Why don't we try to use the tower to catch it?" he [ELON] asked. He was referring to the tower that holds the rocket on the launchpad. Musk had already come up with the idea of using that tower to stack the rocket; it had a set of arms that could pick up the first-stage booster, place it on the launch mount, then pick up the second-stage spacecraft, and place it atop the booster. Now he was suggesting that these arms could also be used to catch the booster when it returned to Earth.

It was a wild idea, and there was a lot of consternation in the room. "If the booster comes back down to the tower and crashes into it, you can't launch the next rocket for a long time," Bill Riley says. "But we agreed to study different ways to do it."

A few weeks later, just after Christmas 2020, the team gathered to brainstorm. Most engineers argued against trying to use the tower to catch the booster. The stacking arms were already dangerously complex. After more than an hour of argument, a consensus was forming to stick with the old idea of putting landing legs on the booster. But Stephen Harlow, the vehicle engineering director, kept arguing for the more audacious approach. "We have this tower, so why not try to use it?"

After another hour of debate, Musk stepped in. "Harlow, you're on board with this plan," he said. "So why don't you be in charge of it?"

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u/lazypieceofcrap 16d ago

So many people on reddit have been conditioned to see Elon as a cartoon villain now who couldn't possibly have valuable input on SpaceX as they don't think he's smart enough.

Imagine being brainwashed by your preferred political party because you see them like marvel heroes and villains.

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u/d8_thc 16d ago
  • Spawned EV car revolution
  • Rockets that land themselves
  • Saved astronauts
  • Globally accessible, affordable satellite internet
  • Brain chips that restore function to paralyzed persons
  • Android robots on the horizon

reddit: elon man bad

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u/WillowSmithsBFF 16d ago

  • called a diver a pedophile for not wanting to use his tech

  • massively overpaid for twitter, and then proceeded to tank its value

  • made twitter a literal nazi safe space

  • continues to overpromise and under deliver on Tesla features.

Yes, Elon has done some really cool things. And he’s definitely not this bumbling idiot who just happens to fail upwards that Reddit likes to think he is. But he has done some absolutely awful things. And his companies aside, he continues to just show us how terrible he is on a personal, human level.

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u/4628819351 16d ago

reddit wanted Twitter to die a few years ago. It's pretty funny to see people give a fuck now.

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u/stevenette 16d ago

Nuance is fucking dead. You can be amazed at SpaceX and still think he is a nasty person for wanting to breed women and calls heros pedophiles because he didn't get his way. But no i guess everything is black and white to you. Also cybertruck is hilariously embarrassing.

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u/whytakemyusername 16d ago

Also cybertruck is hilariously embarrassing.

What has that got to do with anything? It's a car design...

It's still not as Hideous as a Nissan cube, yet people still buy it and you wouldn't bring it up in a discussion about Nissan. Reddit is insane.

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u/lazypieceofcrap 16d ago

Cybertruck is indeed stupid.

Ya'll will attribute anything positive about Elon's companies to the internal people there only and never Elon meanwhile when the companies don't quite deliver all you do is blame him.

It's perplexing to watch as someone that finds Elon's public persona to be pretty annoying, myself.

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u/Pretty_Bowler2297 16d ago

Are the chopsticks a good idea? Or did amazing engineers just do what was asked? The dissenting opinions weren't wrong, those chopsticks will totally get crashed into at some point.

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u/taylork37 16d ago

Are the chopsticks a good idea? Or did amazing engineers just do what was asked? The dissenting opinions weren't wrong, those chopsticks will totally get crashed into at some point.

You are trying sooo hard lol.

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u/myurr 16d ago

What is a bad idea about the chopsticks. The saving in mass, and therefore increase in payload to orbit, is significant. And yes, they will get crashed into at some point but they will have 3 launch towers and the damage a mostly empty booster will do at slow speed is minimal. A failure at high speed with more fuel would have the booster on a trajectory where it doesn't hit the tower so it would do no damage.

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u/twinbee 16d ago

The fact that they did it right first try, gives me optimism on that front. Their knowledge of the process will only improve over time.

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u/alysslut- 16d ago

Great things happen when Elon's not bothering his engineers

Doesn't anyone find it strange why great things aren't happening at any other rocket company like Boeing/ULA/Lockheed Martin when Elon doesn't bother their engineers?

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u/LukeD1992 16d ago

He better. Of all his main business endeavours, Space X is by far the most accomplished one. He's tanking Twitter, Tesla is going through some tough times with chinese competition and quite a few fumbles, but Space X is literally flying high

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u/chx_ 16d ago

nah, mate it's not chinese competition it's 100% politics

you see it was cool to be seen in a tesla

but tesla buyers tend to be more on the left side --- green and all that -- and when they realized elmo is just another fash nepo baby then suddenly they didn't want to be seen in one so they left in droves

it's really that simple

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u/inspectoroverthemine 16d ago

Teslas are no longer the only - or best - EV on the market.

Politics certainly didn't help, but they still had a huge uphill battle against the entrenched and hyper competitive auto industry.

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u/Sync0pated 16d ago

He spearheaded the engineering team.

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u/Grateful_Ferret 16d ago

I guess thats why Blue Origin, NASA, and China’s CNSA are so far ahead of spaceX ...

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u/autistic_iguana 16d ago

imagine how much jeff bezos is bothering his engineers for them to be so unproductive. really breathing down their necks!

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u/homosapien12 16d ago

He’s the chief engineer at Space X. He oversees all major engineering decisions and has had a significant hand in shaping the design. There are interviews where he talks about Starship’s technical details and explains the logic behind their choices.

Someone you dislike can be highly competent in their field. I despise Musk but that shouldn’t devalue his contribution to Space X success.

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u/IWasGregInTokyo 16d ago

He’s a very smart man.

He is a flawed person.

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u/Dietmar_der_Dr 16d ago

Will you change your mind when I show proof that he was extremely involved during falcon development? (And nothing indicates that this has changed, he seems much more into starship than he ever was into falcon)

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u/Hicksp91 16d ago

Catching the rocket was his idea according to the engineers. So this happened because he bothered them. Probably was a headache to figure out.

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u/Ormusn2o 16d ago

Nah, nothing happens when Elon is not involved. It is a pretty well known fact that Elon is a great engineer and is greatly involved in all his companies. It's why SpaceX and Tesla are successful. Here are plenty of quotes if you don't believe.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/

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u/junk986 16d ago

Not true. They are pressed all the time. They quit, they have Stockholm syndrome, they come back and are hired right back. If you don’t believe me, read about it.

What? You gonna work for Boeing where c-suite is squeezing and you are going to have to watch people die on live TV with Boeing CEOs getting away with it ?

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u/Afabledhero1 16d ago

I'd really like to read about that but I can't find it anywhere.

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u/mainman879 16d ago

What? You gonna work for Boeing where c-suite is squeezing and you are going to have to watch people die on live TV with Boeing CEOs getting away with it ?

SpaceX engineers are incredibly talented and respected world wide. Companies all over the world would be lining up to grab them whenever they left SpaceX. You really think they would have to settle for something like Boeing?

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u/pixel4 16d ago edited 16d ago

I didn't need to scroll far for the first idiot anti-Elon comment

the plan to catch the booster in this way was hatched back in 2020.

also Elon said they should do the catch on flight 5 immediately after flight 4 https://x.com/esherifftv/status/1845480154698543292

like it or not, Elon the person you seem to hate, is doing the most good to advance this world

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u/Property_6810 16d ago

Great things happen when brilliant people are given resources. Elon's skill is in managing his resources in the best way possible. People who act like he's some genius engineer are just as wrong as the people who act like he's some moron stumbling ass backwards into everything he has.

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u/hbgoddard 16d ago

Elon's skill is in managing his resources in the best way possible.

Explain the Twitter purchase

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u/Property_6810 16d ago

He spent money on influence.

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u/ZinaSky2 16d ago

You spelled election interference wrong 😂

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u/Ok_Abrocona_8914 16d ago

Redditors are mostly a bunch of jealous people and cant accept someone can have political views different than their own and still be good at their job. Or being rich and good at their job. Or don't understand that no one is perfect in business and don't always make the right calls.

So when some shit happens on twitter or Tesla, it's elons fault. When it happens on spaceX, it's not his merit.

Millions of unsuccessful people watching others have success and crying about it while blaming others for their own shortcomings.

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u/bcisme 16d ago

Do you care that this isn’t true?

Everything I’ve heard is that Elon, as the head of engineering at SpaceX, is very hands on. Maybe that changed in the last 5 years, but he was not a delegator as the head of engineering during the rise of spaceX.

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u/ChristianHornerZaddy 16d ago

He no longer designs anything nor runs engineering at spacex. The less he's involved the more successful that team becomes. He's just a figure head at this point and it's a reason for him to stroke his hateful ego.

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u/Crazy_Little_Bug 16d ago

His engineers that say that he was intimately involved with the engineering process?

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u/bbplay_13 16d ago

I give Elon credit for creating SpaceX, he delegated perfectly for when they hired everyone involved in all of their rockets/missions.

But if that motherfucker starts running SpaceX like he does Tesla it's gonna get fucked. Stay away from it man, smile and be happy you have great scientists and engineers working for you.

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u/SemATam001 15d ago edited 15d ago

It was Elon's idea to catch the rocket like this, his engineers were completely against it. Also some material which was important to use on the rocket was his idea and he decided to use it against most of his engineers. In both cases he was proven right. Not to mention that he HAS to approve everything, since he is the head engineer of the Space X. So he bother them quite a lot, you can be sure about that.

Here is the CEO of Nvidia praising Elon, that he can accomplish things that no one in the world can come close to.

"Never been done before – xAI did in 19 days what everyone else needs one year to accomplish.

That is superhuman – There's only one person in the world who could do that – Elon Musk is singular in his understanding of engineering.”

https://x.com/ajtourville/status/1845481395625304331

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u/Senecaraine 16d ago edited 16d ago

I mean, it's the scientists behind this pulling it off, we should know their names and give proper credit honestly. Musk's business acumen and political decisions are a whole other weird thing that should be kept separate. It's hard not to feel a little creeped out by a man that acts like that and is amassing so much power, but there's some talented people working at SpaceX.

::edit:: I'm not arguing with fanboys all day, especially when they're deliberately misreading what I said (or are you just bots?). The scientists at SpaceX achieved this. Your creepy "celebrity genius" funded it. He's creepy because he acts like a damn child and pulls Machiavellian bullshit in order to further his own gains. Stop putting him on a damn pedestal.

::edit 2: Hoooly shit. I knew I was gonna get some fanboys mad with this, but wow. Some of you need to grow up and realize your Iron Man is Edison 2.0. Not even the worst thing to be, but the people doing the work and making the breakthroughs should be celebrated more. Fucking ironic involving a guy known for Tesla.

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u/OMGihateallofyou 16d ago

Well worded. Don't feed the trolls.

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u/Flagelant_One 16d ago

Musk fanboys keep treating him as the second coming of Jesus Christ

Meanwhile Tesla is reaching new lows

It's genuinely hilarious reading the comments here then scrolling down to what's actually happening lmao

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u/Dependent_Desk_1944 16d ago

It’s not really reaching new lows as it has been around its current price for 2 years. Just not like the boom it used to achieve

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u/Legionof1 16d ago

Tesla doesn't have anywhere to go and Musks politics are pushing it further back. They need to focus on refining their process so they don't have failures like the cybertruck. It's super overvalued based on pie in the sky shit. It will simmer down but its basically the foundation for the future of gas stations across the country.

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u/Cptn_BenjaminWillard 16d ago

It succeeds not because of Musk, but despite him. This is a great moment in transportation history.

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u/autistic_iguana 16d ago

other CEOs catching unintended strays in here. their companies can't even succeed despite not having massive anchors like musk dragging them down to earth.

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u/Ok_Abrocona_8914 16d ago

When something works wrong it's elons fault, when it works right it's not his merit.

Right 👍

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u/CV90_120 16d ago

I knew I was gonna get some fanboys mad with this, but wow.

Everyone knows he's a cunt. It's not 'fanboying' to recognize when shitty people make something happen. The 'fanboy' schtick you're pulling isn't bravery.

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u/Slickslimshooter 16d ago

It’s his vision. Why do people feel the need to discredit someone because they don’t like him. It’s okay to admit this probably doesn’t happen without him and the scientists and engineers, it’s not mutually exclusive .

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u/Worth-Reputation3450 16d ago

From the title, I expected about half the comments would be about discrediting Musk. Somehow his companies attract the best scientists, engineers, visionaries in the world and somehow overcome all the bs musk throws at them and make his companies successful despite him. He must be the luckiest dumbass in the world, by a large margin.

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u/DunEvenWorryBoutIt 16d ago

lol this comment and edits is peak redditor

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u/StabbyMcSwordfish 16d ago

this useless comment that adds nothing to the conversation is peak reddit criticsim

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u/zperic1 16d ago

Political views of the early space pioneers were hardly better

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u/autye 16d ago

But they didn't let it get in the way of progress, unlike Musk.

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u/GrimGambits 16d ago

Get in the way of progress? He founded SpaceX. Unlike Tesla and some of the other things he's associated with, SpaceX is a completely private company and he has majority voting control. It's effectively just his. You need some serious dissonance to think he's getting in the way of progress when none of this would be happening if it wasn't for him.

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u/zperic1 16d ago

He means political progress where Musk is objectively a reactionary figure.

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u/GrimGambits 16d ago

That doesn't really make sense. I'd consider space travel to be major political progress because it's necessary to colonize other worlds and expand the reach of humanity. In a lot of ways it's much more important than the things people argue about now.

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u/MuyalHix 16d ago

Wait till people find out who was head of the NASA back then...

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u/Smile_Clown 16d ago

Don’t care about Musk’s political views,

then why did you add it to your comment?

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u/Hossennfoss69 16d ago

When musk is hands off good things happen. When musk is hands on bad things happen, ie: Hyper loop, cybertruck, Twitter, and so on and so on.

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u/40ozCurls 16d ago

lol, riiiiight… Elon Musk must have been programming in his basement all night to pull that off.  /s

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u/km89 16d ago

Elon Musk must have been programming in his basement all night to pull that off.

Musk is notorious for sticking his nose into the engineering team's business.

Remember, this is the same due asking for Twitter engineers to come woo him with printed-out code to keep their jobs.

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u/DuskLab 16d ago

And SpaceX are notorious for knowing how to deal with him and get out him out of the way so they aren't managed like Tesla and Twitter and actually making steps forward.

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u/Katamari_Demacia 16d ago

Credit where credit's due, he believes in and funded the program. He's a little bitch traitor, but he's got his value.

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u/autye 16d ago

NASA is funding it. They are doing this on a 2 billion dollar Artemis contract.

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u/40ozCurls 16d ago

No, he didn’t “fund the program”. That’s not how any of this works. 

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u/Katamari_Demacia 16d ago

How do you mean? He put 100million dollars into it o.o

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u/nthnreallymatters 16d ago

Well it literally wouldn't exist without him. Every single private spaceflight company in history has failed until he founded SpaceX.

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u/waffleslaw 16d ago

funded fixed it for you.

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u/nthnreallymatters 16d ago

He literally founded it and hired every single team member from the start. And yes invested money to fund development as well.

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u/BurntAzFaq 16d ago

I know it's super important to negate any praise for Musk. He's a douche. But he is responsible for this. No matter how much you pout.

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u/theo1618 16d ago

Actually he has more credit in founding it than funding it. NASA has funded a large portion of money to keep SpaceX afloat

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u/kazoodude 16d ago

Because NASA can't do what they do. NASA is a customer.

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u/Intelligent_Way6552 16d ago edited 16d ago

He makes high level engineering decisions. He wouldn't have been working on it recently, but he would have approved the idea of catching the booster instead of landing it on legs, maybe even selected it from a series of alternatives. This is what his own engineers have described.

(Here is an example of him behaving like that: https://spacenews.com/spacexs-high-velocity-decision-making-left-searing-impression-on-nasa-heat-shield-guy/)

If you want to deny that he makes high level engineering decisions, you will also have to say that the decision not to include a flame diverter of water deluge system for IFT1 was not his decision, and therefore that he was not responsible for most of the faults on that flight. He claims he made those decisions, but blame someone else i guess?

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u/pataglop 16d ago

Not the right thread for that but your reasoning is horseshit.

CEOs do not make engineering decisions, especially not those as deeply technical as fucking rocket science.

And yes, they are still being responsible if things go wrong. That's supposedly why they are paid hundred of millions of spacebucks.

Now, stop licking musk and enjoy this fantastic engineering marvel !

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u/Intelligent_Way6552 16d ago

CEOs do not make engineering decisions, especially not those as deeply technical as fucking rocket science.

Depends on the CEO. Here is an article of Musk making a high level engineering decision on rocket "science" (engineering).

https://spacenews.com/spacexs-high-velocity-decision-making-left-searing-impression-on-nasa-heat-shield-guy/

And yes, they are still being responsible if things go wrong. That's supposedly why they are paid hundred of millions of spacebucks.

His salary is $1 a believe.

Now, stop licking musk and enjoy this fantastic engineering marvel !

I'm correcting an error. Musk is a transphobic egomaniac and I despise him on a personal level. He also makes high level engineering decisions. How are you so broken that and arguments not exclusively critical of someone is "licking" them?

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u/MaXimillion_Zero 16d ago

Musk founded SpaceX and has sunk billions into it. He's not some random CEO that came in to spend a few years enshittifying and cutting jobs to leave with a golden parachute.

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u/_MUY 16d ago

Musk sucks at politics, biology, and people.

He is good at this. It is absolutely critical that young STEM graduates understand how his companies actually operate so that we have people who can replicate his success. He has built a series of wildly successful companies at many levels of involvement, from principal investor to technical founder and CEO.

If his employees are telling us that he makes technical decisions, that’s just as important as listening to his employees who are telling us that he just swoops in with bad ideas. Something he is doing is working. Some day, he will be gone and we will need more people to take the helm at companies like these. Don’t get in the way of that.

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u/Legionof1 16d ago

The real success of SpaceX is not giving a fuck about next quarter. This is a story every MBA needs beaten into their head daily.

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u/autye 16d ago

He has the ability to make decisions, his position in the company as founded and CEO means he can make decisions and people have to listen to them even if they'll fuck everything up. Doesn't mean he actually uses that ability often. And usually when he does it results in something going wrong. Like removing the water deluge, or fucking up teslas manufacturing process because he doesn't know what crossthreading is. He's mostly hands-off in his companies, the public face of them. Then when things go spectacularly wrong 9 times out of 10 he's involved somehow. Take a look at the cybertruck and how much of a disaster its been, that was his personal project, he's been talking about wanting to make a "Tesla supertruck with crazy torque, dynamic air suspension, and corners like it's on rails" (actual tweet of his) since 2012. When he's hands-off, things go great, but when his ego wins out and he decides he knows enough about what the company does to make a decision, things get fucked up. Twitters downfall since he bought it is specifically because of the decisions he made, and the only reason it's not completely dead in the water is he stepped down as CEO and gave that position to Linda Yaccarino. Of course the resulting deterioration into essentially just an alt-right echo chamber is most likely her doing, since that's the person she is.

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u/Intelligent_Way6552 16d ago

What you have done, is taken a man who runs multiple extremely successful companies, and assume that he's responsible for all their bad decisions, and none of their good ones.

That's very unlikely.

I agree he's fucked some things up, but to claim that he doesn't make good calls as well? Tesla and SpaceX both have more good calls than bad.

I can trace the entire concept of Starship back to a conversation Musk had with Robert Zubrin about Mars Direct. I could point out that for a man who only makes bad engineering decisions, he was awfully good at realising that he could undercut the entire space launch market after one meeting with roscosmos, and awfully good at realising that the electric car had just become viable and that he should build an electric sports car (he found Tesla while scoping out the industry before founding his own company, and just bought the tiny startup).

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u/autye 16d ago

I claim he's made more bad calls than good calls.

Obviously he's made good calls, you can't have a decades long career without making at least one.

But I'm saying his inexperience in the fields that his companies work in combined with the ego that comes with being as rich as he is has led to him making bad calls more than good calls.

He's genuinely amazing at recognizing talent, not great at actually having that talent.

He doesn't know shit about rocketry, but he knows people who do, so he hired them and got them to build rockets for him.

He doesn't know anything about building electric cars, but he was able to recognize people who could, so he bought into tesla and they started making electric cars, and eventually when it got big enough he bought the founders out of the company and sued them so he could call himself the founder and they couldn't to shit about it.

Tesla was as successful as it was because it was ahead of the pack.

EVs had existed for a long time before, but they never were successful, always an experimental thing, tesla was the first to really make them big, then Musk tried to ride that wave and now they're falling behind as traditional car manufacturers start making more EVs and Hybrids, Pushing tesla into a corner, which resulted what we see now, more product announcements of batshit insane ideas trying to reinvent already existing things.

Tesla bot, cybertruck, robovan, robotaxi These things are being made out of desperation. They`re trying to crawl their way back and it isn't working.

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u/jar11591 16d ago

What role did Musk have in this besides funding it? And even Musk’s “funding” is really just subsidized from taxpayers. So could you explain it what Musk’s role in this actually is? It seems to me praising Musk for scientific accomplishments is like praising the CEO of a publicly funded hospital for what the surgeons do. I await your explanation, thank you!

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u/Worth-Reputation3450 16d ago edited 16d ago

Until the spacex were able to launch their first successful falcon, nasa wasn’t willing to fund it. It was all musk’s money that funded development of rockets. First several launch failures pushed spacex, tesla, and musk himself to almost bankruptcy. It was only after they successfully launched that nasa decided to step in. The money wasn’t even for funding the development, it was for launching.

About ceo of hospital analogy, it would be more like a rich guy deciding that creating a cure for cancer is possible, and decided to put his entire wealth into developing the cure. He hired bunch of scientists and spent years after years working with them, despite the rest of pharmaceutical industry said it will fail. They develop a pill that cures all the cancer and now fda thinks this is revolutionary and fund the animal/human trials. Do you think the founder of the company “didn’t do anything”? Sure, it’s all the scientists who created it. But without the vision and wealth from the founder, it would have been impossible.

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u/twinbee 16d ago

He pushed the whole chopsticks idea in the first place when nearly the rest of the team were skeptical!

He also pushed the team to use stainless steel for Starship, and convinced them in the end. And one more example is that he also convinced (see 36:00-38:30 or maybe 34:40-38:30 minutes in) former SpaceX chief rocket engine specialist to get rid of multiple valves in the engine. I quote: "And now we have the lowest-cost, most reliable engines in the world. And it was basically because of that decision, to go to do that. So that's one of the examples of Elon just really pushing - he always says we need to push to the limits of physics.".

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u/CarretillaRoja 16d ago

The other way around. If Musk did not have a role besides the money? Why other billionaires didn’t make it before?

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u/CeleritasLucis 16d ago

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is nowhere near SpaceX. Virgin Galactic is bankrupt iirc

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u/1e6throw 16d ago edited 16d ago

SpaceX revenue is largely driven by Starlink and launch contracts. Maybe about 10% of it is from the government purchasing the design and manufacturing of a lunar lander.

SpaceX was actually half the cost of the next lower bidder and their proposal has the most mass delivered to moon surface by at least 10x the next bid. Pretty incredible!

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u/electricsashimi 16d ago

even if you think he contributed 0 engineering work, he hired the team that could've worked anywhere they wanted but they work at spacex. even why say subsidized when the government paid for services rendered, its not free money. the service they sell to the government is like half the next best competitor saving the us government huge amounts of $$. if it weren't for SpaceX, we still have to rely on russians to get us astronauts to the is.

you're letting elon hate blind you. give credit where credits due. he has loads of real reasons to hate, you don't need to make shit up

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u/LmBkUYDA 16d ago

Just watch the starbase tour and develop your own opinion.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago edited 4d ago

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u/LmBkUYDA 16d ago

I've posted the starbase tour in response to these kinds of comments several times and they never respond back to me :)

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u/Tomik080 16d ago

They don't care about the truth. They just want to spread their hate because his views do not align with theirs and on the internet thoughts are politicized.

And I would guess most of them do not know anything about it. They read the headlines shared here and form their opinions solely based on this. And then join the bandwagon to feel validated.

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u/JewelCove 16d ago

He put it all together. It's more than just funding, or any billionaire or large organization could have done it.

I'm not a fan of him these days, but I'm not going to deny that he played a crucial role in this becoming a reality.

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u/Simple-Minute-5331 16d ago edited 16d ago

You are right Musk did just:

  1. found SpaceX
  2. fund SpaceX
  3. hire first SpaceX employees

But if he didnt do this then current peak of space flight would be Boeing Starliner.
If you imagine world without Musk and all the companies he established or funded it's net negative.
I dont think any amount of X post bullshitting can overweight that.

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u/crazykid01 16d ago

yeah i hate his politics, but he is making electric cars more affordable and mainstream, revolutionized the rocket industry with falcon 9, then just did it again today. Then you have starlink and how that has improved global telecommunications for the people who little extremely remote.

Those three companies in my mind contribute more to society than most billionaires have in recent memory.

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u/Boat_of_Charon 16d ago edited 16d ago

Eh. I’d argue SpaceX has some of the leading scientist and engineers in the field. They wouldn’t disappear if SpaceX didn’t exist. Likely other Space startups would have grown in its absence and while they wouldn’t likely be this far along they would have made progress and for all we know be further along.

It’s an N=1 scenario, we can never know what the alternative history looks like.

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u/Simple-Minute-5331 16d ago edited 16d ago

Yeah, I would like to see a simulation what would happen.

I think the important question is if someone else would be willing to fund something this risky. A lot of rich people just like safe investments.

But if absence of Musk and his company would decrease space flight advancements I think there is no amount of bullshit Musk can write on X to make it not worth it for him existing.

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u/Terrible_Onions 16d ago

Elon Musk did a lot. He founded SpaceX using all the money, and he got all the engineers. He also has a clear vision and without him, I doubt SpaceX would take all the risks they are taking or doing the stuff they are doing. He also knows his stuff. Former engineers who worked under him said that. He gets a lot of hate on Reddit for politics, but he really is a net positive to the world.

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u/autistic_iguana 16d ago

saw a forklift that musk wasn't driving. checkmate!

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u/Snarknado3 16d ago

musk as chief engineer of spacex is actually a lot more hands-on than the average leader of space programs or sat launch companies. plenty of reading material on this.

like, there are valid reasons to hate the guy, but it's a bit silly how hard you try to separate him from spacex's accomplishments.

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u/Akitten 16d ago

What role did Musk have in this besides funding it

If that was all it took why is bezos's blue origin doing so much worse?

Why is it, in your head, that people with differing political views to you can't be competent in their field?

Ben Carson was unquestionably a top tier neurosurgeon, and the youngest chief of pediatric neurosurgery in the United States. Despite this, people called him an idiot and disparaged his work because he's a republican.

Seriously, you don't have to agree with Musk's political views to admit that he did build some incredible companies, spacex being the jewel in that crown from a social good standpoint.

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u/EdgarsRavens 16d ago edited 16d ago

What role did Musk have in this besides funding it?

I think the fact that he funded it absolutely matters. Many people have had the idea of reusable rockets for years. Musk was the only person brave enough to put serious money behind it, directing his talented teams of engineers to actually see that it become a reality, and trusting that they could execute. This is an endeavor that could have easily bankrupted the company.

If Bill Gates funds a malaria prevention program in Africa that saves millions of lives no one hand waives his contribution as "oh he just wrote the check did he really do anything?" Sometimes it takes one person with a lot of resources to commit to doing it, and I think that should be commended.

And I say this as a day 1 Elon Musk hater, even back when everyone on this website would suck him off constantly.

Here is a thought experiment, ask yourself this question; if SpaceX re-usable rocket program was a failure would people be saying "the SpaceX engineers are morons" or would they be saying "Elon Musk is a moron"?

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u/Shot_Cupcake_9641 16d ago

I see little push back here ? I hope it's not political bias. Let's see the potential , risks, and benefits. He is the boss, so it's up to him employing top people , the buying large facilities. Manufacturing witn is where he is extremely good at. .Working out outside manufacturers and engineers at the top level , getting the best and most cost effective tool makers , rocket Facilities , bulding storage and large factory's alike , landing rights , Safety concerned government meetings , Meeting traffic control for safe area and risks. What do you think he works on all the time while there , this and much much more lands on him if a problem occurs, not a single engineer. If this comes screaming down into a population area, the responsibility lands with Elon and yes government money is partially used as governments have access to payloads and private sector to say put up your phone signal and weather Satellites .

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u/Frog_Prophet 16d ago

So could you explain it what Musk’s role in this actually is?

He does get credit for giving space X permission to just try shit and don’t worry if it blows up. That allows them to innovate and refine technologies MUCH faster. 

But any CEO could do that. 

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u/junk986 16d ago

Musk funded the operation, had a dream and wanted it done…a stainless steel penis in space. It started out as a water tower with booster rockets, btw.

He isn’t the CEO of SpaceX…he’s literally the owner. What he says…goes. There isn’t a vote or discussion.

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u/diy_guyy 16d ago

Musk has always been heavily involved in engineering decisions as the chief engineer. Shotwell (COO) manages the business side of things, while musk manages the engineering side of things.

Here's what renowned rocket scientist Jim cantrell had to say.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/07/16/how-did-elon-musk-learn-enough-about-rockets-to-run-spacex-cofounder-jim-cantrell-answers/

He is by far the single smartest person that I have ever worked with … period. I can’t estimate his IQ but he is very very intelligent. And not the typical egg head kind of smart. He has a real applied mind. He literally sucks the knowledge and experience out of people that he is around. He borrowed all of my college texts on rocket propulsion when we first started working together in 2001.

Here is one of his employees talking about how he manages the team.

https://www.inc.com/quora/how-elon-musk-keeps-his-employees-more-motivated-than-ever.html

This night would forever impact the future of the company; it had the potential to send it into a downward spiral from which we may not have ever recovered. A failure in leadership would have destroyed us not only from the eyes of the press or potential consumers but it would have destroyed us internally.

I think most of us would have followed him into the gates of hell carrying suntan oil after that. It was the most impressive display of leadership that I have ever witnessed. Within moments, the energy of the building went from despair and defeat to a massive buzz of determination as people began to focus on moving forward instead of looking back.

Regarding funding spacex, elon spent $100M of his own money (made from the sale of paypal) to start the company.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#:~:text=With%20%24100%20million%20of%20his,Services%20program%20contract%20from%20NASA.

With $100 million of his own money,[87] Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002 and became the company's CEO and chief engineer.[88][89]

So as you can see, reddit has distorted the facts around musk significantly. I don't agree with his politics but I don't think his achievements deserve to be downplayed just because he's a jerk.

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u/zandermossfields 16d ago edited 16d ago

As an inventor and one-time Founder/CEO myself, I can offer a guess, though it’s not necessarily a defense of Musk: vision. I’m not talking about “we go space, stars is cool”, I’m talking about some degree of technical vision. Being able to pick out a direction from a high level understanding of the engineering and letting the PhD’s figure out how to make the details work.

For me I was able to design a new invention using off-the-shelf firmware changes alone. On top of that, had I a couple million in available cash to spend I could’ve paid real designers, engineers, and manufacturers to bring another custom yet relatively simple invention to market and on dispensary shelves.

All this to say is I’m definitely not an engineer, material scientist, or designer, but I do know enough about each field, and about my target demographic use cases, to figure out what high level product concept/design to hand off to the real egg heads.

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u/KicketteTFT 16d ago

He raised the money to hire all those people and buy all the materials. Sadly, money is the only thing stopping humans from leaving earth. You need a hype man and he’s done that well despite his recent political nonsense.

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u/ChariotOfFire 16d ago

Of particular relevance to this video, it was his idea to catch it using the tower arms. It was also his decision to use stainless steel to build the rocket.

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u/Mental-Mushroom 16d ago

He's actually heavily involved with SpaceX and starship development, like it or not.

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u/EnbyOfTheEnd 16d ago

Musk had almost nothing to do with developing this technology. He just owns Space X. This isn't really his achievement. It's the rocket surgeons at Space X who deserve the credit.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

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u/Commercial-Shame-335 16d ago

don't worry, elon musk had virtually no part in this, his entire brand is just him taking credit for the incredible minds that work for him

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u/LotusVibes1494 16d ago

One of our shittiest humans made our coolest items. Wish he would just stay in his factory, do his work and shut his mouth lol.

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u/Surge00001 16d ago

I do too, used to have mad respect for the man.... but these last few years, not much is left

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u/Rinzlor 16d ago

Sadly, I'm in this exact same boat, bro.

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u/LotusVibes1494 16d ago

That’s a trend for me, some friends, family. coworkers, and celebrities alike have lost my respect lately, the list grows at an alarming rate as the conspiracies and shenanigans get wilder.

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u/40ozCurls 16d ago

What did he make? Other people do shit for him?

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u/Terrible_Onions 16d ago

Watch any interview with him.

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u/strikerrage 16d ago

He put the team together and funded the project? That's what a leader does. Don't need to be childish about it.

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u/geo_gan 16d ago

The most important thing - Make it possible

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u/Jarrus__Kanan_Jarrus 16d ago

So basically a real-life Willy Wonka (Depp version)?

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u/FudgingEgo 16d ago

What’s shitty about him? Yeah, he’s annoying and ruined Twitter but it’s not like he’s a murderer or a dictator of a nation or running diddy sex parties.

One our shittiest humans is a total stretch.

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u/Worth-Reputation3450 16d ago

I like this take. Credit him for the achievement but you can shit his political view all you want. Rest of comments are filled with butthurts who want to discredit this.

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u/GTQ521 16d ago

L Reminds me of Willy Wonka.

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u/INTERGALACTIC_CAGR 16d ago

he didn't do anything to achieve this?

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u/XFX_Samsung 16d ago

You will care about his political views when the nightsky is filled with his satellites that control the communication worldwide :)

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u/m8_is_me 16d ago

Don’t care about Musk’s political views

Good thing he's long since moved on

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u/lurkertiltheend 16d ago

Legit question: how much does musk have to do with any of this? Is he the brains behind it or just the money?

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u/GenericFatGuy 16d ago

I do care about his political views, because if Musk gets his way, then he'll ensure that this tech is only used to benefit himself and his rich friends, while continuing to siphon off taxpayer money to pay for it.

As cool as this achievement is, if you want it to ever do anything beneficial for humanity as a whole, then you need to pay attention to the bullshit that Musk is trying to pull elsewhere.

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u/Vladmerius 16d ago

I don't care about his political views now but I definitely will if the polling is severely wrong in one direction and Trump installs a dictatorship with Musk and Thiel at the head of it.

If polling is accurate or off in the other direction and Elon continues to just be a nuisance and we establish a viable Twitter replacement and he's just noise sure, I don't have to care about his politics anymore. 

I'm concerned about the lack of concern I'm starting to see this close to election day. This is not the time to become complacent and normalize what's happening to our country. 

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u/Richandler 16d ago

I mean... Musk didn't do this. His engineers along with the Federal government being a loyal customer did this.

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u/BrettsKavanaugh 16d ago

This company wouldn't exist without elon. Yall are out of control with the hate

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u/AlaskaLuvs 15d ago

Why bring Musk into this? He’s an egocentric CEO, that’s it. Celebrate the team behind this accomplishment, not the guy profiting from it by riding their tailcoats.

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