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EVs were ready. The Nissan Leaf was the first successful mass market one. Rockets that land themselves were talked about since the 60s and prototyped by Lockhe

by api 2y ago

EVs were ready. The Nissan Leaf was the first successful mass market one. Rockets that land themselves were talked about since the 60s and prototyped by Lockheed in the 90s as the DC-X. (Search YouTube for some flight tests.) The funding just wasn’t there after the Cold War was over and excitement about space was at a low point. I’m not taking away from the great accomplishments of the engineers at Tesla and SpaceX. What I’m pointing out is that in both cases Musk was raising money to complete and bring to market things that were already quite proven to be achievable. EVs and vertical landing rockets had been done, just not as well. Rapid tunneling, FSD, and Neurolink are all things nobody has done or done well. Success rate is much worse in that domain because there is a lot less prior art to draw from and less certainty about a solution.

ben_w 2y ago
I think the Roadster predates the Leaf by about 2 years? My memory of the era was mostly people saying how they thought batteries were a dead end and hydrogen was the future, but that may have been marketing rather than engineering doing the speaking. I think SpaceX is meaningfully different than Tesla; even now, Musk seems to display a substantially different personality with regard to SpaceX vs. everything else — the similarity is the optimism, sure, but in he's a lot more willing to say "this is hard and I will make mistakes". As for how hard the SpaceX stuff is: all I can do there is look at all the rocket companies and space agencies that were openly laughing at what SpaceX was proposing to do. I think SpaceX is where the market proof is for that, rather than the other way around. Based on what I've heard from civil engineers and neuroscientists, with regard to TBC and Neuralink they regard him much as the annoying speaker with no self-awareness in https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/ FSD sounds like what happens with time estimation for someone new to software engineering projects — you have to take what they say, double the number, and increase to the next highest unit: "1 day" means "2 weeks"; "3 months" means "6 years"; and if someone says "next year" in 2016, pencil 2036 into your diary.
- api 2y ago
  The roadster predates the Leaf but it was very expensive. The Leaf was the first affordable EV and in that they beat Tesla by a couple years. Anyone laughing at what SpaceX was doing was ignorant of things like the DC-X. I suspect a fair amount of that laughter was actually fear from a moribund industry happy with the status quo rather than actual skepticism that it could be done. Some skepticism about a company the size and budget of SpaceX being able to do it might have been reasonable. That is probably the most impressive thing. The DC-X was Lockheed.
inemesitaffia 2y ago
where's the other landing orbital vehicles ?

by api 2y ago

ben_w 2y ago

I think the Roadster predates the Leaf by about 2 years? My memory of the era was mostly people saying how they thought batteries were a dead end and hydrogen was the future, but that may have been marketing rather than engineering doing the speaking. I think SpaceX is meaningfully different than Tesla; even now, Musk seems to display a substantially different personality with regard to SpaceX vs. everything else — the similarity is the optimism, sure, but in he's a lot more willing to say "this is hard and I will make mistakes". As for how hard the SpaceX stuff is: all I can do there is look at all the rocket companies and space agencies that were openly laughing at what SpaceX was proposing to do. I think SpaceX is where the market proof is for that, rather than the other way around. Based on what I've heard from civil engineers and neuroscientists, with regard to TBC and Neuralink they regard him much as the annoying speaker with no self-awareness in https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/ FSD sounds like what happens with time estimation for someone new to software engineering projects — you have to take what they say, double the number, and increase to the next highest unit: "1 day" means "2 weeks"; "3 months" means "6 years"; and if someone says "next year" in 2016, pencil 2036 into your diary.

api 2y ago
The roadster predates the Leaf but it was very expensive. The Leaf was the first affordable EV and in that they beat Tesla by a couple years. Anyone laughing at what SpaceX was doing was ignorant of things like the DC-X. I suspect a fair amount of that laughter was actually fear from a moribund industry happy with the status quo rather than actual skepticism that it could be done. Some skepticism about a company the size and budget of SpaceX being able to do it might have been reasonable. That is probably the most impressive thing. The DC-X was Lockheed.

inemesitaffia 2y ago

where's the other landing orbital vehicles ?