Anyone else watching Starship?

[Beany]

“Capitalism thwarts vanguard idealists,” Wolf added.

See, capitalism ruins everything.

Potentially why Musk will succeed in getting to Mars, he doesn't need colonisation to be profitable. He wants to be God-Emperor of his own planet and be written into history as another von Braun.

Insert comment about how he has a nasty habit of signal boosting neo-nazis and the very good friends of neo-nazis on the regular so he's halfway there already on the von Braun part.

[duncs500]

Once again Zed, we find ourselves curiously aligned...

Musk has 1 skill - backing the right people. He's not a visionary in car manufacturing, battery technology, space travel at all, he just picks people who are and gives them endless funds, funds built on Daddy's money

I think you're describing pretty much the most important skill that a business or organisation leader needs though.

He's not a rocket scientist, he's a business man, if he hires good people that get the job done for him, what else does he need to do?

[duncs500]

It’s about his company?

Is it, I thought it was about rockets!

I couldn't care less whether it was Boeing or SpaceX doing it. Probably the CEO of Boeing is a cunt too BTW.

[ZedLeg]

His rockets

Of course the boeing guy is, you don’t get to that level without being a cunt.

He’s not an incredibly loud and ignorant cunt though, as far as I can tell.

[ZedLeg]

I don’t get your point tbh Duncs. No one here is saying we shouldn’t be exploring space, I love space, which is why I read about it so much.

The fact is that the rocket tech from Space X and Boeing are functional enough to get to orbit but not reliable. The expectation that we’re going to be ready to go x400 further any time soon is a dream.

[duncs500]

I don't really have a point other than a few of you seem to be more interested in talking about Elon than space, whilst simultaneously accusing everyone else of being Elon fan boys, where I don't see that anyone else is that interested in Elon.

I'm not sure anyone has said "OMG, WE'RE GOING TO MARS NEXT WEEK!!!1!!!" either.

Apart from making your dislike of Elon clear, and that you are unimpressed with progress in space exploration, I'm not sure I follow your point either.

[ZedLeg]

My dig this morning was tongue in cheek after 2 days of being called a keyboard warrior

[ZedLeg]

Apart from making your dislike of Elon clear, and that you are unimpressed with progress in space exploration, I'm not sure I follow your point either.

You really have missed my point if you think I’m unimpressed, my first comment in this weeks conversation was saying it’s amazing what can be done with Musk’s money when he’s not involved.

Hilariously, the first person to sarcastically throw their hands in the air and go “we may as well not bother” was you

[dinny_g]

He's not a rocket scientist, he's a business man, if he hires good people that get the job done for him, what else does he need to do?

No you're wrong... He PERSONALLY invented Electric Cars, Batteries and Space Travel and if you don't believe that, you're just jealous. What have you invented eh ???

Etc. etc.

[Mito Man]

There's a lot to said for optimising existing products. Nothing really groundbreaking has been invented in years. Elon is good at spotting problems and chucking a load of money at the right people to solve it.
Paypal - easy online banking.
Tesla - an EV with decent range with a charging network so you could actually go places.
SpaceX - a genuinely reusable low cost rocket.
Starlink - satellite internet which didn't suck, and was plug and play for users.

Basically what Apple do for tech. And they're the most valuable company in the world despite being mocked all the time for releasing tech which android users have had for years.

[RobYob]

There's a lot to said for optimising existing products. Nothing really groundbreaking has been invented in years.

Went to a very interesting lecture by a JPL Engineer last weekend and during Q&A at the end he was asked about how he views SpaceX "leading" the space race these days.

His response was that they're doing incredible stuff (and this was before The Catch*) but SpaceX and all American private space companies have benefitted hugely from Freedom of Information access to Federally Funded R&D, NASA etal.

Which seems like a pretty reasonable way to do things, as long as all that public money spent gets some credit.

*He offhandedly predicted it would explode spectacularly, but added with a laugh that he'd predicted that for every IFT so far.

[jamcg]

[RobYob]

Beautiful.

Imagine how furious you'd be someone jumping in front of your photographer rig at the key moment though!

[nuttinnew]