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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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That’s the thing. I don’t think it’s a reasonable opinion at all.

For the record @FCfromSSC is 100% right about my motivation. The difference between me and Holocaust deniers is that I hope I'm wrong. Like I said my pride is a small price to pay for getting to see Earth from orbit, before I die.

The guy has founded three different companies with huge market values. SpaceX trades hands at over $200 billion in private markets, Tesla has a public market value of over $200 billion, OpenAI has a weird market structure as a nonprofit but if was a normal corporate probably would have trades happening at over $200 billion market cap.

Since you brought it up, I'll also ping @Belisarius - this is why my arguments sounded like they're about financial analysis.

Look, my entire point is that the value of his companies is propped up by promises of crazy technologies he's not going to deliver on. When that becomes apparent to the public, it's over, they're crashing. OpenAI is probably exempted, but does he have any actual control over it? I thought it was all Sam Altman.

Elon was long ago pushed out of OpenAI. But this is not important for the exceptional influence he had on the course of multiple industries. That he funded/cofounded OpenAI in the first place is crazy. Most industry leaders have one career, a few gifted talents hit multiple homeruns (Jobs with Apple, NextStep and Pixar, then Apple again), but Musk makes it seem like he plays a videogame for which he has cheat codes.

For the same reason all his endeavors can now crash and burn and it wouldn’t matter:

Tesla kickstarted the electric car revolution, but it is not on their shoulders to finish it. That Elon memed other car companies kicking & screaming into a future where e-cars are not anymore a mere novelty, but instead seen as inevitable, and we now have the technology and infrastructure in place (superchargers and more and more battery factories) to transition away from fossil fuels, this is the real legacy.

Similar SpaceX could be run into the ground and Elon still would have changed with it the space industry forever. Here is a quote from a recent Washington Post article (which complains that SpaceX is too successful):

SpaceX’s success in doing so has also opened the door for other commercial space companies. Without SpaceX, “I don’t think Rocket Lab would exist, to be honest with you, because they blazed the path that said space can be commercial and space is investable,” said Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s CEO.

You tried to argue that Blue Origin (or others) could leapfrog SpaceX, but in the (unlikely) case this happens this would not discredit Musk, instead this would be a triumph as his competitors would either not exist or wouldn’t be as good as without him.

On a technological level SpaceX did absolutely bonker things: Landing rockets? Landing rockets on a drone ship far away in the ocean? Using Methan as propellant? Using cheap steel? Proofing that the failed Soviet N1 concept is viable with modern tech (many inexpensive small engines instead of few big expensive engines), eliminating landing legs and instead trying to catch Starship?

Other rocket companies, Europe and China will have to copy them.

Elon was long ago pushed out of OpenAI. But this is not important for the exceptional influence he had on the course of multiple industries

Ok, but don't bring up OpenAI as an argument for Elon's greatness, only fallback to other industries when I ask what he had to do with it.

That he funded/cofounded OpenAI in the first place is crazy.

But why though? Overhearing a bunch of nerds planning on doing nerdy things at some cocktail party, and deciding to back them, is not crazy at all. Unless he did more. Did he?

For the same reason all his endeavors can now crash and burn and it wouldn’t matter

That would be the "Elon already deserves a trophy" argument I mentioned earlier. Fine, I hereby officially award Elon with Greatest Entrepreneur in the World Trophy! But I think it does matter if his companies crash, and I think they will.

That Elon memed other car companies kicking & screaming into a future where e-cars are not anymore a mere novelty, but instead seen as inevitable

They're not inevetible. Some people seem to like them, but others have to be forced to switch by using government force to enshittify ICEs, if not outright banning them, like they're talking about in the EU. I'm pretty sure they'll end up doing squat for global warming, and battery disposal will turn out to be an environmental disaster of some sort, making the whole reason for their existence moot.

this would not discredit Musk, instead this would be a triumph as his competitors would either not exist or wouldn’t be as good as without him.

I'm fine with the claim "Musk is great because he inspired a billionaire space race", though that depends on how the whole thing pans out. It's not out of the question that the whole "private-sector space" idea crashes with SpaceX.

Using Methan as propellant?

Why is that bonkers?

Using cheap steel? Proofing that the failed Soviet N1 concept is viable with modern tech? (...) eliminating landing legs and instead trying to catch Starship?

Can we please limit our praise to things he accomplished, and not involve things he promised to do?

Other rocket companies, Europe and China will have to copy them.

You mean copy their actual tech, their paradigm, or the general ideas of reusability?

American Rocketry was very traditional (risk averse) and RP-1 was the save standard propellant everyone had experience with. Here is a paper from 2009, awfully recent, which states that methane was always considered in theory a great propellant, but in praxis no one did serious development work with methane:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576509000630

Liquid methane has been considered an attractive rocket propellant for several decades. However, most rocket engine development efforts in the last 30 years have focused on using more traditional fuels such as hydrogen, kerosene, and earth storables, without any serious development or application of methane to propulsion systems.

This changed in 2012 when SpaceX announced that Raptor would be methane-based. This gave other companies permission to research it too. BlueOrigin announced their methane-based BE-4 in 2014 (and actually they and the Chinese beat SpaceX to orbit with their methane-based engines). Bonkers was the wrong word for it, but it was always an exciting almost-sci-fi idea

You mean copy their actual tech, their paradigm, or the general ideas of reusability?

There is currently an interesting bit about reusability on x. The context is a NYT article how difficult it is to compete with SpaceX.

Dan Piemont from the aerospace startup ABL wrote that he disagrees with the thrust of the article, he welcomes SpaceX success, but their cheap ride sharing on Falcon 9 does indeed make it difficult for his company. He shared as an outlook:

In the long term though, cost is the most important factor as continued cost improvement unlocks larger and more frequent flights, creating a virtuous cycle. Reusability is a huge lever, and I think every launch system will eventually get there. But reusability is on a spectrum it’s not the only lever. Staffing level is the biggest and therefore workflow automation is a huge competitive opportunity.

Elon Musk replied:

Thank you for the thoughtful rebuttal. … I do hope that rocket companies focus on reusability. That is the fundamental breakthrough needed for humanity to become a spacefaring civilization. Falcon is 80% reusable and the team is doing incredible work launching every 2 or 3 days. With extreme effort, Starship will eventually take reusability to 100%. There are many tough issues to solve with this vehicle, but the biggest remaining problem is making a reusable orbital return heat shield, which has never been done before.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1796031244846645493

So to circle back, yes, we shouldn't assume that Starship is already a success. (Actually this is a nice example how Elon is not only hype, but also shares freely if something is not working or unexpectedly challenging.)

Edit:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/ars-live-caleb-henry-joins-us-to-discuss-the-profitability-of-starlink/

Ars Live: How profitable is Starlink? We dig into the details of satellite Internet. How has Starlink has gone from zero to profitability in five years? This will be the first Ars Live event we've done in a few years. During these discussions, reporters and editors at Ars Technica speak with industry leaders about the most important technology and science news of the day. So please join us at 2 pm ET (18:00 UTC) on June 11 on our YouTube livestream.

I’ve personally thought Tesla was overvalued for a while.

But even if you just use reasonable valuations like 2x sales or a 10 pe and give little value to breakthrough tech then Tesla is still a $150-200 billion company. He has $95 billion in trailing sales. That is still a huge accomplishment and something no one else has done in physical tech. This is why I feel like your arguments are like holocaust deniers. Maybe 6 million Jews didn’t die in the Holocaust but 1-2 million is still a lot. Same thing with SpaceX maybe he doesn’t put us on Mars, but as others have said it’s verifiable he’s lowered the price of putting a kg in space by 10x after essentially no improvement in decades. It just has the same feel of maybe this detail is a lie, but if you take away all the exaggerations the verifiable bottom in accomplishments is still extreme.

If the hype is all fake then it’s like he’s only Ken Griffin level accomplishment. Not a messiah but easily in the top 10 innovators of my lifetime. He wouldn’t be Tom Brady only Ben Roethlisberger.

For the record I’ve never owned a Musks investment. I have been short Musks before.

Big Ben is very underrated. Really great in comebacks. Basically when Tomlin had to let Ben ball, Ben played at an extremely high level reaches by only a few. Tomlin though believes in attrition.

Also the TD throw to Holmes to win the SB and the game winning pass to Mike Wallace against GB from about thirty yards out with no time on the clock are two of the greatest throws ever made