https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/...
>He borrowed all of my college texts on rocket propulsion when we first started working together in 2001. We also hired as many of my colleagues in the rocket and spacecraft business that were willing to consult with him. ... I found out later that he was talking to a bunch of other people about rocket designs and collaborating on some spreadsheet level systems designs for launchers. Once our dealings with the Russians fell apart, he decided to build his own rocket and this was the genesis of SpaceX.
Additional info from Jim from a follow-up interview[2]:
>Cantrell ... loaned him some textbooks to study. The books were "Rocket Propulsion Elements," "Aerothermodynamics of Gas Turbine and Rocket Propulsion," "Fundamentals of Astrodynamics," and the "International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems." He would quote passages verbatim from these books. He became very conversant in the material. ... Musk would absorb this information and then hold his own in conversations — and he didn't hold back.
Additionally, Ashlee Vance's biography [3] describes his day-to-day as "quite involved with rocket design" at SpaceX and goes into a lot of detail about spending time on the floor assisting SpaceX scientists with their designs.
Obviously any single person at a company the size of SpaceX doesn't individually design and build a rocket by themselves, but it's generally agreed upon that Elon is knowledgeable in rocket science and contributes many ideas to the designs.
[1] https://www.quora.com/How-did-Elon-Musk-learn-enough-about-r...
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-elon-musk-learned-rocket...
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/...
[0] - https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/...
Amazon link for anyone interested: http://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/0...
I suspect that the turmoil has been caused by the upcoming book http://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/0... and its dubious marketing strategy: http://uk.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-email-tesla-employee...
As you can see from a recent thread, It's easy to fall into the clichè of drama and hubris https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526362 Some users even imply he may be a sociopath.
We are not quite able to cope with the success of other people. We MUST find some kind of weakness, or tradeoff: this is why media love troubled geniuses. "Sure, Einstein was a great physicist, but did you know that [insert meaningless gossip]". It gives us the illusion of being morally superior, because of the false dichotomy between love/affection/community and money/mastery/fame.
The truth is somewhere between what the boosters want you to believe and what the detractors want you to believe. Elon's very smart and works incredibly hard, but has a serious ego problem and isn't pleasant to work for. A bit like Steve Jobs maybe.
No CEO can succeed without attracting talented people and inspiring them to excel, and Elon has been very successful at that. By working incredibly hard, thinking incredibly big, and setting high expectations, he inspires everyone else in the company. But he's also capricious in a way that demoralizes people and burns them out.
We like the story of a lone hero who does everything. But there are many people who worked at Elon's companies and played a key role, but feel underappreciated in a way that the author seemed sympathetic to.
The "people managing Elon" thing is true to a degree. It so happens that I've spoken to a couple employees (one SpaceX one Tesla) who both told me stories like this. (Specifically the two stories were something like: (1) "We adjusted the Tesla to optimize for the route Elon drives, even though that hurt autopilot performance overall" and (2) "We keep having to explain to Elon the basic probability math that explains the importance of continually testing rocket components")
At the same time, "he's mostly there to bring money and hype" seriously underplays his role. As an extreme analogy, imagine you had a toddler who told you "[Mommy/Daddy] I designed an awesome treehouse and I want you to build it". You keep saying you're busy and treehouses are impractical. But your toddler gets you to buy into their vision, and challenges you to overcome obstacles until an awesome treehouse is built. Even if you did all the work in this analogy, you have to give your toddler some credit. The power of visionary leadership and extreme determination was one of my big takeaways from the book -- again similar to Jobs with the "reality distortion field", I guess.
Social media moderation requires a humility and good judgement -- not Elon's strengths. But it's definitely not a coincidence that he's started so many successful companies.