Elon Musk

I was thinking earlier, if the democrats want to end Musks and Trumps bromance, they need a couple of senior dems to do interviews suggesting that Musk is the organ grinder and Trump is the monkey, don’t go too heavy on it, just keep slipping it in every couple of weeks.

There is no organ grinder, just monkeys. Monkeys everywhere!

But they’re certainly not advancing the science than publicly funded programmes haven’t achieved already.

Enlighten us. Which other company or organisation had already been landing rockets [with cm accuracy] returning from 70km altitude at a speed in excess of 4000km/h before SpaceX did it?

Sometimes quite a long time ago. recyclable rockets look cool, but honestly; we’ve known how to fly things for quite a while now.

Then how come so many companies still can’t do it?

Ars Technica has posted this today:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/spacex-has-set-all-kinds-of-records-with-its-falcon-9-rocket-this-year/

Then how come so many companies still can’t do it?

How many other companies have been given tens of  billions of dollars to fund the research by the US government to do that?

Regardless of whether SpaceX is clever or not can we stop pretending it’s all down to that irritating **** who runs Twitter? There will be some big challenges ‘the industry’ defined that were solved by many smart people using a mix of public and private investment.

How many other companies have been given tens of billions of dollars to fund the research by the US government to do that?

Boeing.

can we stop pretending it’s all down to that irritating **** who runs Twitter?

100%

Musk is a dick (never said he was).

Enlighten us. Which other company or organisation had already been landing rockets [with cm accuracy] returning from 70km altitude at a speed in excess of 4000km/h before SpaceX did it?

Everything SpaceX achieves is in spite of, not because of Elonia.

Elon Musk talks shit all the time

Seems to be a recurring thing for idiots who inherit billions… correct me if I’m wrong but Musks money came from his parents exploits in African mines?

Self made man; my bum cheeks.

Everything SpaceX achieves is in spite of, not because of Elonia.

Absolutely.

correct me if I’m wrong but Musks money came from his parents exploits in African mines?

Paypal.

He was rich beyond the dreams of most of us at birth, then he lucked out being an early investor in PayPal. His greatest achievement is marketing a myth of great leadership.

Wasn’t it something to do with online maps before the thing he did that turned into PayPal (that was also called “X”, IIRC).

Anyway, very much a story of a very rich man made good. Not exactly a rags to riches story.

Everything SpaceX achieves is in spite of, not because of Elonia.

Sadly, and I hate myself for saying this, but that’s not true.  The use of materials, the method of rocket catch, the fully automated Dragon.  All of these things may be ideas of others at SpaceX or they may well be Elon’s ideas, but either way.  Once he gets it into his head that it’s the right way to do something, no matter the naysayers, it gets done.  That’s rarely the case elsewhere.  Other space companies have too much history, inertia and management.  SpaceX has Elon.  Convince Him it’s the right way and you’re off.

Once he gets it into his head that it’s the right way to do something, no matter the naysayers, it gets done.

Weird cave rescue idea

Hyperloop

2 off the top of my head that were absolute pot head fantasy bollocks

SpaceX has Elon.

Actually, I think it’s more the case that SpaceX has Gwynne Shotwell.

Say what you like about him but he can pick a winner.

Enlighten us. Which other company or organisation had already been landing rockets [with cm accuracy] returning from 70km altitude at a speed in excess of 4000km/h before SpaceX did it?

OK, despite the fact that I acknowledged on the previous page that reusable rockets was a development by Space X that is innovative, and the answer is probably; any suitably funded avionics/aeronautical company that had a reason to pursue it. The actual technology is still based around the fact that we’ve been able to direct unmanned vehicles with “cm accuracy” since more or less the advent of flight, the first UAV was flown in 1917 and was a radio controllable target, that fact that you’re impressed by a big tube landing on it’s end is mostly becasue the only time you’ve seen it is probably a sci fi movie. All airplanes (and for that matter GBU and J-DAMS)   that use GPS  can reach the same sort of levels of accuracy, and as I said at the time, in a world where we bought back a space shuttle (with cm accuracy, it’s really not as new as you seem to think) and children are building model space rockets that can land vertically, it’s really just combination of  1. building on what everyone has done in the past, and 2. actually being paid (by US tax dollars) to develop it.

None of which means that SpaceX is doing anything beyond putting satellites in space and taking and bringing back stuff from low orbit which are both things that we’ve been doing for some time now. I mean; we went to the moon 60 years ago, and that’s still the furthest humans have been in space. In that respect Space X hasn’t achieved anything new. But y’know; a big tube…landing all by itself…on its end…etc etc

Say what you like about him but he can pick a winner.

Someone has to win the lottery.

I think he got very lucky with his bets early on.  We now live in a world where it’s pretty much impossible for the uber-rich to not continue getting richer.  That was more of a collective effort to control governments, anti-competition laws,  and tax laws in order to extract the maximum wealth from the rest of us rather than any genius move by an individual billionaire.

It shouldn’t really be possible to spend 44 billion on a company and then reduce it’s value to 20% of what it was at purchase within a couple of years and still be the richest person in the world but the billionaires and oligarchs have done their job well.

Enlighten us. Which other company or organisation had already been landing rockets [with cm accuracy] returning from 70km altitude at a speed in excess of 4000km/h before SpaceX did it?

Blue Origin did it first,,,

It shouldn’t really be possible to spend 44 billion on a company

Although he didnt spend all that money himself but got a bunch of other suckers to pay in especially a few banks (the only people trying to back out of the deal faster than he was were the banks but they accepted contracts were contracts).

On his cash front a judge has once again turned down his payout from Tesla. So expect Tesla to finish their move to a more musk friendly jurisdiction before asking a judge again.

2 off the top of my head that were absolute pot head fantasy bollocks

Cybertruck…

Although he didnt spend all that money himself but got a bunch of other suckers to pay in especially a few banks (the only people trying to back out of the deal faster than he was were the banks but they accepted contracts were contracts).

The other trick billionaire’s seem to enjoy is blurring the lines between what is ‘their’ money and what is their company’s money.  The money they use to buy stuff comes from lines of credit secured by the shares they own in their company.

Helps if you want to keep all the profits to yourself but spread the losses around amongst as many people as possible, I would imagine.

The other trick billionaire’s seem to enjoy is blurring the lines between what is ‘their’ money and what is their company’s money.

And he takes it even further blurring the line between different companies.

Say what you like about him but he can pick a winner.

twitter

Say what you like about him but he can pick a winner.

And as it goes, he’ll secure his place in the history books as some sort of visionary. But its often been said that it is exactly that type who further technology etc.

What SpaceX did, at Musk’s behest, was make space affordable.  His goals rely on cheap access to LEO, whether it’s to reach Moon/Mars, deliver Starlink or customer hardware to orbit. Lockheed and Boeing both said this affordability was impossible, NASA doubted it, but today the internal cost of a Falcon launch is around 15 million dollars. Nobody else is even faintly competitive with that- in fact I reckon that the market lead is such that if SpaceX was run by one of the established companies then they’d not be bothering to develop Starship, looking on it as not needed.

The delivery mechanism is kind of  by-the-by – if single shot solid fuel boosters were the quickest and most economical method of sending lots of stuff up then that’s what SpaceX would be using.

The Bill Burr sketch on Steve Jobs will equally apply to Musk when he drops down dead.

And as it goes, he’ll secure his place in the history books as some sort of visionary. But its often been said that it is exactly that type who further technology etc.

There’s a lot of assumption that we will get to Mars etc, honestly if we do, it won’t be a utopian paradise , itll be the future of Phillip K Dick; billionaires like Musk living in luxury while the plebs kept in their place down the mines…

Im not convinced his legacy won’t be dissimilar to that of Jeffrey Epstein or Mohammed al fyed …. hes got 11?  kids,  a long history of mysoginy, associating with some very unpleasant people…. im sure his wealth has bought plenty of silence but that won’t last forever

There’s a lot of assumption that we will get to Mars etc, honestly if we do, it won’t be a utopian paradise , itll be the future of Phillip K Dick; billionaires like Musk living in luxury while the plebs kept in their place down the mines…

That’s true, it’s easy to think of Mars as some lifeboat where a new society thrives and learned the lessons of a failing Earth. Instead it will be taking all of Earths problems with it, in fact, they will likely be totally embedded into it’s social structure from the get go because the likes of Musk will ensure it’s built in their image.

I can see Musks Mars mission now, they’ll take at least a dozen Cyber trucks to get around on the surface, these will break down within a month and no one will have taken tools, because tesla service comes to you, they’ll also take 8 days to charge using solar. Couple of Boring company tunneling machines to build the underground city but no way to get them from the space ship to the lander and then to the ground, the hydroponics lab will only be geared up to grow weed and they’ll forget to take water, or any way of extracting it. So they’ll all be drinking prime by the bucket load and the toilets will require a subscription.

Musk will run it like twitter and fire 75% of his staff before they’ve left LEO. Navigation will be autonomous using cameras only.

Can’t see it going well.

Say what you like about him but he can pick a winner.

If 1000 people each bet on 10 coin tosses, one of them will probably get all 10 right. And it’s a lot easier to make big bets when you’ve got bank of daddy to fund your start-up habit. There are plenty of turkeys in his cupboard too.

Say what you like about him but he can pick a winner.

Confirmation bias.  The world is full of **** like him trying to make it big. Statistically, a few are likely to succeed now and then.

I’m part way through his biog and if it’s truthfully written, then he’s not from significant money, his dad is an ar$eh0le, he’s very smart and he works damn hard.  He’s obviously driven and he pushes people to perform.

That makes it sound like i admire him when I really don’t but I don’t think that SpaceX or Tesla would be what they are without his singlemindedness.

The Mars thing is, in itself, just ridiculous but it is, at least, striving towards something bigger. Whether it’s something that we as a race need to be doing rather than fixing the things it’s aiming to “rescue” us from is another matter. I mean how bad would life on this planet have to be that living on Mars becomes an viable alternative? Unfortunately his ego needs feeding and fixing the actually important stuff isn’t much of a draw.

He certainly works hard at Diablo IV. Is he playing this whilst at work or what?

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859304361547182451

Teaches you to see the matrix, rather than simply exist in the matrix.

What a ….

 he’s very smart

How do you define ‘smart’ ?

I’m part way through his biog and if it’s truthfully written,

It’s a hagiography, it’s not particularly truthful.

And, if he makes Mars happen, it will be in his image for the benefit of him, not for the benefit of humanity.

I would never deny that he’s done some impressive things. But those who were blinded to his grotesque narcissistic nature by his wealth (any time past the 2018 thai cave thing at least, if not prior to then) need to take a long hard look at themselves and their poor judgement of character.