Tesla Bot can walk slowly and pick up stuff now
theverge.com
theverge.com
It feels like it would be easier to built a bot to perform a specific set of tasks, rather than a human shaped robot?
Outright best selling car in Europe in Q1 2023. (Model Y)
Best selling non-pickup in the US in Q1 2023. (Model Y)
Re-usable rockets that have completed 200 successful missions and the launch and landing are so common-place they're not even news.
1.5 million Starlink customers.
Starship progressing, integral part of the new moon landing plans.
They are consistently doing things that "experts" said couldn't be done.
Hyperloop isn't a great idea, I don't think, but calling it failure is kind of dumb.
Should every concept vehicle of every car company that didn't get built considered a failure? Every design study ever done by any engineering firm is a failure?
Something is a failure if you invest large amounts of money into something and get nothing out of it.
Maybe Hyperloop as a concept is a failure, that is correct. But for Musk, releasing a idea as a short paper and not perusing it beyond that isn't a relevant failure.
If he had invested 100M$ and then walked away, then I would consider it a real failure for him. As it stands, its a couple of wasted weekends doodling on project.
If that is the most people can come up with talking about failures, then its really not worth talking about.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g43553191/bestselling-cars...
like I'd be unsurprised to learn that some apple product was the top-selling device in some catagory.
Believe it
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g43553191/bestselling-cars...
I can only think of two successes, Tesla and SpaceX (and I think I'm being generous by including SpaceX because it isn't a success yet)
Its not a success to have more launch payload to orbit then double of the rest of the world combined. To return the US to human launch. Having the most reliable rocket in history. Having revolutionized both the launch and the sat industry? Launched the largest rocket in the history of the world.
Not sure what those things are other then great successes.
If you are referring to the idea that SpaceX isn't profitable, then I would just say that SpaceX core business is very profitable and high margin. Because it was so profitable and high margin the had many investor to double down and take an two massive projects, Starlink and Starship.
Starlink just recently has turned cash flow positive. And Starship is progressing very fast, just reticently a new world record in rocket engines was achieved with Raptor 3.
Calling this anything other a brilliant success is just bad faith.
Also, Zip2, Paypay are successes by any metric. Boring company is not a clear cut success but its also not a failure, most people would be happy having created a company like that, in Musk terms it isn't very successful yet.
Also counting two 100 billion $ business 'a success' is a bit of an understatement.
Astronomers aren't too happy with StarLink, nor pedestrians with Tesla FSD beta being open to any driver with more money than sense.
Musk's track record is heavily spotted. We can celebrate the successes together without turning a blind eye to the problems.
So to be considered 'starting from zero' a company needs to first create its own humans in a lab?
> isn't funded entirely by private industry (gov grants and leases)
Nobody claimed it was.
> Got a link for the most reliable rocket ever?
Not on my right now, but it just had 200 successful missions in a row.
There is a link somewhere about statical methods of reliability and Falcon 9 is on top of that list. Even by just looking at simple % probability they are on top.
I don't have the link at hand but if I can find it later Ill add it.
> Astronomers aren't too happy with StarLink, nor pedestrians with Tesla FSD beta being open to any driver with more money than sense.
So in order t ob considered successful every single person on the plant needs to love you?
> Musk's track record is heavily spotted. We can celebrate the successes together without turning a blind eye to the problems.
I am not doing that. Not everything has to be perfect to consider something a success. That a ridiculous standard.
As for SpaceX’s success streak, reaching 200 missions without losing a payload due to a rocket malfunction extends a record unparalleled in the launch business.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2023/05/10/spacexs-falcon-rocket-...
So a company to be declared successful should only hire college graduates and only have private clients?
Unfortunately the website www.spacelaunchreport.com has shut down, you can find some of the data here, Falcon 9 already on top of the list.
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=56087.0
Since then Falcon 9 has launched many times with 100% success rate. Its really not a competition anymore.
The commercial rockets are going great though.
What I am trying to say is that there was nothing standing in the way of a successful Starship launch. The engines were known to work. The booster was known to work. The second stage was known to work. All they did was put it together and test stage separation. This should have been the moment where it became obvious that Starship will be ready for Artemis 3.
The first Starship Prototype was launched in 2019. If you assume that they started development in 2018 (Musk has proto starship slides as early as 2011), then it is actually as much behind as SLS, which had to delay its planned launch after five years.
Because a launch is a launch, successful or not.
Claiming they are behind SLS is kind of crazy. SLS was supposed to launch in 2017 initially. SLS was a creation of a 2011 Congress Act and of course SLS did not develop any of its own engines and is reusing lots of exiting parts and infrastructure.
SLS also had absolutely gigantic amount of money when eating about 2.5 billion $ a year for 10+ years and will eat much much more before its first operational flight. SpaceX in comparison was not able to spend even 1/4 for most of Starships development, by now they are getting into the billions per year but that took a while.
SLS is also just a far simpler design, basically a slightly adopted Detla 4 Upper Stage, while Starship is basically highly complex new reusable upper stage design.
Its the most powerful rocket that ever launched. Period. There is really no discussion on this.
Just like the N1 was the most powerful before (by thrust at least if I remember correctly) before. It also was not successful.
Just getting to the point of launching a rocket like that, having 33 engines like that is a huge achievement.
The applicable definition from whatever dictionary Google uses is "send (a missile, satellite, or spacecraft) on its course or into orbit."
I guess they did send it on a course.
> The applicable definition from whatever dictionary Google uses is "send (a missile, satellite, or spacecraft) on its course or into orbit."
So dictionary is used now to decide if an operation a launch or not? Are you for real?
Of course the dictionary doesn't decide anything, but they are often consulted when discussing the meanings of words.
You could say they have gotten quite far in testing the largest rocket in history, but the end result of their most significant test to date was a loss of the vessel, it didn't launch into orbit.
They likely had some soft of test weight in the starship as well.
> So dictionary is used now to decide if an operation a launch or not? Are you for real?
I'm not sure what your hangup is, nobody said anything about operational.
If you show 1 million people a video of the Starship launching, all those people would call it a launch.
If it was operational or successful has nothing to do with anything.
No, it's not bad faith. It's having a different opinion. "Bad faith" is making disingenuous arguments to support a position you know is incorrect.
I don't believe for a second that you actually don't believe that SpaceX is a success.
If SpaceX was controlled by anybody other then Musk calling it 'not a success' would be utterly ridiculous.
> I don't believe for a second that you actually don't believe that SpaceX is a success.
It looks like SpaceX is on the path to success, but I think it's premature to say it's a success yet. But that also depends on what we each mean when we say "success". I'm talking about business success.
> If SpaceX was controlled by anybody other then Musk calling it 'not a success' would be utterly ridiculous.
I disagree, obviously. My opinion of SpaceX on this point would be literally no different regardless of who was in charge.
They are the most successful space company ever and their core business is a huge success. Their space transport business is also a success. Its a hugely profitable success that literally dominates the industry.
The only bases to say its not a success is because they decided to expand on that core business and raise money for that expansion.
Are you one of those people who didn't believe Amazon was not successful because they invested in expansion as well?
I think it's difficult to have a "different opinion" about if the earth is round.
At some point your "opinion" goes against factual evidence, which makes it bad faith.
Elon Musk at the very least achieves the same level of success with Tesla and SpaceX. Both upended entrenched industry.
Tesla kicked off the transition to electric vehicles. Call it accelerating the transition if you feel uncharitable.
SpaceX now launch more than any other player — nation or business — annually, and more importantly send more payload than everyone else combined. Payload used to have to wait for rocket, now it’s the other way around.
Hate Elon Musk’s antics or personality all you like, but his success is undeniable. Why is that so hard to separate the two?
And 10 years later people clown Musk because Hyperloop doesn't exist.
> Nothing net new
Rapid rocket re-usability is 'nothing net new'. I mean you can argue that Shuttle was 'reusable' but in terms of revolutionary effect, SpaceX is now literally launching more payload to orbit then the rest of the world combined by 2-3x.
If that's incremental, I like to know what you consider revolutionary.
> In previously established fields.
Is your argument here that he has not established a new field of scientific study?
Can you prove and example of somebody that created a new 'field'?
They have said they might do some testing in the future on some of these idea but that is not their primary reason for existing.
They are just doing EVs in a tunnel, or 'Loop' how they call it.
They are 6 years old, after 6 years neither SpaceX nor Tesla revolutionised anything.
I don't think the company will be as impactful or successful, and their loop isn't really a great idea.
However, calling it a failure because its not as successful as Tesla/SpaceX seems to be using a absurdly high standard.
I’m not comparing it to Tesla/SpaceX. I’m comparing it against their goal of significantly cutting the costs of creating those tunnels (1) and abandonment based on their engagement to trying to build tunnels (2). So yes. They’ve so far failed at their goals. And that’s fine. That doesn’t mean the company has failed. The start of a company is marked by repeated failures. So yes, I agree it’s still too early to tell.
What I was trying to highlight is why people clown on Musk. It’s not because I think he’ll necessarily fail. But his behavior, from the outside anyway, is exceedingly erratic and unfocused. His constant hype about FSD where he’s at best skirting materially lying to investors. His hype about HyperLoop which turned out to be harder than he likely anticipated. His hype with Boring Company which also appears to have turned out to be harder than anticipated. His hype with Twitter and since it’s a private company hard to say how his takeover has impacted their earnings but certainly I think it’s turned out harder than he anticipated.
So again. It’s not about highlighting that Musk is a failure. I don’t think that’s a viable claim. I do think it’s fair to point out that he often can bite off more than he can chew and his behavior does seem erratic and unfocused for someone who’s now responsible for 3 massive companies and a (hopefully) rapidly growing startup.
The reason for those ventures though are clearly strategic. Twitter gives him direct access to the masses / a large media platform which is aligned with how he fired the marketing department at Tesla (let’s him shape the narrative more directly). This is potentially akin to Bezos buying WaPo. SpaceX gives him a foot hold in extraterrestrial transport/mining. Tesla gives him energy distribution / transportation. Boring company gives him in-city rapid transit.
I don't know about you, but making a company that can pull off a major infrastructure project that a costumer paid like 50 million $ for is impressive. Its one more company then I ever created.
> But his behavior, from the outside anyway, is exceedingly erratic and unfocused.
That is really only the case if you are very selective. In reality his behavior is highly consistent. He is the longest serving CEO in both automotive and spaceflight. He has been consistently perusing the topics of EV, spaceflight and AI for over 20 years.
> His constant hype about FSD where he’s at best skirting materially lying to investors.
I agree but that not really what we were discussing and not what I was responding to.
> His hype about HyperLoop which turned out to be harder than he likely anticipated.
He literally said 'I'm not gone do this, its just an idea'. He said this right from the beginning, even before the Blue Paper was realized. I was the pro-Musk and anti-Musk media that made this a bigger deal then it actually was.
> His hype with Boring Company which also appears to have turned out to be harder than anticipated.
And EV and Spaceflight also turned out to be harder then anticipated. He even said about all those companies that they might fail. But he is trying anyway and Boring Company will continue to try to improve tunnel boring. They might eventually only make marginal improvement or non, but not sure what people problem is. Never starting any company that tries to improve an established industry is somehow a virtue now? I don't get it.
He also didn't give timelines, he never said tunneling cost will be X in 3 years. He just said that its conservative industry and that with various improvements like electrification tunneling can be made more efficient.
I think the Loop project isn't a great idea, and not sure if Boring company will turn out to be worth all the effort.
But calling it a failure is ridiculous in my eyes. Again, if somebody made a company valued at 50-100 million $, since when do we consider that a failure in tech culture?
> His hype with Twitter and since it’s a private company hard to say how his takeover has impacted their earnings but certainly I think it’s turned out harder than he anticipated.
Again, success and failure by Musk own predictions is a different thing then calling somebody successful or not.
I would say Twitter so far is a big failure as its nowhere near worth 44 billion anymore. So I'm on board with calling that a failure.
But we should also judge that after 5 years, evaluating a company shortly after takeover is tough. Tesla looked like a steaming pile of shit when Musk took over as CEO.
> The reason for those ventures though are clearly strategic.
Its funny how in one paragraph he is totally erratic and unfocused and in the next paragraph he is a strategist who has for 20 years planned and strategically assembled a business empire to take over the earth and Mars. Do you not see the contradiction there?
In regards to Twitter, Musk is doing nothing in terms of shaping the narrative that he couldn't have done without owning Twitter, he did much the same thing before he owned it just as or more effectively.
> with how he fired the marketing department at Tesla
I think you are referring to the PR department. And I think he fired them because he believed they didn't really add much value. Responding to 100s of media reports about battery fires and such. And some of the people of those teams were just moved. The company still puts out lots of things traditionally considered 'PR', like impact reports and so on. The main thing the stopped doing is interacting with media companies and car journalists.
After all these years, its hard to say that this hurt Tesla overly much.
And if this was about shaping narrative, having a bigger PR team would make sense. He is the CEO, he can tell the PR team exactly what to write and what not to write. If anything firing lots of PR people makes it less likely you can control the narrative.