Elon Musk/Tesla

[DeskJockey]

Just makes how few failures NASA had, despite using 60s technology to develop them, even more incredible

I guess it is down to the engineering ethos. They might be slow and expensive, but there's a reason for it.

[Beany]

I dunno. Once you take the environmental damage into account, not to mention this now being the second launchpad they've blown up, and if you give NASA some discount for having to do a lot more actual R&D work rather than standing on the shoulders of giants like SpaceX do, then I reckon SpaceX might not be as """"cheap"""" as people think.

And of course, despite what people - especially Musk - say, the majority of that big boom was public money...

[Simon]

Interesting.

But how was it public money Beany?

[Simon]

I was sitting in a client meeting a few years ago when another of his rockets exploded on the launchpad. Think it had a meta satellite on it that time?

[Sundayjumper]

Interesting.

But how was it public money Beany?

Massive government contracts. From Fox of all places, who will surely be keen to downplay this:

Federal spending and contract data show that since 2008, SpaceX has been awarded over $20 billion in government contracts and funding commitments, of which nearly $9 billion has been paid.

The Independent noted that the total value of those SpaceX contracts could rise to more than $89 billion if completed.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/ho ... ment-funds

[Beany]

Yeah I thought this was relatively common knowledge. He's sucking off the teat of the government while while castigating public spending.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... behind-him

While Musk claims he aims to eliminate “waste”, his companies continue to benefit from government contracts. SpaceX has received more than $17bn in federal awards since 2015, including lucrative Nasa contracts and taxpayer-funded Starlink deployments in Ukraine. The irony could not be more profound: Musk attacks the legitimacy of public spending even as his empire remains one of its top beneficiaries.

[Simon]

Ah. And as much as I hate Musk there's a difference between having the government as your customer for services and products, and actual corporate aid, tax breaks and public grants.

[Mito Man]

I don’t feel it’s entirely fair to criticise SpaceX too much yet. Their ethos of fast tracking everything and fixing the inevitable flaws later worked well up to Starship.
The government contracts are mainly for their secure Starlink internet and various other satellites and the Falcon rocket system is the cheapest and most reliable.

Starship has failed so far but the entire US government funding for SpaceX Artemis is less than a single NASA SLS launch which seems to be like HS2 in terms of delays and over budget. Then you’ve got Boeing who seem like a bunch of amateurs currently and who knows what Blue Origin is up to…

[Beany]

Alright, that's fair, I've been doing some more reading and SpaceX is sucking less hard on the teat (and generally more transparently) than Tesla, who probably wouldn't exist without a government supplied loan of nearly half a billion dollars.

https://www.energy.gov/lpo/tesla

It's that loan that got one of their big factories built.

The sort of loans and incentives that Musk thanked the government (and the american taxpayer) for - and is now feverishly trying to get shut down as 'government waste' of course, now that's he's benefitted from them and he doesn't want competitors to have access to

[Beany]

So the Robotaxi rollout is going well.

https://bsky.app/profile/esghound.com/p ... f3hoq5ns2e

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg75zv4gny2o

Also, stopping for no reason when there are cop cars around. Not on the same road as a the robotaxi, like. Just in the parking area next to the road.

Also, dropping passengers off at the corner of an intersection. I mean, not the outside corner...the inside corner, where traffic flows.

Also, going through a junction, getting confused between cameras, routefinding, lane choice, GPS, etc - the steering wheel wobbling like it's having a fit and then driving up the (empty) lane for oncoming traffic before eventually correcting. After someone beeping them which suggests they nearly cut into them.

Bear in mind this isn't hundreds of cars across all of Austin. This is ten cars in a tightly fenced area, with access only allowed to highly favourable influencers who'll Glaze musk as the robotaxi throws them and their shit around the car when it emergency stops because it got blinded by the sun.

Those tens of millions of miles of autopilot/FSD data it was trained on obviously going well then, especially given that Musk has been banging on about how millions of fully automated, non-supervised driving has been 'just a year/two years away' for a fucking decade

And of course, learning absolutely nothing from Musks previous lies, the Tesla stock price is up over five days ago because it's not based in reality.

[Beany]

Oh, and SpaceX are having a bad day - crane collapses at Starbase Texas:
https://bsky.app/profile/esghound.com/p ... ew36ryr22e

Musk glazers already blaming sabotage, of course. Not like SpaceX has a long, long history of workplace safety problems, at five to six times the industry average for space outfits

https://www.reuters.com/technology/inju ... 024-04-22/

The 2023 records, newly disclosed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, also show that injury rates at some SpaceX facilities grew worse than those the company had reported in 2022. At its manufacturing-and-launch facility in Brownsville, Texas, for instance, SpaceX reported 5.9 injuries per 100 workers, surpassing its rate of 4.8 injuries in 2022 and topping a space industry average of 0.8.

The company's high injury rate last year was the subject of a Reuters investigation that found at least 600 previously unreported worker injuries at the rocket and satellite company. Those injuries, Reuters found, led to crushed limbs, amputations, serious head injuries and one death.
SpaceX didn't respond to requests from Reuters seeking comment on the latest figures.

So sabotage seems rather less likely that a demonstrably shit attitude to worker safety.

[Rich B]

who gets fined if they’re clocked speeding?

[Sundayjumper]

...a demonstrably shit attitude to worker safety.

Move fast & break stuff.

[Sundayjumper]

Which reminds me.

They’re both in the Epstein files. This doesn’t seem like news. Some evidence would be nice of course.

Until one of them actually does something this is all just words.

Tomorrow will be three weeks since I posted that. How's the release the Epstein files / deport Elon stuff progressing ? Either of them done anything yet ?

[Mito Man]

The robotaxi is pathetic. Firstly what happened to the cybercab thing which had no steering wheel? The robotaxi seems to just be a Model Y with a supervisor who has a hidden dead man’s brake or something like that in their door handle. I’m sure the 10 cars are being remotely operated or the roads round Austin have been mapped to the nth degree because FSD is simply shit.


The new VW/Uber/Waymo collab looks way more decent and is something I’d actually want to sit in

[Beany]

Rumours abound it's not even a dead man switch - it's just the door open button and the software is set up to come to controlled halt if the door is opened.

They're in the passenger seat because it looks more 'no-driver' and 'fully automated' if they don't have someone in the drivers seat, where it'd look like just someone driving you around mostly using the same FSD that non-robotaxi designated cars have.

I firmly believe that they've done *nothing* to the software other than add some ride hailing tossery. I reckon it's no different to the FSD available in anything else. So just as liable to dangerous behaviour.

[jamcg]

[Simon]

Don't have a fucking door release as an electronic button. FFS.

Oh, and 'reigniting', 'LOL'.