@cstross I think the best parallel may be to Henry Ford, who revolutionized industrial production, and was also a vicious racist. Terrible people can nonetheless be accomplished in some domains.

@cstross Musk is an unmitigated ass and possibly fascist, but I don’t think having two companies in vastly different domains that completely upended their markets is coincidence. Tesla sells the vast majority of EVs in the US, and SpaceX puts more mass in orbit than the rest of the world combined. Musk has made a hash of Twitter, but I think it’s silly to suggest that he had no role in those two hugely successful and innovative companies.

@iain_bancarz @cstross I think that analysis is greatly underselling his influence on these companies. They are in vastly different domains, but both have been hugely innovative, outcompeting much larger, well-entrenched incumbents. If it was just raising money, why didn’t GM lead the way in practical electric vehicles, and Boeing or ULA in affordable reusable launch vehicles?

@cstross @iain_bancarz How many other clean sheet auto makers and rocket companies have succeeded?

And SpaceX at least *is* revolutionary, by any reasonable definition (Tesla perhaps lesss so). No one else is currently doing what SpaceX does, which is why it dominates orbital launch mass. And its Starship project is hugely innovative — if it succeeds (a HUGE if), it will completely upend launch.