Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

murtza.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 57 posts

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#31

Post by damoncali »

ThaddeusQuay2 wrote: post #28
divtxt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nati…

If you don't try to do things differently, there will be no innovation. The current system (NASA, et. al.) does not scale up to what is needed, so different strategies are required. It's really as simple as that.

Will he succeed? Highly unlikely. But I'm glad he's trying, and anyone who kills themselves on one of his rockets will know what they're getting into. Flying in space is inherently dangerous.

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#32

Post by showerst »

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 -…

Don't most large power plants in the Western world have 'scrubbers' and other measures that limit the amount of carbon/other pollutants that they actually release into the air?

If not now, is that a technology that's moving forward fast enough to be a partial solution in the future?

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#33

Post by tomerico »

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 -…

Several Reasons why

- As you said, pollution from power plants have less effect on humans, because of distance and filters - You are comparing vehicle best case efficiency with Electrical worst case - Electrical power can be produced from clean sources, gasoline can't be used without creating pollution - Electric can potentially be smaller and lighter because of a very simple mechanism compared to the gasoline engine and all the components around it. (But batteries efficiency must be improved to really reduce weight)

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#34

Post by Avshalom »

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 -…

Efficiency isn't the same carbon/NO2/whatever emissions. A lot of inefficiency comes from waste heat and mechanical losses (that's true both in electrical generation AND gas/diesel engines of course) and even then fossil fuels only make up 75% of US power.

Now that said the overall win is still probably smaller than marketing would be willing to admit.

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#35

Post by jonknee »

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 -…

You're counting all the deficiencies of electricity through the life cycle of how it gets into your car, but not for how oil gets turned into gas and then into your tank.

Less than half of electricity in the US is from coal. Also, because of how power plants / grids work, there is excess capacity available that electric cars can use (overnight charging) without increasing power generation.

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#36

Post by damoncali »

maaku wrote: post #7
dogfood123 wrote: post #4

Nissan and Chevy are already shipping electric cars. There are other private companies pursuing private space flight. Elon gets the love from the Valley because he's from here, but he's an entrepreneur just trying to make money on what's hot. There's nothing wrong with that, but let's hold off on the deification.

I'm in the space business, and there are no other organizations in the world doing space the way Elon is with SpaceX. The framework is entirely different, which is far more important than you might give credit. None of his competitors are doing business in a way that will credibly open up space as an entrepreneurial frontier like we have here in the valley.

Can you elaborate? I used to work in the space industry, but it's been some time.

I spent some time at Orbital at a time when they were trying to launch ORBCOMM. What they were doing seems similar in feel to SpaceX. I also noted that ORBCOMM is one of the first scheduled launches for SpaceX.

Interestingly, Orbital was started by an entrepreneur with a vision of small launch vehicles and he managed to actually pull it off- it was not some huge spinoff of an existing giant. I wonder how much the two are talking.

Friends of mine who worked on the early days of Orbital's Pegasus described a situation that sounded very startup-like to me. (I worked there in the late 90's, but on Hubble, not Orbital's commercial projects).

Orbital had modest success (if an IPO can be considered modest). So it seems not only plausible, but likely that a new approach is what is needed here. Perhaps SpaceX is the next iteration of a leaner approach that will actually scale to the meet the grand vision.

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#37

Post by divtxt »

ThaddeusQuay2 wrote: post #28
divtxt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nati…

> What does "definite" mean? ... Either you made it to orbit or you didn't

The difficulty of defining what probability is is not a defense.

People are able to calculate a value called "probability of launch success" and use this number for useful things like pricing the insurance of the satellites being carried. I assure you that no one involved expects part of a satellite to go up.

> SpaceX's record is abysmal, and you forgot a few facts.

Your facts seem to be (angry) critiques of Musk/SpaceX, but none of them address the original point of discussion i.e. that a new rocket platform had launch failures.

Let me skip to what seems to be the important bit...

> 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.

If that's what bugs you, here's my criticism:

- Electric cars: can't take off until there's a breakthrough in battery tech. Oh, and the breakthrough can't use elements which are rare/expensive.

- Mars: we don't have enough energy and raw materials to send more than a handful of people.

I still admire Musk for his combination of genius & entrepreneurship. He's attempting, rethinking and achieving way more than most people.

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#38

Post by BigTigger »

pgeorgi wrote: post #25
gizmo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I'm highly upset at this comment. I didn't realise hn had become downertown.

Many people enjoy this website and just because someone tried to add wind into someone else's sails don't mean it's your job to tell them to stop inventing and dreaming because they're not somewhere glorious.

I hope gizmo is the first person to land on Mars and I hope just to spite you they start after they're 30...

Re: Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

#40

Post by eps »

jonknee wrote: post #35
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 -…

You're counting all the deficiencies of electricity through the life cycle of how it gets into your car, but not for how oil gets turned into gas and then into your tank. Less than half of electricity in the US is from coal. Also, because of how power plants / grids work, there is excess capacity available that electric cars can use (overnight charging) without increasing power generation.

> Less than half of electricity in the US is from coal.

And the rest is from Canada :)

Post reply on HN