What's interesting is dozens of message on HackerNews and nobody links to any type of studies or evaluation of Elon's work, just repeating is selling point that because the tunnel is smaller, it will be cheaper. Public transportation and cost is a very well studied topic internationally (outside the US) and we can't just assume that for a fact. Actually, boring is actually not the most expensive part of building a subway. Even this idea of saving 10x the amount of money, actually just works when you compare with other US subway construction projects. Close to 10x saving has already been achieved in Spain and in South Korea, and surprise, it didn't need some new fancy technology.
He has revolutionized payload delivery to space w/t significant cost savings, pushed most of the major auto manufacturers into converting their product lines mostly/entirely to electric, and is slowly building out models of what battery storage grid-load-balancing looks like all over the world (which will be essential as we transition to irregular flow clean energy sources). How you can possibly say these are PR stunts is so far beyond me I wonder if we inhabit the same planet.
A few companies had built extremely compromised electric vehicles (Leaf, e-Golf, etc) with anemic range. No one built a 200-300 mile range electric sedan with the best in-class performance and best safety features seen in an auto to-date. (speaking of crash safety, not Autopilot).
Asking how much energy the on-grid batteries have saved is a non-sequitur. That's like asking how much energy Tesla automobiles have saved. Probably very little, but that is irrelevant in the grand scheme. The short-term (1-2 yr) question of energy saved doesn't matter. The long-term (10-50) question of "is this pushing the entire industry in a better direction" is the important question. I think it is Yes for on-grid battery storage, as it is Yes for Tesla automobiles, as it is Yes for reusable rockets for space transit. Must take the long view.
There's certainly a middle ground, however. You can appreciate the ground-breaking work done at SpaceX and the fact that Tesla helped drive the demand for practical, desirable electric vehicles without falling victim to hype machine. Being skeptical of say, the Tesla autopilot claims should not make you deny the real accomplishments done by his companies.
What SpaceX did and does for Space Explpration is far beyond what anybody has even dreamed since the 80s. He has revolutionised the Space industry.
You can listen to everybody from austronauts, CEO of companies (Tory Bruno), people from NASA and CNES, startup space companies and so on. Pretty much all of the agree on how great these achivments are.
But sure, its just a cult and non of theae people understand anything about the space industry.
Go to r/spacex and tell me its "fake".
It seem the issue here is that you went to far in one direction and now you backlashed in the other.
In comparison SpaceX's approach is actually quite conservative (multi-stage, cylindrical, unmanned, liquid fueled rocket). The big difference being that they actually got them flying commercial missions! Plus it turns out that their main advantage (effective reusability) is such a big win that (a) it allowed a startup to leapfrog established military/industrial players and (b) forces everyone to treat reusability as a priority (e.g. adding it to roadmaps, or justifying why they can't).
I'm excited to see how their projects like BFR go, but SpaceX's biggest contribution might turn out to be shaking up the industry enough to start trying out ideas which were previously shelved as being too radical.
Great article here: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2017/12/15/elon-musks-ide... Basically