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> If NASA is Amtrak in space, then SpaceX is the Fyre Festival with rockets > the hypertunnel that is just a regular tunnel, the door panels that fall off the

by rlt 4y ago

> If NASA is Amtrak in space, then SpaceX is the Fyre Festival with rockets > the hypertunnel that is just a regular tunnel, the door panels that fall off the self-driving car, the robot that’s only a guy in a suit This was an otherwise well-articulated post, but wow, Musk Derangement Syndrome is real. I’m not saying SpaceX and Musk have a complete viable plan for getting to Mars, but it was striking how the quality of his arguments when it came to Musk just dropped off a cliff. SpaceX is making more rapid progress towards Mars than anyone. Even if Mars is not viable in the timeframe Musk has said, or you don’t think we should send humans to Mars at all, it would still be highly beneficial for Starship to succeed.

smcl 4y ago
So the door panels are questionable. But the other two are huge red flags, no? These are two supposedly moonshot-type projects that have turned out to be outright lies: - Hyperloop was a sort of snake-oil to squash High-Speed Rail - The robot as a guy in a suit dancing on a stage ... I've no idea where he was trying to with that. I see there's been some movement on their robot since it was "launched", but why on earth did they start off with the weird dancing suit guy?
- rlt 4y ago
  Seriously? The robot dancing was an obvious joke. He was not trying to pass it off as a real robot and literally no one thought he was. Tesla is actually working on the real thing and they’ve demoed admirable progress 1 year after the initial announcement. The hypertunnel reference seems to be conflating two (related) things: the Hyperloop concept and the Boring Company. The Hyperloop thing is definitely questionable, but to steelman it: he truly believes the High Speed Rail is a waste of money and we should be more forward thinking with something like the Hyperloop, even if he didn’t personally intend to build it. After all, if it was entirely fraud and then what did he have to gain from killing the High Speed Rail? I guess a small fraction of the taxes he pays not going to something he didn’t like? Also, the origin story suggests it was not concocted as a means to kill the High Speed Rail: “The recent plans for a version of vacuum train called Hyperloop emerged from a conversation between Elon Musk and Iranian-American Silicon Valley investor Shervin Pishevar when they were flying together to Cuba on a humanitarian mission in January 2012. Pishevar asked Musk to elaborate on his hyperloop idea, which the industrialist had been mulling over for some time. Pishevar suggested using it for cargo, an idea Musk hadn't considered, but he did say he was considering open-sourcing the concept because he was too busy running SpaceX and Tesla. Pishevar pushed Musk to publish his ideas about the hyperloop, so that Pishevar could study them.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop_One https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop_One
  - sethd 4y ago
    > After all, if it was entirely fraud and then what did he have to gain from killing the High Speed Rail? I guess a small fraction of the taxes he pays not going to something he didn’t like? He’s a car salesman. He wants you to commute in a Tesla and opposes remote work.
    - rlt 4y ago
      One-off projects like the High Speed Rail won’t make a noticeable dent in global sales. And he opposed remote work at his own companies because he believes (rightly or wrongly) it leads to decreased productivity.
      - sethd 4y ago
        I find it a bit hard to believe you’re really that naive, but I’ll go ahead and respond. > One-off projects like the High Speed Rail won’t make a noticeable dent in global sales. You’re comparing now with several years ago when California was by far Tesla’s biggest market. > And he opposed remote work at his own companies because he believes (rightly or wrongly) it leads to decreased productivity. It’s called a hidden agenda. The man is a sociopath and chronic liar, one would be a fool to take anything he says at face value. Instead we must judge Musk by his actions and past behavior, not his words.
rendall 4y ago
> wow, Musk Derangement Syndrome is real. The underlying serious point of these light-hearted jokes is that Musk's demonstrated approach to technological questions will not solve the challenges of keeping people alive without access to the resources of our biosphere for years at a time. This challenge is arguably more difficult even than building rockets. You inadvertently proved a point of the article: now we are arguing about Musk and not about the technological challenges of getting to Mars.
- rlt 4y ago
  It’s certainly not an easy problem but neither are many of the other problems SpaceX has thrived solving. “Arguably harder” sounds like pretty good odds to me. The author essentially dismissed SpaceX with ad hominem attacks on Musk, who in his critics minds is simultaneously incompetent and the embodiment of his demonstrably successful companies.
  - rendall 4y ago
    Again, we're arguing about Musk more than about the technological challenges. The article makes that very point - that Musk's approach to technological questions is to distract and make people argue about his character. Which we are doing. > The author essentially dismissed SpaceX... The article also makes the point that keeping people alive in space for years is a very different and unsolved and underestimated challenge than is building rockets. SpaceX builds rockets. It does not do the other thing.
    - rlt 4y ago
      We’re talking past each other. I’m arguing we shouldn’t be arguing about Musk. I don’t know how much he is personally involved in the engineering decisions, but it doesn’t really matter because SpaceX has proved it can solve the vast array of problems that need to be solved to: - Launch a rocket into to orbit - Land and recover the first stage of that rocket (which had never been done before) - Build a spacecraft that can be launched into orbit, dock with the ISS, deorbit, and be recovered - Make that spacecraft support human life, and launch humans on it to the ISS, and bring them back alive (which also had never been done by a commercial entity) I wouldn’t bet against SpaceX being able to do the engineering required to keep humans alive on spacecraft for years once it becomes a priority for them. At this point it’s premature.
fullstackchris 4y ago
I agree entirely. Some of the stuff SpaceX has done is nothing short of incredible (regardless of the involvement of Musk). Imagine if just 20 years ago you said something like "You know, we should make a rocket reusable!" You would have been laughed out of the room, even at a place like NASA. Humans have an extremely bad habit of discounting future tech.
- Arn_Thor 4y ago
  Reusable rockets were seriously discussed many decades before SpaceX, they were just considered too expensive. NASA was among the organizations that evaluated them before it ultimately settled on the space shuttle which was quite a bit cheaper. It was not a far-fetched idea even back then.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  I mean honestly, how can anyone still doubt SpaceX after seeing FH land two boosters at once, Starship doing retrofuturistic manoeuvres and Dragon being NASA's go to for all things ISS for years. It is unfortunate that they're tied with Musk given his recent self implosion, but they will surely survive him.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Explain how being able to land boosters is relevant to setting up a manned self sufficient base on a planet so far away from Earth that any mishap spells the immediate end of the endeavor?
    - m4rtink 4y ago
      Setting up space based resource extraction needed for that could be too expensive or even effectively impossible without reusable rockets.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        Which part of a Mars mission requires space based resource extraction?
jacquesm 4y ago
That's not a sign of Musk Derangement Syndrome but the sign of a working set of brains.
- MrOwnPut 4y ago
  Group think does not make your syndrome go away, sorry. Now if you would like to defend the statement "SpaceX is the Fyre Festival with rockets", that'd be a start. But simply saying "Musk = bad" just proves GPs point and makes you look... silly. Personally SpaceX has blown me away (pun intended) with their advances in rockets. Now what's your take?

by rlt 4y ago

smcl 4y ago

So the door panels are questionable. But the other two are huge red flags, no? These are two supposedly moonshot-type projects that have turned out to be outright lies: - Hyperloop was a sort of snake-oil to squash High-Speed Rail - The robot as a guy in a suit dancing on a stage ... I've no idea where he was trying to with that. I see there's been some movement on their robot since it was "launched", but why on earth did they start off with the weird dancing suit guy?

rlt 4y ago
Seriously? The robot dancing was an obvious joke. He was not trying to pass it off as a real robot and literally no one thought he was. Tesla is actually working on the real thing and they’ve demoed admirable progress 1 year after the initial announcement. The hypertunnel reference seems to be conflating two (related) things: the Hyperloop concept and the Boring Company. The Hyperloop thing is definitely questionable, but to steelman it: he truly believes the High Speed Rail is a waste of money and we should be more forward thinking with something like the Hyperloop, even if he didn’t personally intend to build it. After all, if it was entirely fraud and then what did he have to gain from killing the High Speed Rail? I guess a small fraction of the taxes he pays not going to something he didn’t like? Also, the origin story suggests it was not concocted as a means to kill the High Speed Rail: “The recent plans for a version of vacuum train called Hyperloop emerged from a conversation between Elon Musk and Iranian-American Silicon Valley investor Shervin Pishevar when they were flying together to Cuba on a humanitarian mission in January 2012. Pishevar asked Musk to elaborate on his hyperloop idea, which the industrialist had been mulling over for some time. Pishevar suggested using it for cargo, an idea Musk hadn't considered, but he did say he was considering open-sourcing the concept because he was too busy running SpaceX and Tesla. Pishevar pushed Musk to publish his ideas about the hyperloop, so that Pishevar could study them.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop_One https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop_One
- sethd 4y ago
  > After all, if it was entirely fraud and then what did he have to gain from killing the High Speed Rail? I guess a small fraction of the taxes he pays not going to something he didn’t like? He’s a car salesman. He wants you to commute in a Tesla and opposes remote work.
  - rlt 4y ago
    One-off projects like the High Speed Rail won’t make a noticeable dent in global sales. And he opposed remote work at his own companies because he believes (rightly or wrongly) it leads to decreased productivity.
    - sethd 4y ago
      I find it a bit hard to believe you’re really that naive, but I’ll go ahead and respond. > One-off projects like the High Speed Rail won’t make a noticeable dent in global sales. You’re comparing now with several years ago when California was by far Tesla’s biggest market. > And he opposed remote work at his own companies because he believes (rightly or wrongly) it leads to decreased productivity. It’s called a hidden agenda. The man is a sociopath and chronic liar, one would be a fool to take anything he says at face value. Instead we must judge Musk by his actions and past behavior, not his words.

rendall 4y ago

> wow, Musk Derangement Syndrome is real. The underlying serious point of these light-hearted jokes is that Musk's demonstrated approach to technological questions will not solve the challenges of keeping people alive without access to the resources of our biosphere for years at a time. This challenge is arguably more difficult even than building rockets. You inadvertently proved a point of the article: now we are arguing about Musk and not about the technological challenges of getting to Mars.

rlt 4y ago
It’s certainly not an easy problem but neither are many of the other problems SpaceX has thrived solving. “Arguably harder” sounds like pretty good odds to me. The author essentially dismissed SpaceX with ad hominem attacks on Musk, who in his critics minds is simultaneously incompetent and the embodiment of his demonstrably successful companies.
- rendall 4y ago
  Again, we're arguing about Musk more than about the technological challenges. The article makes that very point - that Musk's approach to technological questions is to distract and make people argue about his character. Which we are doing. > The author essentially dismissed SpaceX... The article also makes the point that keeping people alive in space for years is a very different and unsolved and underestimated challenge than is building rockets. SpaceX builds rockets. It does not do the other thing.
  - rlt 4y ago
    We’re talking past each other. I’m arguing we shouldn’t be arguing about Musk. I don’t know how much he is personally involved in the engineering decisions, but it doesn’t really matter because SpaceX has proved it can solve the vast array of problems that need to be solved to: - Launch a rocket into to orbit - Land and recover the first stage of that rocket (which had never been done before) - Build a spacecraft that can be launched into orbit, dock with the ISS, deorbit, and be recovered - Make that spacecraft support human life, and launch humans on it to the ISS, and bring them back alive (which also had never been done by a commercial entity) I wouldn’t bet against SpaceX being able to do the engineering required to keep humans alive on spacecraft for years once it becomes a priority for them. At this point it’s premature.

fullstackchris 4y ago

I agree entirely. Some of the stuff SpaceX has done is nothing short of incredible (regardless of the involvement of Musk). Imagine if just 20 years ago you said something like "You know, we should make a rocket reusable!" You would have been laughed out of the room, even at a place like NASA. Humans have an extremely bad habit of discounting future tech.

Arn_Thor 4y ago
Reusable rockets were seriously discussed many decades before SpaceX, they were just considered too expensive. NASA was among the organizations that evaluated them before it ultimately settled on the space shuttle which was quite a bit cheaper. It was not a far-fetched idea even back then.
moffkalast 4y ago
I mean honestly, how can anyone still doubt SpaceX after seeing FH land two boosters at once, Starship doing retrofuturistic manoeuvres and Dragon being NASA's go to for all things ISS for years. It is unfortunate that they're tied with Musk given his recent self implosion, but they will surely survive him.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Explain how being able to land boosters is relevant to setting up a manned self sufficient base on a planet so far away from Earth that any mishap spells the immediate end of the endeavor?
  - m4rtink 4y ago
    Setting up space based resource extraction needed for that could be too expensive or even effectively impossible without reusable rockets.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Which part of a Mars mission requires space based resource extraction?

jacquesm 4y ago

That's not a sign of Musk Derangement Syndrome but the sign of a working set of brains.

MrOwnPut 4y ago
Group think does not make your syndrome go away, sorry. Now if you would like to defend the statement "SpaceX is the Fyre Festival with rockets", that'd be a start. But simply saying "Musk = bad" just proves GPs point and makes you look... silly. Personally SpaceX has blown me away (pun intended) with their advances in rockets. Now what's your take?