Enough Musk Spam
For those that have had enough of the Elon Musk worship online.
No flaming, baiting, etc. This community is intended for those opposed to the influx of Elon Musk-related advertising online. Coming here to defend Musk or his companies will not get you banned, but it likely will result in downvotes. Please use the reporting feature if you see a rule violation.
Opinions from all sides of the political spectrum are welcome here. However, we kindly ask that off-topic political discussion be kept to a minimum, so as to focus on the goal of this sub. This community is minimally moderated, so discussion and the power of upvotes/downvotes are allowed, provided lemmy.world rules are not broken.
Post links to instances of obvious Elon Musk fanboy brigading in default subreddits, lemmy/kbin communities/instances, astroturfing from Tesla/SpaceX/etc., or any articles critical of Musk, his ideas, unrealistic promises and timelines, or the working conditions at his companies.
Tesla-specific discussion can be posted here as well as our sister community /c/RealTesla.
view the rest of the comments
Their rockets (Falcon 9) are literally the most reliable in history of spaceflight, and are still the only company that reuses rockets instead of building a new one for every flight - obviously a much cheaper approach, so they make boatloads of money. They made over 9 billion in 2023, likely more in 2024.
They do spend a lot on R&D, with all their test vehicle explosions as you noted, but this doesn't affect actual operations where profits are made.
Plus in addition to being a launch provider, they are now also bringing in ~4 billion a year through their ISP business (Starlink).
That being said, it doesn't explain Musk's wealth at all, it's still orders of magnitude away, so I'm as puzzled as you are.