Tesla has shown that electric cars can be both viable and cool. Even if if Tesla itself remains a niche car, Tesla should get the credit if/when in the future electric cars become the norm.
In addition Tesla is betting big on making better batteries. If they can pull that off then that will end up being their true legacy with the whole car thing becoming a neat historical footnote.
As for SpaceX they'll go down in history as pioneers of commercial space flight and wherever future commercial companies decide to take us, they'll all point back at SpaceX as the company that first showed that it could be done.
I don't think Musk has proven anything yet but has given people some hope that things are certainly possible.
I genuinely don't believe we need electric cars though at all. We need less travel and transport and redistribution of facilities and skills. That's a much bigger problem. At the moment, the hub/spoke and centralised model of society has no redundancy and providing ubiquitous cheap transport isn't going to solve that, just make the problem hang on longer by forcing people to remain sitting on their butts on a freeway in a slightly better car rolling into a job they could probably do at home or doesn't need it exist anyway.
Also batteries need to be filled up, recycled, disposed of still. We'll see how that goes shall we...
SpaceX isn't fundamentally changing the model of anything, just packaging the same turd differently. That might be to build capital (customers = capital) but there isn't anything fundamentally different to what they are doing at the 10,000ft level. ESA have had a similar model for a couple of decades.
> SpaceX isn't fundamentally changing the model of anything, just packaging the same turd differently. That might be to build capital (customers = capital) but there isn't anything fundamentally different to what they are doing at the 10,000ft level. ESA have had a similar model for a couple of decades.
Of course they are. The whole point of everything they do is to cut down the costs of launching things into space by 2-3 orders of magnitude, which itself is just a step towards their real goal, i.e. Mars. They're pretty straightforward about it.
Well. If SpaceX succeeds in its goal of making putting things in space significantly cheaper, they could enable a lot of nasty things like weapons in space, global surveillance systems, increased use of military drones etc.
I guess that your opinion. The point is when you change the variables you change the outcome and it won't magically be for the better, especially since there's little precedence. It's pointless to loose karma over this on HN though when I can and regularly do talk about it with actual aerospace engineers.
I don't see any problem in considering the good and bad of any technology, its implementation and its effects. I would say it's good engineering practice if anything.
More than anything I think premature, excessive and/or misguided credit is damaging to engineering and entrepreneurship. It shifts the focus from knowledge and creativity to adoration and exceptionalism. Quite opposite the mindset of Musk himself.
If those "microwave weapons" end up enabling the killing of millions of people (like e.g. nuclear weapons can wipe out the whole earth), then those left will be right to say:
"Hmm, maybe we were better off without microwave technology after all. In fact, just because we can make something, probably doesn't mean that we should make it".
Sure, it's always a concern. Just because we make something doesn't mean that we should use it. So you've already got that ethical dilemma covered on the basis of usage, if not invention.
On the other hand, if you don't develop technology, you'll never know if it will be used for good, and you'll never see the advantages if it is. And failing to develop something does nothing to prevent someone else from developing it later. If something is possible, you want to be the one making it possible, not the one cowering in fear while someone else forges on ahead.
I will certainly concede that there are scenarios where it works out to be for the worse. However I don't believe that any of those scenarios involve military weapon platforms. I am however more than happy to hear arguments as to why I am wrong.
In addition Tesla is betting big on making better batteries. If they can pull that off then that will end up being their true legacy with the whole car thing becoming a neat historical footnote.
As for SpaceX they'll go down in history as pioneers of commercial space flight and wherever future commercial companies decide to take us, they'll all point back at SpaceX as the company that first showed that it could be done.