
Elon and the collective - theaeolist
https://blog.piekniewski.info/2018/12/28/elon-and-the-collective/
======
arijun
> when one of the SpaceX boosters will have flown 100 times with between
> flights maintenance at an economical level, then it will be an actual
> success

Talk about moving the goalposts! They _already_ reuse boosters, and they
_already_ give discounts for doing so! And using the shuttle as proof that
reusability is not tenable is disingenuous: we know the reasons why the
shuttle was expensive and absolutely could design a version where it was not.

Looking through the rest, it's clear this guy has goggles on where he sees
everything around Musk in a negative light. There is absolutely stuff to
criticize about about Musk, and there for sure exists a cult around him. But I
think this guy is in another cult, where Musk can do no right.

~~~
nphard85
You're attacking a strawman. That quote makes sense in the context (basically
the whole previous paragraph):

 _The rocket as it performs ascent and then descent undergoes some serious
accelerations (way higher than a typical plane), while being built extremely
delicately to minimize the mass (much tighter margins than an airliner). The
rocket engine undergoes much higher stress than a jet engine. Hence all that
stress can cause material fatigue and small malfunctions, while the margin for
error on a rocket is extremely small. Hence if e.g. it turns out that the risk
of mission failure on these reused boosters increases substantially after
every use, all the anticipated savings from reusability may be quickly wiped
out by one or two lost missions. And it should be noted, that the cargo that
goes into space is often MUCH more expensive than the rocket itself._

~~~
Cogito
The quote may make sense, but it's still moved the goalpost.

> when one of the SpaceX boosters will have flown 100 times with between
> flights maintenance at an economical level, then it will be an actual
> success

The hope is that the boosters will be able to be reused indefinitely (stated
goal of 10+ for block 5 I think?) but they only need to be economical to refly
once and they will be successful. There is some argument that they need to
refly multiple times in order to recoup development costs, but the reality is
that they are already cheaper than the competition on expendable flights.

We know it's already economical, because as stated in parent they have flown
reused boosters at a discount.

The concern you quote above is that reused boosters are somehow more likely to
fail, but the best indicator that a booster can fly is if it has already flown
before. Recovering the boosters has allowed the effect of stresses during
flight to be measured, and we have seen them make design modifications in
response. It's plausible that this has already improved reliability of all
boosters, but more importantly it means that the boosters that have been
reflown (or ones like them) have been heavily investigated.

Of course everyone knows that reused boosters need to be dependable, the fact
that they're being reflown means that the engineers are at least _reasonably_
confident that they're not going to blow up with the payload on top. Even if a
reused booster blew up, you would need to identify that something about it
being reused was at fault. If you did, and were not able to fix that issue for
some reason, we still have the situation that the boosters are already cheaper
in expendable mode than the competition.

------
bischofs
This article started out good but got pretty lazy toward the end. "This idea
is stupid" is not a good description.

Also I think Elon is generally looking at problems we have (traffic
congestion, expensive space travel, fossil fuel cars) and trying different
things to fix them with his considerable funding. Why is this a problem?

It's much easier to criticize others ideas on a blog then it is to generate
and execute ideas yourself.

~~~
wpietri
For each thing, there's a big question whether he's really trying to fix it or
is just showboating. The useless submarine for the Thai cave rescue is a
pretty clear example of the latter. SpaceX seems to be doing well, but Tesla's
still an open question; they've had big production problems, they've lost
execs left and right, they've had just one profitable quarter, and their cars
get decidedly mixed reviews. [1]

Also, I think Musk's extensive self-promotion means that public criticism is
entirely within bounds. Especially given Musk's dedication to criticizing his
critics, like the Thai cave diver he called a pedophile. Or his obsession with
people shorting Telsa.

[1] E.g., [https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-tesla-
model-3-test...](https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-tesla-model-3-test-
review)

~~~
dforrestwilson
^ This.

For someone who claims to be dedicated to saving the world he (1) is receiving
one hell of an executive package and (2) spending a significant amount of time
being a rude asshole to critics.

~~~
Robotbeat
Those things can be simultaneously true.

------
m0zg
"People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing
it."

Dude literally is, to quote the author, "the next Steve Jobs, but better". Is
he occasionally an idiot? Yes. Is he occasionally an asshole? Also yes. But
he's on track to have done not one, not two, but _three_ things others widely
consider impossible (SpaceX, Tesla, StarLink) and may even squeeze in 2-3 more
of those things in his remaining lifespan. If that's not genius, I don't know
what is.

~~~
xiphias2
I wouldn't say PayPal is nothing, although lot of people hate it, I always
prefer paying with it than giving my credit card number to a new merchant.

What's the most important for me is that Elon showed people that clean great
electric cars are possible (and China already has a higher growth rate in
electric cars than Tesla). I'm literally sick of the toxic air pollution that
cars make, which is a problem I didn't have when I was younger.

~~~
wpietri
What exactly did Musk do at PayPal? He didn't start it. He was CEO for a hot
minute, but that's about it. From what I can tell, his major initiative during
his short CEO stint was to try to shift them from a Unix infrastructure to
Windows, for which they fired him.

I have no idea why people give him credit for it.

~~~
xiphias2
I don't think Peter Thiel would have given so much shares to Elon if he didn't
think about X.com as a serious competitor. Peter still looks up to Elon for a
reason.

At the same time Elon is making huge mistakes and huge risks as well (and also
has borderline lies that sometimes step over the border), so I'm not saying
he's perfect, just the best we have right now.

~~~
wpietri
That avoids the question. What did he do at PayPal? As far as I can tell he
deserves no credit for his success.

------
alexandros
Many of the flaws with the article have been pointed out, but can I just point
out the author is so lazy that he doesn't even remove the weight of the fuel
from the Boeing 737, nevermind the jet engine and the many other optimisations
that can be done when designing from scratch without the ICE constraints. His
thought experiment is literally a Boeing 737 with a 25T battery attached to
it, and he takes that to be the best case of what Elon is proposing... What
makes smart people write things so trivially dumb?

And in case the author objects to me dissecting his rough sketch of an
argument and drawing conclusions about him from it, he should have thought of
that before taking 5 sentences spoken in a podcast and assuming he understands
what the complete idea someone else has in mind is.

~~~
reitzensteinm
The author replaced the 25 tonnes of fuel a 737 carries with 25 tonnes of
batteries, which is generous towards the electric jet (as the fuel burns
during the trip).

Edit: It looks like you deleted the post I was replying to, but a 737 with 72
tonnes of MTOW does not carry just 17 tonnes of fuel; you can easily look up
the product matrix on Wikipedia.

~~~
alexandros
The author doesn't really state that he did that, but I ran the numbers, and
it seems he's doing that indeed. Not sure how he came to the conclusion that
25T fuel is in the 737, as that doesn't seem to be the case. He still didn't
consider the engines that would be almost completely gone weightwise, and of
course the main point stands -- the 737 is a specific model, with specific
tradeoffs, to handle specific cost variables, including engines and fuel. If
one is considering a new design, with drastically different variables,
different cost of fuel (almost 1/5th or less) different weight distribution,
different acceleration capabilities, different aerodynamics (no more bulky
engines at the wings), different takeoff strategies, then this kind of "what
if I flipped the fuel on the 737 for a battery" approach cannot be used as
proof that an idea is "ridiculous". The author comes to the fight extremely
underprepared, and honestly if we all reasoned like that we'd still be in
caves. I'm all for calling Elon out on things he's more vulnerable on, but the
author tips his hand with shoddy work like this.

~~~
reitzensteinm
I don't think the author is saying the plane has to be like a 737 with the
batteries removed; the argument is more like: a 737 with battery replacement
is an order of magnitude away from being viable, so the design is going to
have to close that gap, and that's a pretty tall order.

It's a fairly lazy argument, but also one that effectively illustrates the
challenge.

------
standardUser
"No one in the engineering community ever questioned whether it would be
technically feasible to land a rocket booster on a barge."

Not to be pedantic, but it was technically impossible to land a rocket booster
on a barge. SpaceX did the R&D to make it happen. They made it technically
feasible by developing the technology for a task that was previously _not_
technically feasible.

~~~
elteto
Actually, you are not being pedantic at all. No one in the space industry
thought it could be done in a commercially viable way. SpaceX was dismissed
time after time by space pundits until it landed a rocket, and then another,
and then another. Now the goalpost is 100 reusable flights! I wonder what the
next one will be when SpaceX gets to that one.

The article started with a biased premise and then worked to prove that.

~~~
rjdagost
SpaceX executives have stated several times that their company is profitable.
But, when SpaceX was trying to do a $750M debt raise just last month, their
internal financials were divulged:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/musk-
said...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/musk-said-to-
divide-wall-street-with-demands-for-new-spacex-loan).

It's a company running in the red. Unfortunately EBITDA is still negative
(much less earnings). The jury is still out on whether or not SpaceX's
approach is in fact commercially viable.

~~~
elteto
Negative _including_ R&D. If SpaceX was to turn around tomorrow and stop
pursuing the Mars goal they would probably be in the black within a year: the
Falcon platform is completed, Falcon Heavy already flew and block 5 is
optimized for quick reusability. But, SpaceX is dead serious about going to
Mars and Musk will use the profits generated from the stable part of the
business to fund that objective. That is part of the reason why he says he
will not take SpaceX public until it gets to Mars.

------
skilled
I get the impression that this post repeatedly tries to make it sound like
'we' are the dumb guys for believing Musk. I think he's done some good things,
is a likeable marketing personality, and genuinely cares for a lot of the
projects he's working on. And this is me saying this without ever having owned
a product of his.

There's a bit of emotion in this post, but that's alright.

~~~
tachyonbeam
I think the most important thing is that he's moving the goalpost and forcing
the competition to innovate. Whether one believes Tesla will become profitable
long term or not, that company has definitely accelerated the shift towards
electric cars, which is a good thing for all of us. I feel like SpaceX is
doing the same for the aeronautic industry. It would be amazing to see SpaceX
send astronauts to Mars, but even if that doesn't happen, now other space
launch companies are thinking about reusable launchers, bigger rockets, and
finding creative ways to reduce costs.

------
ricardobeat
> Wind, tiny earthquakes or even birds walking along the roof displace the
> tiles ever so slightly and they loose contact. Once the circuit is broken it
> is difficult to find and fix the fault. Even worse a short circuit can lead
> to heating and fire danger. Turns out regular solar panels are way easier
> and cheaper to work with.

How can you say this much about an unreleased product to which you have zero
insight on technical details? This is even more bs than if the tiles never
come to market...

Also, you can’t call a machine-bored tunnel a “tube” and expect to be taken
seriously. Questioning lofty, sci-fi-is goals? Fine and reasonable.
Gaslighting actual, tangible products? Sounds shady.

~~~
mrpopo
About the roof tiles :

Other companies already have solar roof tiles on the market.

[http://www.dyaqua.it/invisiblesolar/_en/](http://www.dyaqua.it/invisiblesolar/_en/)

They are popular in areas of Europe where architecture is regulated. Sure they
are more expensive and less efficient, but there is a niche market for it.

~~~
ricardobeat
I can’t find any record of those being actually sold/installed, or any issues
like mentioned in the article? Either way, it is pointless to speculate on
technical issues affecting the viability of the Tesla product that doesn't
exist yet. We'll only know when solar roof is on the market.

------
gfodor
Some fair critiques but the tunnel one is way off base. Showing that mass
transit is more efficient than cars in tunnels has nothing to do with the
question of if building cheaper tunnels for cars will result in a virtuous
cycle of commercial investment and development of underground tunnel
infrastructure. One of the core theses of boring as far as I understand it is
that people prefer cars over subway trains for the most part from a comfort
standpoint and so if anything drawing on some of the on-paper benefits of
underground rail but transferring them towards passenger vehicles seems like a
no-brainer if the economics and logistics work.

------
derekp7
On the reusable boosters -- has Spacex released any information on what the
inspection / refurbishment costs (and time) are for the ones that have been
reused already (or is there any educated guesses)? Also, if they end up being
highly reliably reusable, wouldn't that slow down the production of new
boosters, thereby making them much more expensive to produce?

~~~
Robotbeat
Folks at forum.nasaspaceflight.com and reddit.com/r/spacex do a meticulous job
of tracking the booster numbers. You can tell when a reused booster was last
flown which puts an upper limit on the amount of time it takes to refurb a
booster (and a rough proxy upper limit for cost).

This info is summarized in this Wikipedia article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches)

One booster seems to have been reused in just 2 and a half months (launched
July 25, 2018 and October 8, 2018), compared to a new-production time of about
18-24 months from aluminum stock to launch. So a ~tenth the time of production
and so probably about a tenth the labor (for the first stage).

As far as slowing down production...

...SpaceX's production rate of new boosters has been roughly flat while their
launch rate has increased, so this effect has not occurred. In fact, you can
make a good argument that the primary benefit of reuse for SpaceX is that it
has allowed them to squeeze a lot more launches (double) out of the same
production capacity. They launched cores 23 times (3 at once for Falcon Heavy)
in 2018, and only 10 of those were new. In 2017, it was 18 total launches, 5
with reused cores and 13 new.

SpaceX can switch resources between upper stages and first stages, too, and
eventually mothball first stage production or convert it to BFR production,
thus giving them a benefit from reuse that you might not consider from a
first-pass analysis.

------
myegorov
Don't have experience with most of the industries that Musk dabbles in, but
did spend a decade in construction. I have no doubt in my mind that Musk's
roofing and tunneling ventures are sham.

------
rick22
When writing about Elon negatively start the core argument in the first line.
Go straight to the core of the argument instead of wining about elon fan's
e.t.c. The reason is simple, the people who write negatively about Elon have
accomplished very little compared to Elon and so the reader will give as
little time to judge your argument and if you waste your first few lines with
BS then there is no chance of getting people to read the entire article.

------
evrydayhustling
Here's a much more thorough look at SpaceX economics:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/7lp52o/a_thorough_e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/7lp52o/a_thorough_examination_of_the_economics_of_falcon//)

tl;dr - Recoup on development costs is slow right now, but the post-
development economics of rocket reuse are a big game change. Space shuttle
comparison is flawed because both the nature of the system and the need for
teardown were significantly impacted by being manned.

Comparing tunnels to planes is weird too - the target is an order of magnitude
greater passenger throughput at a majorly reduced energy cost. The speed
comparison is superficial.

------
TheChaplain
I can't imagine what Elon goes through, the amount of trash talk he receives
on social media is just insane.

On Twitter there are people whose existence is only to bring anything about
Elon/Tesla into a negative light and whip up storms in teacups. Sure, he's
probably not a saint but man that must be tiring.

~~~
atomical
So tiring that he tells the world he's taking the company private in his
pointless battle with "short sellers."

So tiring that he falsely accuses a critic of being a pedophile.

He can't control his emotions.

------
tbabb
\- Comparison to the space shuttle: Not remotely apt. The space shuttle, among
other reasons, was a failure when it came to its design requirements because
those requirements were expanded in incompatible directions by a congress that
doesn't understand engineering. "It was done badly before, therefore it is not
possible to do well" isn't a good argument.

\- "Rockets are irreconcilably more dangerous than planes": That might
actually be true, at least for many more decades. Rockets are at least 10^5
times more dangerous than planes and the failure modes are much, much worse.
That doesn't mean that SpaceX can't revolutionize space transport for
satellites, unmanned commercial endeavors, and limited manned missions. A
tenfold decrease in the cost of space access would make entire new industries
economically feasible, even after accounting for risk. SpaceX is currently
kicking ass, and I have no reason to doubt they will continue at it.

\- "Earth-to-Earth passenger rockets are insane": Yes, they may well be. I did
a detailed analysis here: [https://www.bzarg.com/p/some-numbers-about-the-
spacex-passen...](https://www.bzarg.com/p/some-numbers-about-the-spacex-
passenger-rocket/) As before, safety needs revolutionary changes, probably
several times over. Economics and engineering will be very difficult, and the
hardest part-- still totally unsolved-- is making something that can withstand
re-entry many dozens of times without being totally rebuilt.

\- "The advertised orbital travel times are wrong": This is likely garbage.
The details of flight navigation are something SpaceX has down pat and would
not reasonably lie to themselves or the public about. Without a proper orbital
analysis to back up this claim, I would not give it much credence. The point
about transport to and from the launch pad adding time is likely valid,
though-- his figure of a 5 mile journey from city center would actually be
more like 10 miles, minimum. In a ferry this would be multiple dozens of
minutes, which would add up at either end, especially once you account for
travel to the ferry terminal itself. 30-40 minutes would be launch-to-landing
time only, not door-to-door.

\- Colonizing mars: Mars being inhospitable is a solvable problem. Radiation
can be avoided by living underground, and temperature and pressure can be
maintained inside a habitat. The unanswered question is economics and
logistics-- It would require many billions of dollars of infrastructure--
flight costs _not_ included-- to get a colony going. SpaceX isn't working on
these logistics; their attitude is "someone else will figure that out." It's
not clear what pot of gold would drive that initial investment, and by whom.

\- "Extinction danger is a bad reason to go to Mars" \- Agree that this is
mostly BS; even the worst Earth is much more comfortable than Mars. But I
would say there are plenty of other, better philosophical reasons to try--
What is the economic and social value of an _entire inhabited planet_? We
should treat the failure to pursue it as an opportunity cost of that
magnitude.

\- "We should go to the moon first" \- Going to the moon is not mutually
exclusive with going to other places in the solar system.

\- "Hyperloop is infeasible" \- Maybe. I'll believe it when I see it, but
happy to let them try.

\- "Neuralink is garbage" \- Neuroscientists I've spoken to would love to see
more advanced neural probes. Money toward that problem could reasonably do a
lot of good and make a lot of progress. Right now we can get about 100 neuron
readings from a small area, and this is already used in humans with various
degrees of paralysis to control artifical limbs. We are a long way from a
"seamless brain-computer interface", and it is probably 10 times harder than
Elon imagines-- I doubt he understands it-- and healthy skepticism is in
order. But investment in the problem would give real returns, especially for
the quality of life of disabled people. A limited consumer brain-computer
interface within the next three decades is probably not terribly outlandish if
resources are dedicated to making it happen. A hell of a lot can happen in 30
years.

\- "Boring company is dumb" \- Solution to mass transit? I agree that the idea
is probably not very thoroughly thought through. Are 10x gains in the
efficiency of tunnel drilling possible? I could believe it. If Elon and his
company have to convince themselves that subterranean packet-routed car skates
are the future, only to arrive at mass transit later on, so be it if that
results in making infrastructure 10 times cheaper to construct.

\- "Self-driving is dangerous" \- Self driving does not have to be impeccable
to be a benefit-- it only has to be better than the average driver, which is
often quite bad in some pretty trivial/preventable ways. About 50,000
Americans die in cars per year, so there is a lot of room for improvement and
a lot of potential good. As a society, we should try to make this work. I do
agree that Elon way oversells its capability, and that's
dangerous/disingenuous. I also think that many car localization and navigation
problems are very solveable, but Tesla does not seem to be solving them
effectively-- see examples of autopiloted cars hitting dividers earlier this
year. The hard part is getting machines to participate in the nonverbal social
environment that is a road full of human drivers... but Tesla seems to be
struggling on problems several tiers below this.

\- Problems in Tesla management - From the outside, it looks as if Musk's
stubbornness may have lead to his underlings being unable to convery to him
what is realistic to accomplish, resulting in repeated missed deadlines, as
predicted by the people who appear to have been oustered for saying so. He
does not seem like someone who it is easy to give bad news to, which means he
and his company are going to have a hard time seeing and reacting to peril. I
do not side fully with the shorts, though; Tesla is positioned to completely
change the auto industry. I just hope they can execute without shooting
themselves in the foot.

\- Elon's childish toxicity - Completely agree. Not behavior becoming of a
leader at his level, let alone any emotionally well-adjusted adult. It's a
huge liability, c.f. the SEC fiasco, which Musk still doesn't seem to
comprehend. Musk supporters frustratingly seem to attribute his companies'
success as being due to these flaws instead of in spite of them.

------
sidcool
It seems the article was written as an experiment to gauge people's reaction
on a critical Elon article. Not much credibility.

