8 ms·

Tesla and SpaceX are great but I'm not aware of fundamental engineering principles they have overthrown. This is a strange religious argument you are making her

by npalli 13y ago

Tesla and SpaceX are great but I'm not aware of fundamental engineering principles they have overthrown. This is a strange religious argument you are making here. The logical conclusion to your attitude is that there is no engineering challenge that Musk and his compadres can't solve. How odd. People have been building bridges for millenia now, there is a rich history of engineering and science here. You can't just 'think out of the box' your way through some fundamental constraints. If you feel the original article is wrong then it is worth discussing. If Musk and friends are modern day messiahs what's there to discuss?

stonemetal 13y ago
>Tesla and SpaceX are great but I'm not aware of fundamental engineering principles they have overthrown. No, but it is a pretty good claim to show an understanding of the basics that they supposedly haven't learned.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  How so? The point being made in the blog post is that Musk has a severe misunderstanding of the fundamentals of civil engineering. That Musk runs a company that has successfully engineered cars and spacecraft in no way makes him qualified to construct the Hyperloop. Civil engineering isn't mechanical engineering isn't chemical engineering isn't aerospace engineering. These are different disciplines. Being a talented industrialist in one (or more) of these do not imply capability in any of the others.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > Civil engineering isn't mechanical engineering isn't chemical engineering isn't aerospace engineering. That's true, but all of them derive from the same set of first principles, those defined by physics. > Being a talented industrialist in one (or more) of these do not imply capability in any of the others. Not true -- expertise is not implied, but capability certainly is. In this specific case, to predict the behavior of an evacuated transport tube, and given that the project doesn't resemble any existing projects, one could hardly do better than have a background in spacecraft booster design.
    - zorpner 13y ago
      > That's true, but all of them derive from the same set of first principles, those defined by physics. More is different (PDF link: http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72mo... ). Much like a knowledge of physics is insufficient to draw conclusions about biochemistry, knowledge of basic physical laws tells you very little about the fundamentals of a practical engineering field. The theory and laws of e.g. civil engineering are typically traceable back to abstract physical principles, but are not strictly derivable from them.
      - lutusp 13y ago
        > More is different (PDF link: http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72mo.. http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72mo.... ). What? A link to a paywalled article with no abstract? That was constructive. Here's a real link: https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1_2011_more_is_different_PWA.pdf https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1_2011_more_is_differen... As to the article's content, it's philosophy without supporting evidence (meaning it's philosophy), and its conclusions are regularly refuted by the many examples that connect physical fundamentals with everyday reality. Example? Quantum theory and computers -- as separate as the two may seem, we can't have the second without a detailed knowledge of the first. > Much like a knowledge of physics is insufficient to draw conclusions about biochemistry ... In the final analysis, all of biochemistry derives from biology and chemistry, each of which derives from physics. Relevant in that regard is the fact that chemistry turns out to be applied quantum physics, to a shocking number of decimal places. > The theory and laws of e.g. civil engineering are typically traceable back to abstract physical principles, but are not strictly derivable from them. Not true. Either civil engineering is "strictly derivable" from physics, or it's not part of reality. The behavior of concrete over time, as just one example -- we know what will become of it in the long term, and modern quantum theory tells us why. Philosophical articles like "More Is Different" represent nothing more or less than physics envy. They're interesting and deserve to be heard, but in the reality footrace, events annoy the authors by reliably overtaking their philosophical positions.
  - stonemetal 13y ago
    His primary argument is about thermal expansion. Are you claiming aerospace and automotive engineers make no study of thermal expansion? I could see your point if the proposal was about a dirt retaining wall or aqueduct where the other two disciplines wouldn't be well versed in the material's properties, but I am not seeing something CE specific in the thermal expansion of steel. Yes, “stringer” is also a common word in structural engineering, especially in bridge design, but something that reinforces a tube wall is a stiffener, not a stringer. Update: I am reminded by Matthew Hunt on Twitter that “stringer” is commonly used in aircraft design. I should have remembered that. Given this quote how do we know they aren't in violent agreement but talking past each other because they are using terms from different disciplines?
Gravityloss 13y ago
At least SpaceX actually made some quite fundamental changes in their approach to many things, since their original ideas did not work. They for example talked a lot about recovering their rockets, and none of that has worked at all. They changed from ablative to regenerative cooling. They experienced many failures (I think it is actually better to launch more often and experience some failures than launch years apart, because then you can't afford to fail at any cost and your schedule and cost will explode). So in a sense he has this "new kid on the block" serial enterpreneur attitude where he bursts into a scene, stumbles a lot but finally seems to get something done quite right. Maybe it's him learning the tricks of the trade - or that just finding the right people takes a lot of time, or something else entirely. I at least don't know that closely what happens in these organizations. It might be cool to read a book about something like that. I don't have high hopes of anyone getting the stories right though.

by npalli 13y ago

stonemetal 13y ago

>Tesla and SpaceX are great but I'm not aware of fundamental engineering principles they have overthrown. No, but it is a pretty good claim to show an understanding of the basics that they supposedly haven't learned.

potatolicious 13y ago
How so? The point being made in the blog post is that Musk has a severe misunderstanding of the fundamentals of civil engineering. That Musk runs a company that has successfully engineered cars and spacecraft in no way makes him qualified to construct the Hyperloop. Civil engineering isn't mechanical engineering isn't chemical engineering isn't aerospace engineering. These are different disciplines. Being a talented industrialist in one (or more) of these do not imply capability in any of the others.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > Civil engineering isn't mechanical engineering isn't chemical engineering isn't aerospace engineering. That's true, but all of them derive from the same set of first principles, those defined by physics. > Being a talented industrialist in one (or more) of these do not imply capability in any of the others. Not true -- expertise is not implied, but capability certainly is. In this specific case, to predict the behavior of an evacuated transport tube, and given that the project doesn't resemble any existing projects, one could hardly do better than have a background in spacecraft booster design.
  - zorpner 13y ago
    > That's true, but all of them derive from the same set of first principles, those defined by physics. More is different (PDF link: http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72mo... ). Much like a knowledge of physics is insufficient to draw conclusions about biochemistry, knowledge of basic physical laws tells you very little about the fundamentals of a practical engineering field. The theory and laws of e.g. civil engineering are typically traceable back to abstract physical principles, but are not strictly derivable from them.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > More is different (PDF link: http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72mo.. http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72mo.... ). What? A link to a paywalled article with no abstract? That was constructive. Here's a real link: https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1_2011_more_is_different_PWA.pdf https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1_2011_more_is_differen... As to the article's content, it's philosophy without supporting evidence (meaning it's philosophy), and its conclusions are regularly refuted by the many examples that connect physical fundamentals with everyday reality. Example? Quantum theory and computers -- as separate as the two may seem, we can't have the second without a detailed knowledge of the first. > Much like a knowledge of physics is insufficient to draw conclusions about biochemistry ... In the final analysis, all of biochemistry derives from biology and chemistry, each of which derives from physics. Relevant in that regard is the fact that chemistry turns out to be applied quantum physics, to a shocking number of decimal places. > The theory and laws of e.g. civil engineering are typically traceable back to abstract physical principles, but are not strictly derivable from them. Not true. Either civil engineering is "strictly derivable" from physics, or it's not part of reality. The behavior of concrete over time, as just one example -- we know what will become of it in the long term, and modern quantum theory tells us why. Philosophical articles like "More Is Different" represent nothing more or less than physics envy. They're interesting and deserve to be heard, but in the reality footrace, events annoy the authors by reliably overtaking their philosophical positions.
- stonemetal 13y ago
  His primary argument is about thermal expansion. Are you claiming aerospace and automotive engineers make no study of thermal expansion? I could see your point if the proposal was about a dirt retaining wall or aqueduct where the other two disciplines wouldn't be well versed in the material's properties, but I am not seeing something CE specific in the thermal expansion of steel. Yes, “stringer” is also a common word in structural engineering, especially in bridge design, but something that reinforces a tube wall is a stiffener, not a stringer. Update: I am reminded by Matthew Hunt on Twitter that “stringer” is commonly used in aircraft design. I should have remembered that. Given this quote how do we know they aren't in violent agreement but talking past each other because they are using terms from different disciplines?

Gravityloss 13y ago

At least SpaceX actually made some quite fundamental changes in their approach to many things, since their original ideas did not work. They for example talked a lot about recovering their rockets, and none of that has worked at all. They changed from ablative to regenerative cooling. They experienced many failures (I think it is actually better to launch more often and experience some failures than launch years apart, because then you can't afford to fail at any cost and your schedule and cost will explode). So in a sense he has this "new kid on the block" serial enterpreneur attitude where he bursts into a scene, stumbles a lot but finally seems to get something done quite right. Maybe it's him learning the tricks of the trade - or that just finding the right people takes a lot of time, or something else entirely. I at least don't know that closely what happens in these organizations. It might be cool to read a book about something like that. I don't have high hopes of anyone getting the stories right though.