The Ever-Controversial Elon Musk

I just met some of the people who built the transponder that SpaceX will launch into orbit around the Earth tomorrow morning, enabling, for the first time, the tracking of all aircraft around the world, even over water.  Readers may recall that we still don’t know what happened to international passenger flight Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that disappeared somewhere into the Southern India Ocean in 2014.

I asked these people their impressions of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, which may have been indelicate, but I felt I had nothing to lose.  As I expected, they had great things to say about his business contributions, Tesla in particular, but were unwilling to comment on his character.

I told them my opinion, that a) There is no question that what he’s done to promote the cause of electric transportation has been great, b) It’s a shame that someone with $150 billion can’t use some of it to solve the mega-problems we all face, and c) It’s deplorable  that he’s empowering Donald Trump to spread his messages to the world’s people.