I tend to believe the father since the son’s obviously exaggerating and because that stunt with the space car was definitely childish - albeit funny - not to mention wasteful.
I said that on a thread about the launch and was well flamed.
I’m glad that I am not the only one that thought it was a waste of a good booster.
Self-promotion is all that stunt was.
“to believe the father since the son’s obviously exaggerating and because that stunt with the space car.”
It was a test flight so it couldn’t have a $1 billion payload so was he supposed to do, just send up a chuck of concrete like our wasteful government? He did it for marketing and it worked out well and even you are still talking about it. Musk had a marketing coup and set American kids to dreaming again so I consider it genious.
The stunt with the car was genius.
Most demo flights carry concrete or water as ballast. Instead, Musk got free advertising for both his companies that may have a value that will pay for the development cost of the rocket over time.
The story I read was that SpaceX offered NASA an opportunity to put a payload on the rocket, and NASA declined. Then SpaceX offered the Air Force an opportunity to put a payload on the rocket, and the Air Force also declined.
Ordinary satellite investors didn't want to risk putting a 100 million dollar satellite on an experimental rocket, so they all declined.
The rocket still needed a payload to demonstrate what it was capable of, so Musk decided to launch his own personal car on the rocket because he knew it would be talked about, and therefore would be a good marketing scheme. Yes, they could have loaded concrete weights on the payload, but as a marketing tool, the car and manikin were a stroke of brilliance.
Now that the rocket worked as promised, other parties will not be so skittish about taking a risk with their expensive payloads.