Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: amorphous

Musk lives off taxpayers and is a carnival barker.

Tesla is a failure and he did not deliver one ventilator....but got lots of press for saying he would build them.


2 posted on 04/27/2020 1:36:28 PM PDT by Erik Latranyi (The Democratic Party is communism)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: Erik Latranyi
Musk, like most entrepreneurs, is full of energy and ideas but a hit or miss proposition as to implementation, followup, and whether hot ideas actually become viable, profit-making businesses over the long term.

Musk's Space-X is a genuine and formidable success that reinvigorated the US launch industry with cheap access to orbit based on reusable launchers. This has set competing Russian, Chinese, and European launch businesses back on their heels. Largely because of Space-X and Musk, the US is again leading the world in providing access to space.

Yes, Musk received subsidies for doing that, but they were competitively awarded by the US government to accomplish national objectives. In the early phase of development, for sake of national and industrial development, the US government also subsidized travel by steam, rail, auto, and aircraft.

The federal subsidy for carrying airmail was essential to airline survival for many decades. As Eddie Rickenbacker's autobiography revealed, during the Depression Eastern Airlines would send packages of rocks and scrap metal by air so as to keep the business going based on the federal airmail subsidy.

Notably, the federal government began subsidizing newcomers to the launch business like Musk's Space-X because the established aerospace giants like Boeing and Lockheed-Martin were milking the taxpayers while failing to develop cheap reusable launchers as promised. In the long term, subsidizing Musk was a better deal for the taxpayers than getting robbed forever by the cozy LockMart-Boeing duopoly.

As for Musk's Tesla auto and his hyperloop projects, both remain works in progress. There is no doubt that electric autos will one day be a fully viable and cost-effective form of travel, but it is not clear that Tesla will be one of the survivors in the business. As for Tesla's visionary hyperloop concept, there are major technical and practical obstacles, but the concept continues to draw independent interest from experts and entrepreneurs.

8 posted on 04/27/2020 2:29:45 PM PDT by Rockingham
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]

To: Erik Latranyi

“Tesla is a failure ...”

I am certainly not a Musk fanboy, but Tesla is technologically far ahead of every other US assembled EV in the market. Whether he can make money on it is another matter but, then again, it is not clear that Ford or GM can make money on EVs either.


10 posted on 04/27/2020 3:03:39 PM PDT by riverdawg
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]

To: Erik Latranyi

yea....ok


12 posted on 04/27/2020 4:34:30 PM PDT by mowowie ( day)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson