I'm curious to know if there's any general attitude or consensus, whether positive or negative (envy, contempt, skepticism, respect, rivalry, etc.). And has it changed over time as SpaceX has hit new milestones?

Or does it perhaps depend on the age of the engineer? Or their personal feelings toward Musk in general? Or whether their livelihood is tied to preserving the status quo with respect to government contracts, etc.?

My question is motivated by a conflicting set of assumptions that I'm curious to reconcile. On one hand, presumably most people who go into aerospace engineering are personally excited by space exploration, and presumably many have been disappointed by the lack of progress after the Apollo era. In this light, SpaceX's success with reusable rockets, and their plans for low-cost heavy launch systems and Mars colonization should be, at a minimum, very exciting. And beyond that, perhaps light a fire for engineers to want to quit their current employment and seek jobs at SpaceX or other space startups.

On the other hand, based on my own experience with several such firms (circa 2000), I've never met a group of more risk-averse, change-phobic, stodgy, ossified-thinking, "it can't be done" people in any industry, ever (including automotive and pre-breakup Ma Bell telecom, so that's saying something). Presumably there was a long history of incentive structures to engrain and reinforce such a culture, but I'm speculating. And the famous negative responses of Apollo astronauts to Musk's plans makes me wonder if their attitudes are representative of generational institutional biases.