Getting lucky (Paypal) and being a good grifter (Tesla) does not equal having brains. At most, if one wanted to be generous, you could say SpaceX was a venture made at an opportune time, but I would attribute that less to brains than luck, since the driving impetus for its founding was not "NASA is phasing out certain services which private companies will need to pick up" but "I just got rich and now I want to fund space exploration." Which, to be fair, is better than what most people do when they first get rich - but is hardly proof of intelligence.

[–] afraid_of_zombies 2 points 1 year ago

SpaceX should have been a failure.

The US lost its primary source of engines and one of its main launch providers
the US was between rockets
Obama space advisors groked that the more people involved with space the higher the chance programs don't get cut. Hence private launch contracts.
every other country that can do something in space lost interest for decades but still had needs.
Wall Street scumbags took over Boeing.
they hired obsessed talent in the beginning.

Any of those things hadn't happened when they did and it would have been failure. Only one of them is because of something they did.