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Cont: Musk, SpaceX and future of Tesla II

Darat said:
Which is nothing to do with the fact that the choice is not between a moon mission and funding healthcare and education. Those are not the set of available choices.
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You're right it isn’t. But I'm not interested in the latter until the former is done.
 
Darat said:
Which is nothing to do with the fact that the choice is not between a moon mission and funding healthcare and education. Those are not the set of available choices.
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Retrospectively, any choice made can be made to look binary, and in theory, the choice cited could have been made. We might have improved health care and education instead of going to the moon, if those in charge had agreed to the need, and had the power to redirect the energy, and chosen that particular tradeoff. It's also possible we could have done both, at the expense of something else. Life is full of these choices and consequences, from political divisions that never go away, to "if only I'd known" regrets. Anyway, it's handy at times. If we can send a man to the moon, why can't we....

Which, conveniently or inconveniently, depending a little I imagine on how busy your morning is, leads to a sort of philosophical diversion, based on the moon/social welfare issue.

I sort of agree with acbytesla, that there are some things we should attend to before we attend to others. Some are glaringly obvious, some a matter of perspective or point of view. Certainly right now, our nation is a blinding example of wrong priorities, frivolous choices and lost opportunities. At the same time, because most of the choices we see are not truly binary, often not mutually exclusive, and often not ours to make, we need, I think, to guard against what I've always thought of as a sort of "moral triage" when we assess the acts of others. We make our choices and others make theirs. Whatever you decide to dedicate your time or money or conscience to, someone somewhere can find and justify something else you should have done instead. Whatever enterprise or charity or cause you decide to pursue, someone can say you would have done better to feed the poor. If you put your effort toward feeding the poor, someone can find an argument that you'd have gotten more bang for your buck doing something else. Every choice we make is alloyed, every choice a little bit wrong, the more so in hindsight when unforeseen consquences are revealed. Even if there's some truth there we have to temper an argument that can be deployed for everything from gold-encrusted ballrooms to animal welfare to art itself. The world is a terrible and contradictory place where bluebirds sing and lions eat antelopes alive. The poor we will always have with us, and in the meantime we should do the best we can, but we also can, perhaps, be forgiven for not all being Diogenes naked in his barrel.
 
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this is all in the context of the value of elon musk's rocket ship company he's pocked billions of dollars off of, who had not only previously claimed he'd be willing and able to solve world hunger and interferered in an election to position himself to massively disrupt internatinal humanitarian aid
 
dirtywick said:
this is all in the context of the value of elon musk's rocket ship company he's pocked billions of dollars off of, who had not only previously claimed he'd be willing and able to solve world hunger and interferered in an election to position himself to massively disrupt internatinal humanitarian aid
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Of course if we go back from abstraction to real world cases I don't think there's any argument that can realistically be made in Musk's favor. Because even if we can justify a national policy of sending another rocket to the moon, which is itself tenuous, we are left with the fact that Musk is an utter ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ hoarding obscenely enormous wealth the justification for which stretches the bounds of credulity past the breaking point, and that his participation in the enterprise, even if it's only in part, taints it. There's an argument to be made that even if flying to the moon is a good idea, hiring Musk or his company to do it is too high a price, as well as questioning whether that deal is as binary as some see it.

My post upthread was aimed more at the issue of whether the original moon mission was misdirected, and whether the argument that can be made should be made. I saw a crack in the stable door and my hobby horse snuck through. Circumstances are different now.
 
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jeremyp said:
The USA has already proved we can go to the Moon.

China will likely be the nation to prove it wasn't a one-off. Artemis is going nonowhere.
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The Apollo missions weren't a one off. There were 6 manned Apollo spacecraft that landed on the moon. There would have been 7 if Apollo 13 didn't have a problem. 12 humans walked on the moon. From Neil Armstrong the first, to Eugene Cernan being the last.
 
acbytesla said:
The Apollo missions weren't a one off. There were 6 manned Apollo spacecraft that landed on the moon. There would have been 7 if Apollo 13 didn't have a problem. 12 humans walked on the moon. From Neil Armstrong the first, to Eugene Cernan being the last.
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That's a bit nit picky. There was oner programme.
 
We haven't talked about Tesla for a while. How are sales going


Oh.

Never mind. There is always autonomy to save the company. How's robotaxi going?

Musk cuts Tesla Robotaxi plans in Austin: instead of 500, there will be about 60 driverless cars

Elon Musk has sharply scaled back plans for a Tesla robotaxi pilot fleet in Austin. While last month he promised 500 cars by the end of the year, he is now talking only about "roughly doubling" the number of vehicles available.
mezha.ua mezha.ua

Oh.
 
GlennB said:
That would make 60+ launches? Hilarious :) Ain't gonna happen.
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The plan for v3, which has completely new engines, is 200 tons to LEO.

If he gets anywhere near that is open to debate.

Total fuel capacity of Starship is 1200 tons.

However the fact that the source fuel tanker must have a higher fuel pressure than the target vehicle must mean they can't transfer all the fuel they carry.
 
So all the tankers will return with fuel cargo still in their tanks?

What could go wrong?
 
arthwollipot said:
Fun fact: The reason you haven't seen anything since the tremendously successful Artemis I mission in 2022 is that the next mission, Artemis II, isn't scheduled until next year.
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We know the SLS part works despite having been designed using the old stupid design things right first time methodology instead of the move slow and break things methodology beloved of Elon's fanboys. Unfortunately, it is expensive and it is reliant on the bit that we don't know works which is years behind schedule and will almost certainly turn out to be expensive.

I can't see everything being ready before Congress decides to remove the budget.
 
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