Elon Musk Teases Reddit With Bad Answers About BFR Rocket (reddit.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader Rei writes: On Saturday evening, Elon Musk took questions in a Reddit AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) concerning SpaceX's new design for the BFR (Big F* Rocket). But unlike the 2016 IAC conference where many audience questions seemed to be trolling Musk, this time the tables were turned. Asked why Raptor thrust was reduced from 300 tons to 170, Musk replied, "We chickened out." He responded to a statement about landing on the moon by quoting Bob the Builder, while responding to a user's suggestion about caching internet data from Mars by writing simply "Nerd." A question as to whether BFR autogenous pressurization would be heat-exchanger based, Musk replied that they planned to utilize the Incendio spell from Harry Potter -- helpfully providing a Wikipedia link for the spell.

A technical question about the lack of a tail? "Tails are lame." A question about why the number of landing legs was increased from 3 to 4? "Because 4." After one Redditor observed "This is one bizarre AMA so far," Musk replied "Just wait..." While Musk ultimately did follow up some of the trolling with some actual responses, the overall event could be best described as "surreal".
To be fair, Musk provided some serious answers. (And his final comment ended with "Great questions nk!!") But one Redditor suggested Musk's stranger answers were like a threat, along the lines of "Just wait. It will get way more bizarre than that. Let me finish my whiskey."

Musk replied, "How did you know? I am actually drinking whiskey right now. Really."

Comments

Distraction

[atomicalgebra]

The purpose of that AMA about the BFR was meant to distract the public from the layoffs at Tesla.

Re:Distraction

[Rei]

That's what THEY say. There is no public evidence.

Huh? So poor performance firings should require a detailed public airing of the company's grievances against the employees? And what the heck kind of crappy "layoff" would involve under 2% of the company's employee base?

MUCH further behind than that.

False. Here's Tesla's official announced production plan. They're one month off. July was supposed to be around a hundred, August was supposed to be a few hundred, and September 1500. A few hundred were delivered in September. That's one month off.

It's also worth noting that when Model 3 was announced, their initial goal was to start production in late 2017, with no specific numbers for deliveries. They moved the start up by half a year.

And I see you have a history of making excuses for Musk's ...let's say... puffery

Funny, given that people like you keep calling his claims impossible BS, and he keeps delivering the supposed "impossible BS". Do you ever tire of being wrong, or are you always refreshed by the latest opportunity to be even more spectacularly wrong?

Re:Stupid summary

[DanielRavenNest]

I'm a space systems engineer (i.e rocket scientist). Of course you can land on the Moon with a 3 MN engine. You just require a 1.5 MN landed weight and 50% throttle capability. The throttle capability is to adjust landing deceleration to make a 0 m/s @ 0 elevation stop. Given the Moon's surface gravity, 1.5 MN --> 900 ton landed mass. That's a *big fucking landed mass* by NASA standards, but that idea is built in the BFR's name.

If you want to do a suicide burn and higher landing acceleration, the landed mass goes down. For example, 1.3 Earth gravities (which is the Earth takeoff acceleration) works out to 235 tons landed mass given 3 MN full thrust. With a fast landing, you would throttle *down* from max thrust to meet the landing condition. That's a more reasonable landed mass, but still pretty big.

to be fair...

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, Musk provided some serious answers.

This mischaracterizes the whole thing. Musk provided serious answers as a followup to almost every one of his quips. The serious answers were insightful, usually a full or several full paragraphs with meaty details suitable for the audience, and honestly impressive that a CEO could do that off the top of his head. Many CEOs have no idea about the technical details of their own company. Musk can speculate intelligently about the nature of an interplanetary packet network and answer questsions about metallurgy.

I have no idea what the submission is whining about. It was a pretty good Q&A, much better than you'd get from 95% of CEOs out there.

Re:to be fair...

[Areyoukiddingme]

The serious answers were insightful, usually a full or several full paragraphs with meaty details suitable for the audience, and honestly impressive that a CEO could do that off the top of his head.

There's a reason Elon Musk self-identifies as SpaceX's Chief Designer more frequently than he self-identifies as CEO. He's making very technical decisions after learning and understanding the ramifications of the options. He has a physics degree, which alone makes him a far cry from most MBA CEOs today, who choose among technical options they literally can't understand based on how much they like the person presenting them.

Those were placeholder answers.

[Omeganon]

OP seems a bit disingenuous. For every one, he followed up minutes later with a more fleshed out and responsive answer. It seems obviously to me that his original comments were markers to track which ones he wanted to come back to.