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How often have the experts confidently told us that something Musk was planning to do would be a complete failure, and turned out to be wrong? Pretty often, I

How often have the experts confidently told us that something Musk was planning to do would be a complete failure, and turned out to be wrong? Pretty often, I would say.

eesmith 8y ago
Could you help by saying which projects experts thought would be a "complete failure"? Three I can think of are 1) the original hyperloop proposal, 2) the mini-sub to rescue the people stuck in the Thai cave, and 3) car-based mini-tunnels as an better alternative form of transport. All of those objections, as far as I can tell, are correct. I would like this clarification because there are a large number of other goals which experts said would be impossible to achieve in the timeframe given. Consider that in 2014 he said that self-driving cars would be safer than humans in about two years. Now, at that point there were self-driving cars and in some circumstances they were already safer than humans. More so if you include automated trams on special tracks. Remember, the first nearly hands-free trip across the US was in 1995. However, at least some experts doubted it would happen in that time frame, and we still don't have such technology. We especially don't have it at the level that we can sleep while the car is driving, which in 2017 he implied we would have by 2019. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/elon-musk-self-driving-cars-sleep-boring-company-tesla-spacex-futurism-a7711516.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/elon-musk-self-dr... Is that a "complete failure"? No. But were the experts who said it was not achievable in anywhere near the time frame given correct? Yes. As another example, in 2018 SpaceX said that there would be a crewed flight around the Moon. Didn't happen, and as I recall there were experts who doubted it - though they of course know from history that such flights are possible. If in 5 years there is a crewed flight around the Moon, does that make that prediction correct?
- woodandsteel 8y ago
  Many experts predicted that Tesla would be a complete failure, that it would never produce electric cars that people would buy. Many experts predicted that SpaceX would be a complete failure, that it would never produce commercially successful space rockets, much less reusable ones. And the same experts are today continuing to tell us that Tesla is going to fail.
  - eesmith 8y ago
    A couple of questions: 1) Does "many" equal "the large majority"? That is, 100 people can be "many", but if there are 100,000 with the opposite view then it doesn't make sense. 2) Do you place the same weight on market 'experts' as you do on engineering 'experts'? That is, if a transport engineer says it's not possible to build a hyperloop on the original because of a half-dozen well-understood engineering issues, and a market expert says that a given product is not going to be commercially successful, then are they equally (dis)trusted? Because the three examples I gave were in the "not possible because of known engineering problems", while the successes you listed were more marketing and commercialization. Going back to 1), I'm not a car person so I don't know the history. It's not hard to find car experts from 2009 who tried out a Tesla and were enthusiastic about it. For example, from https://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1021105_driven-2009-tesla-roadster https://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1021105_driven-2009-te... > I was fully prepared to write something negative about the 2009 Tesla Roadster simply because it is the poster child for "environmental change" and "all things wrong with Detroit." Then I drove it. > I suppose it's OK to be wrong when you admit it... > If this is the future of cars, enthusiasts have nothing to worry about. So I assume the experts you refer to are "car people before 2008 with knowledge based on gasoline engines and a few earlier electric cars, who had strong doubts that a small company would be able to produce a mass-produced electric car." That seems to me to be substantially different than a transport engineer who points out that the raw numbers - load time, capacity, speed - simply do not justify the cost for a small tunnel given that there are well-known alternatives which can provide much better service for the same cost, and there are no proposals for how the small tunnel can come close to matching those alternatives.

How often have the experts confidently told us that something Musk was planning to do would be a complete failure, and turned out to be wrong? Pretty often, I would say.

eesmith 8y ago

Could you help by saying which projects experts thought would be a "complete failure"? Three I can think of are 1) the original hyperloop proposal, 2) the mini-sub to rescue the people stuck in the Thai cave, and 3) car-based mini-tunnels as an better alternative form of transport. All of those objections, as far as I can tell, are correct. I would like this clarification because there are a large number of other goals which experts said would be impossible to achieve in the timeframe given. Consider that in 2014 he said that self-driving cars would be safer than humans in about two years. Now, at that point there were self-driving cars and in some circumstances they were already safer than humans. More so if you include automated trams on special tracks. Remember, the first nearly hands-free trip across the US was in 1995. However, at least some experts doubted it would happen in that time frame, and we still don't have such technology. We especially don't have it at the level that we can sleep while the car is driving, which in 2017 he implied we would have by 2019. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/elon-musk-self-driving-cars-sleep-boring-company-tesla-spacex-futurism-a7711516.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/elon-musk-self-dr... Is that a "complete failure"? No. But were the experts who said it was not achievable in anywhere near the time frame given correct? Yes. As another example, in 2018 SpaceX said that there would be a crewed flight around the Moon. Didn't happen, and as I recall there were experts who doubted it - though they of course know from history that such flights are possible. If in 5 years there is a crewed flight around the Moon, does that make that prediction correct?

woodandsteel 8y ago
Many experts predicted that Tesla would be a complete failure, that it would never produce electric cars that people would buy. Many experts predicted that SpaceX would be a complete failure, that it would never produce commercially successful space rockets, much less reusable ones. And the same experts are today continuing to tell us that Tesla is going to fail.
- eesmith 8y ago
  A couple of questions: 1) Does "many" equal "the large majority"? That is, 100 people can be "many", but if there are 100,000 with the opposite view then it doesn't make sense. 2) Do you place the same weight on market 'experts' as you do on engineering 'experts'? That is, if a transport engineer says it's not possible to build a hyperloop on the original because of a half-dozen well-understood engineering issues, and a market expert says that a given product is not going to be commercially successful, then are they equally (dis)trusted? Because the three examples I gave were in the "not possible because of known engineering problems", while the successes you listed were more marketing and commercialization. Going back to 1), I'm not a car person so I don't know the history. It's not hard to find car experts from 2009 who tried out a Tesla and were enthusiastic about it. For example, from https://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1021105_driven-2009-tesla-roadster https://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1021105_driven-2009-te... > I was fully prepared to write something negative about the 2009 Tesla Roadster simply because it is the poster child for "environmental change" and "all things wrong with Detroit." Then I drove it. > I suppose it's OK to be wrong when you admit it... > If this is the future of cars, enthusiasts have nothing to worry about. So I assume the experts you refer to are "car people before 2008 with knowledge based on gasoline engines and a few earlier electric cars, who had strong doubts that a small company would be able to produce a mass-produced electric car." That seems to me to be substantially different than a transport engineer who points out that the raw numbers - load time, capacity, speed - simply do not justify the cost for a small tunnel given that there are well-known alternatives which can provide much better service for the same cost, and there are no proposals for how the small tunnel can come close to matching those alternatives.