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Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

arstechnica.com

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Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#161

Post by hef19898 »

widowlark wrote: post #104
hef19898 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't, plain and simple. So either it is propaganda or dilution or hybris. Probably a combination of all three.

People say he doesn't over and over - but he beats expectations over and over. Hmm.

Two things. Yes he does, but despite his management style, not because of it. And no, he doesn't have the bandwidth people think he has. That is part of his narrative, and that narrative, more than anything else, keeps his companies afloat.

Not to forget that he misses a ton of deadlines and constantly moves the goal posts. Helps in beating expectations.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#162

Post by m4rtink »

peeters wrote: post #74
aguyfromnb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They designed and built a custom welding machine _and_ a custom X-Ray machine for building tank domes in four weeks? Can any engineer speak to whether this is actually progress, or even necessary? It seems like every time something goes wrong, Elon "invents" a way to do it better. I'm old enough to remember rescue subs, battery swaps, brain implants that will cure autism, factories spitting out factories, solar shi…

I'm not in that area, but I struggle to find an analogue of a large pressurized tank on Earth where mass is the dominant cost factor. You might have equally big tanks on Earth, under equal pressures, but it will be more cost-effective to just increase the material used on the shell of the tank to solve your problems. Whereas in space, every kg that can theoretically be removed from the launch vehicle is worth investi…

>I'm not in that area, but I struggle to find an analogue of a large pressurized tank on Earth where mass is the dominant cost factor.

If you stretch the definition of "tank" and "on Earth" then modern pressurized airliner cabins definitely qualify.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#163

Post by Avalaxy »

justapassenger wrote: post #4

Is it me, or does this article basically romanticize abusing workers and glorifies running projects without a plan, just with a goal?

I don't think it's abusing workers if it's perfectly clear to everyone before they get on board what they're signing up for. I think most people applying for those jobs are dying (figuratively) to get in on it because it's such a unique opportunity to work on something big, hightech and exciting.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#164

Post by addisonl »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #141
addisonl wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone does trial and error. Look at every major aviation achievement, were those done on the first try?

If so, why is everyone else so far behind?

Depends on how you measure "behind". If you measure it by "times been to the moon" SpaceX sure is behind.

Less money? Less motivation? Less talent? The number of factors that contribute to success are unmeasurable, what a silly question.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#166

Post by jgalt212 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #9
justapassenger wrote: post #4

Is it me, or does this article basically romanticize abusing workers and glorifies running projects without a plan, just with a goal?

I assume that an "all-hands" meeting at 1AM means an all-hands for everybody working the night shift, not the entire staff. Yes, shift work sucks, but that doesn't necessarily mean overwork.

Shift work also correlates with elevated levels of various diseases and cancers.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#167

Post by nixpulvis »

anthonypasq wrote: post #159
nixpulvis wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's quite inspiring to see a real goal and drive towards it. I'm throughly uninspired... As a friend of mine once said: "progress when you're going the wrong direction, is turning around". The idea that we'll settle Mars while the Earth burns in borderline sinister. It reminds me of the elite outpost from Kingsman (the movie). We have a planet that is in dire need of this kind of motivated action, and yet Elon wou…

sigh... there are plenty of reasons humanity should be multi-planetary other than escaping climate change.

Feel free to elaborate.

I suspect any reasons you'll come up with are all still less urgent than the needs of our Earth.

I've heard the argument about learning to control the climate through taraforming (or whatever you want to call it), but I'm completely unconvinced that is an efficient method.

I'd be willing to be convinced otherwise, but I'm very skeptical.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#168

Post by aglavine »

schaefer wrote: post #121

A Linguistic Beef: The word "Starship" means specifically that the ship is capable of traveling between stars. At a minimum, it should travel from it's home star to the nearest neighboring star. What we're talking about here are "Spaceships". -- The only way I can lighten up and enjoy the name Starship in this context is to assume it's being used ironically... like someone who's named their cat "Dog".

It is called after a fictional spacecraft

https://science.howstuffworks.com/10-fictional-spacecraft-we...

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#169

Post by vsareto »

nixpulvis wrote: post #145
throwaway13337 wrote: post #23

It's quite inspiring to see a real goal and drive towards it. Purpose is so hard to come by now because we all don't know what we want. When we do know, we're constantly unsure about it. Such a clear goal makes it easy to have greater purpose that you don't second guess. This isn't a scheme to get rich, a zero sum political movement, or a narcissistic artistic endeavor. It's pretty unique there. There's that whole da…

> It's quite inspiring to see a real goal and drive towards it. I'm throughly uninspired... As a friend of mine once said: "progress when you're going the wrong direction, is turning around". The idea that we'll settle Mars while the Earth burns in borderline sinister. It reminds me of the elite outpost from Kingsman (the movie). We have a planet that is in dire need of this kind of motivated action, and yet Elon wou…

>If we as humans can't live on Earth responsibly, we frankly don't deserve to exist at all.

We did for a long time though, except for relatively recently. And Mars won't be able to live without Earth for a long time so it isn't really escapism as you paint it.

I don't think we deserve to disappear completely, but if we don't reverse climate change, we'll have a ton of loss of life but not likely total extinction except for some astronauts. That's probably "enough" as far as galactic justice goes. I'm always a little disappointed in this argument though because it's climate change that we should be judged by, rather than massive deaths from human made conflicts throughout history. Surely there's lots of previous events that qualify for "we don't deserve to exist at all".

Do we need another eccentric billionaire but for climate change though? Sure, bring it on.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#170

Post by ben_w »

bergoid wrote: post #76
daxaxelrod wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are not adapted to live in space either. But because of a couple brave people, we now know a little about how to counteract zero gravity's degradation on the body (Bone and muscle loss -> stricter workout regiment). Bound to fail in the long term is quite the statement to make given our ability to build tools based on data that could increase our chance of survival.

Low gravity is one thing. But the radiation outside the Earth's magnetic field is quite another. People colonizing Mars will need to shield themselves from several types of harmful radiation. Wich means in practice: living underground.

The magnetic field is, by far, the easiest problem. There are many other unsolved problems, but that isn’t one of them.

Now I’m working if making a very large current loop on the ground would double up as a launch/landing system where the planet itself is the reaction mass…

(Probably not; the chances are the requirements for safety and reaction are orders of magnitude different from each other).

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