People really under estimate how important he is to SpaceX.
Reusing f9 1st stage - His initiative
Landing f9 on a barge - His initiative.
Making Starship Stainless Steel - His initiative
Catching Starship booster on chopsticks - His initiative.
The list goes on and on.
Without someone like him pushing for these radical things that everyone else thinks is impossible or a bad idea we wouldn’t recognize what SpaceX would be.
Instead we have things like starliner which is a disaster, and blue origin which started before SpaceX and has never reached orbit.
SpaceX would slowly transform back into ‘old space’ if he was forced out as there are very few people willing to take the risks he takes.
Edit: and it’s even very possible that the wrong CEO takes SpaceX public too soon which would make all the risk taking and fail fast development cycle they use impossible. Think of the stock crashing when a test flight fails and the pressure from investors around that.
Reusing f9, landing F9 on barge, and Stainless steel were his initiatives. The SS one was a particularly hard win for him with a lot of internal push back.
Catching Starship on the chopsticks might have been an idea he heard outside of SpaceX, but that he then championed, I’m not 100% about that though.
Those are just examples though. And I’m sure there are time as you suggest that people suggest an difficult idea that he then champions as well.
People really under estimate how important he is to SpaceX.
Reusing f9 1st stage - His initiative
Landing f9 on a barge - His initiative.
Making Starship Stainless Steel - His initiative
Catching Starship booster on chopsticks - His initiative.
The list goes on and on.
Without someone like him pushing for these radical things that everyone else thinks is impossible or a bad idea we wouldn’t recognize what SpaceX would be.
Instead we have things like starliner which is a disaster, and blue origin which started before SpaceX and has never reached orbit.
SpaceX would slowly transform back into ‘old space’ if he was forced out as there are very few people willing to take the risks he takes.
Edit: and it’s even very possible that the wrong CEO takes SpaceX public too soon which would make all the risk taking and fail fast development cycle they use impossible. Think of the stock crashing when a test flight fails and the pressure from investors around that.
Are those examples actually his initiative, or him championing someone else’s idea?
Reusing f9, landing F9 on barge, and Stainless steel were his initiatives. The SS one was a particularly hard win for him with a lot of internal push back.
Catching Starship on the chopsticks might have been an idea he heard outside of SpaceX, but that he then championed, I’m not 100% about that though.
Those are just examples though. And I’m sure there are time as you suggest that people suggest an difficult idea that he then champions as well.