Re: Optimistically...
> I know people who worship at the altar of Musk thing he can do anything, but his companies have never made any fundamental advances in the state in the art. They've taken the next obvious step.
That's the kind of the point - fundamental scientific advances in and of themselves dont benefit anyone until they become deployed technology. What is often the barrier to deployment? Cost. How does one reduce cost? Scale. Scaling spreads the development and tooling costs across many more customers, so each customer pays less.
So, Musk himself doesn't discover or invent things, but he has a clear idea of what technology he thinks would be beneficial and then organises companies to reduce the cost barrier to deployment.
Example problem: batteries are expensive, they would be cheaper if more people bought them, but they won't buy them until they are less expensive. Solution: invest in a sodding massive battery factory, invest in the scale to reduce costs and then reap the increase in demand. That's an organisational solution to an organisational problem.
So yeah, Musk only takes what engineers see as the next obvious step. However, markets and money don't see things the same way as engineers, which is a barrier to the next obvious step actually being taken. The skill set to get the financiers, the public, the government customers, the engineers et al to all see the next step as obvious, and then organise and finance the engineers to deliver it is not an engineering skill set as such - but it is invaluable none the less.
So, he uses the technique of talking about crazy far off things such as backing up your memories or going to Mars. Since those are so far off they cannot be destinations and can only be used as directions at this stage. And that is not a problem. I would follow the *direction* of North if I wanted to travel from Mexico to Canada, even though I had no great desire to go to the *destination* that is the North Pole. On my journey I might discover things that cause me to go West instead, or maybe settle down. It would be hubristic of me to assume I know everything about the journey before I take it. Never the less, if I ever do reach Canada I could learn more about the North Pole than I ever could in Mexico.
All navigators, and the Marquis de Sade, know that directions are often expressed in terms of far-off and unreachable destinations.