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Starship’s second flight test

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Re: Starship’s second flight test

#91

Post by ekianjo »

rbanffy wrote: post #74
maxlin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone knows that, but Falcon 9 is extremely successful and Starship is the main project that's been in the making doing good strides once in a while, and the whole "chopstick" lift tower has already been built, with the clear idea of ultimately landing Starships right in to it. And Starship seems to really be the main focus of Elon where he doesn't just lead but is in the weeds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY73…

> And Starship seems to really be the main focus of Elon where he doesn't just lead but is in the weeds There lies the danger, considering his work leading Twitter.

I remember ignorant folks commenting on HN a while ago that Twitter would not last 3 months after the massive layoffs. Proven wrong over and over again.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#92

Post by atleastoptimal »

maxlin wrote: post #82
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any hints on how this is going to change civilisation, for non-space nerds?

-Not being dependent on Earth for survival of the species as Starship in its huge capability and reasonably cheap cost, among with refuelability on Mars begins the road to believable planetary colonization -Asteroid / Moon mining -Overally, being capable of going to space with more than just miniscule science-oriented payloads. FYI, ISS has cost us over a 100 billion dollars. When Starship hauls its worth in volume i…

I feel there are 100 more scientific/engineering breakthroughs greater than Starship between where we are now and off-planet habitability/asteroid mining. Of course it's an important step but by far I imagine it won't be the most important.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#94

Post by rbanffy »

jiggawatts wrote: post #58
melagonster wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure sapceX don't have department of wildlife. we don't have enough research on this issue, I don't know why it is OK to do anything before we do not have information. maybe just like old Big oil companies, just do it before people found what do they do?

I wonder if NASA launches are held up for months waiting for information about how many sharks might be directly hit by their rockets. And then I wonder if they would have to cancel multi-billion dollar missions to deep space if the answer is non-zero. People really need to get a grip and use their common sense for a bit. A hundred workers — humans — died in the construction of the Hoover Dam, and that was considered…

> I wonder if NASA launches are held up for months waiting for information about how many sharks might be directly hit by their rockets.

NASA has been actively involved in wildlife preservation since the beginning. By doing that they are effectively in control and can design it into their mission operations.

https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/blog/07/the-wild-side-of-...

https://www.fws.gov/refuge/merritt-island/about-us

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#95

Post by rbanffy »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #84
jiggawatts wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

The problem with Hanlon's Razor is that Grey's Law turns it into just "never attribute anything to malice" which is invalid unless you're willing to assume that no act of malice ever occurs.

Only when incompetence is also a credible explanation.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#96

Post by 3seashells »

Can't wait to have Isis in space.. We kicked the problem of growing up as a species down the road for so long, now it's time for a nuke for everyone (who is not in a gravity well). Let's get this over with by bribing us out of today's problems into even bigger tomorrow's problems with the tools of yesterday to handle internal crisis.

Sure downvote reality, that will make it go away. The sort of points I want to see, the bankruptcy of "I have no plan".

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#97

Post by maxlin »

XorNot wrote: post #75
satvikpendem wrote: post #60

I finished reading the Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson, and, for all his faults, Musk really knows how to get shit done. I was constantly amazed by his ability to strip a process to its essentials before embarking on its construction. SpaceX single-handedly* brought down the cost of space flight by using off-the-shelf and custom-created-from-metal components, where they only had to pay for the raw cost rather…

Elon Musk's biggest problem is his chronic inability to shut the hell up. No one would care who he was as a person if he just let his media people do their jobs, and stuck to corporate press releases to respond to things. Plenty of people say they dislike Jeff Bezos, but barely anyone even thinks about Jeff Bezos or knows what he sounds like.

I basically get what you're asking but having followed Musk for a long time and having a similar personality, this would be very similar to asking him to lie and break his principles, on which I think is motivation -> progress of his companies (at least SpaceX) are reliant on.

He's a VERY different person from the likes of Bezos for whom it is easy to "get" the benefits of the idea of not expressing themselves in their role, for the benefits they are personally after.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#98

Post by enneff »

maxlin wrote: post #82
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any hints on how this is going to change civilisation, for non-space nerds?

-Not being dependent on Earth for survival of the species as Starship in its huge capability and reasonably cheap cost, among with refuelability on Mars begins the road to believable planetary colonization -Asteroid / Moon mining -Overally, being capable of going to space with more than just miniscule science-oriented payloads. FYI, ISS has cost us over a 100 billion dollars. When Starship hauls its worth in volume i…

What would have to happen to earth to make it less viable a place to live than mars? An asteroid rendering earth’s surface uninhabitable? Even that wouldn’t be enough - there’s still so much more on earth to sustain human life than any planet in our solar system.

Apart from proof of concept I just don’t see any practical reason to colonise mars.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#99

Post by Gud »

radu_floricica wrote: post #80
XorNot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk's biggest problem is his chronic inability to shut the hell up. No one would care who he was as a person if he just let his media people do their jobs, and stuck to corporate press releases to respond to things. Plenty of people say they dislike Jeff Bezos, but barely anyone even thinks about Jeff Bezos or knows what he sounds like.

I mean, what's the point of getting where he is and shutting up just to make random people happy?

To efficiently reach his target goals?

It would be such shame if Starship never flew because he squandered $45B on Twitter and made a lot of political enemies being an edge lord online..

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#100

Post by IshKebab »

maxlin wrote: post #77
stonogo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he didn't say it was his "best guess." He said, and I quote, “I feel very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla next year. From our standpoint, if you fast-forward a year … maybe a year and three months, but next year for sure, we will have over a million robotaxis on the road.” "Next year for sure" is not a "best guess."

Checking the transcript, it is not unreasonable to say that "Next year we'll have 1mil robotaxis on the road, the fleet wakes up by OTA update" means "Robotaxi-capable in hardware" which is the main sell, IE that you buy car now, when the software is ready, and Tesla is closer than anyone else in having anything like that ready, your car will take the role of Robotaxi. Maybe a bit ambigious wording like when what Sea…

I don't know why you can't just accept that he makes crazy promises that are sometimes total nonsense.

Sometimes his crazy promises do mostly pan out. But he's clearly massively over-promised in driverless cars.

I'm really surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit from all the Tesla owners who were essentially tricked into paying $5k for a thing that can never exist.

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