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Posted
Given that SpaceX built the Falcon 9 on its own and the government wasn't involved at all, definitely him or at least his company. SpaceX has completely disrupted the rocket industry, and I'd argue its effect has been more significant than Henry Ford's to the auto industry and will be more historically important. Musk is a dick. But SpaceX's achievements will be seen as a historical pivot point on par with the moon landing. 

No one was talking about SpaceX in the post I quoted. It was about driving the cost of technology down. Is Musk doing that? Or is that just a by product of him getting a seemingly unending supply of government money?
Posted (edited)
8 minutes ago, Jkwellborn said:


No one was talking about SpaceX in the post I quoted. It was about driving the cost of technology down. Is Musk doing that? Or is that just a by product of him getting a seemingly unending supply of government money?

What? Of course the post was about SpaceX and Tesla, you know, Elon's companies. I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about. SpaceX and the falcon 9 have driven down the cost of launches by doing what the established players said was impossible: create a reusable rocket. The government had nothing to do with that. Literally no one can compete with SpaceX on launch cost right, and that's with Boeing getting more US government money, and other companies by funded by multiple governments (e.g., Russia and Europe). 

Edited by Dahobbs
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Posted
Quote

Tesla stock rose 5% in regular trading Tuesday after a securities filing showed CEO Elon Musk controls a little over one-fifth of the luxury automaker.

At the end of 2021, the billionaire held 231 million shares in Tesla, representing a 21.2% stake, according to the Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commision. At Monday's closing price of $875.76 a share, the stake is worth around $202 billion.

That's still down from a 22.4% stake held by Musk at the close of 2020, revealed in a similar filing a year ago. 

A separate filing Monday showed Musk donated Tesla shares worth $5.7 billion to an unnamed charity between November 19 and 29.

Musk's donation took place around the same time he was selling around $16 billion in shares. It was made days after the United Nations responded to his challenge to prove how his wealth could tackle world hunger.   

The Tesla billionaire's stock-selling spree in November was made as part of a pre-arranged plan, called 10b5-1, to meet US tax liabilities. Musk said in December that he would pay more than $11 billion in taxes in 2021, due to exercising stock options set to expire in August this year.

Musk sold 15.7 million shares in Tesla at the end of January, roughly equal to the 10% stake he had planned to sell.

But he still managed to boost his stake in the automaker by exercising stock options to buy nearly 23 million shares at $6.24 each, which is just a fraction of Tesla's share price.

$200+ billion. Plus a lot of additional wealth probably yet to be realized in SpaceX. 

Posted
3 minutes ago, tbone_ said:

How is space x going to make money again?

(lack of) Volume.  

Posted
23 minutes ago, tbone_ said:

How is space x going to make money again?

They're making more money than Boeing in spaceflight right now lol.

They're already fully funding each launch with their satellite rideshare missions. A single F9 launch is about $62M and can carry as many as 140 satellites. Typically a rideshare will be around 105 sats with each spot being at least $1M. That's some fat margin.

And starship is only going to lower the cost per kg into orbit! The newest raptor engines are about 30% more powerful than the first iteration, and they're making about five new engines a week so far in 2022. The scale of SpaceX engineering and production pipeline is a marvel.

Posted
5 hours ago, Captainant said:

They're making more money than Boeing in spaceflight right now lol.

They're already fully funding each launch with their satellite rideshare missions. A single F9 launch is about $62M and can carry as many as 140 satellites. Typically a rideshare will be around 105 sats with each spot being at least $1M. That's some fat margin.

And starship is only going to lower the cost per kg into orbit! The newest raptor engines are about 30% more powerful than the first iteration, and they're making about five new engines a week so far in 2022. The scale of SpaceX engineering and production pipeline is a marvel.

Musk may be full of shit, and who knows how well it will work, but his revenue projections for starlink broadband is $30 -$50 billion a year once they get all the satellites in orbit. The guy tackles massive problems/markets, I'll give him that.

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Posted
6 hours ago, Blotto said:

Musk may be full of shit, and who knows how well it will work, but his revenue projections for starlink broadband is $30 -$50 billion a year once they get all the satellites in orbit. The guy tackles massive problems/markets, I'll give him that.

Streaming Pornography beamed from outerspace is worth a lot of money

Posted
2 hours ago, Jkwellborn said:


How fast are we talking? Can’t be beating off with buffering videos.

Please, we did it for years with buffering still photos and fuzzy video from premium cable . 

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Posted

When this thread bumped I thought it would be internet sleuthing to try and figure out which charity got his $5.7bn charitable donation last year (2nd only to B&MG foundation). The "Solving World Hunger" Theory has been debunked as the food people say it wasn't them.

Posted
10 minutes ago, TurkeyChew said:

When this thread bumped I thought it would be internet sleuthing to try and figure out which charity got his $5.7bn charitable donation last year (2nd only to B&MG foundation). The "Solving World Hunger" Theory has been debunked as the food people say it wasn't them.

I assume he setup his own charity, either as a stepping stone to send out the money, or, since it is Elon, to try and do everything himself. I could definitely see him running with whatever plan the WFP sent him on ending hunger. 

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Posted

 

Igor is/was pretty famous on the poker scene.   Married Liv Boeree (another poker celeb).  Seems like he landed a pretty good staking arrangement from Elon.

 

Posted
On 2/17/2022 at 1:59 PM, crash_davis said:

why are all gazillionaires fucking idiots?

In order to obtain that level of wealth I think you need to already begin adult life as half nuts in the head (and wholly lucky).

Posted

I think it takes a combo of luck, greed, arrogance, delusion, dedication, really hard work, self absorption, smarts, ultra competitiveness, and luck. And more luck.

Sometimes I think the delusion can take on a bigger roll when the normal governors of life are bypassed due to the money.

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Posted (edited)
28 minutes ago, tbone_ said:

I think it takes a combo of luck, greed, arrogance, delusion, dedication, really hard work, self absorption, smarts, ultra competitiveness, and luck. And more luck.

Sometimes I think the delusion can take on a bigger roll when the normal governors of life are bypassed due to the money.

It's 100% luck in my opinion, now that I think about it.

Timing has to line up like Indiana Jones and the staff and the sun, or you have to be lucky that the broken brain you were born with (we are all born with something broken), just so happens to be aligned with being a billionaire. I call that last bit of luck, the Warren Buffett effect, but there are hundreds of non-celebrity multi-millionaires and billionaires in high finance whose flavor of autism brought them their fortunes.

Edited by TurkeyChew
Posted

cuban owns the mavs because he and 2 partners had the idea of streaming sound over the internet and playing audio files in a browser.

musk owns spacex and tesla because he had the idea of an internet monetary/payment system.

they executed on these ideas 25-30 years ago.

someone would have come up with these ideas.

they just happened to be first, and that is luck.

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Posted

Most ideas are not original (besides the hula hoop obviously). For example, Cuban’s “original” idea was neither original nor his idea. Cameron Jaeb created the sports radio over the internet idea. Cuban invested in Jaeb’s idea. 5 years later Cuban sold the company for 1 billion. Another guy named Carl Malamud created internet over radio a year before Jaeb. But there were a bunch of others popping up simultaneously during this time like Scott Bourne of NetRadio. 

Many people have the same great idea at the same time (aka multiple discovery) and only the person who is first to market, or better funded, or company that is better run or more savvy will reap the rewards.

 

 

 

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Posted
30 minutes ago, McCroskey said:

I love the idea that all ideas and innovation are inevitable.

It’s a wildly ignorant statement, and a funny ass thought.

you go on lovin'

i said both of those ideas were inevitable

not all ideas are inevitable

Posted
1 hour ago, McCroskey said:

I love the idea that all ideas and innovation are inevitable.

It’s a wildly ignorant statement, and a funny ass thought.

Do you even multiverse in quantum mechanics theory, uh, bro?

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Posted

the patent office is full of good ideas that havent or cant be monetizable.  x.com and paypal doesn't go on elon's mantle because, as tightly regulated as financial services are... launching a non-conventionally car and a rocketship company is on whole 'nother level of execution. 

 

Posted
On 2/12/2022 at 11:35 AM, Dahobbs said:

What? Of course the post was about SpaceX and Tesla, you know, Elon's companies. I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about. SpaceX and the falcon 9 have driven down the cost of launches by doing what the established players said was impossible: create a reusable rocket. The government had nothing to do with that. Literally no one can compete with SpaceX on launch cost right, and that's with Boeing getting more US government money, and other companies by funded by multiple governments (e.g., Russia and Europe). 

look, i don't want to go full cloak here, but jpl and nasa are very much involved with spacex, let's not kid ourselves here.

Posted
Just now, hayden_horn said:

look, i don't want to go full cloak here, but jpl and nasa are very much involved with spacex, let's not kid ourselves here.

How so? Certainly NASA has assisted a lot with the Dragon and getting it ready to fly astronauts. But I'm not aware of any substantial NASA contribution to the design, development, or manufacture of Falcon 9 or Starship. SpaceX did get some government contracts that gave it a bit of a lifeline while it was still struggling to get the Falcon 9 ready, but only if it could actually get the launches done.  I'm also perplexed how cloakroom would come into play here. 

Posted
On 2/12/2022 at 11:35 AM, Dahobbs said:

What? Of course the post was about SpaceX and Tesla, you know, Elon's companies. I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about. SpaceX and the falcon 9 have driven down the cost of launches by doing what the established players said was impossible: create a reusable rocket. The government had nothing to do with that. Literally no one can compete with SpaceX on launch cost right, and that's with Boeing getting more US government money, and other companies by funded by multiple governments (e.g., Russia and Europe). 

the government had nothing to do with it.

5 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

How so? Certainly NASA has assisted a lot with the Dragon and getting it ready to fly astronauts. But I'm not aware of any substantial NASA contribution to the design, development, or manufacture of Falcon 9 or Starship. SpaceX did get some government contracts that gave it a bit of a lifeline while it was still struggling to get the Falcon 9 ready, but only if it could actually get the launches done.  I'm also perplexed how cloakroom would come into play here. 

well, of course, government funded nasa assisted a lot. and they government contracts to get a lifeline. but the government had nothing to do with it.

i'm just shrugging. i don't really care to argue. what he's done with the landing rocket has blown my mind. 

but i'm just saying your point that he went it alone is silly. he had significant government assistance.

certainly, spacex did a lot of heavy lifting. but saying the government had "nothing to do with it" seems silly. they couldn't have done it without nasa and jpl.

and cloak room would have to do with a prolonged discussion about government assistance and how we want to quantify that in dt, and i'm going to bow out now, unless you want to talk about it over there.

Posted
13 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

the government had nothing to do with it.

well, of course, government funded nasa assisted a lot. and they government contracts to get a lifeline. but the government had nothing to do with it.

i'm just shrugging. i don't really care to argue. what he's done with the landing rocket has blown my mind. 

but i'm just saying your point that he went it alone is silly. he had significant government assistance.

certainly, spacex did a lot of heavy lifting. but saying the government had "nothing to do with it" seems silly. they couldn't have done it without nasa and jpl.

and cloak room would have to do with a prolonged discussion about government assistance and how we want to quantify that in dt, and i'm going to bow out now, unless you want to talk about it over there.

I don't think you know the history of the Falcon 9 very well. SpaceX didn't have the sort of government contracts that Boeing and other players did. It didn't get paid to build a rocket for the government where the government oversaw aspects of the design and construction. Rather, SpaceX  got a contract to do a launch. If SpaceX couldn't do the launch, it didn't get paid. Yes, the government was the customer and therefore would be the one to pay SpaceX for a launch, but beyond that the government didn't contribute. I don't count that as "government assistance" and I don't think its viewed that way in any other industry. Otherwise, I could say that I've provided assistance to Ford, Audi, Buick, and Tesla in the production of their cars. But that would be ridiculous. All I did was buy the car. 

Anyway, the whole point was that the government had nothing to do with SpaceX driving down launch costs rather than that the government had nothing to do with SpaceX at all. It very clearly is and has been a customer. But, it didn't do any of the work that led to lower launch costs. And, it didn't/doesn't, as implied by the post I was responding to, subsidize SpaceX's launch costs. 

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Posted (edited)
35 minutes ago, rpspeed said:

 

Over/under on Elon announcing a new rocket engine manufacturing plant is 10 days.  His net worth will be 1 trillion dollars before Russia gets back 20% of their economy.

Edited by CooterBrown
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