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Cont: Musk, SpaceX and future of Tesla II

SpaceX critics in 2017 – "Elon Musk promised me reusable rockets 15 years ago. SpaceX is a failure."

SpaceX 2024:
85% of all mass to orbit.
Booster 1067 completed its 24th launch and recovery.
134 orbital lunches – all other US companies combined managed 20 total.

SpaceX critics in 2025 – "Elon Musk promised Starship would be going to Mars by now. SpaceX is a failure."
You are going to have to come up with a better strawman than that.

The Falcon 9 is an unqualified success and I haven't been critical of that.

It's the Starship that is problematic.

A reusable orbital ship that can repeatedly sustain the extremes of reentry with a quick turnaround is probably not feasible. Nor the aim of manufacturing 1,000 Starships a year nor the infrastructure to support it.
 
Hey, I am more than in favour of SpaceX and Tesla.

I reserve the right to criticize him for his far-right politics and anti-democratic intrusion into governments around the western world.
His current descent into insanity indicates he won't be capable of making any more meaningful input into either business. "We Robot" was embarrassing.
 
Starship test flight 7 launches in a few days (barring unforseen cancellations of course). It's goal is to deploy ten simulated Starlink satellites, relight the Raptor engines, and splash down in the Indian Ocean. Its goal is not to reach orbital velocity, it is not to perform an orbital fuel transfer, and it is not to make an uncrewed landing on the moon. And anybody who says that Starship has failed because it has not done those things is just lying.
No, it has failed because SpaceX arenot even bothering to pretend its test flights have anything to do with the NASA contract that built Starship any more. This test flight does nothing to further that contract which is the sole source of funds for the rocket.

But what else would you expect from a scam artist and welfare queen.
 
His current descent into insanity indicates he won't be capable of making any more meaningful input into either business. "We Robot" was embarrassing.
well the next meaningful input for tesla to stay competitive is use his corrupt political connections to tariff imports and scrap the ev tax credits to hurt domestic competitors more than it hurts tesla.

you can obviously notice none of this is make a car people want to buy and compete in the market
 
well the next meaningful input for tesla to stay competitive is use his corrupt political connections to tariff imports and scrap the ev tax credits to hurt domestic competitors more than it hurts tesla.

you can obviously notice none of this is make a car people want to buy and compete in the market
Scrapping domeztic tarriffs across the board would hurt Teslaa lot more than its compeditors, as Teslas are not profitable without subventions and they don't have other already profitable products that they can lean on while selling EVs as loss leaders.
 
Scrapping domeztic tarriffs across the board would hurt Teslaa lot more than its compeditors, as Teslas are not profitable without subventions and they don't have other already profitable products that they can lean on while selling EVs as loss leaders.
What do you mean by domestic tariffs? The tariffs are on imports. A lot of the cars are built in the US (maybe some of the parts are made overseas, such as in China?).

But anyway, I assume there will be certain carve-outs for Musk somehow, because Trump will make it happen for him.
 
besides that, tesla barely makes money off of cars. most of it's value is in investment.
 
What do you mean by domestic tariffs? The tariffs are on imports. A lot of the cars are built in the US (maybe some of the parts are made overseas, such as in China?).

But anyway, I assume there will be certain carve-outs for Musk somehow, because Trump will make it happen for him.
tesla depends on imports from China, especially for battery parts. In a trade war, they would sink like a cybertruck.
 
besides that, tesla barely makes money off of cars. most of it's value is in investment.

Stipulated that this is revenues, not profits, but still…

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it’s trading at $400 a share, which is about $360 more per share than its revenue would suggest it should be. that’s why i say that.
 
it’s trading at $400 a share, which is about $360 more per share than its revenue would suggest it should be.

Not to belabor the point, but it’s trading exactly where investors think it should be - that’s what makes a market. Paraphrasing Bill O’Reilly, “Stocks go up; stocks go down. Nobody can explain it.”

I may have said this already, but I divested myself of most of my Tesla stock in the low 200’s, quite uncertain of Tesla’s future in light of Elon’s escapades elsewhere. Decent profit at that price. Still holding 100 shares, hoping for the best.
 
I read it multiple times. It still makes no sense.
Arth posted about the upcoming Starship flight 7. I added that the upcoming flight will include reused Raptor motors from a previous flight. That is something that no NASA rocket has ever done, only the Space shuttle. I'm not denying that the Space Shuttle was a NASA program, I'm saying that the shuttle was not a rocket.
 
No, it has failed because SpaceX arenot even bothering to pretend its test flights have anything to do with the NASA contract that built Starship any more.
Which NASA contract provided funding to build Starship?

This test flight does nothing to further that contract which is the sole source of funds for the rocket.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
 
Not to belabor the point, but it’s trading exactly where investors think it should be - that’s what makes a market. Paraphrasing Bill O’Reilly, “Stocks go up; stocks go down. Nobody can explain it.”

I may have said this already, but I divested myself of most of my Tesla stock in the low 200’s, quite uncertain of Tesla’s future in light of Elon’s escapades elsewhere. Decent profit at that price. Still holding 100 shares, hoping for the best.

i don’t really think any of that changes the observation that a lot of the money the company receives is from investors rather than ev sales.
 
Arth posted about the upcoming Starship flight 7. I added that the upcoming flight will include reused Raptor motors from a previous flight. That is something that no NASA rocket has ever done, only the Space shuttle. I'm not denying that the Space Shuttle was a NASA program, I'm saying that the shuttle was not a rocket.


Despite those big rocket engines it had and going in to orbit and everything?
 
Arth posted about the upcoming Starship flight 7. I added that the upcoming flight will include reused Raptor motors from a previous flight. That is something that no NASA rocket has ever done, only the Space shuttle. I'm not denying that the Space Shuttle was a NASA program, I'm saying that the shuttle was not a rocket.
You seem to be mangling the English language in such a way that it makes no logical sense. The space shuttle is a reusable rocket with reusable rocket engines. The shape is not a simple cylinder. It's a cylinder with wings for the reentry and landing and significant crew quarters. It's definitely a rocket though. That's it's only propulsion.
 
i don’t really think any of that changes the observation that a lot of the money the company receives is from investors rather than ev sales.
Where have you observed this? What investors have you observed, generating the bulk of Tesla's revenues? What have you observed them getting in return?
 
Today I learned the Space Shuttle, a craft entirely propelled by rocket motors, is not a rocket, because... umm... I guess it doesn't look like an old dish soap tube.
Today I learned anything powered by rocket motors is a rocket. The X-1, X-15, ME-163, streamliner cars, school buses, cars etc.. Hell, I even fly model airplanes with a guy who mounted a rocket motor to his airplane. I'll have to let him know he no longer flies an airplane, it's actually a rocket according to some random guy on ISF.
 
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Today I learned anything powered by rocket motors is a rocket. The X-1, X-15, ME-163, streamliner cars, school buses, cars etc.. Hell, I even fly model airplanes with a guy who mounted a rocket motor to his airplane. I'll have to let him know he no longer flies an airplane, it's actually a rocket according to some random guy on ISF.
Calm down. The STS is reasonably in the rocket family of heavier than air flying machines. It's not a rocket car. It's not a rocket plane. It's a rocket-powered spaceplane purposed for delivering payloads to Earth orbit. And even if you disagree, it's not worth arguing over.
 
Despite those big rocket engines it had and going in to orbit and everything?

Yes. Here's how NASA describes it:
The world's first reusable spacecraft launched like a rocket, maneuvered in Earth orbit like a spacecraft and landed like an airplane. It was comprised of the orbiter, the main engines, the external tank, and the solid rocket boosters.
If it were a rocket, NASA would just say "The world's first reusable rocket, maneuvered in Earth orbit like a spacecraft and landed like an airplane…"

The shuttle is an orbiter, not a rocket.
 
It's both. You're still welcome.

Say, can anyone remember why it was important that the shuttle shouldn't count as a real rocket?
 
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It's both. You're still welcome.

Say, can anyone remember why it was important that the shuttle shouldn't count as a real rocket?

So that SpaceX would be the first to reuse a rocket engine on a rocket.

And if you really want to get pedantic, the Space Shuttle is the entire system - SRBs, External Tank, and Orbiter. So I guess you can say an Orbiter is an orbiter, but orbiter+ET = 1 1/2 stage rocket.

I was just reading a book about the development of the Shuttle program. What a long, tortuous process it was, and it explains how we wound up with the bundle of compromises that we did.
 
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So that SpaceX would be the first to reuse a rocket engine on a rocket.

And if you really want to get pedantic, the Space Shuttle is the entire system - SRBs, External Tank, and Orbiter. So I guess you can say an Orbiter is an orbiter, but orbiter+ET = 1 1/2 stage rocket.

I was just reading a book about the development of the Shuttle program. What a long, tortuous process it was, and it explains how we wound up with the bundle of compromises that we did.
And the Shuttles Solid Rocket Boosters were also reused.
 
His current descent into insanity indicates he won't be capable of making any more meaningful input into either business. "We Robot" was embarrassing.
A lot of investors are getting really nervous.........
i don’t really think any of that changes the observation that a lot of the money the company receives is from investors rather than ev sales.

problem is you eventually have to sell cars to keep investors.......
Real problem is for a while Tesla was the only real EV in town, but now it has real competition and Musk is not handling having to actual compete very well..

So that SpaceX would be the first to reuse a rocket engine on a rocket.

And if you really want to get pedantic, the Space Shuttle is the entire system - SRBs, External Tank, and Orbiter. So I guess you can say an Orbiter is an orbiter, but orbiter+ET = 1 1/2 stage rocket.

I was just reading a book about the development of the Shuttle program. What a long, tortuous process it was, and it explains how we wound up with the bundle of compromises that we did.
The Space Program has always been comprmises and a lot of make it up as we go along.
 
Today I learned anything powered by rocket motors is a rocket. The X-1, X-15, ME-163, streamliner cars, school buses, cars etc.. Hell, I even fly model airplanes with a guy who mounted a rocket motor to his airplane. I'll have to let him know he no longer flies an airplane, it's actually a rocket according to some random guy on ISF.
Today I learned that there are rocket-powered school buses.
 
Today I learned that there's some enthusiasm for arguing about whether the space shuttle is a rocket.

Which isn't even the point. The point is that the shuttle rocket motors were reusable, and probably one of the best things to come out of that program.

My understanding is that the SpaceX motors are somewhat easier and cheaper to refurbish between flights.
 
I have more trouble with the idea of calling a rocket engine a "motor" than I do with calling the Space Shuttle a rocket. :D

Yes, I know it's a valid term. It just sounds weird to me. Always has.
 
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