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Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

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Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#21

Post by gizmo »

SeoxyS wrote: post #15

Elon Musk is my ultimate role model as an entrepreneur. This article, for me, is somewhat bittersweet. I look up to Elon Musk and what he's doing, because it's really making a difference in the world. That's what I aspire to do someday. But my day to day job is as the first engineer of an advertising startup, where we make boatloads of money helping compagnies better monetize and promote crappy mobile games. Sometime…

Elon's first startup was CMS software. Not all that sexy either. And he did that until he was 28. It's easy to think he's godlike, but he didn't get to work on space ships when he was 22.

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#22

Post by Joakal »

cloudwalking wrote: post #10
codeonfire wrote: post #6

I think SpaceX's success had more to do with the military and space business needing a new public face. SpaceX's executive bios read like a who's who of the space industry. I think people seem to think that Musk reinvented rocketry in three years, which is unrealistic. It's a nice made for TV story, but most corporations probably couldn't swing hundreds of millions in fed contracts without some serious connections.

He hasn't reinvented rocketry, he's reinvented rocket manufacturing.

A lot of reinventing seems to be done due to ITAR and monosponies.

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#23

Post by josephg »

JamesBlair wrote: post #20
lionhearted wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes I wonder if I'm creating any value in the world. ... Hopefully this'll be a stepping stone towards financing a startup that'll be a little more meaningful. I think almost everyone thinks this, but y'know what? It's a lie. People keep saying they'll do what really motivates and engages them real, real soon... just as soon as this obviously-must-be-done thing is done. But life, life is a series of obviously…

Although I am probably not the intended audience of your message, I can't agree with the sentiment. Akrasia has to have a reason, even if it makes no rational sense, and all my believing in "stop doing [unimportant things] and start doing what actually matters" seems to do is make me feel guilty and worthless for being unable to find the motivation to do what actually matters to me. I know what I'd like to be doing,…

> I know what I'd like to be doing, but I also know I'm not motivated to do it.

You just contradicted yourself. Being motivated to do something means wanting to do it.

The problem is that "What do I want to do" actually has two meanings. It means "What would I like to be doing each day" and it means "What do I want to have done". These are very different questions, and they have different answers. I'd like to have fed the poor, but I would not enjoy standing on the street asking for donations from passers-by. I want to be designing computer games, but I won't be particularly proud of writing Battlefield N+1.

I've spent years optimizing for how my life will look in retrospect. This came as a revelation to me, but if I look back at my fondest memories over the past few years, none of them have involved big goals. Instead, they've all been things that were fun to do, like gamejam and trapeze lessons. This year I've got a new plan: -Ofun. I might not change the world, but maybe if I'm enjoying myself a lot more that'll be ok.

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#24

Post by divtxt »

ThaddeusQuay2 wrote: post #17

"Musk recently said that he will put humans on Mars within ten to twenty years." Uh-huh. I said it before, got downvoted, and will say it again, because I think it's important. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3389824

Your original comment should read:

> The number of dead people whose ashes got a known-to-be small but definite odds at being put into space by Elon Musk? 208.

It's well known that new launch platforms fail a lot initially. Soyuz still fails after 757+ launches, and the fatality rate for humans is still 2%.

So, when you get on launch #3 of a new platform for which launch #1 & #2 failed, you've got no excuse for to complain about failure.

Links:

http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2011.html#rate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_acc...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1#Launch_history

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#25

Post by pgeorgi »

gizmo wrote: post #21
SeoxyS wrote: post #15

Elon Musk is my ultimate role model as an entrepreneur. This article, for me, is somewhat bittersweet. I look up to Elon Musk and what he's doing, because it's really making a difference in the world. That's what I aspire to do someday. But my day to day job is as the first engineer of an advertising startup, where we make boatloads of money helping compagnies better monetize and promote crappy mobile games. Sometime…

Elon's first startup was CMS software. Not all that sexy either. And he did that until he was 28. It's easy to think he's godlike, but he didn't get to work on space ships when he was 22.

Oh. 28. He really wasted the best part of his life on the CMS... (But I suppose, life ends at 30 for many here, given the spin many VCs try to put on entrepreneurship)

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#26

Post by lloeki »

maxmcd wrote: post #16
BerislavLopac wrote: post #12

"This car will be able to go 160 miles on one charge of its battery pack." Meh: http://www.rimac-automobili.com/concept_one/battery-system-9

I was going to simply counter your "meh" with another "meh" regarding battery vaporware, but unless that site is straight up lying those are some impressive stats. I've always been more a fan of battery replacement stations instead of batter charging, but with a 20min charge and 150km range who cares.

From their performance page [0]:

    POWER: 1088 hp
    MOTOR TORQUE: 3.800 Nm
 
    BATTERY CAPACITY: 92 kWh
    RANGE: 600 km
 
    ACCELERATION 0-100 kph: 2,8 sec.
    TOP SPEED: 305 kph
The battery capacity for the Tesla Roadster is 53kWh, weights 450kg and is advertised to last 350km on a charge (and Roadster's world record at 500km). 92x350/53 magically gives us 600km. It also gives us a little short of 800kg of batteries (although they're LiPo instead of Li-ion as in the Roadster, but that should not change the weight much) and the x-ray renderings indeed show batteries take a good deal of the volume of the car. Note that weight, critical for a sports car, is not mentioned. The complete car will probably end up around 2t, and with 1000hp this makes a contender for Veyron class cars.

For reference the one in Model S is 42kWh and the Nissan Leaf has a 24kWh unit. This is expected given the audience, which requires a practical car, so volume has to be surrendered by the batteries to the passengers and the boot.

All in all it's not groundbreaking by any stretch of the imagination and you can safely "meh" the GP on the distance-on-a-charge ground. By saying so I'm not downplaying the most important fact here and that's each one of those cars show a nascent market expanding both ends, and I'm looking forward to that.

[0] http://www.rimac-automobili.com/concept_one/performance-10

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#27

Post by prewett »

The article says "in addition to reducing carbon emissions" in regard to the Tesla. I can't see how electric cars actually reduce pollution/emissions of any kind.

Typical coal -> electricity is 33% efficient, but can be up to 50% [1], electricty to battery is 75% [2], and electric motors are about 92% [3]. The typical efficiency will be .33 * .75 * .92 = 23%, with a maximum of 35%. Gasoline engine efficiency is 25 - 30% [4], so we aren't really improving pollution much with electric cars, until wind/solar makes up a substantial part of our grid.

Now it will certainly _move_ the pollution from the cars in the cities to the power plants elsewhere (which is a good thing), but it really isn't preventing pollution.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station#Basic...

[2] http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006554.html

[3] http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/electrical-motor-efficienc...

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#28

Post by ThaddeusQuay2 »

divtxt wrote: post #24
ThaddeusQuay2 wrote: post #17

"Musk recently said that he will put humans on Mars within ten to twenty years." Uh-huh. I said it before, got downvoted, and will say it again, because I think it's important. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3389824

Your original comment should read: > The number of dead people whose ashes got a known-to-be small but definite odds at being put into space by Elon Musk? 208. It's well known that new launch platforms fail a lot initially. Soyuz still fails after 757+ launches, and the fatality rate for humans is still 2%. So, when you get on launch #3 of a new platform for which launch #1 & #2 failed, you've got no excuse for to co…

What does "definite" mean? Greater than zero? That's useless here. Either you made it to orbit or you didn't. Either you're pregnant or you're not. Either you are alive or you are dead. There is quite a lot of binary stuff happening in the universe, and none of it relies on things like "0.24% likelihood". SpaceX's record is abysmal, and you forgot a few facts.

1) Soyuz is a government project with the pride of a nation at stake. SpaceX is a personal project with the pride of an egomaniac at stake. If SpaceX fails, it's merely another startup gone bad. If Soyuz fails, it's quite a lot more.

2) Did Musk spend any of his billions on purchasing any of that hard-earned Soyuz flight data from Russia? If not, then he does not care to learn from history, which means that the long-term failure rate of SpaceX vehicles will likely be higher than that of Soyuz.

3) If I am right about #2, then the fatality rate for humans under SpaceX will be higher than 2%, and even 2% of a million people is already quite high, especially when you consider that most of them will not be trained to the levels of the people who have already gone up.

4) If Musk was grounded in reality, he would shoot for the moon, then Mars. Risking fewer people, closer to Earth, is certainly a much better strategy than what he has announced. If something goes wrong on the moon, help is a few days away. That might still not be good enough, but it's far better than the stretch of time required to wait for help on Mars.

5) Musk has very little experience building rockets, and none at all when it comes to building habitats for extreme environments. Take the full documentation (parts, computers, software, maintenance, and whatnot) of the latest Boeing jet, multiply that by about 100, and you might have what it takes to successfully fly to Mars and live there. This kind of endeavor will require a deep rethink of how we handle big projects. SpaceX does not have this ability.

A few years ago, we had the era when Google could do no wrong, and any criticism of Google would not be tolerated by its many fans. Now, that same mindset applies to Musk, except this time, people will die.

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#29

Post by tlammens »

prewett wrote: post #27

The article says "in addition to reducing carbon emissions" in regard to the Tesla. I can't see how electric cars actually reduce pollution/emissions of any kind. Typical coal -> electricity is 33% efficient, but can be up to 50% [1], electricty to battery is 75% [2], and electric motors are about 92% [3]. The typical efficiency will be .33 * .75 * .92 = 23%, with a maximum of 35%. Gasoline engine efficiency is 25 -…

It is enabling an improvement in "total" efficiency which in the end is the only thing that matters.

The sum of the different parts being greater than the individual components...

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