
Elon Musk - The Future of Energy and Transport [video] - dawson
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/videos/view/211
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simonebrunozzi
Before thinking about enhancing tranportation, we should ask ourselves IF we
need to travel more. In the last five years I took 500 flights (all on economy
class except for two), and I also took about 100 train rides. For "short"
trips (<600-700 km or 400-500 miles) train might be slightly slower, but
there's essentially no dead time and it's cheaper (no rush to the airport, no
stupid security checks at the airport, no weather affecting the trip, no big
delays, no taxi trip from arriving airport to city center). As a consequence,
we should "aggregate" airports and use them only for long range travel, and
revert to rail or road for shorter trips. By doing this, we would maximize the
frequency and availability of flights from these mega-airports. Then, by
simply providing more leg space, power, and possibly internet connection, we
could make flights "suck less". This is doable now. Any other technology would
take decades to develop. And again, most people don't need to travel NY to
Hong Kong in 3 hours. Most people need to travel cheaply, and possibly in a
green way.

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marquis
I rarely travel for business: that one's been sorted by the internet. But I
can't go long periods of time without seeing friends and family who are all
over the world, and as I'm the one with the freedom I'm the one that travels.
As a bonus I get croissants in Paris one day and shrimp in Sydney the next. I
don't want to give this up - I want to pay some kind of forward-travel-tax
that makes this more sustainable. Speaking of Paris, the Concorde is taunting
me sitting at Charles de Gaulle and Orly right now, lifted up as if it's
waiting for stronger winds.

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Eyght
How would you feel about traveling in a larger vehicle, think zeppelin, that
took 20 hours longer to reach its destination, but in return it would be
cheaper and more comfortable - more like traveling on a cruise ship?

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gutnor
I really wonder if a Zeppelin would be cheaper considering that it would
require more personnel, accommodation and service for long period of time.

Actually like cruise ships: they are not cheaper than flying. They are a lot
more comfortable.

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stcredzero
_> I really wonder if a Zeppelin would be cheaper considering that it would
require more personnel, accommodation and service for long period of time._

What if you made them really huge and mostly automated? Make the service be
mostly self-service, like at an extended-stay hotel?

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jd
Mirror: <http://78.47.91.45/201211_musk.mp4>

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hedgehog
And magnet link:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:66a30e1f6e602ba6c6d9b31a1e8fd1becf7289e0&dn=201211%5Fmusk.mp4

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neokoenig
Hi All, Sorry for the streaming server issues. Now mirrored on youTube:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1HZIQliuoA&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1HZIQliuoA&feature=youtu.be)

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ahalam
Torrent here <http://burnbit.com/torrent/227565/201211_musk_mp4>

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jv22222
Thx

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stcredzero
Electric jets combined with beamed power could be huge. Such craft would be
unencumbered by fuel tankage, so there would be huge potential for savings.
One place to start, strangely enough, would be with electric tankers. By
lifting fuel to altitude, individual aircraft fuel needs would be greatly
reduced to cover the same distance, meaning structural weight could be saved,
resulting in even more efficiency. Networks of power beaming stations to power
cross country flights would result in aircraft so light, that parachute
landing systems for the whole craft might be feasible. (Some on board battery
capacity would always be necessary for emergencies.)

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paulsutter
Good point. Going further, a big advantage of an electric plane is that it can
fly at much higher altitudes since it doesn't burn atmospheric oxygen like
normal jets.

At high altitudes, it may be more efficient to beam the power from orbit then
from the ground or flying tankers.

EDIT: replaced "the biggest" with "a big", point well taken.

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TeMPOraL
> At high altitudes, it may be more efficient to beam the power from orbit
> then from the ground or flying tankers.

In line with InclinedPlane's comment upthread, I do have a question: how do
you prevent such power delivery systems from becoming orbital weapons
platforms? It wouldn't be difficult to make such satellite transmit power to a
building or road insatead of a plane.

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robbiep
You could use frequencies that dont interfere with a lot of
materials/biological tissues. But once we have the technology to beam huge
qtys of power from orbit this will always be a risk: simply retune or develop
a satellite just for weapons purposes. Perhaps another way of looking at it is
how is it different from ICBMs etc? Most technologies can be weaponised, on
911 some enterprising bastards managed to do it with commercial transport.

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swalsh
I love the idea of Elon musk travelling to Russia trying to negotiate a price
on ICBM's. I wonder if the Federal Government was watching him :)

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enraged_camel
They were too busy reading Patraeus's love emails.

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MarkMc
Elon Musk certainly sails close to the wind. In this talk he says that SpaceX
would no longer exist if the fourth spaceflight had not succeeded. And during
the financial crisis in 2008 Tesla almost went bankrupt. I admire Elon's
success, but I couldn't take the risks he takes.

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confluence
That's why I attempt to mitigate the halo effect by using counterfactuals,
historic branch extensions and alterations.

For example:

Steve Jobs, an art school college dropout, doesn't meet Wozniak - Where is he
now? Steve Jobs gets himself killed in India. Steve Jobs doesn't get hooked
onto computers or doesn't hang out with the right hobbyist crowd at the right
time, in the right place, with few other options to pursue.

When you look at history you'll see a bunch of events that could have - and
most probably - should have happened and things get a whole lot less certain.
Things are only guaranteed to people because they happened - but at the time -
not so much.

Once you see the world through this light - it's difficult to make the kind of
statements that others make about the past and the future. It also reduces the
effect of both the halo and hindsight biases and just generally lets you get a
feeling for the anthropic principle and its constant interference with daily
life (aka we would not be discussing this had Elon not been a success).

These are called mistakes of omission (could have happened) and not commision
(did happen). The deeds of omission far out weight all the deeds of
commission.

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andrewtbham
I like when he talks about why Mars is the best planet to inhabit. 24 1/2 hour
rotational cycle, 1/2 the earths gravity, lots of water/ice. Co2 atmosphere
(which plants like to consume). Ultimately terraform the planet to make it
like earth.... Sign me up!

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marcoamorales
Wasn't the possibility of terraforming Mars debunked a while ago?

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goodcanadian
Depends what you mean by debunked. It is a bit of a fantastical idea to begin
with requiring technology and engineering on a scale much larger than anything
in human experience. It is, therefore, a bit difficult to come up with a
plausible plan let alone debunk that plan. I, for one, do not see any
fundamental reasons why it couldn't be done, but I can come up with plenty of
practical reasons why it probably won't be done anytime soon.

~~~
minwcnt5
I thought the lack of a magnetic field was considered to be such a
"fundamental reason", i.e. without one away any significant atmosphere that's
created will be stripped away by the solar wind.

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goodcanadian
The issue is timescale. Yes, the atmosphere is (very slowly) stripped away by
the solar wind, so we could not simply terraform it and forget about it. On
the other hand, the timescale is very long by human standards, so as long as
we produced new atmosphere at a rate faster than it is being stripped away, I
don't see it being a fundamental problem. I could be wrong, of course.

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wickedbass
With a weak magnetic field, wouldn't something such as a solar flare, which
the Earth has more sufficient protection against, possibly wipe out any part
of the surface it touched on Mars?

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beobab
Anyone got a transcript?

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sbierwagen
Or at least a summary?

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cskau
I'm surprised no one has posted the official youtube video yet:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1HZIQliuoA>

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nodesocket
Does anybody know if Elon has a minor speech impediment; stammer or stutter? I
myself stutter and was just curious, as I noticed it watching this video.

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agumonkey
For the lazy podcaster, there's also the [audio]
[http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/podcasts/201211_m...](http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/podcasts/201211_musk.mp3)

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hvass
Thanks. Elon begins at 06:15.

~~~
agumonkey
And stops around 38 minutes. Lots of Q and A. He often takes time to answer in
details even though he can't share everything.

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karpathy
Maybe this is a silly question but why doesn't SpaceX or Tesla use some form
of crowd-funding scheme for their projects in addition to all their other
sources of funding?

I really want both companies to succeed and I'd be happy to contribute to
either cause (yes, I see both primarily as a cause and philosophy, not just a
company). Judging from response around the internet there are many people like
me who are just as excited. I can't buy a Model S car because I don't have
that money, but I'd be happy to throw some money at Tesla or SpaceX for a
little badge and a warm feeling.

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quote
Have you considered buying stock?

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robbiep
Participating in the secondary market (Stock market) doesn't give the company
any money, you just have a stake of the company that varies in price according
to the demands of others and the perceived value of the company. As far as I
know there aren't any firm plans for a SpaceX IPO

~~~
relix
Buying stock drives the price up of said stock, allowing the company to reap
more money per share when it wants to sell more shares on said secondary
market, and also allows it to get better deals on loans and future funding
rounds. It might not directly give money to the company, but it's definitely
an action anyone can take to "vote with your money" that actually benefits a
company.

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thrill
SpaceX remains private. Purchasing stock will be limited to accredited
investors, and limited in quantity to 500(?) before the company must become
publicly reporting, which carries its own compliment of pain - the new bill
will raise that to 1000 I believe - still a minuscule number for a multi-
billion dollar effort.

The recent launch success makes the likelihood of it going public soon a
little higher, and then everyone will be able to participate - but I can only
imagine all the caveats in the filing documents, and frankly after watching
the debacle of a meltdown called Facebook, I wouldn't trust anyone on Wall
Street to properly bring this to market unless a Dutch Auction was used.

~~~
relix
Of course, but I wasn't talking about SpaceX specifically, just refuting the
point put forward by robbiep.

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akie
I've got the file. Where do I mirror it? Have fast connection to upload.

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pygy_
Two good options: <http://www.youtube.com> and <http://depositfiles.com/>

Note that you will need to provide some identification info (I don't remember
what) if you want to upload a long HD video to YouTube. IIRC not needed for
480p.

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akie
I thought of YouTube, but the 15 minute barrier stopped me. So now I'm
uploading to Veoh.com (at 45% as we speak) - it should be done shortly, I'll
post the link once it's done. Hopefully they don't want to re-encode it. In
that case, I'll upload to depositfiles.com...

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akie
Ok, fuck - it uploaded but now it's recoding the file. Sigh. It'll be at
<http://www.veoh.com/watch/v40542469qRZG8NMn> once that's done. I'll now
proceed to upload at DepositFiles.com, using the university's not-as-fast-as-
I-thought network.

(edit: nevermind. Use the other mirror (^^up there) instead.)

(and when did universities stop having ridiculously overdimensioned internet
connections?)

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mavhc
> and when did universities stop having ridiculously overdimensioned internet
> connections?

About the same time internet video took off

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mcdonji
He sounds quite bright. It seems he (and his people) are actually making a
dent and are producing some tangible value. He said he could have gone to work
for Wall Street. Does Wall Street actually attract our best and brightest
people? I wonder what the world would look like if the best and brightest did
not put all their talents into skimming value off the top (on Wall Street) but
instead actually produced value.

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xoail
I think I'm in love with the guy.

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20100thibault
I'm wondering what's the efficiency (speed) limit on ducted fan relative to
altitude for the electric airplane concept. Would like to have some data on it

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filvdg
there seem to be bandwidth issues with the streaming

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spitx
Neat trick:

Disregard the stream. It was buggy in Chrome and only mildly better in
Firefox. (Oxford can't afford a more robust video solution?)

Tackle the MP4 file instead. Only left click open it in place of downloading
it.

Quicktime should take care of the rest.

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Permit
If you Right Click and "Save As", you can open and watch the downloading
(.crdownload) file in VLC as well. Just in case you wanted to have it for
later I guess.

