"Flying to orbit and back multiple times in a day like an airliner."
Probably not. It takes 85 days, on average, to turn a Falcon 9 around.
Probably not. It takes 85 days, on average, to turn a Falcon 9 around.
Launching multiple times per day was never a design goal of Falcon 9 but it is explicitly a design goal of the Starship program. They're going to need fast turnaround for all the orbital refueling missions they've already sold for HLS.
The entire industry said they'd never land, then they'd never be able to reuse, then they'd never reuse 10+ times. They're up to 18 reuses. Now they'll never reuse twice in the same day? There's no physical law preventing it, it's just a matter of good engineering. It's not a sure thing but I wouldn't bet against them.
Also, Falcon 9 has been turned around in 21 days, with a significant chunk of that being shipping. And there's no indication that they've hit any limit, they simply don't need to go faster right now given their fleet and launch cadence.
Elon said in 2020: > Starship is being designed to be relaunched an hour after landing, with zero nominal work
Now while that might take some time to reach, before that the pad itself is likely going to be capable of many launches every day given there's more ships. Starships seems to be made to be way more economical to manufacture per-ship than the shuttles or Saturns so I don't see a bottleneck in that.
To be fair, Elon has said _a lot_ of things about his various projects and not all of them are based in reality.
And Starship seems to really be the main focus of Elon where he doesn't just lead but is in the weeds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY73exaVpyw
There lies the danger, considering his work leading Twitter.
Now when I open a tweet without being logged in I can't even see any replies.
So…you’re upset that you can’t do something for free now?
I was just noting a clear downgrade in feature set, made (by Elon's own words) so Twitter can better handle the traffic after having fallen over multiple times.
(No I don't know how to create google accounts without using your residential VPN or avoid the phone auth if it ends up forcing that)
You can always buy a prepaid SIM and used hotspot-capable phone with cash.
I think they have increased them since then, but for a while Twitter was really struggling to serve regular users without hitting them with rate limit errors.
He was also quite adamant about not needing a fire suppression system on the pad while everyone else was saying to just dig a water trench and be over with it. Now he got his inverted shower head. It should work, but it delayed the second launch by almost a year.
Even the internal engineers (ie the only people who matter in this case due to being the only people with the data) expected the previous pad to at least survive the first test flight (with some ablation).
The shattering was a surprise that did not fit their own models. Beyond that they had already started work on the current system as a long term solution prior to the first flight.
"by year" doesn't make sense.
Also, the flame "plate" was a reasonable test, it hadn't been tried before. Engines failing at start doomed what was otherwise at the very limit from what we've understood. If you watched the launch, you saw how extremely long the rocket stayed on the pad. It was because with engine failures the thrust was too low to get off and it actually needed to lose fuel. It was like 5x the time it would have been held down otherwise. It's a misnomer that anything really went truly "wrong" with the test. It's like pressing F5 and seeing the "There were build errors" popup.
We shall see. There might be some https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect in play with the Starship.
1 engineering or physics related thing. Deadlines don't count.
I'm waiting...
Musk released a bluepaper and that pretty much it. SpaceX hosted a student competition also.
Other companies failing doesnt reflect on Musk.
I do think Hyperloop was a bad idea to be sure, but he very clearly stated he wasnt gone make it happen.
On its basis it is hard to think we won't this at some point as it promises essentially orbit-like capability on the surface, so everyone has the right to dream we'd get this sooner.
..well known example is given..
"Has Elon actually promised something concrete about this?"
you can see that those things are different.
Hyperloop was always being to be extremely expensive and Elon's role on it was never but just try to be a catalyst for more innovation towards it. He used terms like "open-source idea" and did that student competition to try to kind of drive other people to grab the idea. Things like FSD are instead considered concrete and produced by his companies.
Your kind of thinking would say that no one will ever need more than 840k of memory or that rifling will never take off
> Deadlines don't count.
I also don't believe commercial Earth-to-Earth passenger service will ever be viable with the current Starship design. Certainly not in the next 10 years.
>cannot become a reality in the next 10 years
serves as red herring and allows to move the goalposts arbitrarily, making the question pretty manipulative. Anything can become a reality in 10 years, theoretically speaking. At the same time this is not the main issue with Elon claims at all.
Everyone still wants the damn thing. Critique is better aimed towards things that are actually impossible instead just being observed with too much optimism timewise. I don't think sharp unnecessary critique of irreplaceable multidisciplinary pioneers like Elon are healthy in any space, especially here. This is not Steam Forums.
Elon bad, Elon bad at planning so Elon liar. /s
"Next year for sure" is not a "best guess."
"Next year we'll have 1mil robotaxis on the road, the fleet wakes up by OTA update"
means "Robotaxi-capable in hardware" which is the main sell, IE that you buy car now, when the software is ready, and Tesla is closer than anyone else in having anything like that ready, your car will take the role of Robotaxi.
Maybe a bit ambigious wording like when what Sean Murray implied when the reality was a shared universe in place names, not realtime multiplayer at that stage
Sometimes his crazy promises do mostly pan out. But he's clearly massively over-promised in driverless cars.
I'm really surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit from all the Tesla owners who were essentially tricked into paying $5k for a thing that can never exist.
However, cars last long and Tesla's batteries last as long as any, I remember seeing some very promising numbers from very old Model S's remaining battery capabilities, and of course the batteries can be replaced. I don't see why the robotaxi idea wouldn't increase the potential value of almost any Tesla considering even the NN chip hardware can be semi-easily upgraded if really needed
> that can never exist.
That sounds like someone saying muskets are a fad. Do you really truly believe that? Never heard anyone be _that_ pessimistic about it, especially with the continual improvements.
Than foreseen by Tesla. Everyone else knew they couldn't possibly achieve what Musk was claiming.
> Tesla also has the most promising tech on this for many reasons
After Waymo maybe.
> considering even the NN chip hardware can be semi-easily upgraded if really needed
Haha there's no way 20 year old cars (minimum; by the time FSD actually works) are going to get sensor and compute upgrades. Not going to happen.
> That sounds like someone saying muskets are a fad.
I'm not sure what your analogy is meant to mean but I think you misunderstood me. I'm not saying driverless cars in general can never exist. Clearly they will eventually (maybe 10-20 years?). It's the upgrade to FSD that people have paid for that can never exist.
You do not even understand what field Tesla operates in if you're comparing it to Waymo. Waymo operates on HD maps and remote human operators who can take over every 5 minutes if needed. Those cars are not real "cars", you can't own them, they can't drive outside the city. They compete with electric scooters like Tier, Bolt, Lime, not Tesla. They have zero ability to grow, it's like comparing a hardcoded nature language engine to ChatGPT.
(Also note that the gain in value Tesla has gotten after Autonomy Day hasn't actually even been lost. Long-term investors aren't gonna miss this one)
Tesla cars do not last long, and the battery costs a fortune to replace when it dies or gets damaged out of warranty.
Get real man. Tesla has even custom HARDWARE for their NN's even, designed by the chip designer that has created some of the greatest designs BOTH at Intel and AMD.
And Tesla's battery lasts better than others. I remember seeing incredible endurance even for the first Model S batteries after like 10 years of driving. You buy a Tesla now or 5 years ago, it will likely last longer than any other car, all while it will receive SW updates to function as a Robotaxi when the time comes.
You're funnily arguing the exact polar opposite of where Tesla is strong.
Their chips are actually nice, but you're betraying your lack of knowledge here - the compute hardware isn't remotely the hard part about self driving cars.
To further demonstrate this, consider the fact that in the current AI landscape, hardware is actually the bottleneck. Everyone is trying to buy more GPU's NVIDIA simply can't supply fast enough. If Tesla still relied on NVIDIA for the in-car processing, the project would have to be shelved as they'd have to sell Teslas without the hardware, instead of just having it all cars even if they will never use it for running FSD directly on that car.
And he said that the Semi will be competitive with rail and could already operate in follow the leader convoy mode back in 2017: they were just waiting on regulators to give the ok! Never seen testing it but I guess they did the whole project in secret and shelved it without applying to regulators in a public way.
About the Semi, there's zero reason to believe anything is being shelved. The truck itself is ready and being tested in practice by Pepsico and Tesla itself. Jay Leno teste drove it and was impressed.
Where does this unnecessary negativity come from? We should cheer these kind of unique projects auspicious for civilization.
I didn't say they couldn't build the Semi; he said it could already do automated convoy follower driving in 2017. Still nowhere to be seen.
Thats where you get on your private jet to fly the last 10 miles. Simple.