[mission9]

Agreed. I listened to the skeptics about the prospects of Space X and Tesla. Man oh man, the other guys were just a bunch of lying hound dogs. Elon Musk, in the Space X early days, tried to buy rocket engines from Russia. They laughed. He tried to hire the best rocket scientist talent- they would not return his calls. So he had to be his own project manager. He hit the books, and now he has not just a rocket engine, but a PROCESS of continuous improvement for manufacturing rocket engines.

He humbly says that if he could have hired better talent, maybe Space X’s first two rocket launches would not have failed.

By comparison, the NASA legacy suppliers wares are like fireworks from China.

[Campion]

Longtime big government contractors (Boeing, Lockheed, etc.) grow fat and sloppy. They are used to a market in which they have maybe one other competitor, who is as fat and sloppy as they are.

Musk comes in with the mindset of a private-sector tycoon. He's going to leverage whatever he can to do more, do it better, do it faster, and do it with less $$.