Give Elon His Due

Have Elon Musk’s politics and controversies blinded critics to the significance of his achievements? (NYT)

The latest: On Sunday, Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched a 233-foot rocket booster, returned it to its launch site and caught it with mechanical arms in what New York Times reporter Kenneth Change called “a feat of technical wizardry.”

• Way back in 2013, Musk said figuring out how to make a rocket reusable was one of the keys to dramatically reducing the cost of space travel.

• Musk aims for the first crewed missions to Mars in late 2026, contingent on more technical progress, including refueling Starship - SpaceX's next-generation, fully reusable spacecraft - in orbit.

• Last week, Musk’s Tesla generated a wave of buzz by unveiling prototypes for a robotaxi (set to go into production in 2026 at a retail cost of less than $30,000) and robovan.

Aged like milk: Weeks before the SpaceX breakthrough, the left-wing New Republic reposted a December 2023 story which characterized Musk as “a small man who is simply not very good at anything.”

More: By a 6-4 vote, the California Coastal Commission on Thursday denied the Air Force’s plan to let SpaceX launch up to 50 rockets per year from Vandenberg Air Force Base, a decision based partly on Musk’s tweets and politics.

• Commissioner Gretchen Newsom: “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet.”

• Commission Chair Caryl Hart: “…we’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race and he’s managed a company in a way that was just described by Commissioner Newsom that I find to be very disturbing.”

• Last year, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit alleging SpaceX had discriminated against refugees and asylum seekers in its hiring practices.

Related: Early on in his presidency, Joe Biden famously snubbed Musk and Tesla, declining to invite him to a 2021 electric vehicle summit, where he told GM’s CEO, “You electrified the entire automobile industry. I’m serious. You led, and it matters.”

• At the time, Tesla held roughly two-thirds of the U.S. EV market.

Bubba’s Two Cents

I can understand why some people might not like Musk’s politics or find his troll-ish persona and juvenile and tasteless tweets grating. But, if I were an advocate for the environmental causes he supports, I wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. The same goes for people who want to downplay his achievements or mobilize the bureaucracy to take potshots at his companies. Whatever the guy’s faults, his fiercely individual spirit, his almost childlike drive to do seemingly impossible things like put humans on Mars, reminds me of the best parts of America.