141–150 of 348 posts
This is the first time I’ve ever heard him speak. Is he always this awkward? Based off of the 5 minutes I watched, he clearly hasn’t gotten to where he is through charisma and public speaking skills. I’m just wondering if this is typical for him. Also, a million tons to Mars? If each starship lifts 100 tons, that is 10,000 launches. I think he said launch windows only come around every 2 years. He is either planning…
He was born autistic.
"It's gonna be cramped, dangerous, difficult, very hard work. You might die." -- Elon's sales pitch for Mars, in his own words. I wonder if any billionaire (or their children) will be doing the early work. It's an interesting game of "Who values their life the least?" knowing that their sacrifice will make for a better future. Of course, it's not a foregone conclusion that there will be a disaster. But over the cours…
Why do we need to fly 3 months to some inhospitable planet that is in worse condition than Earth would be (even after nuclear wars and global warming) to make progress? I suppose there's an idea we could apply everything done on Mars to Earth, but like... seriously, what we just took all the prep for mars and just put it in the middle of the Empty Quarter, the Saraha, Antarctica? People barely want to live in the arc…
Why do we need to pick?
Also the Earth has limited resources and even of the resources we have, people are already attacking the idea of mining on Earth more and more, even when it's for things like stopping global warming by creating EVs. At some point it's going to be considered downright evil to dig into the ground to pull resources out of it with how things are going. The only alternative will be to pull it out of space.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The basic idea is to not have all your eggs in one basket. We are one asteroid strike away from losing all human life on earth. Having 2 habited planets spreads the risk. Obviously having those planets in different solar systems would be even better, but we don’t have the technology for that, yet.
You're presenting a false dichotomy. Our options aren't only (a) live only on Earth, and (b) live on Earth and Mars and potentially other planets. There is, for example, (c) live in man-made structures orbiting the sun at a distance of 1AU, which is debatedly much more sensible than trying to live on Mars.
The resources still need to come from somewhere. Either we mine them on Mars, asteroids, or the moon. Mining is a lot easier when you have gravity you can push against to apply force. Rather than move the resources off-body though, its easier and cheaper to use them directly in-situ.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no opinion to express on Elon but I will say that I’ve heard non-technical managers lap up stuff like that in meetings with the engineers and then regurgitate it elsewhere. If I had to guess his technical competence is somewhere in the middle of the distribution of opinions on the matter. I’m sure he’s fine.
Sure but if you ever listen to his longer interviews, in particular those with Tim Dodd (Everyday Astronaut), it's very clear he has a deep understanding of rocket mechanics, production, logistics, launch pad development, etc. It's well beyond manager-just-regurgitating-stuff they hear. One interview he stops briefly and gets into some nitty gritty about hold-downs on the starship pad or something.
https://youtu.be/DxREm3s1scA?t=3760 1.02.40
and
https://youtu.be/DxREm3s1scA?t=5641 1:34.01
looks more like the case of the manager repeating stuff heard from the engineers discussion.
Lex Fridman asked the questions, was the one that clearly layout the challenges, and kindly enough repeated the answer that Elon Musk was not providing. Meaning its not a problem of "vector space". Humans interpret the world and give semantic meaning to the scene in front of them.
He repeated it several times as Elon Musk answers completely missed the critical challenges, until he was perceptive enough to pick and regurgitate back the examples Lex Fridman was providing. Like the one where a human would not miss the fact that although some children temporarily disappear from your field a vision as you overtake a school bus for example, they are likely to appear in front of you as they will try to cross from the front of the bus to the other side of the road.
The interview is actually concerning, as its basically Lex Fridman explaining to Elon Musk the challenges and points he is supposed to address, and throwing him a soft ball while he was running around as this is simple, easy problem of creating a "vector space".
Curiously he does pick up on hints a bit later, but still concludes and reluctantly goes on to declare the problem will be fully solved by middle 2022... At 1:26:48: https://youtu.be/DxREm3s1scA?t=5206
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It’s helpful to remember it’s not a zero sum game. We can do all of that too. The tech for Mars would make it that much easier. No one wants to live in those places because currently they have a choice. But if our planet becomes irradiated, or hit by a meteor, or suffers a sun burst — all very realistic concerns — then those choices become more limited. And it’s good to have options.
The ISS is literally the most expensive physical structure we have ever built, and it's like 5 floating schoolbuses. Now I'm for walking and chewing bubblegum. But if you believe in opportunity costs and care about navigating that, it feels like the same problem. Our planet becoming irradiated is actually not a huge problem! It would still be easier to live on Earth than on Mars! An irradiated radioactive hellscape o…
Most of that cost was in the cost of launching it (and the inflation in the price of the modules knowing that they are "priceless" and "can't fail" and "we can only build one copy of it"). Further it's all engineered to very fine margins. The more you get your margins down the more cost these things take. One-offs of anything tend to be expensive. One-offs of very tight margin things are even more expensive. There's nothing in the ISS that is especially exotic. It's copper wiring and aluminum pressure vessels.
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The ISS was built largely with hundreds of space shuttle and Soyuz launches over two decades hence why it's so expensive. Starship will be able to put an entire ISS worth of stuff into orbit in a single launch for 1/50th of the cost. It's not a zero sum game. The space industry employs a lot of people. Some of the stuff they put into orbit are satellites that literally save lives.
Starship can't lift 462 tons to orbit in one launch and that isn't taking into account the volume needed. It would take more than 1 to get an ISS equivalent on orbit.
I love how some folks are like "Elon isn't a real engineer !" and then he starts going on a tangent in the middle of a presser about how flanges are a PITA to seal once you exceed a few hundred bar (just over a few thousand PSI), and how welding improves the plumbing significantly. Like, what!? That's not how C-suite bigwigs talk. That's primo enginerd banter.
One of the secrets about Musk is that he is actually a much better speaker when he just goes of on technical stuff like that. The problem with Musk is that when you ask him an even slightly open question, he always basically goes to the what he considers the fundamental answer. That's why so many of his answer are the same and people who know him well can already tell what most answers to most question will be. Howev…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, if someone is struggling to survive, that will limit their ability to become a world-changing entrepreneur. That said, the average westerner is not struggling to survive, and the average westerner does not end up founding 3 world changing companies and amassing a wealth of $200 billion. Not even the average birthright 1%er achieves that.
> That said, the average westerner is not struggling to survive… This is an extremely privileged and out-of-touch POV.
"It's gonna be cramped, dangerous, difficult, very hard work. You might die." -- Elon's sales pitch for Mars, in his own words. I wonder if any billionaire (or their children) will be doing the early work. It's an interesting game of "Who values their life the least?" knowing that their sacrifice will make for a better future. Of course, it's not a foregone conclusion that there will be a disaster. But over the cours…
Why do we need to fly 3 months to some inhospitable planet that is in worse condition than Earth would be (even after nuclear wars and global warming) to make progress? I suppose there's an idea we could apply everything done on Mars to Earth, but like... seriously, what we just took all the prep for mars and just put it in the middle of the Empty Quarter, the Saraha, Antarctica? People barely want to live in the arc…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elon seemed to indicate that it would be stretching to get individual launch costs below $1M. That seems at least 2-3 orders of magnitude out of range for most conventional travel?
There is no way the cost per trip (airline) is in the $1K - $10K range. The Boeing 787-8 has a fuel capacity of 33,500 gallons. I don't think an intercontinental flight costs significantly less than $1M
So a trip from NYC to Rome of 4,300 miles in a 777-300ER with 350 passengers would cost in the ballpark of $225k.
LA to Shanghai at 6,500 miles in the same capacity plane would be more like $350k.
$1M wouldn’t make much sense because with 350pax you’d need them to pay $2,900 each leg just to cover the operating costs. So a round trip flight to Shanghai that was completely sold out in both directions would need to have an average ticket price of nearly $6k.