Elon Musk, ask me anything about BFR
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It would be interesting to know what the max capacity is for the human brain to store these kind of multi disciplinary low level details.
> Elon: But, yes, it would make sense to strip the headers out and do a UDP-style feed with extreme compression and a CRC check to confirm the packet is good, then do a batch resend of the CRC-failed packets. Something like that. Earth to Mars is over 22 light-minutes at max distance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_error_correction
FEC is usually used in addition to resending.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet
Work continues on interplanatary networking.
Is that still on? Or are they announcing the next model before shipping the current model?
So the Falcon Heavy we are gone get now is way, way more powerful and all 3 boosters will land and be reusable. The side boosters are actually reused F9 boosters.
So its really not the same as 2013.
On the moon you have water (ice), but no carbon dioxide. You can split the water into hydrogen and oxygen to use as fuel, but the BFR requires methane fuel.
Why use methane? It has a lower ISP than hydrogen but higher energy density, to simplify somewhat, and is easier (possible even) to store on long flights.
[1] http://www.lunarpedia.org/index.php?title=In-Situ_Propellant...
Perhaps they need to change the name of these on-topic AMAs, but Musk isn't selling BFR rockets to consumers, generally geeks are interested in SpaceX from a hobby interest point of view, and so the idea of marketing and brand promotion seems a little divorced from reality.
SpaceX isn't going to increase their launch contracts by entertaining AMA questions. My guess is, Musk likes engaging people and talking about the cool shit he's working on.
When an AMA is held on Tesla, then I might be interested in that, but I'm interested in more technical details of upcoming SpaceX rockets.
If NASA had an AMA about the Space Shuttle, do you want the thread polluted with questions about NASA's opinion on the F-35? Or on Obamacare? Is NASA "advertising"?
Musk frequently engages people on Twitter. He's obviously a tech-nerd, and loves talking about rockets and mars, it's an obsession. No one would bet their money on an uneconomical plan to colonize Mars. He literally cried on 60 minutes when confronted with Aldrin's support of ULA.
It's a pretty cheap shop to chalk this up to some advertising campaign, rather than personal ego.
Advertising what? Buying seats on a BFR rocket?
He hasnt, he’s betting money on rockets which are useful for highly lucrative activities, while talking aboutna currently far fetched vision of Martian colonization. Apparently though all it takes to disable the critical thinking of many is wanting to believe, and in your case, tears.
If you knew even the first thing about the Space industry you would know that these sorts of rockets are super high risk and even now the demand for such rockets is highly questioned even should they manage to build it.
There are really not so many "highly lucrative activities" even if they manage to achieve technical breakthroughs on rocket designed. Also, the rocket and space ship very clearly are designed around Mars, every design choice is informed by that.
If he had wanted to make the most possible profitable rocket to do 'highly lucrative activities' he would have build a different rocket.
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if you knew even the first thing...
If Musk wanted high ROI, he wouldn't have bet on SpaceX. He's obviously doing it not because it's easy money, but because he's interested in space as a hobby.
The first think he tried to do with his PayPal money was to buy an ICBM to fly a greenhouse to Mars. Does that sound like something that's a good investment?
I don't think you're convincing very many people that Musk is doing this for advertising purposes. What's next, Musk gives a space talk to middle school students, and you accuse him of trying to recruit cheap future employees?
The original purist concept yes, absolutely, but a lot of people actually prefer it this way. The world is big enough for both approaches to exist as they offer different things.
Finally, what is wrong with honest informative advertising content on things people to want to know about? Is such a thing inherently bad? If so why?
BFR as a project is out of touch with the current affairs at Tesla and SpaceX which means that there is basically no negative sentiment that can be generated from asking questions about the topic or their answers.
A general AMA however will likely touch about things like the failure to support Autopilot 2.0 hardware on schedule, Model 3 delivery delays, Falcon Heavy delays, and those are just the light stuff.
One does have to wonder why is there an AMA on the only detached and "universally rosie" subject just as Tesla announced layoffs.
While I don't think it was planned, I do have a strong suspicion that the AMA was intentionally focused and the mods were asked to enforce question rules (and looks like more strictly than usual even based on previous Musk AMAs).
I don't think the mods had to be even asked to do it. The AMA was posted in /r/space, and widely advertised in /r/spacex. There was a group effort to get technical BFR questions upvoted from /r/spacex members.
I would guess that even without any outside influence, the mods and most voters did not care about Tesla questions - Tesla only matters to the extent of "does it help finance Mars plans" for them.
Gotcha.
Even if the AMA was about Tesla, that probably wouldn't make the list.
You say you have a strong suspicion that it was intentionally focused. Did the fact that it says “about BFR” in the title give it away? Of course it’s focused.
Every subreddit has its own moderators, and they set the rules for content in that subreddit. Reddit generally never interferes with the content or moderation of a subreddit, unless it gets into illegal or "bad publicity in national media" territory.
Elon decided to host the AMA in /r/space, so the space enthusiast moderators there get to decide how to run it. If they decide that they want to see Elon answer space questions, and banning Tesla questions helps with that, then it's their subreddit and their choice.