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SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

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Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#191

Post by phkahler »

bluthru wrote: post #130
nickik wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually I agree about his presentation. However this one was quite a bit worse then most of them. The slides were not in sync confusing the audience. Not knowing when to clap, made it really uncomfortable. He seemed to just drop stuff randomly without a narrative thread. When he showed the BFR/ITS for the first time, he had a much clear threwline, even while rambling in between.

I don't get the sense that Elon values rehearsal time, but someone should convince him that it's really important.

They could let Shotwell do some of these talks. She's a much better speaker. One of my favorite Shotwell lines was when congress asked how they can be so much cheaper than the competition. She responded "I don't know how to build a 400 million dollar rocket".

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#192

Post by a1studmuffin »

hacker_9 wrote: post #77

Great presentation, only thing I'm worried about is human flight in these things. I mean what happens if this thing is 1% off on the landing? Does the whole thing topple over and blow up into a million pieces? Additionally with the entire flight being automated, what happens if the software gets taken over in space and they just drop it like a rock onto a city? The damage would be catastrophic. We need Elon to invest…

Yeah I'm really interested to see the g-forces involved in one of those flights, I can't imagine it's a gentle take-off and landing.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#193

Post by imaginenore »

dcsommer wrote: post #73

I wonder what the greenhouse gas emissions will be like for the Earth-to-Earth trips. Ironic that the display showed a snow-capped mountain after the E2E animation.

He addressed this. You can make methane from CO2 and water, so it can be carbon-neutral.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#194

Post by Inconel »

nickik wrote: post #186
krapp wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a CEO - he doesn't build and design, he has people build and design for him. He owns an entire company of builders and designers. Giving speeches is more appropriate for his actual job.

Do you know Elon Musk? He absolutely builds and designs. He is CEO and Chief Engineer at SpaceX and that is not just a title. He knows more about the rocket then probably anybody else. He said that he spends about 80% of his SpaceX time as and engineer.

Just to add a small anecdote, I have no involvement on the design side of the house but there isn't a rocket that leaves Hawthorne without touching my hands at some point, and I've always been impressed with Musk and some of the other more senior engineers, Tom Mueller deserves to be called out in particular, for how much they know about the low level technical things that go on here. I'm very, very, very low on the hierarchy here but I've escalated things to Musk and other VP's in the past when I felt it was necessary and they always took the time to respond to me.

Also, and this was particularly true when we where in much more cramped quarters on the production side, I would run in Musk on occasion in my area and he knew way more about the intricacies of my work, and the equipment I was using, or complaining about, than I would have assumed considering all the things he's responsible for.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#195

Post by a13n »

andrewtbham wrote: post #95
audeyisaacs wrote: post #29

Musk's speaking is always a little awkward (in an endearing way), but did he seem significantly more nervous/emotionally affected than usual in the first part of this speech? It seemed that way to me, curious if anyone else interpreted it like that. He calms down when he starts talking about risk and it being the anniversary of a launch. edit: Good and fun presentation regardless! edit2: Thoughts: - Maybe he feels in…

he told a few jokes that bombed. tough crowd.

"So we decided to call it BFR"... crickets

Clearly no gamers in the audience, I died.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#196

Post by krapp »

nickik wrote: post #186
krapp wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a CEO - he doesn't build and design, he has people build and design for him. He owns an entire company of builders and designers. Giving speeches is more appropriate for his actual job.

Do you know Elon Musk? He absolutely builds and designs. He is CEO and Chief Engineer at SpaceX and that is not just a title. He knows more about the rocket then probably anybody else. He said that he spends about 80% of his SpaceX time as and engineer.

>He said that he spends about 80% of his SpaceX time as and engineer.

Fair enough, but that leads me to believe he needs to hire more engineers. He shouldn't need to be that hands-on, even if he wants to be.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#197

Post by staticelf »

antientropic wrote: post #159
staticelf wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is very easy to forget that high-tech engineer is a species that only thrives in politically stable countries. I disagree, a lot of nations became stable because of engineering solutions in the first place and also more scientifically literate. There is a ton of examples of this. The first telescope, as an example, thanks to Hans Lippershey and Galileo Galilei showed that the earth wasn't flat and removed some p…

> Galileo Galilei showed that the earth wasn't flat That the Earth is not flat has been known since ancient times. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth .

Well yes, but using the tool he made you could argue that very few would deny it since the truth became so obvious. Even if it was known a long time before that, a lot of people still believed that the earth was flat.

With increased technology it was easily disproven.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#198

Post by antientropic »

staticelf wrote: post #197
antientropic wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Galileo Galilei showed that the earth wasn't flat That the Earth is not flat has been known since ancient times. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth .

Well yes, but using the tool he made you could argue that very few would deny it since the truth became so obvious. Even if it was known a long time before that, a lot of people still believed that the earth was flat. With increased technology it was easily disproven.

Do you have a source for the claim that a lot of people believed the Earth was flat in Galileo's time? (Galileo was born decades after the Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation of the world.)

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#199

Post by igravious »

nickik wrote: post #157
igravious wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's key, and it's clever design. Basically space shuttle next edition with the booster on the bottom rather than it being strapped to the side of it and where the booster is reusable. It's a two-part vehicle: booster/shuttle. The original space shuttle had a 40% vehicular failure rate. The SpaceX Shuttle need to have commercial airline rates of failure and reusability. That's a big step up. You know the way we still…

The Shuttle just made the mistake to not be a fully two stage system, it was a strange hybrid. SpaceX also figured out that vertical landing had many advantages compared to a plane.

Totally. Because NASA, ESA, and others use public money there was less (or little to no) incentive to strive for reusability.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#200

Post by staticelf »

wallace_f wrote: post #141
staticelf wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the issue you get when you do not spend money on science though. Compare the NASA budget to the US military budget. What if you would reverse that? Don't you think we would be better off in every way possible?

Of course. What about all the other things I mentioned as well? There are so many more--what about for profit prisons? As technology increases our suicide rate isn't really consistently declining. Our prison population has increased. Technology cant make those improvements alone. We need improvements in governance, culture and education for this to happen. Technology can be used for good or bad. By itself, it is just…

All of these things are not related to investment in science or technology for the betterment of society.

But we also live in a time with least war and a lot less suffering in general. Technology may be a tool, but science is not. With science we can prove that x makes more people happy and reduces suicide rates and hence make that choice.

The issue is that science is not really that present in the chamber of politics. With a more science-heavy government investments would look a lot different.

I am not advocating for technology alone, basic science plays an equal or even more important role in shaping the society. Science has values and it is the only true values that exist. I would argue that with help of the scienctific method we can figure out what makes people happy and implement it politically. But the progress still starts with science.

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