So I just looked up Boeing because I wanted to say “there’s an aerospace engineer who got filthy rich” but in fact Boeing was a timber magnate who bought a plane as a toy, and then when it broke said “well, I could probably make my own plane” and did. While “investor interest” is probably a factor here, it’s probably a lagging indicator instead of a leading indicator; it’s because investors aren’t interested in funding nuclear power plants we can tell they were a bad idea 5 years ago, not 5 years from now.
There’s technology that you can develop without much investor interest like most consumer internet companies. That’s not true for SpaceX.
When William E. Boeing founded Boeing Company in 1916 the amount of regulation in the space was a lot less then it’s post-1970 and the amount of investment needed to start an airplane company was likely much lower then today.
So I just looked up Boeing because I wanted to say “there’s an aerospace engineer who got filthy rich” but in fact Boeing was a timber magnate who bought a plane as a toy, and then when it broke said “well, I could probably make my own plane” and did. While “investor interest” is probably a factor here, it’s probably a lagging indicator instead of a leading indicator; it’s because investors aren’t interested in funding nuclear power plants we can tell they were a bad idea 5 years ago, not 5 years from now.
There’s technology that you can develop without much investor interest like most consumer internet companies. That’s not true for SpaceX.
When William E. Boeing founded Boeing Company in 1916 the amount of regulation in the space was a lot less then it’s post-1970 and the amount of investment needed to start an airplane company was likely much lower then today.