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naraburns  nihil supernum  16d ago (text post)   26864 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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have you re-evaluated Elon, given these developments? Still confident he's a grifter?

I'm mostly sticking to my guns. There are things that are causing me to adjust - I kept my mouth shut, but internally I was expecting a giant fireball at Boca Chica, not a successful booster catch. But I don't think that's enough to change my appraisal on him running his companies mostly on hype. Also if you check my big anti-Elon post, I ranked his companies from best to worst, and I rated Twitter at the top. If it wasn't for the advertiser boycott - which I consider a political affair, rather than anything market-driven - he'd be making bank off of it, and taking it to profitability, I think for the first time ever.

I'm actually somewhat worried he'll tank the whole MAGA thing by using his connections to Trump to try to save himself. But if it helps - I hope I'll be proven embarrassingly wrong, and y'all will get to shit on me for being a retard for all of eternity.

internally I was expecting a giant fireball at Boca Chica, not a successful booster catch.

Man, I'm usually the jerk that yells at your anti-SpaceX nonsense, and even I was expecting a giant fireball. I think Elon's estimate was still 50/50. A third of of the SpaceX formula is the "hardware-rich" design process where they start testing prototypes as soon as they expect useful data rather than as soon as they're sure everything will work.

And according to that leaked meeting audio the booster catch just barely worked this time. IIRC their software has a couple hundred metrics to pass to decide on "everything's working ok, so turn toward the tower to land now" vs "something's badly broken, so just continue to the shoreline and crash in a safe spot", one of those metrics was misconfigured, and it was literally 1 second away from deciding to crash instead. They'll fix that, and fix the design on the chine cover that ripped off, but this is still very much a test vehicle, even if they finally had a test hit every objective.

Man, I'm usually the jerk that yells at your anti-SpaceX nonsense

Half of the reason I post my nonsense is to get that exact kind of pushback so I can gauge if I missed anything, so I don't consider anyone a jerk, and I appreciate the yelling.

I think Elon's estimate was still 50/50. A third of of the SpaceX formula is the "hardware-rich" design process where they start testing prototypes as soon as they expect useful data rather than as soon as they're sure everything will work.

Funnily enough what kept me quiet was the thought "surely, they're not going to try to land this thing on a coin toss?", while you're saying the exact opposite. I guess they really do things differently there.

one of those metrics was misconfigured, and it was literally 1 second away from deciding to crash instead

I wouldn't have held it against them if that's what happened. Better a false-positive-driven crash into the ocean, than a false-negative-driven crash into the spaceport.

Thanks for the feedback! "Be a jerk more"; check!

"surely, they're not going to try to land this thing on a coin toss?"

The only alternative I can see piles conspiracy theory on top of conspiracy theory: start with "The White House pushes to get FAA approval before the election so Elon can publicly embarrass himself" but then checkmate it with "Elon knows they would pull something like that if they saw the chance and so expresses grave doubts even though he knows they'll succeed".

Better a false-positive-driven crash into the ocean, than a false-negative-driven crash into the spaceport.

Definitely. This is what they do with Return To Landing Site booster landings for Falcon 9 too, and those are just aimed at slabs of concrete, not expensive ground support equipment. They had one splash down back in 2018, when a grid fin actuator failed and it didn't/couldn't turn toward the landing pad. SuperHeavy is designed to be much easier to land than F9, but it'll also be a much bigger kaboom when a catch fails.

The big risk they're taking is with upper stage catches. With a booster return, it's flying over ocean all the way, and if it can't fly any more than it just goes in the water like any other rocket company's booster would. Landing the upper stage on an east-coast launch tower, on the other hand, requires it to reenter from the west over land. When that works it should work fine. IFT-5 managed to drop right on top of camera buoys pre-positioned to film the action. But IFT-4 just had one mostly-lost flap and ended up about 5 miles off target, and back in its day the shuttle Columbia scattered debris over a 250-mile-long swath of Texas. Starship is a hardier design than the Shuttle was, and any debris would probably include some scarily huge chunks. Just this year SpaceX started exclusively bringing Dragon capsules back to the Pacific rather than also to the Atlantic, because the discarded "trunk" rings that were supposed to be flimsy enough to burn up on reentry turned out to have too-big chunks of debris reaching the ground too frequently. SpaceX really can't afford to fail an upper stage RTLS Starship reentry, not until they've got a west-coast or island-based or ocean-going catch tower to practice with afterwards, and they have no near-term plans to build any of those.

Starlink is going to be a worldwide telecomm company. Coupled with how cheap they are making it to put satellites into orbit, SpaceX will be worth trillions.

But I don't think that's enough to change my appraisal on him running his companies mostly on hype.

have you seen orbital launch graphs? launch cost graphs? SpaceX is far from dud (even if there is also enormous pile of hype)

spaceX just dominates, even at spaceX vs all humanity except spaceX

reducing costs with reusable rockets was a joke before spaceX

have you seen orbital launch graphs?

Yes, most of them are for themselves. If Starlink doesn't cover their costs, and there's not data to show that either way, this number doesn't mean anything. Though there's a wildcard here, where the whole Starlink thing might turn out to be a front for some Pentagon and/or CIA black-op, which would money is not an issue, but there's no way to tell with publicly available information.

launch cost graphs?

I straight-up don't believe them.

reducing costs with reusable rockets was a joke before spaceX

I think it still is.

I straight-up don't believe them.

What would it take for you to believe them?

An independent audit would be nice. Also, just time, I guess - at some point it will start looking awfully silly if they keep doing their thing, and I keep insisting it's price dumping.

I doubt they'd do an independent audit just for the sake of proving their launch costs, and I don't expect they'd have another reason to do so.

How long do they have to keep this up before you stop insisting that it's dumping?

My model for how Elon's companies work is something like:

  • Create hype for $thing
  • Investors get hyped and shower Elon with money
  • Deliver $thing
  • Thing does not bring enough profit to justify investment
  • Create hype for $new_thing
  • ...

This worked well enough until now, but there are signs things are starting to break. I don't think they'll be able to repeat the same thing past Starship, so to answer your question - if Starship becomes their workhorse, or they'll bin the program, but it won't end the company*, I'll concede.

*) Modulo the shady stuff he can potentially do with a direct line to Trump, but I don't know how to explicitly factor that into my prediction.

I think Elon runs things on a foundation of hype rather than any other core merit. But I still think hype can get real results if it brings in enough capital. Eventually you break through with brute force even if you personally are only a coordination point.

I hope I'll be proven embarrassingly wrong, and y'all will get to shit on me for being a retard for all of eternity.

I hope you're wrong too, but eh, I think skepticism is healthy. We're at the point where con-men are all we've got left, and the forlorn hope that some of them have a heart of gold somewhere in there.

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