191–200 of 246 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Edison was an asshole too. And Franklin.
Examples of assholes abound, sure. Einstein was, by all accounts I've seen, a pretty nice fellow. Being an asshole isn't a required characteristic.
Except to his wife.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Examples of assholes abound, sure. Einstein was, by all accounts I've seen, a pretty nice fellow. Being an asshole isn't a required characteristic.
> Einstein was, by all accounts I've seen, a pretty nice fellow. Except to his wife.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I realise that Musk has flaws and has received criticism for the spat with the cave diver, ignoring COVID, and labour issues. Want to add that caveat. But beyond that, I feel like in terms of what he's doing Musk is some sort of time traveller, back from the future to boost humanity's progress. Why is he such an outlier? What can we as individuals learn from him? And more importantly, how do we make more Elon Musks?
What has Elon Musk done for humanity? He got extremely wealthy from a payment processing website. Now he runs a company that makes luxury cars and another one that is or aims to be a global military arms logistical network [0]. If I had to pick amongst the exorbitantly wealth, without any serious research I'd say we need more people like Bill Gates. 0. https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-building-military-rocke...
How does this compare to what the Space Shuttle offered in terms of delivering large payloads to orbit?
Wikipedia says that the shuttle's payload to LEO is 24,310 kg, at least 4x less than Starship (currently quoted at "100+ tons", meaning it could be somewhat higher, probably depending on where the booster lands (boostback to shore vs autonomous droneship vs no recovery).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious who his biggest customers will be?
There aren't enough customers to justify building something like Starship, so SpaceX created their own biggest customer with Starlink. They are also hoping to provide Earth-to-Earth passenger service to compete with airlines on long distance routes, which would be orders of magnitude more launches than any other use. It seems quite unlikely that they could compete on safety though.
Or you might even just start by launching 20 tons of coffee beans, roasting them in orbit and selling them as "Space Coffee" - it migh still be worth it with the per launch costs they have mentioned.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cost is likely to fall in the 1%-3% range of that of a C-17. The War Department could buy 100-200 of them for the cost of 2 C-17 Globemaster IIIs. I would be interested to see if some form of portable, quickly constructed landing pad could be deployed, much like the mats used as runways during WWII.
Do they need a landing pad? They have to be capable of landing on unimproved martian or lunar rock, with enough spare capacity for either the fuel for a return flight (from the moon) or a local fuel generator (from Mars).
The engine power needed to launch in Earth gravity, even with a small hop fuel load might be too much for engines so close to the ground & with thick atmosphere preventing the exhaust from dissipating.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>looking forward to hailing a Starship in the Uber app Not totally unreasonable, according to another quote: >The cargo version can also be used for rapid point-to-point Earth transport.
Except totally unreasonable :) Rockets that size cannot be launched anywhere near populated areas, so they'd have to launch from off-shore platforms; outside of Australia, USA and Russia there are no worthwhile destinations that can safely host on-shore rocket launch complexes for that class of rocket. This poses quite complex logistical challenges that enthusiasts just love to handwave away. But there's even more to…
Musk has explicitly stated that a "safety first" attitude does not get people to Mars. His hierarchy of action is "don't panic", not yet specified, "safety third, maybe". This philosophy is hard to implement in modern day America, but the attitude is part of what allows Elon Musk and the people that work with him to do what they do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I realise that Musk has flaws and has received criticism for the spat with the cave diver, ignoring COVID, and labour issues. Want to add that caveat. But beyond that, I feel like in terms of what he's doing Musk is some sort of time traveller, back from the future to boost humanity's progress. Why is he such an outlier? What can we as individuals learn from him? And more importantly, how do we make more Elon Musks?
What annoys me that I would want to be a fan of someone like him but I just find his personality and behavior repulsive. After Jobs and Musk many people will now think you have to be an asshole to be successful and will try emulate the bad parts too. People are biased towards simple explanations of the world so they're biased towards either either Musk is amazing or Musk sucks. The reality is that he's a great enterp…
Do any other launch service providers, like United Launch Alliance, make these specifications publicly available (without needing to sign an NDA or whatever)?