He's a crafty businessman who have noticed there are different ways of doing things. It's switching working models that's all. SpaceX is here after years and years of failures and step by step progress. It won lots of funding. It does things differently to NASA and the other major contractors used by NASA. I wouldn't attribute everything to Elon himself but it obviously wouldn't be possible without him. Or at least take some time.
He got himself a pretty good team. But I think saying he had nothing to do with the success of the company is near sighted. Just look at what happened with Blue Origin, a company founded earlier, with more money than SpaceX. They are still stuck in low earth orbit. SpaceX had a viable development model and commercial model and that is one reason why they succeeded.
The same thing could be said about Tesla. It was a niche company which basically integrated existing components in a really expensive car before he got to head the company. After he went in they started manufacturing their own cars, not just assembling kits. Major difference.
He's offloaded plenty of failed ideas and things just had no chance of working until breakthroughs and economic problems associated are solved. SpaceX is successful here and now because the right amount of money have been thrown at the right people with the right organisation. It could be better of course but it could be also much worse.
SpaceX and Tesla had their own issues, and some of them we can blame on Elon's decisions. For example, the Tesla Roadster had to spend huge resources on a large recall because the transmissions broke. This was because Elon insisted the car had to have a manual transmission against the advice of the engineering team. This nearly killed the company. He fired the CEO then because of that recall and put himself in his place when he himself was to blame. The Tesla SolarCity purchase was also a massive scam. With regards to SpaceX proper, they should have gone with regeneratively cooled engine nozzles earlier, but I personally think that was a minor problem.
The US has a lot of talent and attract plenty abroad. In fact nowadays, a disproportionately high number of US tech industries is not only led by and founded by foreigners, they are run and worked by foreign borns and even foreign educated. Some industries it's nearly half. I'm saying SpaceX isn't a miracle and isn't that impressive considering it's major claim to awesomeness is its re-usable tech that it's pioneered into success further than anyone else has in the past. That's literally it. US space contractors have built the Saturn V and F1 engine. It's long had working capsules and space firsts that match the Soviets and Russians in impressiveness. The talent, institutions, organisation was always there along with the size of funding. SpaceX did not that much more than rebrand it all, and reorganised with "privately" driven goals rather than purely government ones - it wants to put people on Mars (apparently Elon's personal mission) and provide contracting service to public programs and missions.
You can say that for much of the US commercial industry to be honest. The semiconductor industry was initially all military oriented. Try reading about the life of Seymour Cray for example.
So what's interesting with SpaceX is the incentive model being changed rather than its abilities and technology developed which of course is impressive. But the US was always impressive and mostly moving forward with impressive speeds, after Von Braun and Project Paperclip... and importing "the Martians".
Some of the SpaceX technology is impressive. Their vehicles have a really small dry mass fraction and are terribly cheap to manufacture. That in itself is an engineering feat. A lot of people talk about Von Braun, but to be honest the Soviets did the same thing. That is how they were the first to manufacture proper air defense missiles like the S-75 Dvina. They had the German Wasserfall missile team. The lead they got in these kinds of systems still exists today. The Soviets also had the first uranium centrifuges because of German researchers. But if you look at it, the F-1 engine used in the Saturn V was designed by US engineers and the Soviet R-7 rocket's engine was designed by Soviet engineers.
Now find me a Chinese billionaire who is actively working for China and trying to break western "chokeholds" on various industries...
None that I can think of to be honest. But even Elon had to be an import.
They are hoarding billions and dont move a finger to help China achieve its goals
Elon threw millions and millions into SpaceX with slim chances of succeeding (he said that he thought he had 10% chance of succeeding).
So where all these Chinese billionaires throwing money into IC, Aircraft, Brain Interface Devices (?) etc ?
Well, it is a lot easier for a US company to get talent for such projects than in China where most of that kind of work is probably classified. China has to figure out some way to solve this problem. It is a lot easier to license government researched tech and put it into the commercial sector in the US.
They are all sitting at their thumbs and waiting for the Gov to throw some subsidies, make some half-hearted effort and then pocket the money
The Chinese Gov has been begging for domestic IC tech development for decades. Where were all these "very patriotic" billionaires while China needed IC tech
You had the "Princeling" son of Jiang Zemin and now you have Taiwan expats (SMIC) basically.
So how are elon's hyperloop and boring company doing? His fans are just as deluded as the hyper himself.
You should notice that Elon threw the idea out there but never put any of his own money into it. All these Hyperloop companies out there aren't owned by him. That should be telling you enough. The Boring Company and Hyperloop are retarded concepts to derail high-speed rail development in the US and/or to sell more EVs. That tunnel they made in Las Vegas is particularly ridiculous. They did not even bother making autonomous vehicles for the circuit. It is basically a hugely expensive Tesla EV theme park ride.
