I rather agree with this. I love that there exists one person with a lot of cash, and technical chops, and the right attitude. That's rare and powerful. But as someone fairly familiar with the space industry I do see a lot of gushing nonsense on HN whenever SpaceX comes up, about how [rocket feature xyz] 'could never' be invented by a government agency when infact in several such cases of drunk-on-koolaid the [rocket feature xyz] isn't new and specifically was invented by NASA or the russians in the 60s. Or similar. Once or twice I've tried to correct these comments [1] but I usually don't as it just feels like pissing into the wind. SpaceX more or less got what was left of the FASTRAC engine[2] work given to them by Nasa as a starting point. Infact, the turbopumps in SpaceX's merlin engines, which most rocket engineers will tell you is the hardest bit to design in a rocket engine, are built by someone else (Barber Nichols), who also made the one for FASTRAC [3].

But this isn't a criticism - it's precisely what they should be doing and what I would do in the same situation! It would be madness not to start from a known working configuration (designing a rocket engine is a massive game of high dimensional parameter whack-a-mole, it's very difficult to get a passable configuration without a lot of iteration and forwards-backwards passes). They're trying to massively lower the cost of space access, and you don't do that by trying to redevelop everything from first principles. It's bloody clever to learn everything you can from people in Nasa who are willing to help you and are pissed off that their own beaurocracy won't let them do it themselves. But it's a far cry from the narrative that people on this site sometimes try and suggest, which is that Musk came out of the woods one day with technically revolutionary launcher-industry-disrupting rockets, catching Nasa by surprise. It is simply not true. He has some technical chops of course but his real strength was getting good people already doing interesting things (eg Tom Mueller, SpaceX head of propulsion) and get them all under one roof with his money and focus, and talking to as many people as possible to keep the string taught and avoid going down dead-end allies. This can't be done in a vacuum.

So the reason for this comment is to illustrate that people seem to be discarding their critical faculties when it comes to Musk, and getting carried away with excitement to the point of being irrational. That simply shouldn't be allowed to happen in a community like this, whose signal to noise ratio is, in other respects, among the highest on the web.

I don't know why it is, maybe it's because people think he's a good example of someone winning the game that they're playing (web widgets for a huge payout so they can work on something they think is more meaningful) but I'm sure he's the exception that proves the rule about web start-ups. I've certainly seen comments on SpaceX threads where people get defensive about their social thingamie because one day the payoff will let them work on real problems too. But this seems silly to me if that's the actual reason, as improbable as a hobby tennis player making a career plan that requires him to win Wimbledon. If you actually want to work in some field that holds you passion, and that's not what you're doing now, consider carefully if your long term plan is as unrealistic as my caricature above. Especially if it's space, stuff is really damn exciting right now. Take a look at something like Reaction Engines [4] in the UK, who just this week announced successful testing of their precooler. Have a look at the video on their website - this really really is revolutionary stuff, not taking existing tech and doing it faster+better+cheaper, but inventing really game-changing, throw-out-the-rule-book technology (I'm gushing now, irony). If I wanted to do something exciting in space, I think I'd be far more likely to be able to make a dent in the universe by going to work for someone like these guys or SpaceX than by some dream about billion dollar buyouts.

Whatever, I've digressed from my point which is that I think a lot of people are wearing the kool-aid version of beer-goggles, which are distorting their vision. Elon has done same fabulously praise-worthy stuff, his accomplishments stand up on their own merits without us (seemingly sometimes wilfully) losing perspective or distorting the context in which they were achieved.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3723065
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastrac_(engine)
[3] http://www.barber-nichols.com/products/rocket-engine-turbopu...
[4] http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/