>SpaceX is, for many of us, what made many of us (myself included) not realize what a raging moron Elon Musk was and is for the longest time. I've come to believe that SpaceX succeeded in spite of Elon, not because of him. Whoever is really in charge has probably built an organization that is designed to insulate itself from Elon's influence.
Sorry to shatter your illusions, but Musk is SpaceX's founder, CEO, and chief engineer. He has a physics degree from Penn and was admitted to an engineering graduate program at Stanford but worked in Silicon Valley instead, where he made the fortune that he used to finance SpaceX.
Musk's biographer tweeted the pages from his book <https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1844870018351169942> discussing how in late 2020 Musk suggested, then insisted against considerable opposition from his engineers, that Superheavy be caught with chopsticks instead of landing on legs like Falcon 9.
Also according to the book, Musk is the person who suggested and, against considerable opposition from his engineers, insisted on Starship switching to stainless steel instead of carbon fiber <https://x.com/richardprice100/status/1728106606616015097>.
(Hint: Musk was right and his engineers were wrong. Both times.)
PS - if you bring up Gwynne Shotwell, look up what a chief operating officer is responsible for (and not responsible for, relative to the CEO).
First, I couldn't care less what his biographer said. These aren't statements made under oath. The biographer isn't even a journalist. They're a propagandist. It's meaningless.
For many people, they think Elon is smart until he starts speaking about a topic you know and then you realize what a narcissistic moron he is. Like I already knew he was a moron but when he started talking about my area of expertise (software engineering), oh boy, it was way worse than I had imagined, specifically in the wake of his Twitter takeover.
It's endlessly fascinating to me how many people desperately cling to the myth of meritocracy, either because they align with the politics of the myth's purveyors or that they simply want to believe that their hard work will be rewarded.
A cursory examination of Elon's history exposes just what an incompetent moron he is. For example, his disastrous run at Paypal [1].
As for going to Penn and Stanford, so? George W. Bush went to Havard and Yale. So did Ten Cruz. Donald Trump bought his way into UPenn (Wharton, specifically). Roughly a third of these colleges are "legacies" or otherwise people buy their way in.
Sorry to shatter your illusions, but Musk is SpaceX's founder, CEO, and chief engineer. He has a physics degree from Penn and was admitted to an engineering graduate program at Stanford but worked in Silicon Valley instead, where he made the fortune that he used to finance SpaceX.
Musk's biographer tweeted the pages from his book <https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1844870018351169942> discussing how in late 2020 Musk suggested, then insisted against considerable opposition from his engineers, that Superheavy be caught with chopsticks instead of landing on legs like Falcon 9.
Also according to the book, Musk is the person who suggested and, against considerable opposition from his engineers, insisted on Starship switching to stainless steel instead of carbon fiber <https://x.com/richardprice100/status/1728106606616015097>.
(Hint: Musk was right and his engineers were wrong. Both times.)
PS - if you bring up Gwynne Shotwell, look up what a chief operating officer is responsible for (and not responsible for, relative to the CEO).