
Ask HN: Why is Elon Musk such hero to the tech community? - WheelsAtLarge
Yes, he&#x27;s done some outstanding things but I feel people would make him a saint if they could. Why is the worship so strong?
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__d
I think worship is overstating the attitude.

Things I admire: his scale of vision (replace fossil fuels, expand beyond
earth, augment human intelligence); his willingness to go for clean-sheet
designs; his persistence, iterating and learning from failures; his personal
commitment, both in working on and financing his ideas; his obvious enjoyment
of his work.

Thing I dislike: over-hyping things; driving employees too hard; being too
thin-skinned; the personal attacks, especially in public; his general
appearance of being gleefully unaware of his own privilege.

If he went home to his family and workshop in the relatively modest Musk
compound instead of hanging out with stars, private-jetting around the world,
and being a jerk on Twitter, I'd be more impressed.

But I think a part of the attraction is that he seems like "one of us": an
engineer who (like us, in our dreams) has taken the napkin projects from a
long session at the pub, and made them real.

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tony-allan
Elon Musk is not and never will be a saint, especially in his personal life
however he is a brilliant visionary who can execute when it comes to space and
electric cars.

There have been many problems along the way and so far he has overcome them.
If he doesn't implode or run out on money he will succeed.

I would love to see humans on Mars in my lifetime and I think he will be a big
part of that.

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PaulHoule
Both Tesla and SpaceX are completely awesome. Having developed one of those
businesses would be a huge accomplishment, having developed both is something
beyond.

Musk has shown some paranoia, and some bad behavior on Twitter.

~~~
chadcmulligan
reusable spaceships - every techies childhood dream. All those black and white
movies where the rocket ship landed by being a rocket, everyone thought that
was just the stuff of movies. The dude built it! For that alone he is legend.
He's also made money from it. Having said that - not sure I'd like to work for
him, but no ones perfect.

~~~
greenyoda
> All those black and white movies where the rocket ship landed by being a
> rocket, everyone thought that was just the stuff of movies.

That's how a spacecraft landed on the moon way back in 1969. SpaceX was just
the first to do it on Earth.

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api
I don't worship him. I do admire his determination and abilities and wish
there were more people with them who also had the means to actually get stuff
to happen.

Hmm... actually... the fact that people like Musk are so rare is discouraging.
There are quite a few people with say $100M+ net worth and it seems like most
of them don't do much. If wealth were a true meritocracy I feel like Elon
would not be remarkable.

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Tepix
The idea to take it upon yourself to make humanity a multi-planetary society
is just awesome. Succeeding at it is just mind-blowing.

If indeed we manage to establish a self-sustaining colony elsewhere this is a
bigger step in our evolution than moving from water to land.

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RyanAF7
My favorite part about this question is that it allows for an SAT like
comparison that tickles me to no end when people realize how true it is.

Trump is to Boomers as Elon Musk is to Millennials.

They are almost the exact same personality wrapped in only slightly different
generational belief systems. Where Trump made waves in the 80s by being the
"winner" type, Musk made waves by being the "visionary" type.

Both are voracious exaggerators bordering on pathological liars. Both are
media whores who appear in movie cameos as themselves. Both are completely
despised by former business partners. Both use Twitter as a personal echo
chamber.

Only reason Musk hasn't gone bankrupt is because the US government kept all of
his businesses afloat with major capital infusions. At least Trump's
bankruptcies didn't cost tax dollars.

Musk is worshiped because a lot of people don't want to face the fact he's a
bullshit artist so they have to take comfort in the illusion of his persona.

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
I must say that's a very good comparison. Musk has mastered the use of the
media for his purposes. Just like Trump has done over the past 40+ years.

It's a Very fair comparison. We might be seeing president MusK in 20 years.

~~~
greenyoda
He can't be president of the U.S. because he doesn't meet the Constitutional
requirement of being a native born citizen - he was born in South Africa. He
only became a U.S. citizen in 2002.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk)

