Anyone else watching Starship?

[DaveE]

It’s amazing what Elon’s money can do when he’s kept well away from the work

I think what you mean is that it's amazing what $15bn of government money can do?

https://qz.com/elon-musks-spacex-and-te ... 20records.

[ZedLeg]

Well yes, lets not let facts get in the way of a good story though

[Beany]

A semi apocryphal tale that matches up with other reports....

I was an intern at SpaceX years ago, back it when it was a much smaller company — after Elon got hair plugs, but before his cult of personality was in full swing. I have some insight to offer here.

Back when I was at SpaceX, Elon was basically a child king. He was an important figurehead who provided the company with the money, power, and PR, but he didn’t have the knowledge or (frankly) maturity to handle day-to-day decision making and everyone knew that. He was surrounded by people whose job was, essentially, to manipulate him into making good decisions.

Managing Elon was a huge part of the company culture. Even I, as a lowly intern, would hear people talking about it openly in meetings. People knew how to present ideas in a way that would resonate with him, they knew how to creatively reinterpret (or ignore) his many insane demands, and they even knew how to “stage manage” parts of the physical office space so that it would appeal to Elon.

The funniest example of “stage management” I can remember is this dude on the IT security team. He had a script running in a terminal on one of his monitors that would output random garbage, Matrix-style, so that it always looked like he was doing Important Computer Things to anyone who walked by his desk. Second funniest was all the people I saw playing WoW at their desks after ~5pm, who did it in the office just to give the appearance that they were working late.

People were willing to do that at SpaceX because Elon was giving them the money (and hype) to get into outer space, a mission people cared deeply about. The company also grew with and around Elon. There were layers of management between individual employees and Elon, and those managers were experienced managers of Elon. Again, I cannot stress enough how much of the company culture was oriented around managing this one guy.

Twitter has neither of those things going for it. There is no company culture or internal structure around the problem of managing Elon Musk, and I think for the first time we’re seeing what happens when people actually take that man seriously and at face value. Worse, they’re doing this little experiment after this man has had decades of success at companies that dedicate significant resources to protecting themselves from him, and he’s too narcissistic to realize it.

This post is long so I’ll leave you with my favorite Elon story. One day at work, I got an all hands email telling me that it was Elon’s birthday and there was going to be a mandatory surprise party for him in the cafeteria. Presumably Elon also got this email, but whatever. We all marched down into the cafeteria, dimmed the lights, and waited. Elon was led out by his secretary (who he hadn’t fired yet) and made a big show of being fake surprised and touched that we were there. Then they wheeled out the cake.

OK, so, I want you to imagine the biggest penis cake you’ve ever seen. Like the king of novelty sex cakes. Only it’s frosted white, and the balls have been frosted to look like fire and smoke. This was Elon’s birthday “rocket” cake.

For as long as I live, I will never forget the look on everyone’s face — in that dark room of mostly-male engineers — when he made a wish and cut into the tip.

[duncs500]

I mean, if you're making big rockets, governments are a pretty key stakeholder! You're not going to fund that enterprise on private money alone.

There's no question that Musk has done a huge amount for the advancement of rockets/space travel, I think anyone who denies that is only doing so because Musk is a twat.

[ZedLeg]

I think the problem with how Musk has got his funding is how dishonest he is about it.

Taking billions from the US government while trying to undermine them, so he can get billions more from the new guy is exactly the kind of scummy behaviour you would expect from him.

[duncs500]

@Beany FWIW that shit happens on a less grandiose scale at every company I've ever worked for. If a person is incapable of understanding the way their senior management (or insert client or other stakeholder) receive and process information, or perceive certain acts/behaviours, they're probably not suited to a management position (and will probably find it hard to get into one anyway).

It might be shit and annoying that these peope are clueless about many things that are actually happening, and it may be frustrating that one may be doing all the proper work whilst they bask in the glory, but it is a reality and in many cases (Musk included) they serve a different function that would be equally difficult for the proper do-ers to perform.

[duncs500]

I think the problem with how Musk has got his funding is how dishonest he is about it.

Taking billions from the US government while trying to undermine them, so he can get billions more from the new guy is exactly the kind of scummy behaviour you would expect from him.

Not unusual behaviour though, is it? He's just high profile.

[ZedLeg]

I’m not sure that anyone else bought a social media company so he could actively control the content people see.

[ZedLeg]

Also when I call other capitalists cunts I don’t get a million sweaty dudes telling me how they’re going to save the world

[Swervin_Mervin]

I’m not sure that anyone else bought a social media company so he could actively control the content people see.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH!!!

[duncs500]

Also when I call other capitalists cunts I don’t get a million sweaty dudes telling me how they’re going to save the world

I imagine that depends who they are and which endeavors have their name plastered all over though. Certainly we could be talking about Bezos here, but Blue Origin just hasn't gone as big as SpaceX.

I'm not really interested in the big cocks behind the progress in space exploration, just the progress itself and seeing it happen.

[ZedLeg]

I’m torn tbh. I love to see us looking at space but it’s a lot of money to be spending on rockets when there’s so much wrong here.

I’d rather see governments spend the money on making sure their populations will survive the year.

[Swervin_Mervin]

I’m torn tbh. I love to see us looking at space but it’s a lot of money to be spending on rockets when there’s so much wrong here.

I’d rather see governments spend the money on making sure their populations will survive the year.

I'm similar. Albeit I also can't see beyond the fact that setting fire to fucktons of combustibles seems like the most efficient way of getting stuff into space. We don't seem to have progressed much in that department.

[ZedLeg]

Aye, if we’re being realistic space travel is a non starter until we can launch from orbit.

The energy needed to get off the ground really limits what we can build.

[ZedLeg]

also, deep space travel is even more remote than that. We haven’t even figured out how we would fuel long distance space ships.

[duncs500]

I’m torn tbh. I love to see us looking at space but it’s a lot of money to be spending on rockets when there’s so much wrong here.

I’d rather see governments spend the money on making sure their populations will survive the year.

I've had the same debates with mates over the years. I get it, but I also think whilst space travel is a big investment it would probably barely make any discernable difference to world poverty, and I think that is probably a lot more of a complex problem on a macroeconomic level that just pure money anyway.

Besides that, suppose we invested all that money and more in creating a utopian society, we're a pretty fragile species and it wouldn't take much of an event either cosmically or just globally to wipe us out, so we could just reach utopia and then it all be for nothing. My thinking is the sooner we can cover off that risk the better.

[duncs500]

also, deep space travel is even more remote than that. We haven’t even figured out how we would fuel long distance space ships.

Yeah, extrasolar travel is not technologically realistic for the foreseeable, but it will never be if we don't advance the tech. Other civilisations within this solar system certainly is though, and that's what I'm keen to see us stepping towards in my lifetime.

[Mito Man]

There's a lot of assumptions going on here and you chaps have far more faith in the generosity of wealthy governments/individuals than I do.
If we didn't have money being spent on rockets, somehow I can't see it ever being spent on poverty instead. Because the purpose of one is an ongoing investment to generate further wealth, whereas the purpose of the other is to give away wealth.

[ZedLeg]

I’m torn tbh. I love to see us looking at space but it’s a lot of money to be spending on rockets when there’s so much wrong here.

I’d rather see governments spend the money on making sure their populations will survive the year.

I've had the same debates with mates over the years. I get it, but I also think whilst space travel is a big investment it would probably barely make any discernable difference to world poverty, and I think that is probably a lot more of a complex problem on a macroeconomic level that just pure money anyway.

Besides that, suppose we invested all that money and more in creating a utopian society, we're a pretty fragile species and it wouldn't take much of an event either cosmically or just globally to wipe us out, so we could just reach utopia and then it all be for nothing. My thinking is the sooner we can cover off that risk the better.

Let’s make it simple, there will never be a mass exodus of humanity into space. It’s would need such a large shift in global politics and economics that we’ll all be dead before it happens.

We should be spending money improving here instead of trashing the place and looking for somewhere else to do it again.

Something like £267bil spent in the right places would solve world hunger.

It’s a logistics and will problem not an economic one.

[ZedLeg]

There's a lot of assumptions going on here and you chaps have far more faith in the generosity of wealthy governments/individuals than I do.
If we didn't have money being spent on rockets, somehow I can't see it ever being spent on poverty instead. Because the purpose of one is an ongoing investment to generate further wealth, whereas the purpose of the other is to give away wealth.

I’m aware of that, when has a government ever done what I want

It’s almost like they don’t care about people.