(December 12, 2023 at 11:00 am)Foxaèr Wrote:

Quote:Elon Musk says he’s prepared to go to prison if U.S. government tries to censor X

Fortune

No wonder things are going to shit for him.  He doesn't have very good long-term plans.

Boru

He may fancy himself a real life Tony Stark but all I see is a bumbling Lex Luthor.

(December 15, 2023 at 3:43 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote:

when he talked about rockets he claimed his star ship can transport tourists to the surface of Europa where they can stroll under a light of jupiter.


Problems: 

1.  Star ship can’t leave earth orbit.

2.  time to accumulate fatal radiation dose on surface of Europa:  5 hours

Musk is fairly smart, but he has got the same thing going for him that Trump does - money and narcissism.

He is very driven, and believes that only he can save the world. He also believes a whole lot of bullshit.

Truly smart people question their own assumptions. Elon's proclamations are often so unrealistic and off-the-wall that he proves he isn't one of those truly smart poeple.

(December 15, 2023 at 5:02 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: when he talked about rockets he claimed his star ship can transport tourists to the surface of Europa where they can stroll under a light of jupiter.


Problems: 

1.  Star ship can’t leave earth orbit.

2.  time to accumulate fatal radiation dose on surface of Europa:  5 hours

Yeah, Starship is nothing more than a pie in the sky. A few years ago Musk said that it would be on Mars by now, but now it can't even reach the Moon and never will since a SINGLE trip to the Moon for Starship will ultimately require up to 20 launches from Boca Chica (to refuel) to make happen, this is critical.

After the first launch, the pad took months to repair and modify.

By SpaceX's requirements, this is not acceptable since they will need to make 16 - 20 consecutive launches, every 12 days, to support a single moon mission.

Yes, but the second launch did much less damage, he is getting better with each attempt. The next thing he needs to do is sort out the fuel situation after the hot staging, probably not a huge problem.

(December 16, 2023 at 5:49 am)zebo-the-fat Wrote: Yes, but the second launch did much less damage, he is getting better with each attempt. The next thing he needs to do is sort out the fuel situation after the hot staging, probably not a huge problem.

While the pad may have survived without completely being destroyed, it seems it is damaged. Probably heavily considering it did not support another launch 12 days later.

The other thing is the 2nd flight was supposed to be suborbital and there was no payload aboard. That means the entire rocket was much lighter than it would be for a moon mission launch. It also means the rocket used much less thrust to take off from the pad. So nothing in the 2nd launch demonstrated anything that's useful to meet their goal of going to the Moon. It was just a show.

And mind you the deadline for an empty starship to land on the Moon is something like in three months.

(December 15, 2023 at 5:30 pm)HappySkeptic Wrote: Musk is fairly smart, but he has got the same thing going for him that Trump does - money and narcissism.  

He is very driven, and believes that only he can save the world. He also believes a whole lot of bullshit.

Truly smart people question their own assumptions.  Elon's proclamations are often so unrealistic and off-the-wall that he proves he isn't one of those truly smart poeple.

It doesn’t take truly smart people to question their own assumption.   Elon is most certainly not truly smart, not a total dimwit either, but ann ego addled gullible man child.     But we don’t know if and how often he inwardly questions his own assumptions.   Outwardly he is so habitually self-serving and dishonest, and so ruthlessly and opportunistically exploitative of the pathetic credulity of his groupies,  that the inferences about the details of his inner mental processes has little concrete to go on.