I think the FSD research Tesla is doing is interesting, but man I would rather all of that money gone into a carbon fiber roof or something on my model 3 instead!
Theranos would be if JWST took taxpayer dollars and launched a non working telescope and sent back fake images.
Tesla with FSD is a lot more like the JWST being delayed, or perhaps if they launched a stripped down version to space and then delayed the real thing.
It would be fraud if internally they knew FSD was not possible on their hardware but they continued advertising that it was (I'm not suggesting this is the case, just saying there is a world where Tesla's FSD claims are fraud)
I agree that Elon's timeline's are absolute BS. My perspective on his timelines are that they are almost meant more for his employees (throughout all his companies) to try and shorten the time it takes to 'achieve the impossible'. For example, something that most industry folks would think will take 20-30 years (or is feasibly impossible ie. reusable rockets), Elon gives a 5 year timeline and his team actually gets it done in 10 -- still less time than anyone thought possible.
I'm excited to see what kind of progress is made on FSD once the DOJO supercomputer is built out and put to work (another item with an unrealistic timeline, I've no doubt).
Just my two cents. Enjoy your Model 3!
No one realistically thought reusable rockets were impossible or even infeasible. Reusable rockets trade lift capacity for reusability. A single-use Falcon 9 lifts more than a reusable one because it can use all the fuel in the first stage for lift saving nothing for landing. Keep in mind the Space Shuttle (a reusable rocket) had been flying for thirty years before Space X landed a Falcon 9.
Space X has done cool things but they are iterative developments. Tesla didn't invent electric cars or do something impossible, they iterated on existing technologies. They, like Space X, have happily and readily accepted every government subsidy dollar they're remotely qualified to receive. All while Musk is bitching about paying taxes.
Not addressing the point of my comment here ^, but why didn't anyone else do it if it was feasible and possible? And how long would it have taken an agency like NASA to actually start and complete the project?
> Keep in mind the Space Shuttle (a reusable rocket) had been flying for thirty years before Space X landed a Falcon 9.
Wasn't the space shuttle a glider with rockets strapped to the bottom? It was not a reusable rocket, it was a reusable shuttle.
> Space X has done cool things but they are iterative developments. Well, everything in the human existence is an iterative development, so I don't understand what you're trying to say other than to downplay other peoples' accomplishments.
https://youtu.be/mY-fSnKTLqw?t=111 <-- anyone could do it if they felt like it, right?
The fuel is quite cheap compared to the rocket that burns it.
Because their customers didn't need it. The medium lift space only has a few players because there's not a huge number of customers. In heavy lift there's even fewer customers.
The established players had legacy expendable stacks with a proven flight history. There was no incentive to redesign their systems to be reusable and then start fresh with a flight record.
> And how long would it have taken an agency like NASA to actually start and complete the project?
SpaceX has gotten considerable amounts of money from NASA to develop the Falcon 9. Even the video you shared is SpaceX landing their rockets at a NASA facility. SpaceX is essentially a NASA subcontractor developing a reusable rocket. So the answer to your question is whatever amount of time it's taken SpaceX to develop the reusable Falcon 9.
Like I said, SpaceX has done some cool things. I'm not trying to take away from their real accomplishments. But there's some ridiculous fanboy shit around Musk and his companies. He's done a good job of publicizing his companies' accomplishments and people seem to jump to a conclusion that they just invented concepts whole cloth that could have never existed without some magic.
With this, we can imagine scenarios that would be comparable for a Tesla, or any othet tech startup. It seems relatively safe to say that Tesla's FSD doesn't just pipe out the computation to a competitor or something, so by this thought experiment, it at least has that going for it.
There's moonshot, and then there is farce. Theranos was farcical, but someone might do it some day. Tesla, at the very least, still has chances to deliver.
Meanwhile Theranos bloodtests suffer from scientific impossibility: you can't get information from where there is none. And when the information is sparse, you'll have to spend greater entropy to get it (versus the tiny machine that theranos built).