Elon Musk (No Politics)

[Cyclotron]

Tesla broke sales records in Norway.
I would like to know whether Tesla provides region-specific range estimates for its vehicles, given the temperature impacts and the power required to maintain battery temperature in colder climates.

[Electrodynamic]

Then he moved into politics, and affected millions of people that could never exercise that choice.

No more politics, if you're late to the show check the last few pages.

We hear this a lot in this day and age.

I find the argument a little strange from a professional and psychological point of view. Imagine if I claimed to be a rational and responsible adult but also claimed if you talk about this one subject I cannot control myself and get very emotional. Which is a direct contradiction in terms imo. Not that I want to talk about politics I just find the contradictions interesting ie. saying one thing then doing another.

[special_K]

I'm still not sure what there is to talk about Elon Musk that isn't political. Even his estrangement from his own daughter is politically motivated. Maybe his hairplugs?

[free_electron]

Ok, new topic.  The SpaceX Starship V3 booster had that explosion recently during a nitrogen pressure test.

Do you think this is just engineering and testing doing its job.
Or is your opinion that Musk is pushing things too fast and causing failures?
But he does push for things to be done fast, so I wouldn't criticize anyone for having the other opinion

Testing, testing and more testing. That's how you progress. Pondering about what-if , what-could gets you nowhere. Try it. At least he's willing to put his private money into it.
Nasa has been burning taxpayer money for what results ? after Apollo and Spaceshuttle what have they really done for spaceflight ? And even those programs were heavily developed by 3rd parties.

If you are not breaking stuff you are not innovating hard enough.

I wouldn't bet against him and the teams he assembled. I know how they work. I Was there for 10 years. Things move fast there.

The whole space world knew it is impossible to land a rocket.
The whole space werld knew it is impossible to make a rocket out of welded stainless steel.
The whole space world knew it is impossible to 3-d print rocket engines.
The wholes space world knew you can't catch a rocket.
Imagine what they will know tomorrow..

i'm not even going to go into things like Starlink and Tesla and other ventures that are/were deemed "impossible". With one exception : electric cars. The traditional makers have been sititing on their hands , believing the revolution would not take off. And now china has opened the floodgates with nio and byd and zeeker and many others. Full electric cars at a cheaper pricepoint than the cheapest traditional stuff out there. Yea,h i hear you coming "chinese quality". They'll get there, and will get there fast. There is a huge workforce and they are willing to work long hours. Meanwhile they are further undermining the existing players to the point they will not be able to survive. It takes too long to turn the existing machine around.

A lot of stuff deemed "impossible" is simply because they are not willing to put the money , time and effort. Preserve the status quo. Milk the cow. Next years improvement is 2 more cupholders.

I still remember a discussion with other carmakers. Where can we buy an electric motor, where can we buy a battery, where can we buy an inverter, infotainment ... and other stuff.
How about you MAKE it ? Many cars are no longer "made". They are only assembled from bits and pieces developed and made by others. They have catalogues with radios and ecu and abs and bit's n bobs. And they may spec some stuff. if you bought a Volvo or Renault 50 years ago almost all of it , including the engine, was own design. Now ? They even use each others engines.

Makes me wonder how come they lost those skills. I blame corporate greed. The corporations refer to it as "cost"... Employees and research and development are "cost' that erode the bottom line. Shareholders are more important than actually making and advancing things. It's almost a pyramid scheme.

[NE666]

Nasa has been burning taxpayer money for what results ? after Apollo and Spaceshuttle what have they really done for spaceflight ?

C'mon. NASA's remit goes well beyond just manned spaceflight. Hubble? James Webb? Pathfinder? Curiosity? Perseverance? Not to mention earth sciences, aeronautics, the ISS, and education and STEM outreach.

"What have the Romans ever done for us?!"

[free_electron]

Nasa has been burning taxpayer money for what results ? after Apollo and Spaceshuttle what have they really done for spaceflight ?

C'mon. NASA's remit goes well beyond just manned spaceflight.

i asked specifically spaceflight. rockets.

[Cyclotron]

Nasa has been burning taxpayer money for what results ? after Apollo and Spaceshuttle what have they really done for spaceflight ?

C'mon. NASA's remit goes well beyond just manned spaceflight. Hubble? James Webb? Pathfinder? Curiosity? Perseverance? Not to mention earth sciences, aeronautics, the ISS, and education and STEM outreach.

"What have the Romans ever done for us?!"

Sure, NASA has expanded its responsibilities drastically from its origins. But its origins were space flight and the intentions were to catchup to and beat the Russians. Apollo has an engineering feat and risk taking at scales that NASA no longer does as free_electron points out.

The first signs of problems at NASA came during the shuttle era when bureaucracy that often plagues government organizations started to show up. NASA has had several programs to fix that including the famous "faster, cheaper, better program".

The point being, they have strayed from their origin.  The US Act that created NASA stated that its core purpose was "to provide for research into problems of flight within and outside the earth's atmosphere, and for other purposes".  The issue is that they spend most all of their time on the "other purposes" now and at substantial lower risk tolerances but not better outcomes. The Hubble was a disaster, remember? It had to have a Herculean effort undertaken to fix it.

That said, those old voyager spacecraft just keep going. The rovers on mars have been fantastic. The one item I would give NASA huge props for is the rover landing air crane.  What a spectacular success and risk taking engineering feat that was.

One last thing on NASA. It doesn't do any of its modern things alone. That's good. My point is that we must recognize that NASA's successes are also ESA's and Canada's as well as other countries and programs.

Musk and SpaceX have taken enormous risks, Elon bet his entire fortune on it and yes, the US government did provide some funding but just as we've seen recently, they are just as amicable to revoke that funding. The US government is also very much more likely to hand out money to the incumbent ISPs that put money in congresspeople's campaigns than to award SpaceX and their "Starlink" ISP those funds. One would think that with all the power that some people claim Elon has, the government would be showering Starlink and Tesla and so on. 

Tesla was impacted by the removal of EV incentives.
Starlink wasn't allowed to receive the 1 billion in FCC's Rural Digital Fund because "too new" which is sideways talk to say "nope, we're giving the billion to our old buddies in the ISP biz because they are our buddies." 
NASA is reopening the Artemis III contract so SpaceX is likely to lose part of what was previously awarded.

[KE5FX]

The issue is that they spend most all of their time on the "other purposes" now and at substantial lower risk tolerances but not better outcomes. The Hubble was a disaster, remember? It had to have a Herculean effort undertaken to fix it.

It's hard to imagine using the Hubble repair missions -- all five of them -- as examples of low-risk activities with less-than-great outcomes.  When it comes to NASA, Herculean efforts are what my Herculean taxes pay for.  I'm OK with that. 

I do wish there were a way for people who disagree to opt out of paying for such efforts, though.  Because then I would presumably get the same privilege with regard to things they support.

[EEVblog]

I'm still not sure what there is to talk about Elon Musk that isn't political. Even his estrangement from his own daughter is politically motivated. Maybe his hairplugs?

Oh geeze, I don't know, maybe Tesla (cars + batteries + solar + robots + FSD), SpaceX, Starlink, X, xAI, Grok, Neuralink...
There are entire Youtube channels now devoted to critiquing Musk. Take Thundef00t and Common Sense Skeptic for example. Let alone the countless channel dedicated to pro-Musk stuff.

[EEVblog]

The whole space world knew it is impossible to land a rocket.

Not so. SpaceX wasn't the first to land a rocket.

A lot of stuff deemed "impossible" is simply because they are not willing to put the money , time and effort. Preserve the status quo. Milk the cow. Next years improvement is 2 more cupholders.

Bingo, mostly Uncle Sam was paying, so there was no real drive to make it more cost effective.

It required someone in charge who had a vision and the money and the clout. Enter Jeff Bezos...
Yes, not Elon. Blue Origin was founded before SpaceX, with the goal of having reusable rockets and people living and working in space. Elon just happened to win that race, for *insert reasons here*
25 years later, Blue Origin have caught up though. Very exciting times for space enthusiasts.
If Blue Origin stick the moon landing in a few months, heads are going to explode at NASA.

[tom66]

Tesla broke sales records in Norway.
I would like to know whether Tesla provides region-specific range estimates for its vehicles, given the temperature impacts and the power required to maintain battery temperature in colder climates.

They're not really allowed to.  EU laws mean all that can be advertised is the useless WLTP range.  Manufacturers can provide a 'range calculator' or 'real world range', but the WLTP range has to be the most prominent.  Tesla used to provide that but they seem to have since removed it.  VW & Stellantis seem to provide it on their websites.

The WLTP range for my VW ID.3 58kWh is 260 miles.  I've never seen the dashboard show more than 195 miles.  And the car will do 190-195 miles from 100% to 0%, but that isn't really that useful.  You should probably keep about 10% in reserve for instance and they recommend not parking up for long times with 100% SoC.   So I say real world range is 180 miles in summer, 165-ish in winter.  I'm happy enough with that, but I can imagine if someone had purchased the vehicle expecting 260 miles, they'd be a bit miffed to say the least.

IHMO, the problem with WLTP for EVs is it's focused on a mixed city-highway cycle, but most people don't really care about city range.  You will rarely be able to drain an EV battery in one day in the city.  What you will be concerned about is road trip range. So what should be advertised is the 70 mph range (or whatever the speed limit is for highways in that country) at -10C, 20C and 35C; effectively, a cold, average, and warm range estimate, in each case with the cabin at 20C.   Probably could omit the -10C range for hotter countries.  Additionally, the recharge time in these standardised conditions should be advertised, with no pre-conditioning before starting the car, but permitting the car to warm the battery up in advance of reaching the charger with a navigate-to-charger feature enabled.

-That- would be a far more useful set of figures, but you only get that from 3rd parties who test cars, and their tests are not done with the same rigour that could be achieved in a lab.

[EEVblog]

Something else:

X Rolls Out Country Labels on User Profiles for Authenticity
The feature, announced on November 16, displays account locations derived from signals like IP addresses, app store regions, and posting behavior, with rollout beginning shortly after. Users can choose to show specific countries, regions, or opt out, though opting out marks profiles as hidden; EU accounts show regions to meet regulations. Proponents view it as a tool to expose fake accounts and foreign interference, while critics highlight privacy risks and potential dangers for activists in repressive areas.

What a nice and welcome change. I think a lot of people will realize that those "thought leaders" they follow are paid trolls to pretend they are someone, and it's all part of the hybrid war that's ongoing for years now. The mask is off.

It's been hilarious to watch! 

[Monkeh]

Nasa has been burning taxpayer money for what results ? after Apollo and Spaceshuttle what have they really done for spaceflight ?

C'mon. NASA's remit goes well beyond just manned spaceflight.

i asked specifically spaceflight. rockets.

So NASA has been a waste of money because they spend it on things other than pushing commercial spaceflight? You asked what results first, not what rockets they've built lately.

[EEVblog]

Yes, heated political discussions distort the whole atmosphere of the forum, even if contained within particular subforums or threads. They waste time of potentially good contributors, and are detrimental to their well-being - participating on the forum becomes less fun for them, and chances of some leaving get higher.

It's bad enough with arguments about technical stuff 

I'm thankful for the forum policy that limits amount of such threads. I know I couldn't contain myself. I would participate in those threads more than I actually want, and I would not enjoy it. I'm sure many share this view, even if not in these exact words. Dave has asked about this numerous times (polls and otherwise), and the result is always the same: members prefer to have the generic ban/limit of political discucssions, even including those who do participate in those discussions!

I personally LOVE political discussion, and if you follow me on X, barely a day goes by when I don't comment on some political thing. But I'm smart enough to know it doesn't belong here. So for those who desperately want my political opinion on something, ask me on X.

[vk6zgo]

daqq

Do you really not see anything wrong with a person being given the power to gut a public entity that is investigating him/his companies? Do you not see the gain he gets if an entity tasked with investigating him gets gutted by him? I do believe there's some gain for him there. Do you really not see any issue with this?

Thankfully, this behavior seems to be limited to countries like the U.S., North Korea, Russia and China for now.

Here in Canada almost nobody would think of trying to destroy a public entity simply because it's critical of someone or a company. It's recognized that this represents a clear conflict of interest which does not serve the public interest.

Ironically, in the U.S. this kind of behavior would never have been tolerated 20 years ago. Sure the odd nut job with a self interest might question a newspaper article but it was nothing like the authoritarian dogma were seeing today.

Canadians are subject and do the exact same things. They serve and govern bodies that they have conflicts of interest with and over.

Speaking of evils that governments do. While in Toronto a couple weeks ago, I saw Canadian government advertising to its own people propaganda about how great the government is and exploring the ring of fire and doing so with the native population and how its delivering nuclear power to provide sustainable and lower carbon energy. 

This is the kind of thing you see in countries like Canada, North Korea, China, and Russia. They use the taxes of the people to run advertisements to their own people telling them how great their government is.   

Meanwhile in the USA, public entities publish blatantly partisan political material on govt owned websites.

[vk6zgo]

How can anyone volunteer in government and not have some conflicts of interest?  This is just FUD unless there's evidence that someone actually exercised their privileges for personal gain, such as the congresspeople who use insider information to trade stocks. I didn't say the person is a saint, but what exactly did he do that's illegal?

Do you really not see anything wrong with a person being given the power to gut a public entity that is investigating him/his companies?

Myth. Elon (and DOGE) had zero power to gut anything, it had zero statutory power, that power still remained with the administrative branches of government.

Somehow, they still managed to use that non-existent power to get large numbers of public servants sacked.
Such is the power of influence.

[EEVblog]

Meanwhile in the USA, public entities publish blatantly partisan political material on govt owned websites.

You missed have missed the memo. No more politics please.

[vk6zgo]

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[EEVblog]

I'm deleting any new political posts.

[free_electron]

So NASA has been a waste of money because they spend it on things other than pushing commercial spaceflight? You asked what results first, not what rockets they've built lately.

No. ready what it says. I am talking about space FLIGHT. FLYING. i'm not talking about satellites, cargo, humans in space. Just like i'm not talking about starlink, dragon or trying to get to mars. Where is Nasa's rocket ? Home-built, not something they buy off-the shelf from lockheed martin or boeing or others.

Russia government builds their own, China government builds their own. India government builds their own. Japan government builds their own. Where's ours ? We rely on a private ride.
The technical prowess in rocketry they had in the apollo era is gone. Destroyed by endless budget cuts and a lack of drive.

[Analog Kid]

Yes, heated political discussions distort the whole atmosphere of the forum, even if contained within particular subforums or threads. They waste time of potentially good contributors, and are detrimental to their well-being - participating on the forum becomes less fun for them, and chances of some leaving get higher.

I challenge that belief. Just look at some of the non-political arguments that have raged on this very forum, on purely technical topics where both sides dug in their heels and vehemently defended their positions. Sometimes leading to some very ugly exchanges.

So I reject the idea that "politics" is somehow sui generis in fomenting toxic discussions. Really, if two people are determined to fight over something, that something could be something as inconsequential as, say, whether KVL is applicable when external magnetic fields are induced. Or whatever.

I really do not understand the fear of and antipathy towards "political" discussions. Kind of like the hackneyed, trite portrayal of Thanksgiving get-togethers where family members must avoid discussing politics at all costs, else out come the knives and daggers.

[EEVblog]

Yes, heated political discussions distort the whole atmosphere of the forum, even if contained within particular subforums or threads. They waste time of potentially good contributors, and are detrimental to their well-being - participating on the forum becomes less fun for them, and chances of some leaving get higher.

I challenge that belief. Just look at some of the non-political arguments that have raged on this very forum, on purely technical topics where both sides dug in their heels and vehemently defended their positions. Sometimes leading to some very ugly exchanges.
So I reject the idea that "politics" is somehow sui generis in fomenting toxic discussions. Really, if two people are determined to fight over something, that something could be something as inconsequential as, say, whether KVL is applicable when external magnetic fields are induced. Or whatever.

Yes, remember, this is an ENGINEERING forum.

I really do not understand the fear of and antipathy towards "political" discussions.

Because it's not engineering. The majority do not want that here, they like that the no-politics rule exists. Same for talk about religion, or guns, or during the peak hysteria, covid.

[Cyclotron]

The issue is that they spend most all of their time on the "other purposes" now and at substantial lower risk tolerances but not better outcomes. The Hubble was a disaster, remember? It had to have a Herculean effort undertaken to fix it.

It's hard to imagine using the Hubble repair missions -- all five of them -- as examples of low-risk activities with less-than-great outcomes.  When it comes to NASA, Herculean efforts are what my Herculean taxes pay for.  I'm OK with that. 

I do wish there were a way for people who disagree to opt out of paying for such efforts, though.  Because then I would presumably get the same privilege with regard to things they support.

Well, you're right about the risk. Flying on the shuttle was obviously fraught with danger and only because of the bureaucracy.
Simple QA check on that mirror would have suffice to have prevented at least half of the servicing adventures. Hubble, in the end, has been an enormous success. I am a super supporter of it and JWST and many more.

I love NASA, I have several NASA shirts and go onsite there, have friends that work there. Don't misunderstand my statement to imply that I don't want to fund and continue to fund NASA.

I think its obvious that I was providing support to the notion that NASA has strayed from its core mission "Atmospheric and Space Flight".  No other activity is specifically named in their commissioning law. The Apollo Engineers would be ashamed of what the modern NASA has not achieved with enormous budgets and enormous numbers of specifically trained staff. Everything, I'm mean, everything had to be invented for Apollo and all the modern folks need to do is make "v2"?

SpaceX has proven that, given the proper leadership, great feats can be accomplished and at a level that they have actually become "normal" or even "table stakes" for space flight.

[Analog Kid]

Yes, heated political discussions distort the whole atmosphere of the forum, even if contained within particular subforums or threads. They waste time of potentially good contributors, and are detrimental to their well-being - participating on the forum becomes less fun for them, and chances of some leaving get higher.

I challenge that belief. Just look at some of the non-political arguments that have raged on this very forum, on purely technical topics where both sides dug in their heels and vehemently defended their positions. Sometimes leading to some very ugly exchanges.
So I reject the idea that "politics" is somehow sui generis in fomenting toxic discussions. Really, if two people are determined to fight over something, that something could be something as inconsequential as, say, whether KVL is applicable when external magnetic fields are induced. Or whatever.

Yes, remember, this is an ENGINEERING forum.

Yes. Thanks for helping make my point.

[Analog Kid]

Well, you're right about the risk. Flying on the shuttle was obviously fraught with danger and only because of the bureaucracy.
Simple QA check on that mirror would have suffice to have prevented at least half of the servicing adventures. Hubble, in the end, has been an enormous success. I am a super supporter of it and JWST and many more.

Well, me too.
For my money, NASA should stick, for the most part, to unmanned (unwomaned?) missions, except of course in cases like this where repairs are needed.

I'm all in favor of remote space exploration through telescopes and other satellites.
To me, the other stuff--the "let's go live on Mars" stuff--is more hubris than anything. Sci-fi fanboi masturbatory fantasies.