Try that in a roundabout.
Split Thread Musk, SpaceX and future of Tesla
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Try that in a roundabout.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
I've worked as a programmer too. The CPUs and real time capabilities today are far more powerful than those available back when the Space Shuttle was created. Once that design was created they had to stick to whatever that technology was for the life of the product.
The SLS design was baked in because of politics There was no possibility that it could have been designed the way Falcon 9 was because of the constraints. The design had to be approved by Congress.
jeremyp
Philosopher
What evidence do you have for that statement? Have you seen SpaceX’s accounts?
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
The SpaceX scam of the gaps, again.
What's your hypothesis? Musk is operating SpaceX at a loss, and nobody noticed? Even NASA doesn't seem to think that's why SpaceX's prices are so low. Even ULA isn't alleging that SpaceX is operating below cost, in spite of the fact that Boeing and Lockheed-Martin have a vested interest in protecting their anti-competitive launch services cartel. Even Arianespace isn't alleging it, in spite of the fact they also have a cartel and a vested interest to protect.
Note that both the American and the European space launch cartels receive government subsidies to stay in business. But somehow SpaceX is the scam? Pull the other one, it's landing itself on a drone barge.
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Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
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As I keep saying, turnaround times. If you can turn around a rocket quickly, it doesn't cost much to get it ready for reuse. That means huge cost savings, because the rocket itself is one of the main costs of launching. There is no conceivable circumstance under which reusing a rocket that doesn't take much work to prepare isn't a lot lower cost than manufacturing an entire new rocket from scratch. The only way reuse is ever going to be more expensive is if the work to prepare a rocket for launch is more expensive than a new rocket, and that can only happen if there's enough labor involved that it takes longer to prepare for relaunch than it does to make a rocket from scratch. And we know the turnaround times, those ARE public, and they're short. Which means they're cheap compared to building a new rocket.
Again, there's precedent for this. The space shuttle was (partially) reusable, but it was expensive as hell, and that was reflected in really long turnaround times. The two (turnaround times and cost) are intrinsically linked. The space shuttle was a failure of reusability, because it cost to much to prep a new launch.
But there's a reason that basically everybody in the launch business is aiming for reusability now. SpaceX proved it can be done quickly and therefore cheaply, and if it can be done, it's a no brainer, because the cost savings mean no other approach can ever compete on cost.
Checkmite
Skepticifimisticalationist
In response to a rival robot maker's claim that its prototype has learned to be able to autonomously operate a coffee pot just by watching humans do it, Musk tweeted a short video of a Tesla bot appearing to do something much more complicated - taking a t-shirt out of a laundry basket and folding it. Slowly, badly, but still. The video was leapt on by fans as an impressive feat - and they would have been right, except...
However skeptics with keener eyes noticed a few tiny instances of something poking into the bottom right corner of the frame as the robot was doing its thing. It was a telepresence glove; i.e., the robot's movements were being entirely controlled by a human. This immediately rendered the video the opposite of impressive as telepresence hand control is 30-year-old tech. Not long after this started getting called out, Musk followed up with a backpedaling disclaimer stating that it is "important to note Optimus cannot yet do this autonomously" (but totally will be able to at some point in the future I swear), which makes the video a really weird decision to post as a response to a competitor's product that can do something autonomously unless he hadn't expected people to notice the controller and intended to mislead them.
However skeptics with keener eyes noticed a few tiny instances of something poking into the bottom right corner of the frame as the robot was doing its thing. It was a telepresence glove; i.e., the robot's movements were being entirely controlled by a human. This immediately rendered the video the opposite of impressive as telepresence hand control is 30-year-old tech. Not long after this started getting called out, Musk followed up with a backpedaling disclaimer stating that it is "important to note Optimus cannot yet do this autonomously" (but totally will be able to at some point in the future I swear), which makes the video a really weird decision to post as a response to a competitor's product that can do something autonomously unless he hadn't expected people to notice the controller and intended to mislead them.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
"Robot" is like "AI" - used to connote a wide range of things not actually included in the core definition. I'm not excusing Musk's equivocation, though.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Also, strictly speaking, this reverses the burden of proof. It's our Gully Foyle who alleges SpaceX it's a scam. It's his responsibility to produce evidence to support that allegation, not Zig's responsibility to produce evidence to refute it.
It's totally reasonable for Zig to rebut Foyle's unsupported claim by inference from what can be seen. It's totally unreasonable for you to give Foyle a pass on his burden of proof, and make it Zig's problem instead.
It seems that Foyle has discovered it's super easy to make accusations, but extremely inconvenient to actually support them. The null hypothesis holds: SpaceX is not a scam.
I would've thought you had kept up with the latest from Philip Mason.
What was it Musk said? We faked our own death with starship or something?
Anyway, the latest SpaceX meeting revealed the reason for the explosion.
So it was March not May. I was a little off.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
I don't know who that is.
You tell me.
yt;dw
Sounds reasonable to me.
I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say. You think SpaceX is a scam? You don't think SpaceX is a scam? You think you have evidence that it's a scam? What?
tyr_13
Penultimate Amazing
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In that he gets investors to pay for engineers they wouldn't otherwise, yeah. For some cases, that's an indictment of the investor environment. In others, it's for good reason.
Although sometimes he insists that engineers work on things they rather wouldn't, like his version of the Cybertruck.
He's (and cheap Chinese manufactures who did it first) have given the auto industry the permission structure to make a change that will increase their profits while externalizing the costs.
I'm reminded of the deer who evolved antlers too large for the environment to support and died out. The auto industry, especially in the US, often drives towards cliffs, as it is now. Short term success in the market often comes with long term damage. (This dynamic is far from unique to the auto industry. Many products are 'designed for the showroom' where features that are actually worse for the product are used because they make it seem better. The 'edgeless' phone screens are one example. Very bright, oversaturated TV are another. The 'sleek' turn signal delete on Tesla is probably dangerous but it sure does look nice!) People already can't afford cars for the most part. Very large, very expensive, vehicles have predominated despite this. Large cast components are might have short term market forces driving them, they'll be cheaper to buy, but their repair costs are going to force a lot of people who can't afford the repairs into getting old cars. Once the only old cars available are cast cars, they're screwed. We've seen this with small trucks disappearing. We've seen this with the US sedan disappearing.
If Tesla ever cuts costs with it. They're still looking at a 60% failure rate at their German plant. Other manufacturers already do better with 'giga' castings.
Yeah, the horse for handjobs guy who maneuvered himself into being forced to by a company for more than $40 billion and thinks students at black colleges have low IQ when he isn't calling experts pedos, his actions need spun to prove he's an idiot. Well argued.
tyr_13
Penultimate Amazing
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Musk's comments that he'd need 25% control of Tesla (CBS link) to advance AI and other projects inside Tesla, threatening to take them external, has reasonably spooked investors. Without these things, including things he's promised to be delivered years and years ago, there is no reason for Tesla to have as high a share price as it does.
Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
So have you tried it in a Tesla? What did you think of it?
Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
Evidence?
You might be surprised at how many businesses expect engineers to work on stuff they rather wouldn't - I've experienced it myself. But when you are paid to do a job you don't do something else instead.
A strange statement to make when externalizing the costs is an inherent feature of all gas cars.
Evidence?
Your insinuation that they did it just to look nice is off base, but not surprising. Never let a chance go by to polish the narrative!
GraculusTheGreenBird
Muse
Yep, more proof (as if we needed it) that he's a scam and bull artist.
Quite why anyone would take anything he says at face value is astounding.
I mean, he KEEPS DOING IT.
You know why we don't have threads on other billionaires?
Because THEY DONT KEEP DOING IT.
He's about as trustworthy as the Chinese government.
The direction signals on my Teslas are controlled by a stalk as normal. It's on the new ones it's a button on the steering wheel.
But it was in the news here in Norway recently that driving schools are dropping Tesla from now on, because of the difficulty of using direction signals in roundabouts. Hitting the right button when the steering wheel is upside down has been proven to be confusing.
I can understand that this isn't a problem for Americans, but in Europe we have a lot of roundabouts.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
The cost savings of dropping the stalk are minimal. The effects on sales probably not so much. Stalks are a very effective design that drivers are used to. The most used and important tools go on the stalks. The less important tools go on the wheel itself.
Fast Eddie B
Philosopher
I’m trying to visualize how much a steering wheel is turned once on a roundabout. Doesn’t seem like it would need to be upside down while navigating the average roundabout.
I still think getting rid of stalks, or at least the left stalk, is a poor decision. Standardization is the key to moving from vehicle to vehicle, and cars have standardized the left stalk for turn signals for ages. Most, I think, use the same stalk for high beams*. I think the right stalk could easily be gotten rid of - its function is already non-standard.
As an aside, the “drive-by-wire” of the new CyberTruck finally makes a yoke practical. With no need to go hand-over-hand, the steering wheel buttons are always in reach by the left or right thumb, so eliminating the left stalk might make some sense.
*I’m old enough to remember when high beams were controlled by your left foot pushing a button on the floor. So standards can and do change, often for the better.
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tyr_13
Penultimate Amazing
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It was in the Elon Musk biography.
I absolutely wouldn't be surprised, having been one of the people making them work on stuff they rather wouldn't (documentation mostly).
A strange rationalization after you cited ICE vehicle manufacturers who would use the same tech.
And a stale rationalization. Your constant excusing of ever criticism on the alter of electric vehicles would be annoying and bad reasoning generally, but it's epically stupid when you're directing it at people who are for electric vehicles. I'm for better public transport and walking more but your idea that your opponents in regards to Musk and Tesla are just against the environment or electric vehicles or whatever is as wrong as your idea about how many models Subaru produces.
Even in rural western New York we have roundabouts.
Naw, it's why they did it. There is no other reason. Unless they did it to cut costs, like their deletion of the anchor for a child's seat that has their new Model 3 banned for sale in Australia right now.
Phil Mason runs a channel under the Thunderfoot name.
I finally got around to watching and it's full of cheerful commentary, like:
"Blowing up rockets is not the norm. Blowing up rockets is failure, not success.
Having the entire company cheer like idiots when they've just failed makes
you look like a hard core Kool Aid cult. Having one rocket blow up could be
seen as misfortune. Having both rockets blow up, like loosing both parents,
looks a lot like carelessness. Having rocket blow up and not even knowing
that it's happened. Uh, yeah." [13th minute mark or so.]
Mason notes they didn't use geosynchronous satellites in routing their
telemetry and had no idea what happened to the rocket for three minutes,
instead they used StarLink routers which only work within a few hundred
kilometers of an uplink tower.
He discussed how NASA's space launch system for two billion dollars
flawlessly sent a capsule into space, around the Moon, and safely landed
it back on earth. How fifty years ago, NASA launched big rockets to the
Moon in the Apollo missions and brought astronauts back home. And how
a Soviet rocket built with slide rules in the 1970's could deliver payloads
cheeper without reusability, rather than the Falcon 9. 45 million dollars to
the Space Station versus 90 million for SpaceX. The fastest reuse time for
the Falcon 9 was about a month, similar to the Space Shuttle, and he expects
the StarShip rocket to take three times as long because it has three times
as many engines.
"The launch market is tiny compared to these development costs.
The perseverance rover, mission costs 2.4 billion, launch costs 243 million,
10% cost. There's more to space exploration than just building rockets.
And that pattern is seen with satellites."
Mason then notes the market for space launches is small. SpaceX sent
the 195 million dollar AMOS-6 Satellite into space charging 67 million
dollars for the launch and pocketing 10 million dollars in profits. He thinks
SpaceX will go bankrupt in five years because the billion dollar funding
rounds every year cannot continue.
I had to look this up on Fortune. Global market for space launches
9.15 billion dollars in 2023. North America space launches 3.53 billion
dollars. So the most SpaceX could earn in the North American market
is half a billion dollars per year.
That's about everything in the 45 minute long video.
Now you can go a watch it.
If Elon Musk ask you to invest your hard earned money into his company
by saying, "The second your money touches my hand it will burst into flame
never to be seen again" then it's probably not a scam.
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