The optimization problem of hoverslamming a rocket is something that I can fairly easily wrap my head around. Even without the advances in convex optimization of solving that problem you likely could have done it with somewhat less robust approaches. I'm pretty certain that rockets could have been landed using the engineering pieces that existed in 2001 with incremental improvements and learning (maybe not as robust so your optimizer eats a few rockets in your first 100 landings).
When it comes to automated driving though you're really requiring solving entirely novel never-before-solved problems. If there is a spectrum between "found a company on doing some existing engineering twice as good" and "found a company on solving the Goldbach conjecture" then driverless cars are a bit more towards the latter than hoverslamming rockets is.
When it comes to automated driving though you're really requiring solving entirely novel never-before-solved problems. If there is a spectrum between "found a company on doing some existing engineering twice as good" and "found a company on solving the Goldbach conjecture" then driverless cars are a bit more towards the latter than hoverslamming rockets is.