He has so much money that he can keep doing it. And hire the best in the field - there’s no money in academia so of course they’ll go. And then he’ll take credit for their hard work eventually of course.

Screw Elon, but to be fair…that’s most business and science. You try, fail, adjust, try again, rinse and repeat until you find success.

Sometimes his project fails enough times that it starts working (space x).

That’s just the process of engineering that’s not an Elon thing that’s just an engineering thing. No one knew how to make reusable rockets that land on the launch pad so of course it was trial and error. The reason NASA would never do it is because it’s trial and error and Congress don’t want NASA blowing rockets up.

The Soviet space program was exactly the same and remember they got into space first.