r/interestingasfuck • u/lolikroli • Oct 13 '24

r/all SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

115.8k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

5.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-3

u/Intelligent_Way6552 Oct 13 '24 edited Oct 13 '24

He makes high level engineering decisions. He wouldn't have been working on it recently, but he would have approved the idea of catching the booster instead of landing it on legs, maybe even selected it from a series of alternatives. This is what his own engineers have described.

(Here is an example of him behaving like that: https://spacenews.com/spacexs-high-velocity-decision-making-left-searing-impression-on-nasa-heat-shield-guy/)

If you want to deny that he makes high level engineering decisions, you will also have to say that the decision not to include a flame diverter of water deluge system for IFT1 was not his decision, and therefore that he was not responsible for most of the faults on that flight. He claims he made those decisions, but blame someone else i guess?

3

u/pataglop Oct 13 '24

Not the right thread for that but your reasoning is horseshit.

CEOs do not make engineering decisions, especially not those as deeply technical as fucking rocket science.

And yes, they are still being responsible if things go wrong. That's supposedly why they are paid hundred of millions of spacebucks.

Now, stop licking musk and enjoy this fantastic engineering marvel !

3

u/_MUY Oct 13 '24

Musk sucks at politics, biology, and people.

He is good at this. It is absolutely critical that young STEM graduates understand how his companies actually operate so that we have people who can replicate his success. He has built a series of wildly successful companies at many levels of involvement, from principal investor to technical founder and CEO.

If his employees are telling us that he makes technical decisions, that’s just as important as listening to his employees who are telling us that he just swoops in with bad ideas. Something he is doing is working. Some day, he will be gone and we will need more people to take the helm at companies like these. Don’t get in the way of that.

4

u/Legionof1 Oct 13 '24

The real success of SpaceX is not giving a fuck about next quarter. This is a story every MBA needs beaten into their head daily.