Edit: Just out of curiosity, I looked up his video about Starlink, and his point was it's a bad business, not that it's physically impossible to do it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaUCDZ9d09Y
I'd actually love it if you could find a single thing he says in that video that's provably false. I'm quite confident history will judge Elon Musk properly, as the "Too Big To Fail" version of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes.
An ad hominem attack occurs when someone attacks the person making the argument rather than addressing the argument itself. For example, saying "You're always wrong, so you're wrong about this too" without addressing the current claim would be ad hominem.
That's exactly what the person I responded to was doing.
> Take a look at videos on YouTube by ThunderF00t. SpaceX is pretty problematic.
Response:
> Thunderf00t has basically 0 credibility when it comes to SpaceX. He predicted that starlink couldn't ever work, for example. In fact, he even thought that this landing would fail.
You’re claiming Thunderf00t is a good resource on SpaceX. The response gave examples of how he’s been consistently wrong.
That is not an ad hominem attack.
>Probably something to do with the fact that the satellites are hundreds of miles or kilometers apart and you're trying to hit a tiny moving Target from another moving target with a laser and then and chaining those together that doesn't sound very easy but they're promising to launch some satellites that can do it in the next generation [getting close to launching satellite 1.5 which has laser interest satellite links]
>Now where have I heard that before... Let's just call me skeptical on this one
https://youtu.be/zaUCDZ9d09Y?t=1688
This entire video is just the same thing over and over. As is usual with him, he doesn't actually make any strong enough claim and just goes on endless sneering. But in the context of the video, it is absolutely clear that he's saying it is just another lie and that it's basically impossible. Remember, this was mere months before the laser network went up. He also claimed that the bandwidth is never going to be usable, but it absolutely is.
Also, that's just the fallacy fallacy. This isn't some sort of debate club, it makes perfect sense to discredit someone based on past record. For example I would absolutely take with a grain of salt anything Musk promises. It would be very dumb to just erase any priors everytime someone claims something. And no one does that expect when it's to play fallacy semantics online. I never attacked thunderf00t as a person, I'm attacking his completely bogus track record on SpaceX.
This basically he does every single SpaceX event. I'm not even exaggerating, I'm pretty sure the exact same happened in the latest stream. Just making up stuff about holes, "guaranteed" failures, it's super weird.
As for the specific quote about laser communications and latency, Thunderf00t's criticism was specifically talking about the latency claims. I actually thought you might be right, but some research indicates that the laser links do not currently provide improved latency, and they are only used when no ground station is available.
I very much appreciate that Thunderf00t does it for every SpaceX event. Someone needs to tell people the truth. I've known Musk was a con artist for decades (since he was fired from Paypal for gross incompetence), but it seems America just woke up to it when he bought Twitter.
It has nothing to do with musk, and that's the entire issue. The dude is obsessed with him, clouding anything he says about SpaceX. SpaceX isn't just musk. It's actually super cringe how he seems genuinely mad whenever SpaceX staff celebrates or when a success happens. Or when he literally makes up stuff as he goes while the stream happens ("wow this is super bad, this shouldn't look like this" or even simple stuff like thinking that the water release before launch is for cooling the engines (???))
It's not the first time thunderfoot has obsessed over someone, he used to do the same with Anita sarkeesian. And the same thing happened, it got to the point where it was so weird and obsessive that it made him lose any credibility.
As for his focus on Musk, I feel the same way about that as I did about Carreyrou’s “obsession” with Elizabeth Holmes. Good! I’m glad people are debunking our generation’s greatest fraud (which is Musk. Holmes doesn’t even make the top 10).
I’ve never personally paid a dime for a Musk product, but unfortunately my government has financed his frauds to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. So, I’m glad someone is pointing it out
Edit: I just asked GPT about water sprayed on rockets before launch. It specifically mentioned cooling the engines. I’m not sure what your game is here, but i suggest, like, learning some stuff. I’m tired of fact checking you only to find out instantly that you’re lying. Here’s the text:
Water is sprayed on a rocket before launch as part of a sound suppression system to protect the rocket and the launch pad. The intense noise generated during a rocket launch creates powerful sound waves that can damage the rocket or surrounding structures. Water absorbs and dampens these sound waves, reducing their intensity. Additionally, the water helps to cool the launch pad and the rocket’s exhaust, preventing overheating or damage from the extreme heat generated by the rocket engines during liftoff.
And yes. Even chatgpt says that it is used to prevent vibrations. It could also help cooling the launch pad I guess. But not the engines! That's a completely different thing, the engines get absolutely 0 cooling from the water. The entire point is to allow them to get as hot and powerful as possible without damaging everything around! It's almost entirely for vibration control btw, so any cooling to the launchpad isn't the point. You don't even need chatgpt to know that, it's literally something that a lot of launch platforms have done for decades.
As for frauds, how exactly is SpaceX a fraud? Again, I don't care about musk. I'm specifically talking about SpaceX. And in any case, there is so much legitimate reasons to dislike Musk that it is actually super unhelpful to have personalities like thunderf00t obsessing on something as visibly successful as spacex.
He is prone to very unrealistic timelines and some hype, but at the end of the day he delivers so much that normal people (those without Elon Derangement Syndrome) are happy to look past that.
Some things not working out is inevitable if you have extreme ambitions.
Who fucking cares if the latency isn’t better than fiber, Starlink is providing broadband globally that is orders of magnitude better than previous satellite.
He was confidently dismissive of the entire laser link idea, not just the latency claim:
“Starlink can’t do any of that at the moment. Probably something to with the fact that the satellites are hundreds of kilometers apart and you’re trying to hit a tiny moving target from another moving target and then chaining those together”
That’s in fact exactly what they’re doing now. They just haven’t optimized it enough yet to reduce the total latency.