Yeah, right?!? I know this is getting off topic, but if all this remote work stuff has shown us anything, it should be very obvious to most of us that you don’t actually need a human to be in a given space in order for humans to be exploring and interacting with and learning about that space. 
We’ve been doing tons of cool stuff in the space exploration arena lately! Sans the “space bros” or whatever we’re calling them.
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Are they really, though? Other than “innovations” like (checks notes) putting touchscreens in spacecrafts, most of what SpaceX does is take existing taxpayer-funded technology and repackaging it into something prettier in order to make a profit while contributing nothing back into the public good. Tesla isn’t all that different.
Musk’s main skill is in RDF innovations.
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SpaceX has been sending rockets high enough that it could service the international space station! Has anyone ever done that before?
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You mean, apart from the people who put the ISS there in the first place?
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It’s weird to me that people who don’t like Elon Musk (granted, for perfectly good reasons) feel the need to dismiss various real world good things ™ just because he was involved with them.
As several people have pointed out, Musk broke the gasoline powered car monopoly. Thousands tried, he did it. I don’t need to admire his personality to appreciate that.
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His most notable personal achievement is convincing a judge that ‘Pedo Guy’ is some common jargon and he wasn’t trying to insinuate something about his victim.
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Space X pioneered and is perfecting the re-use of launch platforms and the first stages of rockets, dramatically reducing the cost per launch and the cost per payload.
Prior to Space X, space was controlled by Boeing, Lockheed Martin etc. They had cost plus contracts and threw away the first stage of every single launch. Cost per launch was astronomical (
and because they had some well paid Senators in their pocket they were able to make rockets on a cost plus basis.
Space X does something different, drastically reduces the cost, and people have a hate on for them. They have revolutionized access to space. It wasn’t reusing taxpayer funded tech, they developed it themselves and in the process ended the deathgrip the Military Industrial complex had on space. It was a literal death grip since launches were so expensive the US had stopped doing them - all or almost all launches were happening in Russia.
The guy’s an asshole, fair enough. He is hundreds of billions richer than anyone needs to be or should be, also true. I know it’s cool now to hate on him, and with plenty of fair reasons. But let’s not confuse the asshole with what the teams at Tesla and Space-X have accomplished.
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Using single use disposable gazillion dollar rockets, yes. Space X reuses rockets and does the whole thing vastly cheaper. Or does nobody realize how huge that is?
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i also get upset over the toxic working environment for people making his wannabe posh cars.
^ that’s only one of several lawsuits over conditions in his factories. but, hey: capitalism. we can be eco-conscious status consumers without worrying even a tad about workers.
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Atrios over at Eschaton blog:
“ Aside from a lot of other things, one of his shitposter nickames is “subsidy truffle pig,” as one of his core abilities his hunting out and obtaining every government subsidy that is out there, often bordering (said for legal reasons) on fraud to do so.”
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Funny - I don’t remember ordering a slice of asshole.
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He’s not doing ANY of this for the good of mankind, but to line his pockets with public money and boost his ego. That’s it. He doesn’t give two shits about space exploration.
Some shit costs money and that include space exploration. I would much rather pay more and get a truly international, peaceful and publicly funded space program off the ground than to farm it all out to private corporations with no public oversight.
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SpaceX is using tech and design ideas that were more or less abandoned in the late 60’s for safety and other practical concerns. They rely on government grants and government infrastructure. A company can’t just launch a rocket without clearing it with civil authority.
The military industrial complex is our money going towards our goals. This is just another privatization scam.
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California put policies in place in the 90’s that mandated escalating proportions of zero emission vehicles in manufacturer fleets, as well as promoting and pushing for electric vehicles.
They were following a model set by many countries in Europe and several in Asia.
That is what lead us here. Most major auto manufacturers had serious electric car development in the works by the mid 90s. By the late 90’s Chevy and Ford were already shipping (or technically leasing) small numbers of electric pickup trucks.
Nissan and Mitsubishi were both shipping full electric cars several years before Tesla had a full production car. Nissan’s was a pretty standard commuter car, rather than a micro-car inspired ecconobox.
Chevy shipped the plug in hybrid Volt a full year before the first Tesla Model S, used that as a stepping stone to a full electric a few years later. My cousin had a Bolt, pretty standard commuter hatch.
Prior to the point around 2008-2012 when all this stuff came out in force. The battery technology to practically power something like this as anything other than a second car for urban dwellers, resort cars, or on site fleet cars didn’t really exist.
Tesla didn’t even start working on it as on a concept till after major manufacturers had made it feasible.
Their bigger contribution was in early proliferation of chargers. But at this point most chargers you run into aren’t Tesla’s.
They did not become the top selling EV maker until they launched the 3, their (supposed) economy commuter model. The roadster was basically a hand built, halo piece. Their first production model was the S.
MEANWHILE plug in electric sales are still less than 5% of auto sales.
So two questions.
Did Tesla really do that?
And has the “gasoline powered” monopoly even been broken?
What Musk did. Was hire a lot of clever people to package and build from stuff developed elsewhere. Stuff that was prompted by public policy, and at Tesla would be paid for with public money.
Then he marketed it very well.
In the offing we’ve got a bunch of stock manipulation. Horrible labor relations. Ten tons of bullshit. One of the absolute worst build quality, reliability, and repairability records in the auto industry.
This dude didn’t swing out of nowhere and invent the modern electric car from whole cloth. In classic tech sector fashion much of his “innovation” is rooted in fucking labor and squaring off with regulators. And he soaked up a lot of government subsidies to get there.
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May not have ordered it, but we paid for it!
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Me too. Thay hasn’t yet been on the table anywhere. What was on the table was a gigantic porkbarrel at which Lockheed and Boeing were feeding for decades.
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As I said above, that’s just not the case. In addition to incredibly useful probe programs, that we absolutely NEED to assess what is possible with regards to manned missions, manned missions have been planned for a while now:
You really need to stop reading some of the propaganda and lies that are out there about the space program, because you’re just uninformed here.
And why is giving Lockheed and Boeing pork bad, but giving it to Space X is cool? It’s the same damn thing!
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I don’t know if it’s exactly the same.
Lockheed and Boeing workers are Union.
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So it’s better to give Lockheed & Boeing the contracts.
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