Consider also how much money was invested during WWII in mystics and parapsychologists and look at how well all that turned out. I don't think that you can really say that with confidence, that Elon's money is as well-deserved or well-invested as Bill's.
How is Elon Musk comparable to mysticism and parapsychology? A physics-major working on engineering challenges like space travel, electric cars, and renewable energy... Elon Musk's pursuits are at least based in science, its the business viability that is unknown at the beginning
Elon Musk's work is based on our best guesses about how the world works. "Crazy" stuff in the past was based on our ancestor's best guesses about how stuff works.
The only difference is hindsight. Bullshit artists distort things as much today as they did in the past.
There's a key difference: Elon Musk is delivering results.
The scientific method enables one to deliver results because its models are predictive, not merely explanatory. The engineering and science we do today is also predictive because it relies on models cultivated within this methodology.
Equating today's "best guesses" with those in medieval or ancient times is absolutely inane.
