He showed up to a bar in Lompoc,CA and spoke to all the lowly humans. My son was there, said Musk was "dam cool in person, not arrogant but fun"! Maybe he's got a persona for tv and one around the rabble like us?
We may not like the man but let's give him credit where credit is due. It took SpaceX, with their own development money, not Boeing, not Northrop, not Lockheed... with Government funding to get it done and doing it 10 times cheaper than flying the Space Shuttle to the ISS.
He needs to do reasonably priced cars for the masses, not over built hyper cruisers. Normal price, average 100+ mile range and a top speed 80mph which is more than enough. Maybe a city version, less range and lower top speed, no point lugging those batteries around. Someone else has 1 coming out £10K.
It will come. Remember the PC? Used to cost thousands now a few hundreds but thousands of times more capable. He is building cars like PCs.
But the shuttle was always more expensive than rockets though? Last I read, SpaceX could marginally do it cheaper than the Russians. Are you saying SpaceX does not rely on government contracts to stay afloat?
No, they funded their own development. Still needs some US Government customers to buy their products but many of their customers are commercial satellite companies. They also use their own launches to launch their own satellites and eventually provide satellite services - A vertical integrated business model, once upon a time successfully done by Hughes Aircraft to create a successful space communication businesses (DirecTV, PanAmSat. Hughes Network...). Marginally cheaper than the Russian is a monumental achievement. All other existing US rockets are way more expensive. That is why US satellite companies bought launches from Russia, France, even from China a few years back. Sea Launch, the US launch company actually bought Russian built rocket to launch satellites, acted only as a middleman.