Dish Feuds With SpaceX Over Starlink Dishes Being Used on Moving Boats, Cars

[SV Tom Crean]

I'm going to "reserve my position" until the full story on the cabin crew harassment case comes out. As Gwynne Shotwell (President/COO of SpaceX) said recently, she's been flying on Elons plane for over 12 years (and Musk doesn't use commercial aircraft) and it doesn't have cabin crew - only a pilot/co-pilot - You bring your own lunch bag. So I'll wait and see.

Some insight into Musk and his drive. There is a big difference between someone who plays with other peoples money and those that play with their own and make hard decisions. There is a book called Liftoff by Eric Berger and it goes through the early days of SpaceX.

They were on their 3rd launch of the Falcon1 and they (ie Musk as he was the only investor) were out of money and if it failed, they were in big trouble. It launched, went out of control and crashed. Hans koenigsmann who was working for Musk at the time thought, well that's it, it's all over - Musk will take his remaining $30/$40M and pack it in, retire and live well on the remainder.

Instead Musk turned to him, said fix it and lets go one more time. They did and a year later were successful and NASA awarded them a $3B contract to deliver cargo to the ISS.

That's what makes him successful over and over. Yes I wish he would park the social comments and just stay in the background but that won't happen.

Originally Posted by GordMay

As previously noted, SpaceX has fired a number of
employees, who wrote, and shared a letter [1], criticizing the behavior of CEO Elon Musk, with the company’s president criticizing the letter as “overreaching activism.”
Shared in an internal SpaceX Microsoft Teams channel, with more than 2,600 employees, the letter [1] argues that the company is not living up to its oft-stated “No *******” policy, and its zero-tolerance sexual harassment policy.
The open letter [1] from the employees referenced recent accusations of sexual misconduct involving Musk that reportedly prompted a $250,000 settlement. Musk said the allegations were "utterly untrue" and made a crude joke about some of the details on Twitter.

[1] The Open Letter:

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by SV Tom Crean

Not an engineer? Give me a break. He has 3 bachelor degrees and another in physics. He is also the chief engineer at SpaceX and some very smart engineers who worked for me previously now work for him at SpaceX - and he can run rings around them. Very very smart engineer. Try listening to him talking about combustion stability in rocket engines and you'll understand.

Did he invent EVs? No. Did he invent LEO sats or reusable rockets? no. But what he did was perfect them and try and make them mass market - the Porsche Tycan is only different in that it has an 800 volt system (and no, it's not better performance as it's slower and less efficient) but it would not even exist if Tesla/Musk didn't because he dragged the car industry screaming and kicking into the EV world. Remember the Prius? What came after it? Nothing because Toyota didn't and still doesn't believe in EVs but Tesla did.

What he gets is that its easy to build a one off or in small numbers - Its the production that is hard and unless you can get the production cost down, your product is going nowhere. That's why he slept at the Tesla factory - he needed it to get past setup and into production or his business was in trouble.

I understand musk has a double Major in physics and economics , fine degrees but none are engineering degrees

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

I understand musk has a double Major in physics and economics , fine degrees but none are engineering degrees

Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, grew up in Canada. The son of a Canadian model and a South-African engineer, Musk studied physics and economics at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in physics (1992), and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics (1994).
He then attended Stanford University where he earned his Masters of Business Administration degree (1998) and Ph.D. in business administration (2002).
After graduating from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Musk worked for an Internet startup called Zip2 before going to work at PayPal as vice president of business development. After that, he founded his own company X.com, which later merged with Confinity and then PayPal. In 2002, he sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion – around 13 times what Musk had invested.

[ThereAndBack]

SpaceX is granted license for in-motion use. See here.

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, grew up in Canada. The son of a Canadian model and a South-African engineer, Musk studied physics and economics at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in physics (1992), and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics (1994).
He then attended Stanford University where he earned his Masters of Business Administration degree (1998) and Ph.D. in business administration (2002).
After graduating from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Musk worked for an Internet startup called Zip2 before going to work at PayPal as vice president of business development. After that, he founded his own company X.com, which later merged with Confinity and then PayPal. In 2002, he sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion – around 13 times what Musk had invested.

Not that it's terribly important, but Elon not only doesn't have an MBA or PhD from Stanford, he doesn't hold those degrees at all. He enrolled in a PhD program in material science at Stanford but famously dropped out after two days to start his entrepreneurial career. He does have a BA in physics and a BS in economics from the University of Pennsylvania (hint, Wharton is at Penn).

I have to admit I am curios where you got such precise (mythical graduation years and everything!) but incorrect information?