561–570 of 641 posts
Isn't this an absolutely horrible idea to build this here? What happens when the next Category 5 hurricane hits this area? It's an absolute certainty that they will get another Category 5 at some point.
How are SpaceX paying for it? it’s costing $100bn… but they don’t have $100bn…
More no-bid contracts, under the guise of building a "golden dome" that I'll bet my hands will never exist.
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Most of the important maths research is funded by the Department of War. NSF is a good chunk, I'd have to look it up, but I wouldn't be concerned about this at all. Math is important for the war planners, always has been always will be.
Thanks for sharing. I don't work on weapons as a matter of deep conviction, so I'll continue to be concerned about this.
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"Incredible" is a subjective word. It describes how one feels about his achievements. It also has a strong connotation of positivity (you don't usually hear people say that the Holocaust was an incredible achievement despite the unique amount of planning and effort that went into it). This is not in the realm of facts. It could be factual to say "I find his achievements incredible" or "many people find his achievemen…
> ”Incredible" is a subjective word And subjectively, launching more to orbit than the rest of the world is an incredible achievement. So is reusing a first stage rocket 300 times. So is building the world’s best selling car. These are incredibly difficult things to do, hence, “incredible”
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I can count plenty of incredibly ambitious announcements from them that have turned out amazing! In fact, they are an outlier in how many they have challenges they have taken on and succeeded in. [x] Partially reusable rocket that dropped cost to orbit by an order of magnitude. And no, the space shuttle (while an amazing piece of engineering), doesn't really count. It cost a billion+ to refurbish and did nothing to m…
SpaceX is the most successful Musk company because it is the one he has the LEAST direct involvement with. Compare SpaceX to how Musk is causing Tesla to crash and burn. Gwynne Shotwell is the actual reason SpaceX is as successful as it it.
> Gwynne Shotwell is the actual reason SpaceX is as successful as it it.
Weird take. If you read any of the biographies or books about SpaceX, you would know that many key personnel at SpaceX (e.g. Tom Mueller [1], Hans Koeniggsman[2], Tim Buzza [3], Jim Cantrell[4], Garrett Reisman [5]) have all mentioned his major role in the engineering decisions there.
Gwynne has done an amazing job at running the company - but she doesn't make the engineering decisions. You cannot deny the achievements of the company - so you just say that he had no role in it. This sort of retconning of history just because people don't like him, is super weird.
> When we first started he didn't know a lot about propulsion. He knew quite a bit about structures and helped the structures guys a lot. Over the twenty years that we worked together, now he's practically running propulsion there because he's come up to speed and he understands how to do rocket engines, which are really one of the most complex parts of the vehicle. He's always been excellent at architecting the whole mission, but now he's a lot better at the very small details of the combustion process. Stuff I learned over a decade-and-a-half at TRW he's picked up too."
> Musk "didn't know a lot about rockets initially, but he learned a lot over time," Koenigsmann said. Musk picked knowledge up quickly, which was "amazing to watch," he added. "I really enjoyed working with him and learning how he sees things," Koenigsmann said. "He sees things from a different perspective." Musk provided a "unique perspective" on scenarios involving basic physics by asking what the limiting factor was, according to Koenigsmann. An example of this was when Musk pushed his engineers to shorten the time it took to fuel SpaceX's rockets. Musk said SpaceX should aim to reduce the time from 30 minutes to eight minutes — the same time it takes to empty a rocket tank, according to Koenigsmann. SpaceX uses propellant at very low temperatures to increase its density, allowing engineers to cram more into each rocket, Insider previously reported. Rockets need to be fueled quickly before launch so the propellant doesn't warm up. As a result of Musk's direction, SpaceX's rockets are fueled "in a remarkably short time," Koenigsmann said."
[3] https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/buzzat-1-15-...
> Elon Musk is our chief designer. I think between himself and the technical design teams, they came up with the initial concepts of the size of the vehicle, how much propellant's on board, what the engine thrust is going to be, two stage rocket, that kind of stuff.
[4] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/former-spacex-exec-explains-e...
[5] https://magazine.wharton.upenn.edu/digital/from-nasa-to-spac...
> The thing that impresses me the most is his ability to reach very, very, very deep into particular technical topics, but across an incredibly wide scope. He’s the only person I’ve ever seen that can really do it with that level of acumen. He can jump from talking to our electronic experts about the arcane details about the architectures of the processor inside the flight computer, and then talk to our structures guys about a particular type of alloy in their welding techniques. His ability to switch gears and interact at such a very high technical level with experts in each of these subjects, and not only keep up, but surpass them in many cases, is remarkable.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W676Kk9LSYw
Did you watch the video? This person didn't say it was impossible to launch enough satellites for Starlink. He said the Falcon 1 launch price of $5MM was unrealistic, which ended up being correct. At the time, Falcon 1 was supposed to launch 600kg for $5MM. It ended up launching 420kg for $9MM. $8k/kg to $21k/kg. Now obviously there's always a lot of doubt and skepticism around SpaceX, but you can just say "people sa…
Yes, thus my posting it.
His underlying tone is that reusability is "a dream" (his words). Without reusability, Starlink as a network of tens of thousands of satellites would not be practical.
He said this in 2013, two years before the first Falcon 9 booster landing.
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Are we looking at the same link? I scrolled through a bunch of them and I could not find a single one that was NOT related to scientific research. The UI is horrible so I can't link anything on that page, but here's what I see when I click that link: https://i.imgur.com/LzwDuKl.png (Edited to add, these are the abstracts, because I can't fit both in one screen /facepalm: https://i.imgur.com/yQKHViO.png ) Maybe there'…
Maybe you and I have different views on what constitutes scientific research.
Collaborative Research: Bounding global ice volumes over the last glacial cycle using reconstructions of Bering Strait flooding
Collaborative Research: Effects of government-insured mortgages
Basic Plasma Science Facility Renewal
Studies in the Climate Dynamics of Moist Process Variability and Change
NeTS: Medium: Provable Guarantees for Network Protocol Implementations
Collaborative Research: Ideas Lab: RNA-encoded Molecular Memory (REMM)
Research: Process and consequences of social partner choice revealed by multilayer network analysis
Collaborative Research: Towards the Foundation of Approximate Sampling-Based Exploration in Sequential Decision Making
Travel Grant: International School/Symposium for Space Simulations (ISSS) and Interrelationship between Plasma Experiments in the Laboratory and in Space (IPELS)
RAPID: Measuring Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) Composition During and After the Los Angeles Wildland-Urban Interface Fires
GEM: Fundamental Properties of Dawnside Auroral Polarization Streams and Their Role in Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Instabilities and Dramatic Events
PFI-TT: A Rapid Multiplexed Diagnostic Tool for Serology of Tick-Borne Diseases
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I love that people see a website about one of musk’s ideas and go “wow this is real and happening” in the year of our lord 2026
Of all of Musk's ventures, SpaceX seems to actually do things and not just say they do things.
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> ”Incredible" is a subjective word And subjectively, launching more to orbit than the rest of the world is an incredible achievement. So is reusing a first stage rocket 300 times. So is building the world’s best selling car. These are incredibly difficult things to do, hence, “incredible”
I'm not sure what you're saying here. That he's launched so many rockets to orbit is a fact. That this is an "incredible achievement" is a subjective interpretation.
Personally I describe nuclear weapons as incredible (though also horrific).