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Those rockets impress me, but Elon Musk did not construct them. The NASA (and also the soviet union) managed to do equally great things without someone like him
by nnamtr 5y ago
Those rockets impress me, but Elon Musk did not construct them. The NASA (and also the soviet union) managed to do equally great things without someone like him in past.
> Tesla cars -- truly helping humanity move from fossil fuels
It would be much more effective to use bicycle and trains wherever possible, and drive small cars otherwise. But wait ... that's not luxurious enough. Saving the world is just an excuse for cool cars.
> and now StarLink
... to make the last corner of the world addicted to the internet and pay money to Musk.
- Gwypaas 5y agoThe true achievement is not the capability of the rockets, it is the huge reduction in cost compared to government contracts. This is even excluding the reusability. The development costs for Falcon 9 v1.0 were approximately US$300 million, and NASA verified those costs. If some of the Falcon 1 development costs were included, since F1 development did contribute to Falcon 9 to some extent, then the total might be considered as high as US$390 million.[14][2] NASA also evaluated Falcon 9 development costs using the NASA‐Air Force Cost Model (NAFCOM)—a traditional cost-plus contract approach for US civilian and military space procurement—at US$$3.6 billion based on a NASA environment/culture, or US$$1.6 billion using a more commercial approach.[15][14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_v1.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_v1.0 Cited from https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/Section403(b)CommercialMarketAssessmentReportFinal.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/Section403(b)...
- nnamtr 5y agoWe were never talking about costs, we were talking about how visionary Elon Musk is. However, while it's great if money is saved, again: is it really the achievement of Elon Musk, or would any private company be able to hold down costs?
- doggosphere 5y agoNobody was working on self landing rockets. Nobody was working on electric cars. We'd be waiting another 10 years for what we have today.
- hooande 5y ago"nobody was working on electric cars"?
- doggosphere 5y agoWhere was Ford, Toyota, GM's progress on electric cars? Where are all the other startups that started at the same time as Tesla? Do you think Tesla would be where it's at today if Musk didn't get involved? How many times did Tesla almost die?
- hooande 5y agoover 100,000 Toyota Prius were sold in 2016. Tesla is likely to be the top company in the electric vehicle space for quite some time. but to act like they invented the market and no one else was working on it is just silly. it's like saying that Bill Gates invented computers
- doggosphere 5y agoI'm not being literal when I say "nobody was working on electric cars". If you need to me to clarify it: the scale and rate of progress in EV was severely accelerated by Tesla. ICE auto companies had no incentive to develop electric. The space was unprofitable, had many technical challenges.
- grey-area 5y agoMusk bought Tesla from someone else, he didn't found it (though he now calls himself founder).
- marvin 5y agoYou figure Tesla would be the in the world's top 10 companies by market cap today if Musk hadn't invested and run it, and the company was still run my Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard? I mean...it's hard to prove a negative, but just to mention one of the tens of critical moments along the way, I have a hard time seeing how someone less ruthless than Musk would have saved them from bankruptcy in 2008. Another obvious juncture was the whole thing about building a battery factory costing more than the company's market cap a few years prior, doubling the world's battery production capacity...
- brianwawok 5y agoWell, what other private company is launching rockets at the pace and cost of SpaceX? Some are trying!
- inglor_cz 5y ago"would any private company be able to hold down costs?" Most space startups died without ever reaching orbit. One of the reasons why SpaceX has such a reputation is precisely that it stands so far apart from its competition.
- ericd 5y agoI love trains, and would love to see proper high speed rail in the US, but let's be honest, that's primarily a political problem, and I don't expect to see it within the next 30 years.
- nnamtr 5y agoI'm living in Europe, and the situation seems better over here. While going by car is cheaper and faster in most cases, train is not much worse. At least Biden seems to be a supporter of the railway. But it could go faster if you'd build tracks instead of tunnels with Teslas.