alt Hacker News> no one in the established “expert” car companies thought that mainstream EVs were feasible
No executive in the established "expert" car companies had any reason to rock the boat. Establishing EVs as a credible alternative to ICEs required a build-out of charging infrastructure that none of them were willing to commit to. But non-established companies had no such risk, and the emerging companies in China would have developed no less quickly even if Tesla never existed.
> none of the clever brains spending billions in NASA, ULA, ArianeSpace, et al made a reusable commercial rocket a reality
All of them would have told you that there's nothing impossible about a reusable rocket, only that their customers were happily served by their current offerings. Without Starlink, there would be no commercial demand that would make up for the cost of R&D.
Yes. Musk and his colleagues revolutionised two technical and entrenched industries. You make it sound like this wasn't a difficult proposition.
> Without Starlink, there would be no commercial demand that would make up for the cost of R&D.
Not sure about this analysis.
a) SpaceX developed the Falcon 9 relatively cheaply - ~$300m to it simply being a viable launch platform (i.e. without reuse, Dragon, etc.)
b) NASA contributed to some of the costs.
c) SpaceX was already offering launch services cheaper than their competition before perfecting reuse or conceiving of Starlink.
Therefore it's likely that they'd have had a positive (albeit lower) business case and made back R%D costs over time, simply by offering launch services and capturing a majority of the market thanks to their lower prices. Reusability lowered their launch costs, when it came. Starlink was an answer to the question of how to capitalise on all of the cheap surplus launch capacity they'd made available.