WI: Elon Musk dies in the hospital as a child

Back when he was he was in High School, Elon Musk was very heavily bullied, culminating in an instance wherein he got pushed down a flight of stairs and then beat until he blacked out. He ended up being hospitalized for his injuries. What if, instead of recovering, the young Elon had ended up dead from his injuries? I mean, to begin with, obviously no Tesla revolutionizing the electric car and no SpaceX doing the same for private space travel. That's not even mentioning the butterflies that will effect Paypal which Elon encouraged X.Com to focus on. That in turn will effect Youtube and Google and have massive butterflies across the internet as a whole. Your thoughts?
 

Archibald

Banned
Space-wise,

NASA COTS as initiated by administrator Mike Griffin in 2006 grew entirely independant from SpaceX (the goal was to take ISS logistics out of the Space Shuttle fleet that was to be retired in 2010)

Without SpaceX COTS nominees would be Kistler and Orbital Sciences. They are no SpaceX, but whatever happens, the commercial space wave started with COTS ten years ago and hasn't stopped yet. Sierra Nevada and its DreamChaser, Boeing CST-100 largely fill the void left by a stillborn SpaceX

As for recovery of the first stage Blue Origin was largely independant from SpaceX so it still exists
It remained in stealth mode for 10 years - noone believed in them, they missed every NASA COTS round - then in 2014 they come out of nowhere shaking both the suborbital race (take that, VG Galactic and XCOR) and rocket reusability (SpaceX)
 
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