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I see a lot more driving Toyota Corollas. Making a car is not a new thing, even electric cars are nothing new.

And as for Space X, space travel is also nothing new. We have been traveling to space since 60 years and vertical landing and reusable space vehicles had been done before.

All these stuff is simply re-do of the stuff humans did in the past but failed commercially. As I said, Musk is brilliant in building commercial systems. This time we have better cheaper technology and these things can actually be feasible.




How are Corollas relevant to this discussion? If you think scaling up a car manufacturer to becoming a mainstream brand is not “delivering big time”, then I guess I will simply have to disagree.

> All these stuff is simply re-do of the stuff humans did in the past but failed commercially.

That was my point. At least some of Musks’s claims were based in reality and so he was able to deliver something. The entirety of Holmes’ claims were fictional. That’s the difference.


Becoming a mainstream brand is definitely not a big delivery on the promise that in 2 years you will tell your electric car where you want to go and it will take you there without further input from you.

As a financial delivery, sure. It turned out to be a good stock investment. So may others like AMD, Apple or GameStop. I don't argue that Musk can't make brands and money, he surely can.


You're running some very weird arguments here. Bringing costs down and volumes up are significant achievements in any industry.

Sure there were a few other electric cars out there before Tesla but nothing with 500km range that was compelling and affordable to the middle classes. There were other rockets too but SpaceX significantly reduced cost and launch frequency. Nobody had recovered an orbital rocket before SpaceX, let alone reusing it another 7 times.


I don't think that I argued against any of that, I don't know what do you expect me to say but I have to point out that the pace shuttles were re-used much more than 7 times. I'm sure that SpaceX will surpass these numbers some day, after all it's a work in progress as long as you don't accept that you failed. Space X is doing some cool stuff and spectacular videos.


The orbiters and solid boosters were but the massive external tank was not recovered. The time and complexity associated with the refurbishment of the orbiters and booters resulted in a program cost of over $1b per launch. SpaceX can launch similar sized payloads on FH for ~$150m.


nice factoid, thanks.




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