I think that the reason you reject the claims and won’t even entertain the notion as a hypothetical is because you know deep down that you’ve been duped by Musk and can’t admit that fact publicly.
Should incontrovertible proof of the magnitude of the atrocities that he has committed come to light you’ll pivot and say that it was worth it because he’s taking us to Mars.
That’s how conmen work and Musk is a damn good one. The sooner you can admit that you’re duped is the sooner you’ll stop letting yourself be duped by him.
I’ll admit that I was duped by him too. I used to believe his stuff and this dream of mars.
When you find proof of atrocities, feel free to post it.
> dream of mars
He's doing something about it, while nobody else does nuttin.
Meanwhile, https://medium.com/swlh/here-s-to-the-crazy-ones-941190f58c5...
And it's his money being spent on it, not yours. You're not out anything. And if he succeeds, we all win.
The starship is a reality. Not a con.
Why don’t you just admit that you don’t really give a shit how many people he kills or laws he breaks as long as he does cool space stuff?
Like why beat around the bush? Just be honest man. The honesty would be refreshing.
It’s not like this attitude is unprecedented in aeronautics.
He hasn't killed anybody. Nor has he been charged with any crimes.
google sez: "One estimate suggests Tesla’s impact, through emission reductions, has saved over 20,000 lives globally."
google sez: "A 2022 report suggested that Tesla and other electric vehicle technologies (which often include enhanced safety features) have contributed to saving thousands of lives."
Empathy is judged by what one is willing to freely give. Not by making someone else give, and not by spending someone else's money.
> It’s not like this attitude is unprecedented in aeronautics.
You'd be quite wrong. I've worked with many aeronautical engineers, and their primary concern is safety. I'm personally very proud that the system I worked on has never been at fault in an accident. When the MD-83 went down because of jackscrew failure, I was sweating bullets worrying that it was a 757. Whenever I board an aircraft that is a 757, I feel a lot of pride and I always ask to speak to the captain and ask him how he likes it. They always say they love the 757. Makes me happy!
Here's the deal. I feel the same way about it as you do Walter.
I don't really care about all those people who will die because of Musk's actions at Doge with USAID. Poor Americans, poor Africans, In the context of getting humanity to space are all just fuel for the fire -- just like the slaves in mittelwerk and Von Braun. You don't need to convince me that you care about human life and that Elon Musk does too with some nebulous numbers that indicate that Tesla cars save a smattering of lives through reduced collisions and emissions.
My criticism of Musk isn't that he's hurting people -- that's just what shitty people do and I can't stop him -- my criticism is that he's not actually going to do the cool shit that he said he was going to do. It's all a con.
I think they'll get Starship mostly figured out but it'll end up underdelivering on payload. I don't just mean like the way it already has but they claim to be fixing it in v2 and v3, I mean the final version that does launch and comes back to Earth will have a relatively underspecced payload compared to what he sold us as a bill of goods all those years ago. It won't facilitate going to Mars as he sells it but it will enable amazing orbital stuff that can maybe one day serve as a springboard to further space exploration.
But Mars, it just ain't happening.
If you listen to his recent interview with Dwarkesh[0] you'll see that Mars is off the table now. The moon is actually where the cool kids have always wanted to go to and not Mars. And we're building data centres in space now -- terawatts worth -- and robot taxis with robot chauffers or something?
Do you actually think that space will be the cheapest place to locate data centres by 2029? If not then, will it ever be? It seems pretty bogus to me. Why would he make such an outrageous claim? The physics seem to work out, but I'm not certain about the radiation issue in LEO. I don't know enough about it, but it seems to me that it will ultimately require redesigned hardware architectures that can handle this kind of stuff, the workload certainly seems amenable to it, so it should be doable. But designing new chip architectures, and producing and testing all this in three years, on top of everything else that will go into one of these satellites, on top of everything else that his companies are doing sounds too good to be true. This ain't happening in three years.
Do you actually think that Musk's companies will actually be fabbing terawatts of photovoltaics? He says they plan to do it all in house, so what does that mean? Are they going to make their own wafers? Their own ingots? Source their own sand? How long will take to scale up? I don't see hown they can ever compete with China and I'm sure China will knee-cap them at every turn to prevent a competitor in the solar market. I just don't see an American company ever producing a significant quality of solar panels ever again. Just like America is the pornography producing capital of the world and always will be I think it's going to be the same with solar for China. People specialize in what they're good at. That's just comparative advantage.
As for the Optimus Robot -- do you actually think humanoid robots are going to be a household item in the next five years? Worth shutting down to automobile assembly lines to convert into robot production lines? Seems a bit foolish to me when you could be selling cars, a proven product with a known market. I don't think I need to say too much about the robotaxi stuff -- this list of claims about self driving speaks for itself.[0]
When you listen to Elon Musk talk about these things in the interview and you look at his facial expressions and mannerisms, do you actually get the impression that he knows what he's talking about and not just blowing smoke up the host's ass? Because when I look at this stuff, I see a con-man. I see a flim-flam man doing the interview circuit to drum up some press for his impending IPO.
The way I see it Walter, you and others are still in denial about getting duped by Musk. I think on some level you're aware but pride prevents you from expressing doubts and you're still a ways off from admitting the possiblity that you could have been duped. I was duped too. It's okay to admit it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...
Did you know that von Braun was jailed by the SS because he was spending too much time dreaming about planets and not enough about weapons? Von Braun was a dead man if he didn't do what they said. What would you do in his shoes?
As for Mars, I've advocated in this forum numerous times that a more practical goal was a Moon base. I doubt I'll live to see a man on Mars.
If Musk has 10 amazing goals, and delivers on 3 of them, is he a success or a con man? I say success. So what has he delivered on? Tesla, X, Grok, AI, Neuralink, The Boring Company (yes it is profitable!), reusable cheap rockets, and Starlink. Any one of those would be a storied lifetime achievement for anyone else.
Platitude alert: If you're not failing, you're not trying.
Who would you say is a more successful entrepreneur than Musk?
Musk can be both an successful entrepreneur and a conman. Just like how Musk can be a successful entrepreneur and an absolutely terrible father.
These things often go together like peanut butter and jam.
Ten amazing goals, and delivers on three is exactly how a con works -- The con-man over promises massively, delivers on the easier or more profitable stuff and then glosses over the stuff that they didn't deliver on.
The key difference between an overly ambitious but honest person and a conman is that a conman has absolutely no intention of folowing through on any of the things promise if they don't have to. They only deliver on what they have to to keep the con going and that's what Musk has been doing for well over a decade. I'm sure at some point he genuinely believed that self driving cars are right around the corner but he's come to realize that htey aren't and it doesn't matter because he can just make that same promise ove rand over and rubes fall for it time and time again.
As for your point regarding Von Braun, I highly recommend this biography[0] of him if you haven't read it. It contains details about that episode of his life and many more fascinating ones. I'm glad that you chose to defend Von Braun in your reply because it is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. People in the space community have been reflexively minimizing the hrm done by 'great men' for decades simply because they think space stuff is cool.
Just be honest with yourself about why you like Von Braun. You don't need to paint him in a sympathetic light becauase his persuit of something cool resulted in him making a pact with the devil that almost resulted in his death.
The question isn't whether or not a person like Musk is a successful entrepreneur or whether or not someone like Von Braun was a spectacular project manager. The question is whether not his current slate of promises -- space data centres, domestic robots, robotaxis etc... are credible.
I think that your choice to omit commenting on them is illuminating -- you know they're not credible. You know they exist to serve his financial interests and bolster his upcoming IPO with little regard for veracity or legality.
So yeah the question in my mind isn't "Does he do cool stuff?" but "is the cool stuff he does worth the negative externalities that he dumps on society?" and I think the answer to that is likely to be no.
Musk like all the other current crop of American oligarchs are weakening America's grip on the world and it will have calamitous effects on the American people.
[0] https://www.amazon.ca/Von-Braun-Dreamer-Space-Engineer/dp/03...
> Ten amazing goals, and delivers on three is exactly how a con works
A very cynical take. I've tried and failed at many things, and succeeded here and there. Does that make me a con man? If you're not failing, then you aren't trying.
> is the cool stuff he does worth the negative externalities that he dumps on society?
Musk's Tesla is estimated to have saved 20,000 lives. And then there's Neuralink. And Starlink, which stepped in to help the hurricane Helene victims when FEMA fell flat.
> Musk like all the other current crop of American oligarchs are weakening America's grip on the world
That's quite a claim. I don't see any evidence of that.
> you know they're not credible. You know they exist to serve his financial interests and bolster his upcoming IPO with little regard for veracity or legality.
Assuming your arguments are so compelling that I must be secretly agreeing with you is the "false consensus fallacy".
My knowledge of von Braun comes from the book "V2" by Dornberger. As for the practical effect of the V2 program, see "Impact" by King. (Spoiler: the V2 program was enormously expensive yet ineffective, and shortened the war. It was ineffective because its guidance system was not accurate enough.)
Von Braun at one point was imprisoned by the SS and threatened with execution if he didn't stop dreaming about interplanetary flight and get busy with the military use of the V2.
Wikipedia's take on this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
Pretty much all the liquid fueled rockets of today can trace their lineage back to the V2. The Saturn V was a scaled up V2. Von Braun's team figured out all the crucial details of how to make a liquid rocket engine work:
1. boundary layer cooling
2. nozzle cooled by liquid oxygen, which also preheated the oxygen
3. baffles to prevent pogo-ing
4. turbo-pumps
5. first supersonic airframe
6. first guidance mechanism
[dead]
Presumably he doesn't "admit" it because it isn't true. You aren't going to get anywhere convincing people if you make attacks on your interlocutor like this.