
Now 0-for-3, SpaceX's Elon Musk Vows to Make Orbit (2008) - 6ren
http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa
======
tylerlh
Can someone edit the title of this to correctly reflect that the linked
article is from 2008? Without a close look it gives the impression all this
happened last weekend.

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srlake
"Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my
bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work."

If you need a thesis for why, 4 year later, SpaceX and Tesla are seeing the
succes they are, this attitude might be at its' core.

~~~
Maro
That's Magic Thinking. Just because you want something doesn't mean it's going
to come true. There are thousands of other entrepreneurs you've never heard
of, who were also highly motivated but it didn't work out for them. (That's
why you've never heard of them.)

To explain the relative success of SpaceX and Tesla by Elon Musk "wanting
success" is a fallacy. You should instead reason by first principles (as Musk
himself recommends for entrepreneurs to do) and analyze what they did in the
past couple of years, what worked and didn't work, what factors were involved,
and how that led to where they are today.

~~~
tisme
I read that as 'I'm throwing all that I've got, time, resources, anything
towards achieving my goal'. That's no guarantee for success but it works a lot
better than doing nothing at all.

In order to win you have to first enter the games. Most people that are
claiming this is 'magic thinking', survivor bias or generally down on
achievement have never actually done any of this, let alone entered the game.

~~~
Maro
> have never actually done any of this

I spent 3+ years on my startup without being able to secure funding, getting
by, fully commited [1]. I wanted to succeed really bad, but made too many
mistakes from the get go and ran out of time/money eventually. To reflect on
the topic of discussion, when evaluating why my startup failed (or another one
succeeded), whether the founders wanted it bad enough is not a good core
metric, which is what the grandparent claims.

[1] <http://github.com/scalien/scaliendb>

~~~
tisme
Heal your wounds, save some dough and same player shoots again.

You have to play a lot of chess games before you start winning. Start-ups are
no different, the learning curve is quite steep but if you persevere at some
point it will start to pay off. If your first start-up takes off in a couple
of weeks or months that's the exception not the rule.

Establishing any kind of business normally takes about three years so you have
to plan for that.

~~~
Maro
I'm fine, thanks, but this thread is not about me. I was just responding to
your ad hominem attack.

~~~
tisme
I was not aware I was attacking you.

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jhuckestein
I love how he doesn't consider himself an optimist. There's an important
distinction between knowing that something is possible and going for it and
hoping to accomplish something that may not be possible. I think many people
confuse one for the other.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
"All entrepreneurs have an aptitude for risk, but more important than that is
their capacity for self-delusion. Indeed, psychological investigations have
found that entrepreneurs aren’t more risk-tolerant than non-entrepreneurs.
They just have an extraordinary ability to believe in their own visions, so
much so that they think what they’re embarking on isn’t really that risky."

<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/>

[http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-01-31/ego-makes-
ent...](http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-01-31/ego-makes-
entrepreneurs)

~~~
tsotha
According to some guy who writes for _Wired_. Yeah, that's definitive.

~~~
jessedhillon
Chris Anderson is the editor-in-chief of Wired. The other interview is with
"Wharton doctoral student Brian Wu." Both would seem to be highly credible
sources on the subject of successful entrepreneurs (not successful
entrepreneur _ship_ , which seems to be the source of your dismissal)

~~~
tsotha
Eh, editor in chief? That means he can write well. That's all. The idea that a
guy like Elon Musk is successful because he's somehow delusional is idiotic.

~~~
jessedhillon
You're being downvoted because your argument is "other people are wrong," and
if you forward such an argument you are implicitly forwarding a character
comparison: don't listen to that guy he's a dumbass, listen to me (because I'm
not.)

It can work if you're some well-known personality. As far as you've told us,
you are an unknown, unaccomplished person who expects us to believe he knows
more about the successful entrepreneur's mindset than two people who have
interviewed several extensively. Again, with no reason provided.

EDIT: And also, one of those people (Anderson) is an entrepreneur himself. So
who, exactly are you? Sounds like you're just some guy who likes calling other
people idiots because he doesn't like what they write.

~~~
tsotha
I'm being downvoted because other people are wrong :)

My point is that sentence is wrong and thrown in to get page views. _The fact
that you can write well doesn't mean you know anything_. It's no qualification
at all when it comes to making an argument.

 _And also, one of those people (Anderson) is an entrepreneur himself. So who,
exactly are you?_

Me? Oh, I'm a professional poker player. I'm not very good at it, you see, so
I'm currently writing articles about poker.

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socialist_coder
I am visiting my dad here in the Space Coast of Florida (Cape Canaveral) and
the old retired people here I've spoken to are almost universally "angry at
Obama" for "ending the space program".

I mention SpaceX and how they're advancing rocket technologies and doing
things far cheaper than NASA ever could but it seems to fall on deaf ears.

I know it's pointless to argue, but I can't help myself. What else can I use
in my argument?

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AceJohnny2
This was an interview from 2008.

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gyozaking
Good example of relentlessly resourceful:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html>

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lnanek2
I guess this was posted as look back to before they were successful? They've
launched the Falcon 9 heavy to the ISS now, so no one would consider them not.
Maybe all those failures with the F1 light model are part of why the Falcon 9
was designed to and managed to do its job even with one of the engines
failing...

~~~
jlgreco
They've been launching Falcon 9's to the ISS. So far they haven't flown a
Falcon 9 Heavy (which they have actually renamed to "Falcon Heavy", no "9"
(maybe because the first stage will actually have 27 merlin engines)).

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steve918
I'm sure they'll make it. They've already accomplished so much no one else
though possible. They've built technology no one else has. Even if they didn't
Elon would still be a legend for even trying.

~~~
frisco
(2008)

