...

[expinkolator]

I'm not sure why you're so angry at their decision to eliminate administrative staff from the company they acquired to reduce costs. Thought engineers had an instinctual hatred of bean-counters. You don't seem massively knowledgeable about corporate strategy, so I'd relax the anger and try to understand why it was probably a good idea.

You must have a really low head for so much to fly over it.

Sacking staff from an insolvent company is not a bad idea. Using $2.6 billion of Tesla investor's money to buy such an insolvent company is also a good idea if you were the one who personally guaranteed the junk bonds it had been issuing to keep afloat. For Tesla investors - not such a good idea.

[vk6zgo]

I'm a bit dubious about Musk.
It is, I think, an Australian thing-----we've never had the entrepreneur worship thing going like the USA.

We look for "feet of clay" in these much vaunted individuals, & a big enough percentage of entrepreneurs have revealed such failings, to make it a good working rule.

As far as SpaceX is concerned, how far would Musk have got if he had to start from scratch, without NASA doing the "hard yards" years ago?

Of course, it doesn't hurt having government contracts.
The private sector in the USA has had its mouth clamped fast on the public teat since the Nineteenth Century, when the Railways were built.
In the 20th, such firms as Boeing made military aircraft as their " bread & butter".
Civil Aviation has been the beneficiary of this experience, so it is not such a bad thing.

Would the original Boeing 707 jetliner have ever appeared without all the development work done on the
B47 & B52 bombers?

Of course, the Comet was the first real jet airliner, but was before its time.
De Havilland, even though they were making military fighter aircraft, had no experience in multi engined heavy jets.(really, when they started its development few, if any, people did)

They built the Comet from scratch, making the technology up as they went along.
The poor old Comet in the end, was a failure.

[Mr. Scram]

Have you noticed that most companies who entered the solar power market exited it in bankruptcy?

How unsuprising is it that companies in a turbulent new market go through the cycle faster than usual?

[Mr. Scram]

I'm a bit dubious about Musk.
It is, I think, an Australian thing-----we've never had the entrepreneur worship thing going like the USA.

We look for "feet of clay" in these much vaunted individuals, & a big enough percentage of entrepreneurs have revealed such failings, to make it a good working rule.

As far as SpaceX is concerned, how far would Musk have got if he had to start from scratch, without NASA doing the "hard yards" years ago?

Of course, it doesn't hurt having government contracts.
The private sector in the USA has had its mouth clamped fast on the public teat since the Nineteenth Century, when the Railways were built.
In the 20th, such firms as Boeing made military aircraft as their " bread & butter".
Civil Aviation has been the beneficiary of this experience, so it is not such a bad thing.

Would the original Boeing 707 jetliner have ever appeared without all the development work done on the
B47 & B52 bombers?

Of course, the Comet was the first real jet airliner, but was before its time.
De Havilland, even though they were making military fighter aircraft, had no experience in multi engined heavy jets.(really, when they started its development few, if any, people did)

They built the Comet from scratch, making the technology up as they went along.
The poor old Comet in the end, was a failure.

Nothing is developed in a vacuum and it's always based on the hard work of others. The Comet was built on the work of both English and German war time engineers. In fact, a lot of our modern technology can be traced back to the German war effort, including the moon landings and anything else space related.

You can't get more "foot in the clay" than making the first useable rocket that lands upright. Many people like to talk, but very few people can walk the walk. You can't deny Musk is doing things others don't. Whether it's commercially viable is another story, but no one will care in 50 years, yet we'll still benefit from the progress made. I don't think many people understand how hard it is to do things that haven't been done before, and how much more time and energy is involved compared to replicating something that's been done.

[nctnico]

Nothing is developed in a vacuum and it's always based on the hard work of others. The Comet was built on the work of both English and German war time engineers. In fact, a lot of our modern technology can be traced back to the German war effort, including the moon landings and anything else space related.

You can't get more "foot in the clay" than making the first useable rocket that lands upright. Many people like to talk, but very few people can walk the walk. You can't deny Musk is doing things others don't. Whether it's commercially viable is another story, but no one will care in 50 years, yet we'll still benefit from the progress made. I don't think many people understand how hard it is to do things that haven't been done before, and how much more time and energy is involved compared to replicating something that's been done.

I agree. I'm not saying Musk is always right but at least he doesn't do things half assed. Doing things half assed is a guarantee for failure.

[woody]

I have a lot of respect for Musk. The way he made the electric car feasible, not by pressing our 'green' buttons, but by making a battery powered car that leaves any ordinary Porsche in the dust, is next to brilliant.

What I fail to understand is his whole SpaceX enterprise. Why on earth the very same guy that came up with the Tesla Roadster puts money and effort in an 8 year old's pipe dream is beyond me. Colonizing Mars? Becoming a multi-planet species? Get real. We're not even able to manage one planet. I say put that effort and money in making this planet a nice place to live. Much less sexy, but a way better ROI.

[Mr. Scram]

I have a lot of respect for Musk. The way he made the electric car feasible, not by pressing our 'green' buttons, but by making a battery powered car that leaves any ordinary Porsche in the dust, is next to brilliant.

What I fail to understand is his whole SpaceX enterprise. Why on earth the very same guy that came up with the Tesla Roadster puts money and effort in an 8 year old's pipe dream is beyond me. Colonizing Mars? Becoming a multi-planet species? Get real. We're not even able to manage one planet. I say put that effort and money in making this planet a nice place to live. Much less sexy, but a way better ROI.

Why not both?

Besides, it's not a pipe dream if you make it happen. That what I think is neat about what he does. Rather than moaning about the state of space flight and lack of interest of governments, he just tried to rent a rocket and decided building his own would be better. Get real? Sure. Give the guy a few years.

[woody]

It is not so much that I do not see him realize this (he most likely will) as it is that I do not see any advantage in it. Why would we want to be able to fly to Mars (which takes a year, Musk is not going to change the basic physics) to try and make that planet habitable, one rocket payload at the time, while we live on a beautiful planet with all the resources we'll ever need available to us. It takes billions of years before our sun explodes and we _need_ to relocate (and not to Mars). We can live here for many more moons if we manage to clean up our act. The mother ship is where the money and effort should go first. Not into the lifeboat.

[rstofer]

I have a lot of respect for Musk. The way he made the electric car feasible, not by pressing our 'green' buttons, but by making a battery powered car that leaves any ordinary Porsche in the dust, is next to brilliant.

What I fail to understand is his whole SpaceX enterprise. Why on earth the very same guy that came up with the Tesla Roadster puts money and effort in an 8 year old's pipe dream is beyond me. Colonizing Mars? Becoming a multi-planet species? Get real. We're not even able to manage one planet. I say put that effort and money in making this planet a nice place to live. Much less sexy, but a way better ROI.

Have you been following along with the 'locational diversity' argument?  If we don't get off this planet and colonize another, we are doomed to extinction at some point.

Richard Feynman and Stephen Hawking have both talked about this concept although their ideas of causation are different.  Feynman seemed worried about foreign object impacts and Hawking is worried about climate change.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/6/20/15836426/stephen-hawking-colonize-other-planets

Hawking suggests we have less than 100 years to get somewhere else.  The US space program is about 50 years old and we have made great progress but much is left to be done, only the US can do it and we have lost the will. 

Maybe somebody with vision and money can improve our outlook.

[rdl]

...
Why would we want to be able to fly to Mars (which takes a year, Musk is not going to change the basic physics) to try and make that planet habitable, one rocket payload at the time, while we live on a beautiful planet with all the resources we'll ever need available to us.
...

Until the next dinosaur killer asteroid decides to blow us back to the stone age, or some other catastrophe manages to take us out.

I personally don't understand the Mars fixation though. I think we should expand into Earth orbit first, then the Moon, and finally the asteroid belt. By time we're done with that we should be able to handle Mars.

[Mr. Scram]

I personally don't understand the Mars fixation though. I think we should expand into Earth orbit first, then the Moon, and the asteroid belt next. By time we do that we should be able to handle Mars.

What's interesting about the asteroid belt? It's the one place where impacts and collisions happen a lot.

Also, due to Mars' atmosphere, you are protected against a lot of things without trying. The Moon doesn't has an atmosphere, magnetosphere and the dust wreaks havoc on technology due to it being razor sharp. Gravity is also more favourable and less likely to bring huge medical problems.

The only reason not to go to Mars is pretty much the distance, which means you have to establish a permanent base right away. A permanent base on the Moon wouldn't be much easier, though, you just get more leeway when you cock up and keep a rescue rocket ready.

[mtdoc]

Colonizing Mars? Becoming a multi-planet species? Get real. We're not even able to manage one planet. I say put that effort and money in making this planet a nice place to live. Much less sexy, but a way better ROI.

I agree. We'll never find a better planet than Earth. Even in it's semi damaged and resource depleted state, it's orders of magnitude better suited to support human life than any other reachable planet will ever be. Evolution has seen to that.

The physicists and engineers who propose this seem to have a very poor grasp of human physiology and its requirements for long term survival.

Why should we expend vast resources on ill fated quests to colonize and make habitable another planet when we haven't even demonstrated an ability to provide good stewardship to the one planet uniquely suited to supporting human life?

Are we no better than Bill Peets Pollutians?