As Mr. Lockett has so often pointed out, the stock valuations of Musk's ventures have no basis in reality. No matter how many times his promises go unfilled and his predictions fail, his investors never seem to lose their faith that there'll be pie in the sky in the great by and by. I always found this hard to understand—until it reminded me of the Month Python "Dr. Mystico" sketch in which huge blocks of flats are instantly built by hypnosis and can remain standing as long as the residents believe in them. Here's a video: https://youtu.be/1ujRE2IkEIo?si=bxuVJJs9eMVhV4hh
I was going to make the same point. There are limited signs that institutions are dumping Tesla, which suggests the smar (or less dumb) money may be waking up
Chips are silicon, energy, information and some very
Special materials like boron or arsenic. The first three are super cheap. The cost of sending the specialty materials and the workers is nutty expensive. Debugging a chip line takes a while and the line has a useful life of 5 years and a premium life of 18 months. Losing a year to debugging processes for low gravity is going to make this ridiculous.
For years I’ve been immediately skeptical of Musk’s assertions regarding Mars, autonomous driving (using the camera-only system he insists on sticking to), robots — especially autonomous robots unloading dishwashers and ironing and putting away your clothes and other simple-for-humans but so complex for robots —, enormous advances in tunnel boring, hyperloops, Starship repeating his successes with the Falcon rockets, and — perhaps most of all — his wild fantasies of AI data centres in space, whether launched from Earth or the Moon.
His hand-waving dismissal of skeptics; his dreams (projections) of grand successes, which seem entirely disconnected from reality; and his mystical ability to ever be held accountable for missed deadlines and failures have long driven me mad.
But for all that, it’s fantastic to see someone who is capable, as I’m not, of actually breaking down the details and illustrating precisely why skepticism is in fact the rational response to his wild schemes.
“It generates hype and attention while also weeding out any potentially critical investors, which ensures that SpaceX has a small army of susceptible, desperate dopes willing to hand over their life savings without asking any questions.” Basically the Tesla bag holders
For better or for worse, I spend a lot of time with folks in the space sector, but I am a biology-adjacent PhD, not an engineer. And I would tweak the last bit on this post, around the implausible claims being tied to the grift. What I find is that engineers think "sure, it seems impossible, but it's an engineering problem, and so it's just a matter of waiting for Elon's engineers to engineer a way out of it. QED." It's frustrating for me, trying to leverage my university physics to explain that no, physics can't be ignored, y'all. Somehow in the past few years, engineers have become like gods, able to surmount Newton's laws at will, in the minds of otherwise rational and intelligent people. And this, I would argue, drives the widespread belief in the claims of Mars and moon colonies.
Sir, you omitted water extraction cost. Those fabs need a lot of water, which presumably would have to come from lunar poles, and would need purification, etc.
As Mr. Lockett has so often pointed out, the stock valuations of Musk's ventures have no basis in reality. No matter how many times his promises go unfilled and his predictions fail, his investors never seem to lose their faith that there'll be pie in the sky in the great by and by. I always found this hard to understand—until it reminded me of the Month Python "Dr. Mystico" sketch in which huge blocks of flats are instantly built by hypnosis and can remain standing as long as the residents believe in them. Here's a video: https://youtu.be/1ujRE2IkEIo?si=bxuVJJs9eMVhV4hh
I was going to make the same point. There are limited signs that institutions are dumping Tesla, which suggests the smar (or less dumb) money may be waking up
Chips are silicon, energy, information and some very
Special materials like boron or arsenic. The first three are super cheap. The cost of sending the specialty materials and the workers is nutty expensive. Debugging a chip line takes a while and the line has a useful life of 5 years and a premium life of 18 months. Losing a year to debugging processes for low gravity is going to make this ridiculous.
For years I’ve been immediately skeptical of Musk’s assertions regarding Mars, autonomous driving (using the camera-only system he insists on sticking to), robots — especially autonomous robots unloading dishwashers and ironing and putting away your clothes and other simple-for-humans but so complex for robots —, enormous advances in tunnel boring, hyperloops, Starship repeating his successes with the Falcon rockets, and — perhaps most of all — his wild fantasies of AI data centres in space, whether launched from Earth or the Moon.
His hand-waving dismissal of skeptics; his dreams (projections) of grand successes, which seem entirely disconnected from reality; and his mystical ability to ever be held accountable for missed deadlines and failures have long driven me mad.
But for all that, it’s fantastic to see someone who is capable, as I’m not, of actually breaking down the details and illustrating precisely why skepticism is in fact the rational response to his wild schemes.
Thanks much for this.
“It generates hype and attention while also weeding out any potentially critical investors, which ensures that SpaceX has a small army of susceptible, desperate dopes willing to hand over their life savings without asking any questions.” Basically the Tesla bag holders
For better or for worse, I spend a lot of time with folks in the space sector, but I am a biology-adjacent PhD, not an engineer. And I would tweak the last bit on this post, around the implausible claims being tied to the grift. What I find is that engineers think "sure, it seems impossible, but it's an engineering problem, and so it's just a matter of waiting for Elon's engineers to engineer a way out of it. QED." It's frustrating for me, trying to leverage my university physics to explain that no, physics can't be ignored, y'all. Somehow in the past few years, engineers have become like gods, able to surmount Newton's laws at will, in the minds of otherwise rational and intelligent people. And this, I would argue, drives the widespread belief in the claims of Mars and moon colonies.
Sir, you omitted water extraction cost. Those fabs need a lot of water, which presumably would have to come from lunar poles, and would need purification, etc.
Whew, what a read. Thanks, Will. I take pleasure from this!