Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
He made those answers but ALSO responded in full detail to the same questions.
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.