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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."
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."
They can't take what they dish out. What a surprise. ...yet Musk provided serious answers after having a little fun. He didn't have to provide real answers, but even doing that hurt the precious snowflakes' feelings.
Geez, What have we come to?
I read through the AMA. Musk answered all of the top level questions in significant detail. He did add a quip here and there. For example his comment about chickening out, which was followed up by a couple of paragraphs about the difficulty of deep throttling engines and the benefits of having multiple engines for failure tolerance.
The only exception I noticed was when some nerd said "you can't land on the moon with a 3 MN engine" and Musk said "yes you can - Bob the Builder." Seems fair to me.
If you're referring to the auto industry loans, Tesla paid them back, with interest, years ahead of time. Unlike part of the Big Three loans. If you're referring to EV subsidies, they're available to any manufacturer, and more to the point were specifically designed to be based on the size of the Chevy Volt's battery pack. It's amusing to see the Big Three struggling against an environment that they crafted.
It depends on what you mean. If you mean, "There are humans involved in stages of the manufacturing process", yes - but more to the point, you're describing every car factory on Earth. If you mean there's no robotic manufacturing, that's wrong. If you mean "the factory is not fully set up / tuned and requires more manual labour than it will in the end", no-freaking-duh, that's the very reason for announced S curve production plan. Most manufacturers, for a new line, will set it up and work on it for about half a year before starting sale of their production. This is not the approach Tesla is taking. While the plant is most definitely being set up for massive volumes, they are at present one month behind their planned production level at this point in time, and even that planned level was only two cars per hour.
Nearly half a million people have disagree with you, and put their money behind their disagreement.
Hahahahaha ;)
Sorry, it's just we've heard this constantly for the past decade. And there are no signs that anyone else is taking this seriously, despite their best PR efforts to come across that way. Nobody else is working on similar battery production volumes for any given production year. Nobody else is pouring nearly as much money into production and R&D (100% of Tesla's EV-related spending - excepting that directly dedicated to vehicle production, which earns 25% margins - goes into this. Billions per quarter at present). The competitors are literally missing a "0" at the end of their investment figures from what they need to be investing. Nobody else is even remotely close on fast charging networks, the key differentiating factor that actually lets you do long trips in your vehicle. The closest announcement - VW's network (forced on them by CARB) - will not even get close to what Tesla has today when it's done, let alone the scale of Tesla's network by that point in time.
It's funny watching all of the people who see concept cars announced, compare them to Tesla's offerings today, and saying "See, Tesla is about to face serious competition!" Because, again, we've seen this for a decade, but more importantly, it expresses a profound ignorance about how concept cars work. What you see presented as a concept car does not make it to production like that. Regardless of what the company says. They're not designed to be affordable to build, to meet crash standards, to be remotely efficient, and on and on. Most never go to production at all. When they do, they look radically worse (here was the concept Volt, for example), perform worse, and are priced worse. And they only try to sell them where there's pressure on them to sell EVs. Take the Bolt, for example. Go to a Chevy dealership in a ZEV state and there will be Bolts on the lot, and they'll actually push them. Go to one in a non-ZEV state, and the situation is reversed. Go to most
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
He made those answers but ALSO responded in full detail to the same questions.
Funny, I must be hallucinating the former existence of the Falcon 1, the present existence of the Falcon 9, the landing and reuse of Falcon 9s, the success of the Tesla Roadster, the success of the Tesla Model S, the success of the Tesla Model X, and now Model 3 production beginning. Every last one of these things endlessly prophesied to be pipe dreams by a doomed, DOOOOOOMED company. And instead: success and consquering each of their respective markets.
Just like the Model 3 will soon be doing. Whether you like that or not.
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
Slashdot has a contingent of users (particularly ACs, but others as well) who will take any opportunity to bitch about Elon Musk and everything he does. You can see it in the comments to this story, where people are making Tesla's setbacks out to be massive failures, or suggesting that the entire company is some kind of grand con job to absorb government money. They seem immune to arguments that Tesla has ultimately delivered what it promised, or that SpaceX has been quite successful with its launches and landings.
This story is comment-bait, I think, to stir up these pointless arguments in an effort to drive ad impressions. The summary is misleading and needlessly disparaging. Though the story is only two hours old, the comment count is already near the median number for every older story still on the front page. That counts as a win for the operators of the site, who are motivated in part by generating site traffic.