Posted on 08/17/2018 9:27:52 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Elon Musk was at home in Los Angeles, struggling to maintain his composure. “This past year has been the most difficult and painful year of my career,” he said. “It was excruciating.”
The year has only gotten more intense for Musk, chairman and chief executive of the electric-car maker Tesla, since he abruptly declared on Twitter last week that he hoped to convert the publicly traded company into a private one. The episode kicked off a furor in the markets and within Tesla itself, and he acknowledged Thursday that he was fraying.
At multiple points in an hourlong interview with The New York Times, he choked up, noting that he nearly missed his brother’s wedding this summer and spent his birthday holed up in Tesla’s offices as the company raced to meet elusive production targets on a crucial new model.
(Excerpt) Read more at wral.com ...
My bad. Meant to write “probably spending more on attorney fees than paying their engineers”
...
OK. Do you have a source for that?
Just opinion. Sincerely hope that any Freepers who hold Tesla stock in any way, sell immediately. IMHO this company is facing imminent bankruptcy. Once Tesla files in Federal court for bankruptcy that stock goes from $300/share to near 0 in seconds.
I fully agree. Up to recently, I was a defender of Elon Musk. Politics aside, I like to see Americans entrepreneurs and inventors be successful. That's why I admire American innovators like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, etc., even though I despise their politics. I generally like to root for the home team.
But if I owned stock in any of Musk's ventures, I'd be dumping it right now. His own board of directors (at Tesla) is telegraphing us to do so.
For me, Musk jumped the shark a few months back when he lodged that bogus pedophilia charge against one of the cave rescuers when they wouldn't accept the equipment he tried to donate. (This was when those kids and their coach got trapped in a Thailand cave.)
That was your sign that things aren't right with this dude.
Every day the man is Higher than SpaceX
What’s with the unrelenting anti Elon crap on here all about?
No, and its debatable that he’s succeeded at anything even with subsidies.
He is a con man who conned the American people out of billions in subsidies because he was courted by Obama.
To quote Jeff Sika on last weeks Varney & Co., "Tesla is a dumpster fire."
“Spacex has felt like an off-the-books US space launch capability funded by deep state dollars for whatever they were going to use it for.”
And you know this how, exactly? Oh right, you don’t, like most Freepers you bad mouth a positive product of capitalism that has taken the lunch money from the entity that is actually funded directly by the deep state to simply exist whether they launch a damn thing or not, ULA. SpaceX is dominating the private launch sector because of their innovative reusable boosters, and oh yeah, they’re made in the US too, unlike the Atlas V’s engines.
There’s a large number of space denying freaks on FR who think SpaceX is a hoax or worse, they overlook the organization that is literally subsidized to simply exist, ULA, and pretend the SpaceX is that organization instead. Bunch of reality denying freaks.
The feds funded Spacex, for the most part.
It has SOME private funding, but the bulk of it is federal money.
What part of “they’re dominating the private launch sector” did you not understand? Yeah, they’re also dominating in WINNING government contracts because they can do the job cheaper than their competition. That’s what happens when capitalistic competition produces a disruptive new innovation.
Information is always good.
Yes. I agree.
However, they took loads of government money to get there in the first place. Period.
Loads of it.
Winning contracts is not the same as taking loads of money. It’s a contract for rendering a particular service. ULA takes loads of money every year to simply exist whether they launch or not. SpaceX is the only thing that has come along that might change that paradigm. You should be celebrating them, not vilifying, instead you’re towing the ULA party line because they line the pockets of Republicans instead of Dems. Pathetic.
Indeed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_in_spaceflight#By_rocket
The US is neck and neck with China for the number of orbital launches so far this year, due mostly to SpaceX. The Falcon 9 has had more launches this year than all other US rockets combined. In fact it’s basically double all others combined. It’s more than any other type of rocket anywhere in the world, when you break out the Chinese rockets by type (they’re all Long March rockets).
In terms of private vs public, I count 16 private customers of SpaceX launches this year. Some are repeated customers from multiple launches, others are multiple customers on a single launch carrying multiple payloads. I count Northrop Grumman in that since they contracted SpaceX to provide launch services for Zuma, though the payload itself was of course government. But even counting that launch, I count only 4 missions that have involved a US government payload so far this year. 10 other missions have been exclusively private customers. 1 mission flew a mix of private payloads and the US government GRACE satellites. So it’s pretty clear that the majority of SpaceX launches are currently coming from private companies.
This has taken huge amounts of business away from Russian launches, to the point that they’re pretty much openly stating they can’t compete and won’t even try to compete with SpaceX for launch services.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.