Elon Musk is an engineer and entrepreneur
Specifically, a software engineer. More specifically, a software engineer who hasn't practiced as one since he sold PayPal. He is not an aerospace engineer. He is not an electrical engineer. One of the first things they teach you in engineering is to never misrepresent yourself in a professional capacity. If you don't have a background in it, don't say a thing about it. Musk ignores this regularly.
Take Lisa Su. Excellent executive, who also used to be an electrical engineer. She doesn't call herself an engineer, or pretend to be one anymore. She presents herself as the CEO of AMD. Her background in electrical engineering helps her run AMD, usually by sniffing out the obvious BS as projects pass across her desk, but she is not spending her days in the labs or on the factory floors, physically designing and building processors. Musk needs to be more like Lisa Su if he wants more people to like him.
He doesn't just provide money and hype lol, he runs businesses in a directed way to enable real progress.
The guy at the very top is mostly responsible for closing deals, and providing a strategic direction to the company. AKA Money (deals) & hype (strategic direction).
His competitors aren't achieving the same progress that he is, that's for sure. I'm talking about past results that are measured instead of speculation (the so-called "hype" being his strong point in your opinion).
Look at Nissan, GM, and BMW. All of these were early entrants into the EV market but they were all outdone by Tesla in terms of vehicles sold.
A fair point about EVs.
His competitors aren't achieving the same progress that he is, that's for sure... Meanwhile in the rocket industry, Elon Musk has been able to make launching/landing the same rocket multiple times a common occurrence and no one else has been as successful.
Mostly because LHM/Boeing/ULA is the only other competitor, and prior to a few years ago, they could only afford to do R&D when the government asked them to develop a specific capability (at this point, they could maybe convince their investors to allow private R&D now that Falcon 9 is human-rated).
Being publicly traded severely limits a company's ability to invest in long-term R&D projects. Going public means a company now considers their products developed for the most part, and they'll be focusing on profit generation from then on.
There are exceptions, where investors will tolerate R&D that won't see a return on investment for years, but they're rare. So while SpaceX gets to live off of Musk's bankroll (I'll point out that they have never released a financial report, ever. They could be hemorrhaging money for all we know), LHM/Boeing/ULA has to live off of US government contracts, and can only do R&D when either the government pays for it, or the executive board manages to talk the major shareholders into tolerating private R&D efforts. ULA was never even going to get the chance to try building this kind of system until now, and they still won't unless their investors demand it, or the government decides that they want all their payloads on reusable rockets - and they decide they want a second source of reusable rockets (and Blue Origin fails to provide one).
You refer to one thing's success (Falcon 9) and then say it's unproven by pointing to a rocket under development. Of course Starship is unproven, it's still being prototyped and tested.
Focusing on the Falcon 9, a majority of its launches in the last three years have been with reused vehicles. It's had over 60 subsequent successful launches with the last failure in 2016. There have been only 3 landing failures in this time with lessons learned each time, so while it's not >99% successful yet, it's >90% successful. This is proven technology.
I made no reference to any of this. I have no problem with SpaceX's or Tesla's technology. My objection is to Musk as an "engineer" and the people who worship him as such.
Musk is a business man, nothing else, and has been this way for years.
