> Ten amazing goals, and delivers on three is exactly how a con works

A very cynical take. I've tried and failed at many things, and succeeded here and there. Does that make me a con man? If you're not failing, then you aren't trying.

> is the cool stuff he does worth the negative externalities that he dumps on society?

Musk's Tesla is estimated to have saved 20,000 lives. And then there's Neuralink. And Starlink, which stepped in to help the hurricane Helene victims when FEMA fell flat.

> Musk like all the other current crop of American oligarchs are weakening America's grip on the world

That's quite a claim. I don't see any evidence of that.

> you know they're not credible. You know they exist to serve his financial interests and bolster his upcoming IPO with little regard for veracity or legality.

Assuming your arguments are so compelling that I must be secretly agreeing with you is the "false consensus fallacy".

My knowledge of von Braun comes from the book "V2" by Dornberger. As for the practical effect of the V2 program, see "Impact" by King. (Spoiler: the V2 program was enormously expensive yet ineffective, and shortened the war. It was ineffective because its guidance system was not accurate enough.)

Von Braun at one point was imprisoned by the SS and threatened with execution if he didn't stop dreaming about interplanetary flight and get busy with the military use of the V2.

Wikipedia's take on this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

Pretty much all the liquid fueled rockets of today can trace their lineage back to the V2. The Saturn V was a scaled up V2. Von Braun's team figured out all the crucial details of how to make a liquid rocket engine work:

1. boundary layer cooling

2. nozzle cooled by liquid oxygen, which also preheated the oxygen

3. baffles to prevent pogo-ing

4. turbo-pumps

5. first supersonic airframe

6. first guidance mechanism