Creating new things in the real world, Musk, Tesla Spacex etc....

I'm a space geek, much of my social interaction is with other space geeks.
A lot of these people worship what Spacex and Elon have accomplished.

At the same time I've been more and more convinced that Tesla is going to fail.
This causes some significant personal cognitive dissonance.

The following is my attempt to work this out ...

Making a new thing is hard. You will fail, over and over again, you will fail.
Edison tried thousands of light bulb filaments before he found one that worked.

One of the really cool things about spacex is that they let you see them fail.
The blooper reel of landing attempts is outstanding.
Attempting to do something new and hard will have failures.
Trying something new in engineering or in business will have failures.

Because of Spacex:

• We now know that first stage reuse can make sense.
• We now know that the iterate fast model of engineering works for at least some of the  aerospace world.
• Supersonic retro propulsion works.
• You can (given the right engineering team ) built rockets for a tiny fraction of what the big aerospace primes charge.

All of this is new information in the world due to Spacex efforts.
Everything above this line is engineering....

We still don't really  know that the Spacex way will work in a business sense.
Recent layoffs and recent failed funding raise make this more questionable than it was 12 months ago. (Its clear that  the business case for the large aerospace primes, does not  work absent billions in direct government subsidies)

From an engineering stand point Spacex has been somewhat innovative....
SpaceX  have either surpassed or are approaching 50% of the total world wide launches.
In my opinion (if ancillary things like tesla don't take it out) Spacex will survive long term and the world will be a better place because of that. (see my earlier dialog on why space matters).

The space business has been run for a long time by cost plus contractors working for governments.
This is not a place where innovation thrives.

The Car business on the other had has been a brutally competitive market with microscopic  margins fought over by  efficient international behemoths. Its a hard brutal world.

Tesla managed to crack open that market and with the S and X, they  delivered  a well received  high end quality product that changed the perception of the world. Now every one of those behemoths is planning an EV. Just having a shot at this is a huge achievement...

Some how the engineer Elon that allows us to see spacex failures, has been unable to admit to the world that their are also business failures. By any unbiased measure Solar City was weeks from failing when Tesla bought it.  This burdens Tesla with a millstone that makes the difficult task of breaking into the brutally competitive car market even harder.

Watching the Engineer Elon do magic things at spacex I greatly admire  what he/they have accomplished.   Watching the Business Man Elon commit what looks very much like Fraud to save a failing business I do not admire.  Business ethics matter and used to matter to Elon (see his several year old  tweet about debts and personal responsibility for Solar City Debits) 

Some how the pressure to not have the business fail has pushed pushed Elon to do things that cross the ethical line in a way that has caused me to loose my respect for Business Man Elon...

The Big ones :

• Solar City Purchase and fraudulent Solar roof presentation.
• Model 3 production guarantees on the eve of big Tesla Bond Raise.
• Screwing over his devoted customer base with the crappy quality M3 and things like not refunding deposits.
• The $420 Funding secured Tweet and subsequent response.
• The flipping the Bird at the SEC taunting tweets.
• The recent guidance on Tesla that just does not pass the smell test.
• The Fraudulent Guarantees in the Buffalo Solar city Factory morass.
• Treatment of personnel (At both Spacex and Tesla) You can only run in start up panic mode for so long before it destroys people. I have many space friends that have left Spacex because of the relentless pressure.

It is my opinion that Tesla is very close to failing and will fail in the next 24 months.

It is my hope that this does not destroy Spacex. Elon has generated significant personal liabilities in his Tesla dealings, and if Tesla fails the only real Asset Elons owns is spacex. Spacex will be a very different and less dynamic place when its owned by plaintive s lawyers rather than Elon.

I find the whole affair sad.  I wish Elon had stuck to Spacex and just focused there.

I know that some of my followers that see the Spacex brilliance  and subscribe toe the "Saint Elon can do anything" view will rush in to defend Tesla.
I don't want to rehash that argument here. lets us just agree to disagree and we will know who is correct in 18 months or so.