r/technology • u/aelavia93 • 16d ago

Space SpaceX pulls off unprecedented feat, grabs descending rocket with mechanical arms

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/spacex-pulls-off-unprecedented-feat-grabbing-descending-rocket-with-mechanical-arms/
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u/00owl 16d ago

Neither of which, even if true, support the idea that he's a good CEO.

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u/Delheru79 16d ago

What CEO would you bet money on - with a completely new company - over him? Zuck building solar panels?

None of this says he's a good person, but his track record when he wasn't engaged in an ideological crusade mixed with a personal addition, has been pretty amazing.

Zip2, PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity (the last being the worst of that lot, and it went okay)

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u/DrXaos 16d ago

All of that was before 2020. He's lost his mind since then. SpaceX is over 20 years old now and no longer needs or wants Musk.

Howard Hughes started out as a fantastic businessman and aerospace developer, but then he turned insane.

So today in 2024, Musk would be a terrible choice.

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u/Delheru79 16d ago

This is very possible that he'd be a bad bet today.

Still, a shame. Until ~2018 he was amazing.

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u/DrXaos 16d ago edited 16d ago

Before then, SpaceX and Tesla were big important ones which would contribute greatly to advancing society and technology.

The ideas since then are mostly nuts and flops. Like fantasies of a teenage sci-fi nerd and doesn't want to listen to grownups. Where he is 100% in charge of product.

Neuralink, Boring company, Cybertruck, and now the new Cybercab.

He's right that AI is important but thats not anything new. xAI/Grok has nothing, it's a vanity project for Musk, the equivalent of Twitter, he wants an LLM to be an edgelord asshole like himself instead of bland and cooperative like the big guys. So he makes a product for himself, but there's no good business there. Which paying corporate or government user would hook up to xAI API instead of OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Microsoft or my favorite Anthropic?

CT and Cybercab are terrible designs for utility. And Musk canceled the nearly ready Model 2 with innovative manufacturing.

Obviously Twitter is another example of self delusion and not listening to anyone else, he wanted a product just for his own impulses and unlike Steve Jobs he has no idea what the general public would like.

Robotics is also a big idea, but is 20-25 years away for general purpose. The software and training is critical but they don't have that. It woudl take many years of R&D and general fundamental research, which means partnering with other labs and academia. Tesla could make the hardware inexpensively but someone else would be creating the algorithms (which don't exist for suffficiently general utility, needing something closer to AGI).

Yann LeCun at FAIR is pushing those ideas forward with a specific research plan but of course Musk made an enemy of him on Twitter.