Cont: Musk, SpaceX and future of Tesla II

[junkshop]

...you can't unsoup the fish.

This is a beautiful turn of phrase. I can't guarantee that I won't nick it, should the opportunity arise.

_{edited to add a missing 'I'}

 

[shemp]

you can't unsoup the fish.

I am thieving this for my signature.

 

[Dabop]

Elon Musk's take on Fall of Rome thoroughly debunked

Elon Musk recently sparked a Twitter feud about the fall of Rome, claiming that “population collapse of Romans over time is what caused Rome to fall.” Musk revealed a troubling pattern of historical misinformation. According to archaeologist Flint Dibble and numerous Roman historians, Musk’s...

rudevulture.com

I've always worked on the principle that when certain people say things, it's best to assume they are wrong/lying until proven otherwise...
Musk joined THAT list years ago for me
(interestingly, in my case, he was on it long BEFORE trump!!!!)
As big a fan of alternate energy and EVs as I am, I noticed well over a decade and a half or more ago that Musk was ALWAYS 'exaggerating' which made his public announcements unreliable for me....

 

[a_unique_person]

I've always worked on the principle that when certain people say things, it's best to assume they are wrong/lying until proven otherwise...
Musk joined THAT list years ago for me
(interestingly, in my case, he was on it long BEFORE trump!!!!)
As big a fan of alternate energy and EVs as I am, I noticed well over a decade and a half or more ago that Musk was ALWAYS 'exaggerating' which made his public announcements unreliable for me....

One of those rare occasions where the word 'always' is used correctly.

 

[bruto]

I've always worked on the principle that when certain people say things, it's best to assume they are wrong/lying until proven otherwise...
Musk joined THAT list years ago for me
(interestingly, in my case, he was on it long BEFORE trump!!!!)
As big a fan of alternate energy and EVs as I am, I noticed well over a decade and a half or more ago that Musk was ALWAYS 'exaggerating' which made his public announcements unreliable for me....

I suppose it makes him trustworthy in a sense, inversely.

 

[Dabop]

I suppose it makes him trustworthy in a sense, inversely.

In the same way I can trust trumps every word.....

If he says it, its a lie and the opposite is true...

 

[arthwollipot]

There are some people who, if they tell you that the sky is blue, you go outside to check.

 

[jeremyp]

#1: Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket in the history of rocketry. Turns out doing things at that scale is pretty damn hard.

NASA did it in the 1960's with the Saturn V and had no failures of the actual rocket. The whole Apollo programme was shorter than the time spent developing Starship and Starship has still not got into orbit.

#2: Like I said, SpaceX is deliberately pushing the envelope.

Filling a pressure vessel with nitrogen is "pushing the envelope" no is it?

#3: The Falcon 9 has become a workhorse, so much so that we don't even notice when it pulls off a successful mission any more.

Falcon 9 is a very successful rocket. Probably the engineers who developed it were vastly more competent than the ones developing Starship.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

The AI "bubble" will never burst.

Well the dot com bubble burst even though we kept doing more and more of our daily business online, and the railway mania bubble burst even though it was followed by a century of dominance by rail transport. When everyone and their dog jumps on the new bandwagon, an awful lot of people can lose their shirt before the eventual winners emerge as giants of commerce.

 

[Darat]

I've got some lovely tulip bulbs if you are interested.

 

[dirtywick]

Well the dot com bubble burst even though we kept doing more and more of our daily business online, and the railway mania bubble burst even though it was followed by a century of dominance by rail transport. When everyone and their dog jumps on the new bandwagon, an awful lot of people can lose their shirt before the eventual winners emerge as giants of commerce.

does anybody think the future giants of commerce are going to be grokepedia.

and as it applies to this thread, elon keeps jumping on the bandwagon of whatever the newest tech craze is, says he's going to solve it and raises a bunch of money, then loses interest and moves on to the next tech thing. and people keep handing him more money.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Sometimes, yeah. But sometimes breaking something isn't a sign of failure.

It is with Starship. But then again Musk has a long history of baning his head against the wall repeatedly trying to find solutions to problems that have long been solved.

It's just showing with spades with SpaceX whose Starship project has had a sum total of zero successful flights and hasn't managed to achieve even the first of its contracted goals two years after it was supposed to be landing on the moon.

Even the NASA leadership are getting sick of SpaceX's Bovine Excrement.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

NASA did it in the 1960's with the Saturn V and had no failures of the actual rocket. The whole Apollo programme was shorter than the time spent developing Starship and Starship has still not got into orbit.


Filling a pressure vessel with nitrogen is "pushing the envelope" no is it?


Falcon 9 is a very successful rocket. Probably the engineers who developed it were vastly more competent than the ones developing Starship.

Yes, because when SpaceX started it was vastly more experienced engineers running it and Musk was simply one voice amongst many. Now the company is mostly recent graduates or interns, there's nobody to shut Musk up and tell him that his idiocies are well known failures.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Well the dot com bubble burst even though we kept doing more and more of our daily business online, and the railway mania bubble burst even though it was followed by a century of dominance by rail transport. When everyone and their dog jumps on the new bandwagon, an awful lot of people can lose their shirt before the eventual winners emerge as giants of commerce.

The railway systems survived because the governments of the day stepped in and rescued them in return for significant control of what the companies did, or just outright nationalised them.

 

[theprestige]

Well the dot com bubble burst even though we kept doing more and more of our daily business online, and the railway mania bubble burst even though it was followed by a century of dominance by rail transport. When everyone and their dog jumps on the new bandwagon, an awful lot of people can lose their shirt before the eventual winners emerge as giants of commerce.

Good point.

 

[arthwollipot]

NASA did it in the 1960's with the Saturn V and had no failures of the actual rocket. The whole Apollo programme was shorter than the time spent developing Starship and Starship has still not got into orbit.

Starship is quite a bit bigger than Saturn V.

Filling a pressure vessel with nitrogen is "pushing the envelope" no is it?

The entire design of the rocket is pushing the envelope.

Falcon 9 is a very successful rocket. Probably the engineers who developed it were vastly more competent than the ones developing Starship.

I suspect that Elon is putting himself in the design process more than he did for Falcon 9.

 

[dirtywick]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-says-tesla-build-043053680.html

tesla is now an ai chip company, and he's going to take over that industry too and will soon be producing more chips than any other company. before or after rockets, evs, hyperloops, fsd, robotaxis, robots, or advanced ai? not sure, but he's not kidding.

 

[jeremyp]

Starship is quite a bit bigger than Saturn V.

No. It's a bit bigger, and it has the advantage of all the experience gained in developing Saturn V (and other rockets) and it has the advantage of significantly better design tools.

In many ways, it's less complex than Saturn V which had three stages and was capable of taking astronauts to the Moon and back without needing to be refuelled about twenty times.

The entire design of the rocket is pushing the envelope.

Yes, but this failure was not caused by the entire design but by attempting to put an unreactive gas into a pressure vessel. That is a solved problem. This is a failure that should not have happened. Either the pressure vessel was designed with incorrect tolerances or it was too shoddily built. Either way, it is not a good look for SpaceX.

I suspect that Elon is putting himself in the design process more than he did for Falcon 9.

I suspect you are correct but I think the problem is more pernicious. I think Musk actively fights against good engineering when it is in opposition to his ideas. I think that drives the good engineers away from his companies and he is left with a lot of yes-men. I think this applies to Tesla as well as SpaceX.

 

[arthwollipot]

No. It's a bit bigger, and it has the advantage of all the experience gained in developing Saturn V (and other rockets) and it has the advantage of significantly better design tools.

It's actually a lot bigger. It's only a bit taller, but it is considerably larger in girth, and as we know that means volume.

In many ways, it's less complex than Saturn V which had three stages and was capable of taking astronauts to the Moon and back without needing to be refuelled about twenty times.

Starship won't need to be refuelled "about twenty times". That's an exaggeration and you know it. It'll be refuelled once in Earth orbit and once in Lunar orbit for the return trip. Saturn V was also 100% non-recoverable and non-reusable. That alone increases Starship's complexity by orders of magnitude.

Yes, but this failure was not caused by the entire design but by attempting to put an unreactive gas into a pressure vessel. That is a solved problem. This is a failure that should not have happened. Either the pressure vessel was designed with incorrect tolerances or it was too shoddily built. Either way, it is not a good look for SpaceX.

We don't know at this time what caused the explosion. I agree it was most likely a fault in the manufacturing.

I suspect you are correct but I think the problem is more pernicious. I think Musk actively fights against good engineering when it is in opposition to his ideas. I think that drives the good engineers away from his companies and he is left with a lot of yes-men. I think this applies to Tesla as well as SpaceX.

I appreciate what SpaceX is trying to do. And I appreciate that they are doing as much testing as possible before putting people into this massive new kind of rocket. Musk is a ◊◊◊◊, absolutely. But if SpaceX can get this thing working it'll be a game-changer.

 

[GlennB]

Starship won't need to be refuelled "about twenty times". That's an exaggeration and you know it. It'll be refuelled once in Earth orbit
and once in Lunar orbit for the return trip. Saturn V was also 100% non-recoverable and non-reusable. That alone increases Starship's complexity by orders of magnitude.

Interesting. What about the ship that provides the refuelling? Will that need refuelling in Earth-orbit in order to make it to the moon?
Genuine question. Sounds precarious, to say the least.