Comment by mschuster91 3 days ago
Reminds me of Elon not taking a no for an answer. He did it twice, with a massive success.
A true shame to see how he's completely lost track with Tesla, the competition particularly from China is eating them alive. And in space, it's a matter of years until the rest of the world catches up.
And now, he's ran out of tricks - and more importantly, on public support. He can't pivot any more, his entire brand is too toxic to touch.
I dont know, you could argue that maybe GM with the EV1 was the 'too early' EV and Tesla was just at the right moment. Same goes for SpaceX, The idea of a reusable launcher was not a new idea and studied by NASA. I think they did some test vehicles.
SpaceX is an excellent example of this phenomenon. Reusable rockets were "known" to be financially infeasible because the Space Shuttle was so expensive. NASA & oldspace didn't seriously pursue reusable vehicles because the mostly reusable Space Shuttle cost so much more than conventional disposable vehicles.
Similar to how Sears didn't put their catalog online in the 90's because putting it online on Prodigy failed so badly in the 80's.
Lucky for him, the US government is keeping him from being eaten alive in the USA at least.
I remember that one time we tried to drastically limit Japanese imports to protect the American car industry, which basically created the Lexus LS400, one of the best cars ever made.