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Elon Musk, an Industrialist For the 21st Century
pacopico writes "Elon Musk has just come off a pretty amazing run. SpaceX docked with the ISS. Tesla has started selling its all-electric luxury sedan, and SolarCity just filed to go public. Bloomberg Businessweek spent a few days with Musk and got a look inside his insane factories in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. It's like Willy Wonka time for geeks. Among the other proclamations in the story is Musk saying that he intends to die on Mars. 'Just not on impact.' Musk then goes on to describe a fifth mode of transportation he's calling the Hyperloop."
Bloomberg Businessweek spent a few days with Musk and got a look inside his insane factories in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles.
They're manufacturing insanity in America now? That explains a lot.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Fair play to him for building the factories in the USA and not the People's Republic of Communist China.
Paypal made a lot of money, which he has spent in interesting ways.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Insanity is cheaper than consent.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
PayPal is highly profitable. Even though Musk is no longer involved in the company, it helped to bankroll his future endeavors. SpaceX has the potential to be highly profitable, although its fortunes (at least initially) will be tied closely to the whims and political meanderings of NASA's budget.
Cool but I don't think it's fair to call him an industrialist.
So far, none of his ventures have made money.
I'll accept that critisism as soon as you can explain to me what is so worthwhile about gaining increasingly more value and wealth? He's already rich. Does it matter if he is turning a profit if he is able to continue doing many great things?
Well, with a Star Wars name, he'd hardly go for a 19th century industrialist. For that, he'd have to call himself George Stirling-Krupp or something like that.
Ezekiel 23:20
you have to wait until 2:15 but here is an interview with Elon Musk/walk-thru of the Tesla factory
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
No, building industries is central to being an industrialist. Making money is a whole other thing.
The "hyperloop" is not a launch loop, as I at first suspected. He describes it as
some sort of tube capable of taking someone from downtown San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes.
, so some sort of high-speed-rail-killer. First thought -- a brachistochrone-like evacuated tunnel?
Of course a cycloid, the true brachistochrone, would be too deep (~350 miles distance, so it'd be about 100 miles deep), possibly too much acceleration for comfort, and rather faster... It's a well-known proof (a classic example problem in typical 1st-year graduate maths or physics, if not undergraduate) that a frictionless straight-line tunnel connecting any two points through the Earth takes 42 minutes, and is suboptimal (aside from the antipodal case, where it coincides with the brachistochrone solution), so a 30-minute travel would be curved somewhat, but rather less than the true cycloid.
Paypal made a lot of money, which he has spent in interesting ways.
OK, so none of his enviable ventures have made money... I think PayPal could be one of the most universally loathed name in the tech community. Probably why it didn't show up in the summary, a good bit of /. would be trolling for "he's building rockets with money he stole from me" quips.
Neither did the John Galt Line
Well I'd rather have my stolen money be made into rockets than car elevators for his home.
Has it always been? I quite liked it when it first started up. It was a decent way to pay for things online, knowing fairly well you wouldn't get completely screwed either way. The issue with them is really their more recent actions.
If he's making money he's an industrialist.
If he's not then he's a philanthropist.
I think GP is merely arguing the word choice that's all.
Not entirely dependent on NASA. Check their launch manifest.
No, it is 100% correct to call him an industrialist. he IS building industries.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If he's making money he's an industrialist.
If he's not then he's a philanthropist.
I think GP is merely arguing the word choice that's all.
These two aren't antonyms, nor even mutually exclusive. I would agree that profit-seeking is a nearly ubiquitous goal of industrialists, but that is not the defining characteristic. Being involved in industry is.
Being an "industrialist" doesn't require seeking a profit anymore than a "business" requires profit. There are certainly "non-profit businesses", and the phrase "non-profit industry" should be familiar to most here.
Industrialists don't have to be robber barons in order to be industrialists.
According to the article, SpaceX is turning a profit.
Has it always been? I quite liked it when it first started up. It was a decent way to pay for things online, knowing fairly well you wouldn't get completely screwed either way. The issue with them is really their more recent actions.
Paypal is a company that wants to act like a bank (handling deposits, exchanges, etc) but doesn't want to be regulated like a bank (in all the bad ways). This has been controversial from pretty much the start, but yes things have been escalating since Ebay bought the company from Musk and Thiel. One particularly contentious issue has always been their somewhat capricious handling of fraud (or what they constitute as fraud) and their refusal to allow appeals or arbitration, effectively setting their own rules on when they can decide to perpetually keep money that has been deposited to them.
Not entirely tied to NASA - many private entities (Google Lunar X-Prize teams, for one) are aiming to launch using the SpaceX rockets as well
So far, none of his ventures have made money.
PayPal is profitable. Space-X is profitable. Tesla just needs to get their production volume up.
(Why is the factory being described as "insane"? It looks like a modern auto factory, although on the small side. The Space-X factory is interesting, because it doesn't look like a NASA operation. It looks like an aircraft factory. Space-X boosters can be set on their side and don't need a clean room for the whole booster. They made a decision to have a little more weight to get a more rugged item, and it seems to be working out well. Very Russian, actually.)
I'd say they must be two different things because a lot of money is made by disassembling industries.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
That idiot is going to die on Mars.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
SpaceX has been profitable for several years AFAIK.
... despite the "let's interview a billionaire" theme. The guy has clearly helped a long a lot of interesting stuff, and he's not done yet.
If they can ramp up production of the Tesla S without burning through all their cash, it would be an instant winner here in Denmark, if nothing else then because of our special tax rules for cars.
Considering the only evidence of that is a google street view picture of a hummer parked on the street next to his place, but not parked behind the gate on the actual property, you may be reading too much into things.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Considering he was a self made billionaire and didn't inherit what he lost I would have to say he is pretty damn smart and you might want to rethink how your life has gone so far.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
PayPal is highly profitable. Even though Musk is no longer involved in the company, it helped to bankroll his future endeavors. SpaceX has the potential to be highly profitable, although its fortunes (at least initially) will be tied closely to the whims and political meanderings of NASA's budget.
According to TFA, SpaceX is _already_ profitable, with a backlog of orders.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
I should've saw that one coming.
I studied international economics at George Washington, and have a law degree.
Didn't see that one coming...
you could say that all of them are speculative
they would like to make money, musk would like to make money, the railroad robber barons of old, the iconic image that pops to mind when i think industrialist, they would have liked to make money when they started a business venture
but they frequently lost their shirt. you wouldn't call them philanthropists because they spent a fortune to build a railroad line that promptly went bankrupt
likewise, if musk makes no money, he's not a philanthropist. he just started a business that failed, which happens most of the time
the difference is the scale and the machine-oriented subject of the venture. he is an industrialist, doing what they always do: take a giant risk with a fortune on a gamble involving a complicated outlay on tons of machinery and the long-term effort of a huge cast of engineers
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wait, wait, wait...So let me get this straight.
So SpaceX has launched a grand total of 6 rockets, first three failed. And only the last two were paying customers, and they are already profitable?
So two paying customers covered their entire development and operating costs and profit on top? And where can I get in on this high payback scam, sorry I mean business?
And Richard Branson needs to be taking notes seeing that the first two customers of his suborbital flight stint will turn it into instant money tree.
Such high innovation high risk activities used to be way more common till the 1980s. Look around you, Home Computers were made long before anybody believed there was a market for them, yet in the 1970s many companies just made and sold them. They did sell and a new industry was born.
Unfortunately that is a lot rarer now. Company only develop and build devices which are already proven to have a market. That's why there are virtually no new devices out there. The mobile device market, for example, is now more boring than it ever was. Virtually all the devices are precisely the same.
So, this is the wanker who created paypal and now we're all grinding on his loins? No thanks.
Wait, wait, wait...So let me get this straight.
So SpaceX has launched a grand total of 6 rockets, first three failed. And only the last two were paying customers, and they are already profitable?
They are profitable according to rules that the IRS has given to any business that engages in similar kinds of contracts. Money has been paid as a deposit for many of those flights, and hardware has been built for a great many of those rockets. That those rockets haven't flown yet is sort of a risk that those who are booking these flights are taking, but the recent successes that SpaceX has demonstrated seems to have paid off handsomely.
If SpaceX is just a fraud trying to jilt these customers, it won't stay in business much longer.... or is that what you are implying?
And by most outward indicators, the man doesn't even know how to fail.
Elon Musk came pretty damn close to folding up shop completely and needing to pull the plug on all of his companies. At one point he had no liquid assets of any kind and was technically bankrupt (about two years ago). If the article is to be believed mentioned in the original post, Elon invested in a Silicon Valley startup called Everdream (I've never heard of it, but Elon Musk was a major shareholder and initial investor) and that gave Elon Musk the liquid capital to float Tesla Motors past the initial start up problems, got the Roadster out to all of the customers that had paid deposits, and was able to help finance the flight of the Falcon 1 flight 4 which was necessary to convince their next customer that it could actually fly.
I'd call that a sort of rabbit hat trick and damn good luck, but Elon Musk certainly pushed the envelope of risk there. I'd say it also increased Elon Musk's net worth several fold. How many people can say that they own a major stake in an American automobile manufacturing company and a rocket launching company?