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Comment by maxlin | Hacker News Reader

Starship is designed with way faster turnaround time. Falcon 9 had optional reuse, while Starship aims to be the 747 of space access.

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.

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> Elon said in 2020…

To be fair, Elon has said _a lot_ of things about his various projects and not all of them are based in reality.

Everyone knows that, but Falcon 9 is extremely successful and Starship is the main project that's been in the making doing good strides once in a while, and the whole "chopstick" lift tower has already been built, with the clear idea of ultimately landing Starships right in to it.

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

> And Starship seems to really be the main focus of Elon where he doesn't just lead but is in the weeds

There lies the danger, considering his work leading Twitter.

I remember ignorant folks commenting on HN a while ago that Twitter would not last 3 months after the massive layoffs. Proven wrong over and over again.

It didn't, and they had to implement very severe rate limiting just to keep it from falling over again.

Now when I open a tweet without being logged in I can't even see any replies.

Use Nitter, or, you know, just log in. I used a lurker account for like 6 years, nowadays I'm more active as the place is more interesting. Haven't faced almost any technical problems, maybe a persistent 500 error once, 1/1000 times tweets dont load on my own page

> 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 didn't say I'm upset, I barely use Twitter, only when someone links to some specific tweet.

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.

Twitter has never been non-free. You just need to register. Premium is nice, but not that critical. I have one account with and one without, mostly just the 280 char limit annoys without premium but that's how twitter was before anyway

“Free” in the holistic meaning, not so much as paid monetarily, but requiring you to trade something (registration and login) for access. It’s not necessarily unreasonable in my opinion to expect login to view content or use the site.

There's no strong authentication requirement. As long as you have an extra gmail account or similar or are able to create one that is not connected to your person, you should be able to create a reasonably anonymous twitter account.

(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)

> avoid the phone auth if it ends up forcing that

You can always buy a prepaid SIM and used hotspot-capable phone with cash.

EDIT: dumb typo, I meant "residential IP"

What rate limiting? The login requirement change is policy, not a rate limit.

There are very strict rate limits as well: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675187969420828672

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.

This has to be the most ignorant comment here. Elon has been heading SpaceX as a Chief Engineer for a LONG time now, with undeniable success. How on earth would what he asks X/Twitter to do affect this, even if you considered that bad or the worst thing ever?

You do know that’s just the name of his role, not the job description, right?

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.

People were talking about a flame trench, and it was just the usual "nooo you can't do things differently" kind of whining. Not all too different from people saying suicide burns and barge landings would not be reliable when early Falcon 9 landing attempts failed.

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.

Read the Isaacson biography. Musk is clearly deeply involved in the details of all his projects, to a degree that would seem unthinkable for almost any other CEO.

Lol no. It is actually MORE de facto than de jure. Don't spread misinformation. I've seen that dogshit line replayed so many times. He's an engineer above everything else https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden... https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WY73exaVpyw

"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.

> Falcon 9 is extremely successful and Starship is the main project that's been in the making doing good strides once in a while

We shall see. There might be some https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect in play with the Starship.

Can you give an example of 1 thing Elon said that hasn't become a reality and cannot become a reality in the next 10 years?

1 engineering or physics related thing. Deadlines don't count.

I'm waiting...

Everything Hyperloop related is not happening.

Elon literally said that he didn't have time to work on it, he just liked the idea. What more can he do manage expectation? Like people don't listen and just assume because they get information from secondary "news" articles.

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.

Has Elon actually promised something concrete about this? Elon's not the first guy ever to hype the hyperloop idea.

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.

"Can you give an example of 1 thing Elon said"

..well known example is given..

"Has Elon actually promised something concrete about this?"

you can see that those things are different.

I think the reasonable limit is when something sounds like that he argues it is possible "soon" instead of not being thought about. Like, I don't think we'll have AGI or gene-modified catgirls in 10 years but those dont count as an answer to this.

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.

And FSD doesn't work, at least not in the way it was promised.

Yeah well it will before 10 years and increases the value of even current cars

It will not.

Only if the world ends it won't. At that point Tesla will have licensed it to a ton of other manufacturers, possibly even reached a certified standard like they did with NACS so competition will be even more behind.

Your kind of thinking would say that no one will ever need more than 840k of memory or that rifling will never take off

Coast to coast self-driving by late 2017.

Did you read the question?

That is an engineering thing. And even your arbitrary 15 year extension is not realistic.

It's not my question but you still didn't bloody read it:

> Deadlines don't count.

HW3 Teslas will not reach robotaxi-level self-driving without hardware upgrades.

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.

This is a very engaging question. No idea why anyone would flag this.

Because this part

>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.

I get what you're coming from. But. I think it is fair considering some of the most beloved provider / consumer relationships we have often end up in the situation that everyone wants the thing as fast as possible, and the producer is very optimistic, wants to deliver and ends up "lying" about timelines without any ill intention.

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.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1240754657263144960

> 1 engineering or physics related thing

Elon also said that he will have 1 million Robotaxi by 2020

Again, Falcon 9 wasn't dependent on reuse and was profitable as-is. As Starship has a clear design goal of quick reuse, it's being designed a different vehicle altogether. The reuse isn't only for profitability on earth, it gets a bit more important on Moon and Mars.

No, he never said that. He said his best guess would be 2020 after being put on the spot to come up with a date a few years in the future.

Elon bad, Elon bad at planning so Elon liar. /s

No, he didn't say it was his "best guess." He said, and I quote, “I feel very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla next year. From our standpoint, if you fast-forward a year … maybe a year and three months, but next year for sure, we will have over a million robotaxis on the road.”

"Next year for sure" is not a "best guess."

Checking the transcript, it is not unreasonable to say that

"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

I don't know why you can't just accept that he makes crazy promises that are sometimes total nonsense.

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.

Yes he has over-promised, but Tesla also has the most promising tech on this for many reasons. It seems more like the problem itself is turning out to just be harder to cover properly than foreseen originally.

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.

> the problem itself is turning out to just be harder to cover properly than foreseen originally

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 are dumbfoundingly incorrect. Tesla is just so much ahead everyone else it is a bit ridiculous. I wouldn't wonder if many have already given up and are just waiting for Tesla to front the R&D then willing to license their tech. No one else has even close to Teslas NN chips, Dojo, custom simulators, the FLEET, willing free QA people, endless data sources as all cars have the hardware ... You also have no idea how time works throwing around something like 20 years. In AI age that just leads me to believe you are at least 10 years late in your thinking. 20 year guess for software is something no one can make.

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 is nowhere near the leader. The problem is hard, who could possibly have known? Oh right, any person with a bit of knowledge of how computers work and drive a car. Tesla can't make it reliably work in the car-centric USA. I'd love to see it perform in a busy Indian city or even just any old European city.

Tesla cars do not last long, and the battery costs a fortune to replace when it dies or gets damaged out of warranty.

Lol what. It's like you'd be trying to convince everyone Bing has been the leading search engine for the last 10 years. You don't even mention who would be ahead. Cruise, having to intervene every 5 minutes (literally, look it up) and basing on unscalable HD maps?

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.

> Tesla has even custom HARDWARE for their NN's

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.

Using words like "remotely not the hard part" that is just not true man. There doesn't exist hardware that can do inference with even close to as low as the 100 watts Tesla uses. Also it is not just to drive FSD, it is to provide data, to detect situations of from where to send data as they can't just stream everything to base (check the Autonomy day talk, it's quite interesting), which is needed for the development of the software which we agree is an extremely hard problem.

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.

Elon and Shotwell in 2018 said that by 2028 it will have operating passenger service for between a business class ticket and coach ticket price. They claimed it again around 2020 or 2021. Competitive pricing with air travel.

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.

This doesn't in any way even contest the original point. Timeline maybe, but we all know Elon(r) Valve(r) time, it's the kind of time we all hope would move faster but most don't rip their game pants out of impatience.

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.

> 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.

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.

To be honest that sounds like the easiest thing to do. I remember reading of a similar thing in some invention's book made in 1993 or so. They probably have a working version of it, mostly just need to release the damn truck, and figure out legal for it

How would this ever be possible given the volume of fuel a starship launch entails?

It would carry 1000 people, so divide by 1000, and methane is cheap, plus it's going to save up to 16 hours or so on long haul routes so people may be willing to pay a reasonable premium. The much bigger issue, to me, is safety. I don't see how the Starship design could ever be anywhere near as safe as regular air travel. There are also issues with noise requiring the launch and landing to take place far away from your destination, reducing the travel time benefit. And it's unclear if the general population would be able to tolerate the G-forces and wild maneuvers required.

> landing to take place far away from your destination, reducing the travel time benefit.

Thats where you get on your private jet to fly the last 10 miles. Simple.

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