this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2024
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Like electric cars, like reusable rockets...
Yep Elon famously invented the first electric car and the first reusable spacecraft. He did it in his garage with his own two hands!
Read your damn history.
SpaceX is basically 100% Elon's creation. He was founder, Tom Mueller (who designed the Merlin rocket engine) was the first employee period
Tesla was Elon and a few other people who had seen a good electric roadster, but it had been a one-off that that company was not going to produce. They decided they wanted to produce an electric roadster, so they did. Initially, Martin Eberhard was in charge of the company and Elon was just an investor. Search archive.org for the original Tesla blog. It's all laid out. I know this because I was following them while it was happening.
Eberhard was in charge, and they were going for a setup with a two-speed gearbox. There was to be no clutch, just a synchromesh to allow shifting. Problem is, shifting at 10,000+ RPM under heavy load is mechanically stressful, and they were having a lot of trouble getting the gearbox to work reliably. After a good year of screwing with this, they were burning through cash and not getting close to actually shipping a car. That's when Elon stepped in, pushed Eberhard out, and took over Tesla. Elon quickly switched to a setup with a single speed non-shifting gearbox (much easier to build, much less expensive, and will basically last forever as long as you lubricate it) and a larger and better cooled electric motor to deliver the required torque that they wouldn't get from a lower speed gear. That setup is still in use today in all Teslas.
Wow. What a visionary ๐
I'm not saying he's not an asshole. But he is a visionary.
And right now, if he wasn't up Trump's ass, you'd probably be saying he's a visionary without sarcasm.
He wasn't up Trump's ass like a month ago. That's a fairly recent development.
Okay Trump is recent, but his whole change of focus since buying Twitter is where public opinion on him shifted. That started a shift in public statement more toward the libertarian or perhaps conservative and that made him unpopular with a lot of the liberals who previously liked him for pushing environmental causes.
Now that he pushes conservative and libertarian ideals, supports a Republican candidate, he becomes persona non grata. That may well be valid, but it should not take away recognition of his other accomplishments. If he's now an asshole, he can be a visionary asshole. Becoming an asshole doesn't mean he isn't or wasn't a visionary.
Literally just read the article. Lmao