Because the engineers wouldn't have come anywhere close to achieving their dreams without a rich kid who made money from Paypal and was open to spending it all on hard engineering problems instead of living a good retirement life.
Tom Mueller, arguably one of the key engineers behind the success of SpaceX and designer of the Merlin engines, was working at TRW in a role not related to rocket engines before he was at SpaceX. He was building the rockets out of his garage for fun, until Musk convinced him to join him in what was considered a crazy idea back then.
Lars Blackmore, the engineer who was key in developing the the control algorithms needed for landing Falcon vertically was working at NASA, where his work was in theory going to be applied on a future space mission of much smaller scope compared to Falcon. He was able to apply his research (http://larsblackmore.com/iee_tcst13.pdf) on a revolutionary reusable system that changed the launch industry only because a rich kid was willing to spend his money on testing what seemed like always failing rockets, instead of buying a new Yacht.
> Tom Mueller, arguably one of the key engineers behind the success of SpaceX and designer of the Merlin engines, was working at TRW in a role not related to rocket engines before he was at SpaceX.
This is what Wikipedia says about Tom Mueller at TRW
>For 15 years, Mueller worked for TRW Inc., a conglomerate corporation involved in aerospace, automotive, credit reporting, and electronics. He managed the propulsion and combustion products department where he was responsible for liquid rocket engine development.[1] He worked as a lead engineer during the development of the TR-106, a 650,000 lbf (2,900 kN) thrust, throttled, cost-contained hydrogen engine designed in 2000.
This comment says more about capitalism than it does about Musk, if everything depends so much on the whims of rich kids, and everyone else lives or dies by those whims, including the engineers who are forced to sell their dreams and their labor to said rich kids.
Tom Mueller, arguably one of the key engineers behind the success of SpaceX and designer of the Merlin engines, was working at TRW in a role not related to rocket engines before he was at SpaceX. He was building the rockets out of his garage for fun, until Musk convinced him to join him in what was considered a crazy idea back then.
Lars Blackmore, the engineer who was key in developing the the control algorithms needed for landing Falcon vertically was working at NASA, where his work was in theory going to be applied on a future space mission of much smaller scope compared to Falcon. He was able to apply his research (http://larsblackmore.com/iee_tcst13.pdf) on a revolutionary reusable system that changed the launch industry only because a rich kid was willing to spend his money on testing what seemed like always failing rockets, instead of buying a new Yacht.