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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."
Some of these damn nerds need to be straight up told.
The purpose of that AMA about the BFR was meant to distract the public from the layoffs at Tesla.
I think this story is a bit overblown and sensationalized. I think it was exactly the kind of candid responses people like. In nearly everyone one of those cases he followed up with very technical details of why things were designed the way they were. And to be fair, it was held on /r/space as opposed to /r/spacex and the /r/spacex community sort of invaded the AMA and posted the real technical questions. The nice thing there being a much higher level of technical questions were asked, but it did serve to alienate a lot of the /r/space community who probably isn't used to hearing about deep throttling ratios of methalox engines, etc.
----- obSig
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.
There were a few non-answers there -- can't expect most people to go on the record saying "we don't know yet" or similar.
OTOH, some of those answers in the AMA were excellent and really interesting. Like what he had to say about the metallurgy required to build the oxygen turbopumps for Raptor (which is REVOLUTIONARY in itself; the US didn't manage to do this throughout the Cold War whereas the Russians did); or the aerodynamics of the BFS.
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.
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,
Nissan is pretty much neck and neck with Tesla for units sold per year of pure electric vehicles, Admittedly GM and Ford are currently lagging, though in part because fuel prices fell, chilling the market for EV a bit.
I will say I can't readily find any numbers in terms of dollars invested so I've no idea wheter you are right or wrong about being so optimistic about Tesla's spending in absolute terms, but measuring by percentage is a very incomplete metric, better to compare dollar to dollar (which can get very tricky, e.g Ford developing the Focus Electric has a lot of common cost with the non-electric, so how you do accounting to claim some indication of enthusiasm for electrics is complicated.
Also, wholly focusing on dedicated EV research may actually be a disadvantage. Ford sold more than 4x Focus vehicles in 2015 than any electric car, and so they have some room to amortize common development costs with the gas models further than say a Tesla or a Leaf can, and there is a lot about a car's development cost that is completely independent of the electric drivetrain. Of course to date Ford has been extremely tepid about their EV product, but if they ever take it seriously, they may have a huge advantage with their strategy.
My big concern is that people couple the success of EV as a viable market too much to Tesla's fortunes. If Tesla botches the mundane facets of being a car manufacturer, I'd rather it not take take down the concept in general with it.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
No TLDR for us after that wall-o-text?
You've been quite a holster this afternoon.
Do you have vested stock options?
While operating in a vastly larger market segment. The fact that Tesla sells about as many cars per year but theirs are three times the price is not a fact that's to Nissan's favour.
Conversion EVs - even factory conversion - are terrible. EVs need to be designed from the ground up as EVs. Otherwise you're just throwing away range, stability, handling, performance....
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
Many others are saying the same. If you read the AMA, you'll see that his pattern was to first reply with a playful troll, and then spend the next few minutes typing an actual thoughtful answer in reply to his troll comment. He was just playing around. This post is COMPLETE MISINFORMATION. A disgrace.
Thanks, Elon Musk, the answer to trolling is trolling.
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.
Omeganon
Compared to the MIC who's been getting more for longer than you've been alive to launch crappier rockets, for more money and with a slower schedule?
Elon's doing pretty well. He has gotten a lot less per real world result than the other guys, to the point where if he's bidding, they drop out...
Do I need to name names and show budgets here? Does Elon get the import/export bank to loan his customers money to buy his products on our back?
The subsidy line-whine is getting pretty old in light of the facts. He's just usually a little late. Most people would be "never". Sour grapes much?
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Who are always conventionally serious and plain in their communiqués, specially in a platform with so many readers.
Musk was clearly being nonchalant with the audience, not disrespectful or insulting.
But the anti-Musk brigade will never be satisfied no matter what. So, take it as you please.
I have never seen such vehement defense of a public figure - ever.
You not looked at Trump's defenders recently?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Nissan is pretty much neck and neck with Tesla for units sold per year of pure electric vehicles
Yeah, I have a Leaf and it's a great car for the price I paid for it and what I want to do with it. But Tesla is keeping pace with it just with their luxury cars - if (as I expect) the Model 3 ramps up you can expect Nissan and the others to be left in the dust next year. I think Nissan is being quite clever in their slow battery upgrades, keeping their toe in the low end of the market, but that's not going to get them to have any great jumps in numbers.
I don't doubt that the others will catch up to some extent over time, but they are not really trying very hard yet.
Why shouldn't Musk be yakking it up?
All those millions from NASA are plumping up his dividends and his bonus so he can go to sizes where no yacht has been before.
US taxpayers give NASA billions, NASA gives SpaceX millions, SpaceX pays out bonuses and uses some of it to try and reinvent the last 50 years of space exploration by smashing rockets into the ground and occasionally into the water. If NASA asks nicely SpaceX uses some of it to buy Russian rockets which it uses to launch payloads for NASA.