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Suffice to say, a lot of the issues that I discovered back then which scared me shitless are no doubt part and parcel of what is driving Elon Musk in both Tesla and SpaceX. This was a guy who, before he founded Tesla, bought and totaled a McClaren F1. Somewhere between then and when Tesla was founded he had red-pill epiphany, which was around the same time for me. The smartest people alive today except for a few exceptions such as your Ray Kurzweils have become very concerned about the trajectory of population, resource use, and pollution on this planet.
Questor, I totally agree. No doubt Musk is highly intelligent and I too wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't realized the terrifying collision course we're on. I don't know if there's any stopping it, nor do I think I'll ever agree with how Musk went about it - creating a monster of a company with fingers in too many cash-burning pies (the cars, the semis now, the battery packs, buying SolarCity). As someone who likes the potential of renewable energies, I feel Tesla has become the public face of the entire renewable energy sector - and if Tesla goes bankrupt it'll set the entire industry back. Not to mention, I wonder how much investment money has gone into Tesla that potentially could've gone to other companies. Was Tesla a complete distraction? I don't know. But at the same time, at least he's trying something. Will it eventually be a stroke of genius or a complete folly. I guess only time will tell and we may not be alive when potentially our space-travelers discuss this. But damn, that cash-burn and manufacturing delays are terrifying as hell. My annoyance with him really might be because he doesn't have the bean-counter to balance him out.