5 ms·

Is Elon Musk trying to do too much too fast?

45 points by endswapper 10y ago

themgt 10y ago
Everyone can have their own opinion regarding how many rockets and African internet satellites and Tesla drivers and astronauts are worth risking to push technology as far as fast as Musk can. What's harder to argue, I think, is that Musk has pushed right up near the line where one or two more lost SpaceX rockets or dead Tesla drivers could send many of his plans into a tailspin. There's almost a feel like Steve Jobs in 1985, sword of damocles hanging overhead. History may prove Musk "right" as it did Jobs, but he nonetheless similarly risks losing quite a lot, as do we all in a sense.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- aries1980 10y ago
  Does his companies have Aldus Pagemakers and Pro Tools as Apple had and saved many times from bankruptcy?
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  The rocket is the rocket. These things happen. However, a static fire test is pretty rare these days, and usually doesn't take place with the payload loaded, but SpaceX wanted to shave a day off the schedule[0]. Bonus points, for insurance not paying for the loss.[1] So they do run their rocket launches in an odd way. What's more troubling is the Tesla autopilot product release. That is indefensible. Let's be honest here people, if it's outside the lab, it's a release. Sure you can call it a "beta", you can throw up a "Hey don't use this, it's beta," click through warning, but it's still a release. If you didn't think that people were going to hear "autopilot" and think autopilot, then you're too naive to be in the consumer industry. No, it's not a level 4 autonomous vehicle, and yet that's how people are going to treat it, because that's what you demo. That's what you're calling it. That's what "autopilot" means. Level 3 is the worst level, because it lulls the driver into complacency, and then into a completely preventable accident. [0] http://spacenews.com/falcon-9-pad-explosion-highlights-unique-aspect-of-spacex-launch-campaigns/ http://spacenews.com/falcon-9-pad-explosion-highlights-uniqu... [1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/09/01/spacex_blew_up_facebook_s_first_internet_satellite.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/09/01/spacex_bl...
SubiculumCode 10y ago
a rocket explodes and suddenly everyone turns on the golden boy.
- SubiculumCode 10y ago
  in other words, journalists just making noise.
- coldtea 10y ago
  Yeah, because a rocket exploding is not important when you run a rocket company... I mean, couldn't they focus on all those rockets that did not explode?
  - SubiculumCode 10y ago
    No. It is not that rocket exploding is not a set back. Of course it is. BUT, it is not a set back of the magnitude the press wants it be. This is inherent to the rocket business, especially when those rockets are new technology.
  - enneff 10y ago
    Are you being sarcastic? Because one of the failure modes of a rocket is to explode. It is unfortunate, but not unexpected. It's basically unavoidable for any rocket manufacturer, and certainly not a cause to condemn SpaceX.
elmar 10y ago
I loved this part. Greg Autry, a space industry expert who teaches at USC’s Marshall School of Business, said that Musk’s aggressive cuts to the cost of launching rockets “even scares the Chinese.”
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- yborg 10y ago
  I doubt that the Chinese are actually that "scared". They have clearly been taking the very long view with their exploration program.
samfisher83 10y ago
I hope he doesn't up like the real Tesla who ended up broke. Tesla was trying to do some really advanced things like wireless energy transmission.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  The real Tesla wasn't a billionaire before he started doing big stuff.
  - samfisher83 10y ago
    He wasn't a billionaire, but he was multimillionaire which was pretty rich for the time.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Most of the popularized Tesla stuff is fantasy and pseudo science.
  - samfisher83 10y ago
    He invented a lot of stuff. He way ahead of his time. You have to put yourself in the context of the 1900's.
    - Retric 10y ago
      Mostly because few people where messing with electricity at the time. He showed up right after steam engines took off and you could cheaply generate a lot of power.
  - lj3 10y ago
    Oh yeah, he was a total quack! The stuff he worked on toward his death was so useless that the federal government decided to immediately classify all of his papers as being sensitive to national security and locked them away. O_O
manicdee 10y ago
“This raises serious questions about the reliability of the SpaceX launch vehicle,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, which receives money from Boeing Co., a SpaceX competitor. “They are taking this technology to the limits.” Key quote on which the rest of the article appears to be constructed. SpaceX is pushing the technology to the limits on purpose. This is not because they are doing "too much" but because they are doing everything they can to completely change the way rocketry is done. When a Formula 1 car catches fire in the pits, do we call a halt to pressurised fuelling, or find ways to improve the safety of fuelling? When a NASCAR crashes and burns, do we call a halt to car racing, or do we find ways to improve the safety and reliability of racing cars? The simple answer to the "too much too fast" question is "no". Too much, too fast would be where SpaceX is unable to maintain their progress and makes mistakes they can not learn from. Right now the focus of SpaceX is getting to the point where they can launch, land, relaunch. They will find more ways that quickly fuelling a rocket with supercooled fuel doesn't work. Their competitors might simply say, "supercooled propellants are too hard," and stick to existing performance figures and trusted designs. SpaceX is choosing to do the hard thing because doing the hard thing is how you advance the state of the art. "We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." — President John F Kennedy, Rice University address. Did NASA try doing too much, too fast? They went from the "four inch flight" of Mercury-Redstone 1 in 1960 to the disaster of Apollo 1 (crew killed in a cabin fire due to high oxygen atmosphere) in February 1967 to success with Apollo 11 in July 1969, with many lessons being learned in the meantime.
- kiba 10y ago
  “This raises serious questions about the reliability of the SpaceX launch vehicle,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, which receives money from Boeing Co., a SpaceX competitor. “They are taking this technology to the limits.” Loren Thompson is a shill. Do not trust his name or what he said.
pjscott 10y ago
If rocket failures were a Poisson process with a low rate, you'd expect to see some clustering by random chance. And if they're being watched by the media, you should expect to see people making much of it, whether or not there's a systemic problem. As with most news, I recommend waiting a decade and buying a history book.
- dkbrk 10y ago
  Your assertion that there would be "some clustering by random chance" is correct, however rocket failures are most definitely not described well by a Poisson distribution. The simplest reasonable model would be to assume each launch campaign has a fixed probability of failure, and that the probability of any given failure event is independent of the others. In other words, a binomial distribution. And this is a commonly applied model, I've seen a number of people doing such calculations in the last few days. However, these assumptions do not accurately reflect reality. When a failure occurs launches are stopped, the problem is identified, and the problem is fixed. A failure event should cause reliability to increase for subsequent launches; failures are not conditionally independent.
chickenbane 10y ago
Yes, of course he is. Most people are not talented enough to run one company, let alone have the time. The primary thing that concerns me is I understand his rush. As Tesla is rushing towards the Model 3, they remain largely without competition from other electric cars. From Musk's point of view, it's completely logical to press your lead. Very soon it will be extremely hard for gasoline-powered vehicles to compete - the relentless engineering of electronics has made its way to automobiles. Has any other vendor seriously evaluated a charging solution aside from Supercharger? I wish I lived in a world where Elon had better pick one damn company to run, because the market to build electric cars was so overwhelmingly competitive. Or where the utilities were so ahead in renewal energy creation and storage that Tesla would be silly to also have to go through the insane trouble of building a battery factory. Or acquire a solar company, lol. Musk's achievements impress me especially in comparison to his peers. Who's bothering to challenge the dealership lobby? Who's ready to start pushing software updates over the air to their entire fleet? Hopefully Apple, Google, Amazon, Uber, etc get into the game and also contribute to pushing things forward. Because honestly the old guard hasn't made me as excited. I hope Elon inspires millions to be as disruptive.
- elmar 10y ago
  In the words of Peter Thiel "Elon Musk the man who knows no risk" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FvxrxpW2ckQ&feature=youtu.be&t=2484 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FvxrxpW2ckQ&feature=youtu.be&t...
  - kornish 10y ago
    A friend at Stanford had a lecture taught by one of Musk's old friends who's now a partner at Greylock. The friend said they all used to fly to Vegas 10-15 years ago and that Elon used to just double down after doubling down at blackjack – that it was very indicative of his perception of risk. Apparently he and Peter Thiel also used to debate about who was going to get to Mars first. In the lecturer's words: "Yeah, looks like Elon is probably gonna win that one now."
    - elmar 10y ago
Animats 10y ago
A Space-X booster failure isn't a disaster. Fortunately, Space-X fuels remotely. The USSR had booster explosions during fueling in 1960 and in 1980, each with tens of casualties. If Space-X can find out what's wrong and fix it, it's not a huge setback. If the craft had been manned, the pad abort system would have saved the crew; the payload module was unharmed for the first few seconds, enough time for the capsule to launch. The Falcon launch failure rate is about 4%, which is on a par with everybody else.[1]. But that's not counting this as a launch failure. Tesla's "autopilot" was too much, too fast. It's not very good and was promoted as being more capable than it is. Tesla really needs to enforce hands-on-wheel strictly. The Tesla Model 3 at $35K with big production volume is a big risk. It will probably come out late, at $50K+, and in lower initial volume. But it should make it out the plant door at some point. That's the biggest risk item in all this. Remember that when Musk announced the proposed Model 3 production schedule, the two top people in production quit. They clearly knew the goal wasn't realistic. Tesla buying Solar City looks more like a bailout. The big Solar City risk is that they're building their own solar panels. They could be undercut by competition from China, as Applied Materials was. Solar City has the advantage that their plant sells to themselves, so they can resist competition to some extent. Solar City's big vulnerability is that they're heavily dependent on Government subsidies. Those are gradually going away as solar becomes able to stand on its own. The big risks are financial, not technical. Hence the pressure at Tesla to cut costs, and probably use creative accounting, to get a profitable quarter. [1] http://i.imgur.com/ei3h1B7.png http://i.imgur.com/ei3h1B7.png
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  The risks must be technical, or we would already see production; which, if it were occurring, would be resolving any financial issues.
- skafjvhs 10y ago
  Maybe they should include a pad abort module on cargo missioms, so they can find out its performance next time a Falcon explodes during fueling.
  - Animats 10y ago
unusximmortalis 10y ago
Isn't it obvious? Look at him, look at what kind of people he is looking to hire. He is not looking at people that are mature, balanced and harmonious. He is looking for people to burn with passion and work enormous efforts. Well when you conduct your life like this you can't have too many outcomes but most likely one of those worthy of drama awards :) For who is wise enough these simple priciples are everywhre around us to observe and learn.
jondubois 10y ago
I think Elon Musk is extremely smart and talented but I also think he's been extremely lucky so far (but his luck seems to be running out lately). Since Paypal, he's been on a winning streak and this has just boosted his confidence to stratospheric heights - As a result, he probably bit off more than he could chew.
diafygi 10y ago
So I work in cleantech, and here's my favorite climate change joke: They say humans won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late. To me, Musk is acting like your typical super-smart engineer under a fire drill. Perhaps Musk thinks that we aren't adapting fast enough to the changes in our environment, so he's basically putting every drop of effort he has into trying to engineer solutions. Engineers are a weird bunch. They love fixing problems more than they love money. Also, they recognize the tools available and use them to their advantage. Remember social engineering is still engineering. Perhaps Musk sees capitalism and markets as a tool and is using it to his advantage (having rich people on your side adds to your toolkit). What would you do if we had to switch 87% of our energy sources from fossil fuel[1] to something else in the next 30 years[2]? No really, what would you actually try to engineer to pull it off? Now you're in Musk's mindset. Luckily, that's double-digit trillion dollar opportunity if you can actually pull it off[3], so you can use the markets as a tool (and everyone wins[4]). Musk knows the next Googe will be an energy company[5]. Also, he wants to die on Mars. Everyone's got to have a hobby. [1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=11951 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=11951 [2]: http://ar5-syr.ipcc.ch/ipcc/sites/default/files/AR5_SYR_Figure_2.3.png http://ar5-syr.ipcc.ch/ipcc/sites/default/files/AR5_SYR_Figu... [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/aug/31/citi-report-slowing-global-warming-would-save-tens-of-trillions-of-dollars https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97... [4]: http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/S/5/6/3/What-If-Its-A-Hoax.jpg http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/S/5/6/3/What-If-Its-A-Ho... [5]: http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/ http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/
secfirstmd 10y ago
Frankly I don't care... I wake up some mornings and occasionally when I have those crappy "entrepreneury/startyupy" days when everything is going to shit and I wonder if it's worth all the effort - I think about what Elon Musk is doing and then STFU and get out of bed and get on with it. Having read the recent biography about the guy, the only thing I worry about is that he is physically on a aircraft too much while flying between SpaceX and Tesla (along with other places). He's too important to the future of the human race to lose because of some crappy accident. Ditto his work schedule - for the love of god, please someone make sure he doesn't die of a heart attack/stress or something else!
- leesalminen 10y ago
  I find myself doing the same from time to time! It really does help me push through. I've tried the same line of reasoning with my girlfriend as well; not much success. YMMV.
gaelow 10y ago
Don't even bother reading it: whenever there is a question on the headline of an article from a serious major news outlet, the answer is NO. Seriously it's like that EVERY time. 100%. Literally. Early ages of click-bait when it wasn't even clicking but buying read-bait. Sensationalism and controversy always sell but they have to keep some kind of integrity to be taken seriously, right? Anyway: Challenger, Columbia, Apollo 1. Those were actual disasters. That was actually taking it too far. And the industry learned from those failures and put in place the necessary failsafes to avoid them. Doesn't mean there aren't more to come. Blowing up stuff to get into space is still blowing up stuff. Nevermind driving thousands of cars in actual traffic millions of miles. But what SpaceX is doing, testing on production non manned vehicles, doesn't even compare to what both USA and Russia were doing during the space race. The only problem is it upsets shareholders, and I'm pretty sure the amount of people trying to short this stock is reaching critical mass, so they better be more careful because the real shitstorm of defamation and FUD is yet to come...

45 points by endswapper 10y ago

Everyone can have their own opinion regarding how many rockets and African internet satellites and Tesla drivers and astronauts are worth risking to push technology as far as fast as Musk can. What's harder to argue, I think, is that Musk has pushed right up near the line where one or two more lost SpaceX rockets or dead Tesla drivers could send many of his plans into a tailspin. There's almost a feel like Steve Jobs in 1985, sword of damocles hanging overhead. History may prove Musk "right" as it did Jobs, but he nonetheless similarly risks losing quite a lot, as do we all in a sense.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
aries1980 10y ago
Does his companies have Aldus Pagemakers and Pro Tools as Apple had and saved many times from bankruptcy?
jonathankoren 10y ago
The rocket is the rocket. These things happen. However, a static fire test is pretty rare these days, and usually doesn't take place with the payload loaded, but SpaceX wanted to shave a day off the schedule[0]. Bonus points, for insurance not paying for the loss.[1] So they do run their rocket launches in an odd way. What's more troubling is the Tesla autopilot product release. That is indefensible. Let's be honest here people, if it's outside the lab, it's a release. Sure you can call it a "beta", you can throw up a "Hey don't use this, it's beta," click through warning, but it's still a release. If you didn't think that people were going to hear "autopilot" and think autopilot, then you're too naive to be in the consumer industry. No, it's not a level 4 autonomous vehicle, and yet that's how people are going to treat it, because that's what you demo. That's what you're calling it. That's what "autopilot" means. Level 3 is the worst level, because it lulls the driver into complacency, and then into a completely preventable accident. [0] http://spacenews.com/falcon-9-pad-explosion-highlights-unique-aspect-of-spacex-launch-campaigns/ http://spacenews.com/falcon-9-pad-explosion-highlights-uniqu... [1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/09/01/spacex_blew_up_facebook_s_first_internet_satellite.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/09/01/spacex_bl...

SubiculumCode 10y ago

a rocket explodes and suddenly everyone turns on the golden boy.

SubiculumCode 10y ago
in other words, journalists just making noise.
coldtea 10y ago
Yeah, because a rocket exploding is not important when you run a rocket company... I mean, couldn't they focus on all those rockets that did not explode?
- SubiculumCode 10y ago
  No. It is not that rocket exploding is not a set back. Of course it is. BUT, it is not a set back of the magnitude the press wants it be. This is inherent to the rocket business, especially when those rockets are new technology.
- enneff 10y ago
  Are you being sarcastic? Because one of the failure modes of a rocket is to explode. It is unfortunate, but not unexpected. It's basically unavoidable for any rocket manufacturer, and certainly not a cause to condemn SpaceX.

elmar 10y ago

I loved this part. Greg Autry, a space industry expert who teaches at USC’s Marshall School of Business, said that Musk’s aggressive cuts to the cost of launching rockets “even scares the Chinese.”

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
yborg 10y ago
I doubt that the Chinese are actually that "scared". They have clearly been taking the very long view with their exploration program.

samfisher83 10y ago

I hope he doesn't up like the real Tesla who ended up broke. Tesla was trying to do some really advanced things like wireless energy transmission.

brianwawok 10y ago
The real Tesla wasn't a billionaire before he started doing big stuff.
- samfisher83 10y ago
  He wasn't a billionaire, but he was multimillionaire which was pretty rich for the time.
dogma1138 10y ago
Most of the popularized Tesla stuff is fantasy and pseudo science.
- samfisher83 10y ago
  He invented a lot of stuff. He way ahead of his time. You have to put yourself in the context of the 1900's.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Mostly because few people where messing with electricity at the time. He showed up right after steam engines took off and you could cheaply generate a lot of power.
- lj3 10y ago
  Oh yeah, he was a total quack! The stuff he worked on toward his death was so useless that the federal government decided to immediately classify all of his papers as being sensitive to national security and locked them away. O_O

manicdee 10y ago

“This raises serious questions about the reliability of the SpaceX launch vehicle,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, which receives money from Boeing Co., a SpaceX competitor. “They are taking this technology to the limits.” Key quote on which the rest of the article appears to be constructed. SpaceX is pushing the technology to the limits on purpose. This is not because they are doing "too much" but because they are doing everything they can to completely change the way rocketry is done. When a Formula 1 car catches fire in the pits, do we call a halt to pressurised fuelling, or find ways to improve the safety of fuelling? When a NASCAR crashes and burns, do we call a halt to car racing, or do we find ways to improve the safety and reliability of racing cars? The simple answer to the "too much too fast" question is "no". Too much, too fast would be where SpaceX is unable to maintain their progress and makes mistakes they can not learn from. Right now the focus of SpaceX is getting to the point where they can launch, land, relaunch. They will find more ways that quickly fuelling a rocket with supercooled fuel doesn't work. Their competitors might simply say, "supercooled propellants are too hard," and stick to existing performance figures and trusted designs. SpaceX is choosing to do the hard thing because doing the hard thing is how you advance the state of the art. "We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." — President John F Kennedy, Rice University address. Did NASA try doing too much, too fast? They went from the "four inch flight" of Mercury-Redstone 1 in 1960 to the disaster of Apollo 1 (crew killed in a cabin fire due to high oxygen atmosphere) in February 1967 to success with Apollo 11 in July 1969, with many lessons being learned in the meantime.

kiba 10y ago
“This raises serious questions about the reliability of the SpaceX launch vehicle,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, which receives money from Boeing Co., a SpaceX competitor. “They are taking this technology to the limits.” Loren Thompson is a shill. Do not trust his name or what he said.

pjscott 10y ago

If rocket failures were a Poisson process with a low rate, you'd expect to see some clustering by random chance. And if they're being watched by the media, you should expect to see people making much of it, whether or not there's a systemic problem. As with most news, I recommend waiting a decade and buying a history book.

dkbrk 10y ago
Your assertion that there would be "some clustering by random chance" is correct, however rocket failures are most definitely not described well by a Poisson distribution. The simplest reasonable model would be to assume each launch campaign has a fixed probability of failure, and that the probability of any given failure event is independent of the others. In other words, a binomial distribution. And this is a commonly applied model, I've seen a number of people doing such calculations in the last few days. However, these assumptions do not accurately reflect reality. When a failure occurs launches are stopped, the problem is identified, and the problem is fixed. A failure event should cause reliability to increase for subsequent launches; failures are not conditionally independent.

chickenbane 10y ago

Yes, of course he is. Most people are not talented enough to run one company, let alone have the time. The primary thing that concerns me is I understand his rush. As Tesla is rushing towards the Model 3, they remain largely without competition from other electric cars. From Musk's point of view, it's completely logical to press your lead. Very soon it will be extremely hard for gasoline-powered vehicles to compete - the relentless engineering of electronics has made its way to automobiles. Has any other vendor seriously evaluated a charging solution aside from Supercharger? I wish I lived in a world where Elon had better pick one damn company to run, because the market to build electric cars was so overwhelmingly competitive. Or where the utilities were so ahead in renewal energy creation and storage that Tesla would be silly to also have to go through the insane trouble of building a battery factory. Or acquire a solar company, lol. Musk's achievements impress me especially in comparison to his peers. Who's bothering to challenge the dealership lobby? Who's ready to start pushing software updates over the air to their entire fleet? Hopefully Apple, Google, Amazon, Uber, etc get into the game and also contribute to pushing things forward. Because honestly the old guard hasn't made me as excited. I hope Elon inspires millions to be as disruptive.

elmar 10y ago
In the words of Peter Thiel "Elon Musk the man who knows no risk" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FvxrxpW2ckQ&feature=youtu.be&t=2484 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FvxrxpW2ckQ&feature=youtu.be&t...
- kornish 10y ago
  A friend at Stanford had a lecture taught by one of Musk's old friends who's now a partner at Greylock. The friend said they all used to fly to Vegas 10-15 years ago and that Elon used to just double down after doubling down at blackjack – that it was very indicative of his perception of risk. Apparently he and Peter Thiel also used to debate about who was going to get to Mars first. In the lecturer's words: "Yeah, looks like Elon is probably gonna win that one now."
  - elmar 10y ago

Animats 10y ago

A Space-X booster failure isn't a disaster. Fortunately, Space-X fuels remotely. The USSR had booster explosions during fueling in 1960 and in 1980, each with tens of casualties. If Space-X can find out what's wrong and fix it, it's not a huge setback. If the craft had been manned, the pad abort system would have saved the crew; the payload module was unharmed for the first few seconds, enough time for the capsule to launch. The Falcon launch failure rate is about 4%, which is on a par with everybody else.[1]. But that's not counting this as a launch failure. Tesla's "autopilot" was too much, too fast. It's not very good and was promoted as being more capable than it is. Tesla really needs to enforce hands-on-wheel strictly. The Tesla Model 3 at $35K with big production volume is a big risk. It will probably come out late, at $50K+, and in lower initial volume. But it should make it out the plant door at some point. That's the biggest risk item in all this. Remember that when Musk announced the proposed Model 3 production schedule, the two top people in production quit. They clearly knew the goal wasn't realistic. Tesla buying Solar City looks more like a bailout. The big Solar City risk is that they're building their own solar panels. They could be undercut by competition from China, as Applied Materials was. Solar City has the advantage that their plant sells to themselves, so they can resist competition to some extent. Solar City's big vulnerability is that they're heavily dependent on Government subsidies. Those are gradually going away as solar becomes able to stand on its own. The big risks are financial, not technical. Hence the pressure at Tesla to cut costs, and probably use creative accounting, to get a profitable quarter. [1] http://i.imgur.com/ei3h1B7.png http://i.imgur.com/ei3h1B7.png

jsprogrammer 10y ago
The risks must be technical, or we would already see production; which, if it were occurring, would be resolving any financial issues.
skafjvhs 10y ago
Maybe they should include a pad abort module on cargo missioms, so they can find out its performance next time a Falcon explodes during fueling.
- Animats 10y ago

unusximmortalis 10y ago

Isn't it obvious? Look at him, look at what kind of people he is looking to hire. He is not looking at people that are mature, balanced and harmonious. He is looking for people to burn with passion and work enormous efforts. Well when you conduct your life like this you can't have too many outcomes but most likely one of those worthy of drama awards :) For who is wise enough these simple priciples are everywhre around us to observe and learn.

jondubois 10y ago

I think Elon Musk is extremely smart and talented but I also think he's been extremely lucky so far (but his luck seems to be running out lately). Since Paypal, he's been on a winning streak and this has just boosted his confidence to stratospheric heights - As a result, he probably bit off more than he could chew.

diafygi 10y ago

So I work in cleantech, and here's my favorite climate change joke: They say humans won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late. To me, Musk is acting like your typical super-smart engineer under a fire drill. Perhaps Musk thinks that we aren't adapting fast enough to the changes in our environment, so he's basically putting every drop of effort he has into trying to engineer solutions. Engineers are a weird bunch. They love fixing problems more than they love money. Also, they recognize the tools available and use them to their advantage. Remember social engineering is still engineering. Perhaps Musk sees capitalism and markets as a tool and is using it to his advantage (having rich people on your side adds to your toolkit). What would you do if we had to switch 87% of our energy sources from fossil fuel[1] to something else in the next 30 years[2]? No really, what would you actually try to engineer to pull it off? Now you're in Musk's mindset. Luckily, that's double-digit trillion dollar opportunity if you can actually pull it off[3], so you can use the markets as a tool (and everyone wins[4]). Musk knows the next Googe will be an energy company[5]. Also, he wants to die on Mars. Everyone's got to have a hobby. [1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=11951 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=11951 [2]: http://ar5-syr.ipcc.ch/ipcc/sites/default/files/AR5_SYR_Figure_2.3.png http://ar5-syr.ipcc.ch/ipcc/sites/default/files/AR5_SYR_Figu... [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/aug/31/citi-report-slowing-global-warming-would-save-tens-of-trillions-of-dollars https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97... [4]: http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/S/5/6/3/What-If-Its-A-Hoax.jpg http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/S/5/6/3/What-If-Its-A-Ho... [5]: http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/ http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/

secfirstmd 10y ago

Frankly I don't care... I wake up some mornings and occasionally when I have those crappy "entrepreneury/startyupy" days when everything is going to shit and I wonder if it's worth all the effort - I think about what Elon Musk is doing and then STFU and get out of bed and get on with it. Having read the recent biography about the guy, the only thing I worry about is that he is physically on a aircraft too much while flying between SpaceX and Tesla (along with other places). He's too important to the future of the human race to lose because of some crappy accident. Ditto his work schedule - for the love of god, please someone make sure he doesn't die of a heart attack/stress or something else!

leesalminen 10y ago
I find myself doing the same from time to time! It really does help me push through. I've tried the same line of reasoning with my girlfriend as well; not much success. YMMV.

gaelow 10y ago

Don't even bother reading it: whenever there is a question on the headline of an article from a serious major news outlet, the answer is NO. Seriously it's like that EVERY time. 100%. Literally. Early ages of click-bait when it wasn't even clicking but buying read-bait. Sensationalism and controversy always sell but they have to keep some kind of integrity to be taken seriously, right? Anyway: Challenger, Columbia, Apollo 1. Those were actual disasters. That was actually taking it too far. And the industry learned from those failures and put in place the necessary failsafes to avoid them. Doesn't mean there aren't more to come. Blowing up stuff to get into space is still blowing up stuff. Nevermind driving thousands of cars in actual traffic millions of miles. But what SpaceX is doing, testing on production non manned vehicles, doesn't even compare to what both USA and Russia were doing during the space race. The only problem is it upsets shareholders, and I'm pretty sure the amount of people trying to short this stock is reaching critical mass, so they better be more careful because the real shitstorm of defamation and FUD is yet to come...