Come on.
He sounded like a loon back then, but not now.
Mars is easier to "practice on", and get some toy colonies going, but once scale starts to matter, Venus is better.
At some point, you rather have too much energy and good self-sufficiency at geological scales, than too little energy and bad self-sufficiency.
Of course this stuff has been debated endlessly, but I do not recall reading the "Mars is the stepping stone, Venus is the real deal" needle thread.
If Musk was serious, I think he would admit this, rather than hype-beasting the stepping stone and the real deal.
Floating balloons were considered, but it turns out those have a whole host of practical engineering concerns that rule them out. Plus, getting back into orbit is nearly impossible from said cloudtop balloons. You'd basically need a full sized orbital rocket like the Falcon 9 because the gravity is basically the same and the atmosphere is still a major concern.
Mars needs solar power, batteries, motors, and the ability to build vehicles of labour.
Guess what Tesla does? It supports Mars.
The gig with the android is the last piece: there are dangers in space, where humans are not safe. This is where this comes in place.
Geez. Who doesn't have personality flaws?
It is more believable that Bill Gates isn't really in the news much these days, but Elon is.
Elon's hair plugs aside, at least he's got a personality and isn't the ugliest guy in tech.
So yeah, I'm coming from it totally from vanity but we're all human right? You couldn't pay me to be Bill Gates but I'd trade lives with Elon, no doubt.
Yeah, Musk is a real charmer, with his stutter, he's worse than Biden and he's 35 years younger than him.
Also behind the scenes Bill Gates has a personality and then some.
More F-bombs were dropped in Microsoft board meetings than Stratton Oakmont's .
You have to read Paul Allen's 2011 book: Idea Man.
Of course an elder statesman can't go on live tv and pull this sort of antics. Very much like Bellichick and Brady didn't go on TV to pull such antics. Doesn't mean that they (like Gates, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods) don't have a personality or don't get laid.
Musk on the other hand loves to wear his WWE Vince McMahon costume and say controversial stuff, while stuttering.
Well, for starters, unlike Elon Musk, Bill Gates does not have a track record of accusing emergency cave rescuers of being pedophiles.
Shall we get into what Bill Gates has been accused of? How about the things we know he did? I don't think that's necessary. Bill is a pretty bad guy, I don't care what kind of charity he's been running, just ask his wife.
I don't care about his foundations and charities. Philanthropic acts are the norm for someone who has been the richest human on earth and it probably offers him some relief when he tries to sleep at night. Also they're just stupendous tax shelters and ways to cushy jobs for people who do nice things for you.
Musk sent a car into space as a publicity stunt.
My colleagues liked it, but I found it ... disappointing, that it seemed to signal an end of an era that did see space as a serious thing, like in the film For All Mankind.
I'd say maybe 10% of that stunt was for publicity. The rocket had to be tested, it had to include a payload, and sending a suit to space provided extra data as well.
edit: let's also not forget that there always been an element of humor in spaceflight. Apollo 10's callsigns were Snoopy and Charlie Brown. Watch the funny moonwalk videos. Read transcripts of flights. It's okay to have a laugh in space. The astronauts who make it to Mars will sorely need it.
It's like the internet used to be in the old green screen and bang paths days.
I remember everyone from DARPA on down had wonderful senses of humor. Today, even on HN which is supposed to represent the best of the internet, humor is largely frowned upon, or replaced with anger.
Hopefully this slow opening up of space to the masses won't mean making everything sterile and boring, like happened to the 'net.
It was the dominant media image at the time. It was 100% publicity.
There is a difference between convivial behaviour between people on a mission, and a stunt by a private company.
I find the Pioneer Plaque cool and thought provoking. Launching a roadster into space? Not so much.
Maybe the inscription on one of its PCBs will stimulate your unprovoked thoughts: https://i.redd.it/7agxu1qjdz071.jpg
Yes, it was kind of meme-y and marketing-y. But it is a business, and I also don't think being serious about something means you can never make a joke about it.
Destroying a car that retails for years of many folks' income in a flashy, ostentatious manner is going to look like lighting cigars with $100s to many people.
(I could understand people complaining about symbolism of sending a sports car, of all things, to be a first private industry artifact in interplanetary space. But this doesn't seem to be a majority complaint.)
Also: even the boring test mass payload would also cost "years of many folks' income". Not even counting the integration. Big things just costs big money - that's life for you. If someone is so sensitive about this, they probably shouldn't watch anything related to rockets at all.
Of course. I'm not talking about considered opinion, just knee-jerk human reactions to headlines.
You can tell people they're wrong if you want. Let me know how that goes for you.
Yes, let's instead all nod and smile to people's inconsiderate knee-jerk reactions. Let me know how that goes for you.
The point was to test emergency response, processes, etc.
To make it fun, they chose zombies as the cause. Within a week of the media hearing of it, the entire exercise was canceled.
Zombies, plague, natural disaster, nuclear accident, it mattered not, the tests were for existing response mechanisms, but oh no! Can't be fun!
Bah.
This is why I was disappointed, because it marks a departure from things auspiciously done with consideration "for all mankind".
A publicity stunt I wasn't disappointed in, was the twitter account for the Philae Lander. It also got a lot of media coverage. https://twitter.com/philae2014
The point isn't humour, rather the context. One stunt is for the benefit of a business, with what I find dubious goals for launching a rocket to start with, the other, to promote a project for "all mankind".
They didn't bite.
I do agree that there are better things than publicity stunts to do with dummy payloads. You don't need to launch a multi-million-dollar satellite, but it would be low risk to launch a low-cost payload with corner reflectors for laser identification and distance measurement, chirping radio transmitters, or sensors, clocks, or radios for telemetry.
You can construct a Cubesat for on the order of $10k, but it used to cost 10x that to launch and now costs about that much for a SpaceX rideshare to SSO. Surely you could construct something with at least a little utility to use as a dummy payload.
This just seems like such a stretch for something to get mad at Elon about.
They needed to test the rocket. They used a couple of flight-proven (used) boosters that their competitors all would have throw into the trash, and instead of flying a hunk of concrete, flew one of Elon's cars.
The car, by the way, is symbolic in that it did usher in the end of ICE vehicles. Other companies tried to do EVs and failed, Tesla made it happen.
Is it really better if the car had sat in a museum instead? What better symbolism could there be than to put it into a sort of museum in orbit around our sun? The day we are able to go and visit that car will be another hugely symbolic turning point for humanity.