6 ms·

Pretty much every famous genius in history has spewed numerous claims, collecting lots of hits and lots of misses along the way. It's part of being human that t

by warent 6y ago

Pretty much every famous genius in history has spewed numerous claims, collecting lots of hits and lots of misses along the way. It's part of being human that thinks big. Thinking big means missing the mark a lot. I'm not an Elon fanboy, it's just a little bizarre to me that people mark this guy up as a crazy liar who shouldn't be taken seriously, meanwhile many of his bold claims have actually resulted in advancing tech and science in staggering ways. Like, people were saying the same thing about his claim to land first stage boosters, and here we are. Side note, apparently he is still actively selling off all his possessions.

sneak 6y ago
I mean, Starship exists and with each (frequent) test flight it gets closer to delivering on the promise of full reusability, which is jet-age-level shit. F9 is also incredible and has made the impossible possible... and Starlink is one instance of that, which also exists and is usable. You can't really highlight his failures without also giving credit where credit is due to his (and his organizations') successes. I'm really curious how he gets such smart and talented people to work at his companies.
- mdbug 6y ago
  Fact check: Starship has been in development for about 8 years, has exploded on every landing so far, and has never reached orbit.
  - sneak 6y ago
    That's not true, one exploded before landing a few days ago. :P
  - erikstarck 6y ago
    Uhm. Yeah, prototypes of the next general vessel have exploded while gathering data. Meanwhile, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy have made numerous successful and commercial launches and landings.
    - mdbug 6y ago
      I don't want to deny the successes at all. But everything SpaceX has achieved so far was possible before. I guess the statement that Starship is getting closer to its promise can be expressed that way, but it almost sounds like it's already close and in reality it's far from being ready. Also consider that it took NASA about 9 years to fully develop the Space Shuttle from ground up and they didn't lose a single vehicle during testing - 50 years ago!
      - chrisco255 6y ago
        No, they lost one when it mattered most: when humans were on board. Besides, Starship is meant as more of a replacement for Apollo than for the shuttle.
        mdbug 6y ago
        This does not contradict what I wrote.
        chrisco255 6y ago
        It's not a contradiction what I wrote, it's a fair point. Two of the five shuttles eventually exploded with passengers on board. Better to learn the hard edge cases in testing.
        mdbug 6y ago
        You probably shouldn't have started the sentence with "No" then, but never mind. Let's hope that space travel will be safer in the future. Anyway, I really just wanted to point out that 50 years ago it was apparently possible to develop spaceships in less time without a "move fast and break things" approach.
        tim333 6y ago
        The Apollo program cost about $156 billion in modern money. Starship's approach is very cheap in comparison. Must estimates about $5bn.
  - tigershark 6y ago
    Fact check: Starship was in development for much less time than SLS, it costs order of magnitudes less and it had several successful 10 km flights. Your comment is absolutely misleading if not outright false because starship as we know it with the steel construction is from end of 2018, so a little more than 2 years ago. The current testing pace is two launches in less than 30 days. SLS had a failed static fire in January and it took them 3 months just to do another static fire. Starship performs multiple static fires per day and it’s the only vehicle in history that managed to fly with full flow engines.
  - postingawayonhn 6y ago
    Raptor may have begun development for 8 years but Starship has only been in full development for about 3 years.
    - mgoetzke 6y ago
      And Raptor is an enormous achievement. A full-flow combustion engine that actually looks likely to be used.
mxschumacher 6y ago
Making extremely aggressive predictions about a topic that you know nothing about isn't "thinking big". Somebody with massive media attention and countless acolytes needs to wield their power with care, especially given that a pandemic is driven by human behavior (if it's not a big deal, why wear a mask?). Not knowing what you don't know is just foolish.
rsynnott 6y ago
> Pretty much every famous genius in history has spewed numerous claims, collecting lots of hits and lots of misses along the way. Of course, so has every famous idiot.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

by warent 6y ago

sneak 6y ago

I mean, Starship exists and with each (frequent) test flight it gets closer to delivering on the promise of full reusability, which is jet-age-level shit. F9 is also incredible and has made the impossible possible... and Starlink is one instance of that, which also exists and is usable. You can't really highlight his failures without also giving credit where credit is due to his (and his organizations') successes. I'm really curious how he gets such smart and talented people to work at his companies.

mdbug 6y ago
Fact check: Starship has been in development for about 8 years, has exploded on every landing so far, and has never reached orbit.
- sneak 6y ago
  That's not true, one exploded before landing a few days ago. :P
- erikstarck 6y ago
  Uhm. Yeah, prototypes of the next general vessel have exploded while gathering data. Meanwhile, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy have made numerous successful and commercial launches and landings.
  - mdbug 6y ago
    I don't want to deny the successes at all. But everything SpaceX has achieved so far was possible before. I guess the statement that Starship is getting closer to its promise can be expressed that way, but it almost sounds like it's already close and in reality it's far from being ready. Also consider that it took NASA about 9 years to fully develop the Space Shuttle from ground up and they didn't lose a single vehicle during testing - 50 years ago!
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      No, they lost one when it mattered most: when humans were on board. Besides, Starship is meant as more of a replacement for Apollo than for the shuttle.
      - mdbug 6y ago
        This does not contradict what I wrote.
        chrisco255 6y ago
        It's not a contradiction what I wrote, it's a fair point. Two of the five shuttles eventually exploded with passengers on board. Better to learn the hard edge cases in testing.
        mdbug 6y ago
        You probably shouldn't have started the sentence with "No" then, but never mind. Let's hope that space travel will be safer in the future. Anyway, I really just wanted to point out that 50 years ago it was apparently possible to develop spaceships in less time without a "move fast and break things" approach.
        tim333 6y ago
        The Apollo program cost about $156 billion in modern money. Starship's approach is very cheap in comparison. Must estimates about $5bn.
- tigershark 6y ago
  Fact check: Starship was in development for much less time than SLS, it costs order of magnitudes less and it had several successful 10 km flights. Your comment is absolutely misleading if not outright false because starship as we know it with the steel construction is from end of 2018, so a little more than 2 years ago. The current testing pace is two launches in less than 30 days. SLS had a failed static fire in January and it took them 3 months just to do another static fire. Starship performs multiple static fires per day and it’s the only vehicle in history that managed to fly with full flow engines.
- postingawayonhn 6y ago
  Raptor may have begun development for 8 years but Starship has only been in full development for about 3 years.
  - mgoetzke 6y ago
    And Raptor is an enormous achievement. A full-flow combustion engine that actually looks likely to be used.

mxschumacher 6y ago

Making extremely aggressive predictions about a topic that you know nothing about isn't "thinking big". Somebody with massive media attention and countless acolytes needs to wield their power with care, especially given that a pandemic is driven by human behavior (if it's not a big deal, why wear a mask?). Not knowing what you don't know is just foolish.

rsynnott 6y ago

> Pretty much every famous genius in history has spewed numerous claims, collecting lots of hits and lots of misses along the way. Of course, so has every famous idiot.

deleted 6y ago
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