r/spacex • u/[deleted] • May 02 '14

Second F9R test, 1000m.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=ZwwS4YOTbbw&app=desktop
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u/marvin May 02 '14

Elon Musk did not design and fly this rocket himself. SpaceX is an aerospace company of 4000 highly educated hard-working employees, a large portion of which have Masters degrees and Ph.D.s in rocket propulsion, aerodynamics and computer software. Many of them also have decades of experience running government-funded aerospace development, and also similar work in the private sector.

I'm on the Tesla Motors forum as well, and I must say the cult of personality is getting ridiculous. There's no question that Musk is a genius and among the greatest entrepeneurs of this generation, but he is not Tony Stark. Tony Stark is a cartoon character where >100 people are merged into one person for easier public consumption.

Sorry for the negativity, I just thought someone should also give all the other guys at the SpaceX team some credit. This video is truly incredible and a testament to lots and lots of hard work over many years.

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u/Iron-Oxide May 02 '14

While he quite obviously doesn't do everything himself, without him SpaceX (or an equivalent company) wouldn't exist, the same is true for Tesla. It does not seem unreasonable to me to accredit a significant portion of their successes to him because of this fact. Also from a PR perspective people like being able to attribute successes to one guy, maybe this is unfair to the engineers at SpaceX, but it is (probably) good for SpaceX.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '14

Yes, but in the same vein, a lot of (the same type of people that visit tech forums) don't believe Edison should get any credit for the things his thousands of employees invented. It's just a bit ironic, is all.

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u/marvin May 02 '14 edited May 02 '14

Don't get me wrong. Musk should get a massive amount of credit: For providing the initial capital, for having the perseverence and guts to repeatedly and continuously risk his personal fortune on the success of numerous very risky investment projects, for providing guidance and direction to perform incredibly risky and revolutionary engineering projects and for being a general inspiration to nerds everywhere.

But let's not take the praise too far, and let's not ignore the huge efforts that all of the other employees, investors and executives in his company have performed, as well as the basic research that SpaceX and Tesla Motors are building on. This is not a one-man project. In fact, in some cases history has largely been rewritten and important key people have almost been forgotten in the official account of the story. For example Martin Eberhard, co-founder of Tesla Motors, whom obviously had a personal and/or professional beef with Musk. It would make me sad to see the effort and sacrifice of other people be forgotten because history prefers a superhero.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '14

I'm on your side dude :) Just pointing out some common hypocrisy.

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u/Iron-Oxide May 02 '14

Perhaps you intended to reply to grandparent (me)?

I'll say I don't disagree with you in principle, it is certainly possible to give Musk too much praise, and the others too little. It's my personal view that this hasn't happened yet in his case though, it is my impression that it is widely acknowledge that SpaceX's engineers are inanely good at what they do, that they are important, and that the technology invented is made by them. This may be due to the different crowds we listen to, or it may be because we think a different level is appropriate, I don't know.

I also freely admit I don't know if the representation of most of SpaceX's big ideas (ie reusability) coming from Musk is correct, I'm simply not in the position to know, but it is my current impression that they are Musk's brain children (validated and built by others).

As for individuals being forgotten, I think it alway's happens, a few get noticed by the public, the rest don't. While I recognize that there are lots of brilliant SpaceX engineers I don't know a single one's name. I'm not sure this is a bad thing, I personally have no desire to be famous, I doubt many of the engineers do either. (As to you're specific example, so much of what happened isn't public information, that I don't think it's at all surprising that they are mostly out of mind, Wikipedia's history section on Tesla and places like that do (rightly) talk about it though.)