The falcon rockets made all the news a few months ago. Now Elon is making all the wrong news headlines. Is the rocket programme in jeopardy if his company hits the buffers.
Is there a conspiracy theory somewhere in the sudden change of fortunes for Elon and Tesla?
I think the conspiracy theory would be that the media has discovered that negative stories of Musk sell, so they’re publishing anything they can find. Whether that is actually true or not, I don’t know.
The non-conspiracy theory would be that Tesla legitimately almost landed itself in immense financial peril, and only just (possibly) squeaked through. And certainly that’s not good, and definitely that seems to have been caused by being overly ambitious. On the other hand, they seem to have pulled through via hard work and willingness to accept reality. Whether you want to read that as good news or not will sort of depend on your personality.
And that it just so happens that after overworking yourself, you’re liable to make some bad decisions due to being sleep deprived.
Having an “odd” person in charge of a company is fine as long as everything is going well. The media loves the good side and buries the bad stuff. But then reality catches up and things start falling apart. The “odd” person then finally gets a more realistic analysis of their actions.
The company overall has good and bad stuff going on. Tesla car making has been problematic. All it had going was image and image dies quickly. The other car companies are going to eat it’s lunch.
OTOH, they learned a lot about batteries. That side could end up being the core business if managed right.
The Boring business is just flat out idiotic. Luckily for Tesla shareholders this has nothing to do with them. OTOH, the incredible stupidity of it should be a red flag a hundred miles high to them.
One fallout from the joint smoking incident is the USAF has security regs about who they do business with. Musk failed that big time. This is not going to go well for him or his rocket business.
His increasingly erratic behavior is probably a sign he knows that stuff around him is not going well. When someone like Musk gets worried about his various businesses it is too late for others to start worrying. That window is long closed.
though I have to wonder now if part of the reason Elon has stepped back from SpaceX is that their prospective (at the time) customers demanded it. as in “SpaceX will be run by someone competent and trustworthy or you’ll never get a launch contract.”
I think Musk is a genius, but seriously, what was up with him accusing that guy from the Thai cave rescue of being a pedophile? That was so fucking random.
That’s a good point. I’ll be curious to see what the Air Force does.
And, by the way, somehow his Boring Company won a contract from Chicago for a high-speed tunnel from downtown to the airport. I was surprised they awarded the contract to a company with really no experience in building subways and one that’s planning to use a technology (the hyperloop) that’s not been proven anywhere. Is Chicago going to reevaluate that decision?
Totally. I always roll my eyes at anyone who makes such claims. “Oh my, you are such a better person than the rest of us. Thanks for sharing you ‘hard’ work issues”.
The one article I read about it said that digging tunnels in the US is pretty expensive so there is opportunity to create a more efficient/less costly process.