Elon and the collective
- Comparison to the space shuttle: Not remotely apt. The space shuttle, among other reasons, was a failure when it came to its design requirements because those requirements were expanded in incompatible directions by a congress that doesn&#x27;t understand engineering. &quot;It was done badly before, therefore it is not possible to do well&quot; isn&#x27;t a good argument.<p>- &quot;Rockets are irreconcilably more dangerous than planes&quot;: That might actually be true, at least for many more decades. Rockets are at least 10^5 times more dangerous than planes and the failure modes are much, much worse. That doesn&#x27;t mean that SpaceX can&#x27;t revolutionize space transport for satellites, unmanned commercial endeavors, and limited manned missions. A tenfold decrease in the cost of space access would make entire new industries economically feasible, even after accounting for risk. SpaceX is currently kicking ass, and I have no reason to doubt they will continue at it.<p>- &quot;Earth-to-Earth passenger rockets are insane&quot;: Yes, they may well be. I did a detailed analysis here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bzarg.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;some-numbers-about-the-spacex-passenger-rocket&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bzarg.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;some-numbers-about-the-spacex-passen...</a> As before, safety needs revolutionary changes, probably several times over. Economics and engineering will be very difficult, and the hardest part-- still totally unsolved-- is making something that can withstand re-entry many dozens of times without being totally rebuilt.<p>- &quot;The advertised orbital travel times are wrong&quot;: This is likely garbage. The details of flight navigation are something SpaceX has down pat and would not reasonably lie to themselves or the public about. Without a proper orbital analysis to back up this claim, I would not give it much credence. The point about transport to and from the launch pad adding time is likely valid, though-- his figure of a 5 mile journey from city center would actually be more like 10 miles, minimum. In a ferry this would be multiple dozens of minutes, which would add up at either end, especially once you account for travel to the ferry terminal itself. 30-40 minutes would be launch-to-landing time only, not door-to-door.<p>- Colonizing mars: Mars being inhospitable is a solvable problem. Radiation can be avoided by living underground, and temperature and pressure can be maintained inside a habitat. The unanswered question is economics and logistics-- It would require many billions of dollars of infrastructure-- flight costs <i>not</i> included-- to get a colony going. SpaceX isn&#x27;t working on these logistics; their attitude is &quot;someone else will figure that out.&quot; It&#x27;s not clear what pot of gold would drive that initial investment, and by whom.<p>- &quot;Extinction danger is a bad reason to go to Mars&quot; - Agree that this is mostly BS; even the worst Earth is much more comfortable than Mars. But I would say there are plenty of other, better philosophical reasons to try-- What is the economic and social value of an <i>entire inhabited planet</i>? We should treat the failure to pursue it as an opportunity cost of that magnitude.<p>- &quot;We should go to the moon first&quot; - Going to the moon is not mutually exclusive with going to other places in the solar system.<p>- &quot;Hyperloop is infeasible&quot; - Maybe. I&#x27;ll believe it when I see it, but happy to let them try.<p>- &quot;Neuralink is garbage&quot; - Neuroscientists I&#x27;ve spoken to would love to see more advanced neural probes. Money toward that problem could reasonably do a lot of good and make a lot of progress. Right now we can get about 100 neuron readings from a small area, and this is already used in humans with various degrees of paralysis to control artifical limbs. We are a long way from a &quot;seamless brain-computer interface&quot;, and it is probably 10 times harder than Elon imagines-- I doubt he understands it-- and healthy skepticism is in order. But investment in the problem would give real returns, especially for the quality of life of disabled people. A limited consumer brain-computer interface within the next three decades is probably not terribly outlandish if resources are dedicated to making it happen. A hell of a lot can happen in 30 years.<p>- &quot;Boring company is dumb&quot; - Solution to mass transit? I agree that the idea is probably not very thoroughly thought through. Are 10x gains in the efficiency of tunnel drilling possible? I could believe it. If Elon and his company have to convince themselves that subterranean packet-routed car skates are the future, only to arrive at mass transit later on, so be it if that results in making infrastructure 10 times cheaper to construct.<p>- &quot;Self-driving is dangerous&quot; - Self driving does not have to be impeccable to be a benefit-- it only has to be better than the average driver, which is often quite bad in some pretty trivial&#x2F;preventable ways. About 50,000 Americans die in cars per year, so there is a lot of room for improvement and a lot of potential good. As a society, we should try to make this work. I do agree that Elon way oversells its capability, and that&#x27;s dangerous&#x2F;disingenuous. I also think that many car localization and navigation problems are very solveable, but Tesla does not seem to be solving them effectively-- see examples of autopiloted cars hitting dividers earlier this year. The hard part is getting machines to participate in the nonverbal social environment that is a road full of human drivers... but Tesla seems to be struggling on problems several tiers below this.<p>- Problems in Tesla management - From the outside, it looks as if Musk&#x27;s stubbornness may have lead to his underlings being unable to convery to him what is realistic to accomplish, resulting in repeated missed deadlines, as predicted by the people who appear to have been oustered for saying so. He does not seem like someone who it is easy to give bad news to, which means he and his company are going to have a hard time seeing and reacting to peril. I do not side fully with the shorts, though; Tesla is positioned to completely change the auto industry. I just hope they can execute without shooting themselves in the foot.<p>- Elon&#x27;s childish toxicity - Completely agree. Not behavior becoming of a leader at his level, let alone any emotionally well-adjusted adult. It&#x27;s a huge liability, c.f. the SEC fiasco, which Musk still doesn&#x27;t seem to comprehend. Musk supporters frustratingly seem to attribute his companies&#x27; success as being due to these flaws instead of in spite of them.