HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Can get the latest updates directly from horse's mouth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N7L8Xhkzqo

TLDR: Delay at this point is mostly regulatory (environmental study approvals) to launch out of Boca Chica. If they have to move to the Cape, then there will be delays.

⬐ purpleidea

Not true. Musk said they weren't ready to launch yet anyways, and that they expected to be ready around the same time they expected to get FAA clearance. So it's not holding things up yet. And it might never.

⬐ beambot

OK, let me be more clear: The gating factor is FAA clearance, but it's not a delay yet.

More specifically: Nominal date for FAA clearance is X. Actual clearance will be >X (these agencies are never complete early; it's already been delayed twice). SpaceX readiness date will be <= X. Therefore FAA clearance is the program bottleneck.

⬐ ncmncm

Claiming to be ready and just waiting on the FAA is good publicity, true or no. We can't tell from the outside.

⬐ beambot

Apparently we'll never know... My comment was entirely too prescient: just today the FAA pushed decision back by another month:

https://www.space.com/faa-spacex-starship-review-delayed-mar...

⬐ simonh

>SpaceX readiness date will be <= X

To be fair to the FAA, I wouldn't bet on that. It's not called Elon Time for nothing.

From the article: That makes Starship, which conducted a successful flight to the edge of space last year, especially threatening to the contractors and their allies in Congress.

So far Starship has flown to 12.5 km [1], which seems to be a stretch to describe as "the edge of space" [2].

It seems like the FAA Environmental Assessment for the "SpacePort" at Boca Chica has been delayed again from Feb 28th, by a month to March 28th [3]. If they recommend a full Environmental review that will delay progress even further. I believe Elon mentioned in the recent Starship update that they will move Starship testing to Cape Canaveral which already has permissions to launch Starship there if this is required [4] [5], but that will require building out an orbital pad for Starship.

It will certainly be interesting to see how long it takes Starship to get to orbit. I would guess that the raptor 2 performance/reliability and also the heatshield performance will be significant challenges to overcome. When/if SpaceX do overcome them, the incumbents will be justified in "shitting the bed", as per the article.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SpaceX_Starship_flight...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line#Interpre...

[3] https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_star...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N7L8Xhkzqo (SpaceX Starship update)

[5] https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-starship-orbital-cape-c...

⬐ maccam94

The heat shield isn't a blocker for getting to orbit, it's only needed to recover the second stage. Musk thinks that the Florida launch site will be ready before the end of the year anyway (and sure, add a few months for Elon Time, but they've already built one of them so the timeline should be fairly well understood). The overall economics and reliability may take another year or two to really get dialed in.

⬐ martyvis

The height reached was more of a limit imposed by FAA, and that SpaceX had more important things to demonstrate than to literally just burn more fuel and go straight up. I mean look at how they had to turn off engines as they ascended just to keep the velocity in check.

⬐ Isinlor

For people asking why to go to the Moon or Mars:

The movie Avatar made in box office $2.9B. This is exactly the same amount of money as SpaceX asked for the Moon landing - $2.9B.

Have you asked people who watched Avatar what is the purpose of watching Avatar?

Instead of making a fiction about going to a moon, we can actually go to the Moon.

It really is the question - why do you live? What is the purpose of anyone life?

There does not seem to be any purpose to anything in the universe. But we can choose what we want to do.

So the answer: Because we want to, because it is exciting, because it inspires, because we can.

Because this is what life is about.

⬐ sillysaurusx

"It's gonna be cramped, dangerous, difficult, very hard work. You might die." -- Elon's sales pitch for Mars, in his own words.

I wonder if any billionaire (or their children) will be doing the early work. It's an interesting game of "Who values their life the least?" knowing that their sacrifice will make for a better future.

Of course, it's not a foregone conclusion that there will be a disaster. But over the course of 200 years of constant space travel, it seems incredibly unlikely that there won't be some kind of disaster. The question is, how will we react?

I hope we don't give up. And I hope billionaires risk their children alongside the working class.

⬐ SECProto

Somewhere around a thousand Americans [1] lose their lives in the construction industry each year. It's not a novel thing for people to die building the future, but Mars would definitely bring some novel methods.

[1] https://midwestepi.org/2017/05/08/construction-fatalities-co...

⬐ Someone

Mars in the first years (probably for decades) will likely be way worse.

Workers will spend all 24 hours of every day in risky circumstances, and the quality of aid will be worse. For example, even if there is a MRI machine, will there be surgeons? A small population simply cannot support a wide range of medical specialists.

⬐ tim333

People on the ISS have similar issues and it doesn't seem such a problem.

⬐ Someone

If the need arises, they can get back on earth in two days time or so. I also think/guess their major health risks are of the “you die immediately” kind, not of the “it helps a lot of you get to a hospital within x minutes” kind.

⬐ SECProto

> For example, even if there is a MRI machine, will there be surgeons?

100% yes, there will be surgeon(s). Likely cotasked with other roles (medical studies etc?) until the population would get significantly larger. Antarctic missions have performed surgery (and everyone gets their appendix removed before going on an overwinter).

⬐ more_corn

Elon plans to retire on Mars. He plans to die there. “Hopefully not on impact”

I expect he’ll share some of the risk (though not the super early super high risk) because the settlement will be risky for the first hundred+ years.

⬐ freddie_mercury

It's not just their sacrifice. They're also sacrificing their children, who had no say in the matter, to have a substantially worse life than they would have had had they stayed on Earth.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that is unprecedented in the history of immigration but it does seem pretty uncommon.

⬐ cookingrobot

It’s not a one way trip if you want to leave. They’ve said in previous presentations they plan to bring the ships back for multiple flights, and so there’s an option to return if you want it.

⬐ irrational

By that rationale, any time people have moved any time since humans came into existence they have potentially sacrificed their children who have no say in the matter. Any move could be to a worse situation.

⬐ wnkrshm

How do the politics of a Mars colony work? Say Elon controls the sole means of supplying the colony from Earth - do the colonists effectively become hostages? What if they mutiny? Will the supplies stop coming? Is this murder? Many questions.

⬐ donpott

Based on this comment alone, I can tell you would enjoy "The moon is a harsh mistress" by Robert Heinlein. Recommended if you haven't read it already!

⬐ ByThyGrace

Or the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is a fabulous sci-fi take on this matter. Can't recommend it enough if you're an avid reader.

⬐ donpott

That's next on my list now. Thank you!

⬐ Tepix

The quality of life on Mars poses the greatest risk to SpaceX's plan to create a self-sustaining city there.

I'm sure there will be plenty of people who will go to Mars because it is a fantastic adventure.

However, i doubt that many will want to stay there for more than 26 months. If too many pioneers choose to return to Earth, the project fails. You need a fairly large number of settlers to create something self-sustaining.

⬐ tgsovlerkhgsel

> "Who values their life the least?" knowing that their sacrifice will make for a better future.

I think the pioneers will go there for a sense of adventure, not for a monetary reward or out of some sense of "sacrifice for the future". There will be enough people who want to go that you can select a great crew from that group, and there is no reason to send people who don't want to or have to be convinced with money.

⬐ colechristensen

There are plenty of people out there willing to take the risk. They won’t be the poor being forced into it, they’ll all be perfectly aware and willing.

⬐ DantesKite

Why do you hope billionaires risk their children?

⬐ rtpg

Why do we need to fly 3 months to some inhospitable planet that is in worse condition than Earth would be (even after nuclear wars and global warming) to make progress?

I suppose there's an idea we could apply everything done on Mars to Earth, but like... seriously, what we just took all the prep for mars and just put it in the middle of the Empty Quarter, the Saraha, Antarctica?

People barely want to live in the arctic circle, yet believe that our salvation comes in Mars? I would love to see all the energy put into space exploration to simply be put in rehabilitating existing land.

⬐ oxplot

> I would love to see all the energy put into space exploration to simply be put in rehabilitating existing land.

Quote from my past posts [1] on this point:

> It's impossible to predict what tech can come out of such efforts that will be of use here on Earth in the future. The amount of money going to space exploration is peanuts so I think it's well justified if it has even a trace of potential to improve future of humanity and that has been true historically - e.g. satellites (GPS, weather, etc), medicine (MRI), and whole bunch of NASA spinoffs and more.

> I think SpaceX to date has received less than 10 billion (say 20 to be safe) in total for everything! That's 20 years of research, development, coming up with never done before re-usable rockets, etc.

> People spent nearly half a trillion dollars (not billion) on cosmetic products in a single year! You want to point fingers, point at something you can actually locate. Money spent on space is negligible to the point that it doesn't even warrant justifying spending it.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29189753

⬐ Isinlor

It really is the question - why do you live? What is the purpose of anyone life?

There does not seem to be any purpose to anything in the universe. But we can choose what we want to do.

So the answer: Because we want to, because it is exciting, because it inspires, because we can.

Because this is what life is about.

The movie Avatar made in box office $2.9B. This is exactly the same amount of money as SpaceX asked for an actual moon landing of $2.9B.

Have you asked people who watched Avatar what is the purpose of watching Avatar?

Instead of making a fiction about going to a moon, we can actually go to the moon.

⬐ sillysaurusx

It’s helpful to remember it’s not a zero sum game. We can do all of that too. The tech for Mars would make it that much easier.

No one wants to live in those places because currently they have a choice. But if our planet becomes irradiated, or hit by a meteor, or suffers a sun burst — all very realistic concerns — then those choices become more limited. And it’s good to have options.

⬐ rtpg

The ISS is literally the most expensive physical structure we have ever built, and it's like 5 floating schoolbuses.

Now I'm for walking and chewing bubblegum. But if you believe in opportunity costs and care about navigating that, it feels like the same problem.

Our planet becoming irradiated is actually not a huge problem! It would still be easier to live on Earth than on Mars! An irradiated radioactive hellscape of Earth would still be more survivable than Mars.

(my more nuanced take is that we have so many basic hospitability problems that need solving, and Mars have all of those times 100, so it would be very good if most of those PhDs could focus on those hospitability problems more than the logistics of shooting a bunch of stuff into space for long term transit)

⬐ hparadiz

The ISS was built largely with hundreds of space shuttle and Soyuz launches over two decades hence why it's so expensive. Starship will be able to put an entire ISS worth of stuff into orbit in a single launch for 1/50th of the cost.

It's not a zero sum game. The space industry employs a lot of people.

Some of the stuff they put into orbit are satellites that literally save lives.

⬐ terafo

Definitely not in a single launch, since ISS weighs around 500 tons. And I think designs for space stations in starship era would be different(more heavy, but orders of magnitude cheaper to produce), so something like ISS in a starship era might weigh 1.5-2x more(VERY rough estimate), but nonetheless be much cheaper.

⬐ zlsa

Starship itself has ~1000 cubic meters of payload volume, and ISS has ~900 cubic meters of pressurized volume. It's not too much of a stretch to expect >500 cubic meters of pressurized volume in a crew-capable Starship, in which case two Starships would provide a broadly similar amount of pressurized volume in orbit.

⬐ JaimeThompson

Starship can't lift 462 tons to orbit in one launch and that isn't taking into account the volume needed. It would take more than 1 to get an ISS equivalent on orbit.

⬐ kortex

Ok, so like 5-10. ISS took 40 assembly flights, with 36 being expensive space shuttle flights ($54k/kg).

⬐ mlindner

The pressurized volume of Starship is larger than the pressurized volume of the ISS. I think that was what was intended to be conveyed.

⬐ hparadiz

Exactly what I was thinking in my head when I wrote that. Although I really should have written it out properly. To be fair mass is probably way more important.

⬐ fastball

Humans are not automatons who you can just point at a different problem than the one they are interested in and expect them to make progress in a similar way.

A Mars colony is an exciting problem for smart people to work on that can inspire them. You can't put a dollar value on that.

⬐ mlindner

> The ISS is literally the most expensive physical structure we have ever built, and it's like 5 floating schoolbuses.

Most of that cost was in the cost of launching it (and the inflation in the price of the modules knowing that they are "priceless" and "can't fail" and "we can only build one copy of it"). Further it's all engineered to very fine margins. The more you get your margins down the more cost these things take. One-offs of anything tend to be expensive. One-offs of very tight margin things are even more expensive. There's nothing in the ISS that is especially exotic. It's copper wiring and aluminum pressure vessels.

⬐ kitsunesoba

The ISS was also the first of its kind, not built with cost effectiveness in mind even a little bit, and complicated by being built by so many different parties. A station or other space hab built by a highly vertically integrated company trying to keep costs down is almost certainly going to be much, much less expensive and more capable.

⬐ ClumsyPilot

"it would be very good if all those PhDs could focus on those hospitability problems"

We have like a million PHds telling us what to do about climate change for 50 years, and nobody is listening

"The ISS is literally the most expensive physical structure we have ever built"

And it's 100x cheaper than the Iraq war or 2008 crisis, both entirely preventable manmade disasters. Or to put it into different perspwctive: ISS costs as much as cleanup of 3 oil spills, and we've had quite a few.

⬐ DrBazza

> Why do we need to fly 3 months to some inhospitable planet that is in worse condition than Earth would be (even after nuclear wars and global warming) to make progress?

In the late 1500s, why set sail across an ocean for weeks that no-one has ever successfully crossed (that we know of).

Someone would want to do it, and then want to do it regularly, and regularly means commercializing it, which means reduced cost and innovation. Better ships crossed the Atlantic, trade started and so on. Europe (and the world) is richer after the "discovery" of America and Australia, for example.

There are so many 'unknown unknowns' that until we settle on Mars we just... don't know: some mineral on Mars that might be useful for... capturing CO2 somehow? Lower gravity to grow novel crystalline structures that do... something. Basic life? Who knows?

Mars exploration excites me and many others.

⬐ timeon

> is richer after the "discovery" of America and Australia, for example.

And then there was ethnic cleansing of native population.

⬐ ralfd

True, and even if everyone were a moral saint the pox would been devastating. But this was not a garden eden, but a very brutal tribal world with frequent ethnic cleansing and enslavements. Hundred thousands of native auxiliaries marched with Cortez to get rid of their Aztec overlords.

Anyway, this won't be an issue for Mars.

⬐ mlyle

So, I think it's worth it for people to go to Mars for exploration, and to build a base somewhere up in space or the moon.

I think we should figure out how to exploit resources in space: asteroid mining, space-based solar power, etc. Even if it's all woefully unprofitable and inefficient at first.

And I think we should figure out how to eventually get another self-sufficient lump of humanity off this rock, but that seems like it could be 150+ years out.

But there's no reason, other than the exploration of Mars itself, to go down the gravity well to Mars.

> I would love to see all the energy put into space exploration to simply be put in rehabilitating existing land.

It's not like these are really the same resources.

⬐ sfblah

I completely agree with this line of reasoning, which is why I called the fixation with Mars Quixotic elsewhere in the thread. I was discussing this with some friends. Why not just pick some other totally inhospitable environment and try to live there instead? I mentioned inside a volcano lower in the thread. It seems to me you'd get all the same side-benefits of technological development.

⬐ ralfd

But the utopian end goal is to make Mars hospitable. For Musk a Mars city is not the end goal but the first step. For example one could make a magnetic shield in L1 Mars Orbit. There was a speculative Nasa study (Wikipedia):

> If constructed, the shield may allow the planet to restore its atmosphere. Simulations indicate that within years, the planet would be able to achieve half the atmospheric pressure of Earth. Without solar winds stripping away at the planet, frozen carbon dioxide at the ice caps on either pole would begin to sublimate (change from a solid into a gas) and warm the equator. Ice caps would begin to melt to form an ocean. T

Of course there is much difficulty and unkown unknowns. Maybe this is truly impossible. Maybe this will take a million years. Maybe Mars soil is too toxic for plant growth.

But the upshoot of terraforming Mars is so fantastical, that it is at least worth dreaming about.

⬐ fastball

Because if an asteroid destroys earth, your volcano base ain't gonna save life as we know it.

Because any such project is going to require herculean effort on the part of many humans, and many humans are interested in colonizing Mars but not so many are interested in colonizing volcanoes.

Your question is basically: why do people care about this thing I don't care about and instead care about this thing that neither I nor they care about.

⬐ sfblah

I guess you’ve never read about Xenu. Some people believe volcanoes are pretty important.

⬐ elkos

And DC-9s if I remember correctly

⬐ sangnoir

> Because if an asteroid destroys earth, your volcano base ain't gonna save life as we know it

If an asteroid destroys earth, your Mars base won't save life as we know it either. There's a lot of handwaving in this thread on the technologies required to bridge the gap between Starship existing and self-sustaining life on Mars. Paradoxically, self-sustaining space manufacture/Mars colony will obviate the need for frequent heavy-lift rocket launches.

⬐ fastball

How is that paradoxical? Bootstrapping a self-sustaining colony on Mars will require getting a massive amount of payload to the red planet. Once bootstrapped, yes that will no longer be required.

Nobody is arguing that Starship is sufficient, just that it is necessary.

⬐ sangnoir

> Nobody is arguing that Starship is sufficient, just that it is necessary.

No, it's the yet-to-be-invented tech that is necessary. Your unstated prior is that this non-existent tech will in turn require heavy-lift capacity, and there is no evidence for that. Maybe we can bootstrap space manufacturing off 2 Arianne 5 launches, or 50 starship launches, nobody knows because it's all make-believe atm.

What Starship is good for, is frequent supply runs to a dependant Mars base, with today's technology - but that's nor what people are saying because that's not sexy.

⬐ ClumsyPilot

There is loads of people who want to travel to mars for an expedition to look for life, study it's geology and see what it looks like at all - however you are right that living consitions would be crap.

I have always maintained that a settlement on the moon makes a lot more sence - fortly you have much better access to space for industry, secondly, help can reach you withing days at any time or you could be in earth hospital withing days if you need surgery.

⬐ fastball

Starship is literally also slated for missions to the moon. If those go well someone probably will pay to build a moon base.

That being said, there are a number of reasons why Mars is preferable to the Moon if your goal is a totally self-sustaining colony.

⬐ panick21_

We have enough land on earth already. Land is not actually the solution to any problem on earth. But Mars is the solution to a potentially big problem on earth.

And the technology to manufacture fuel from solar and nuclear energy, building advanced life support system, advancing the state of rocket technology, allowing much more use of sat technology, massively advancing science planetary/biology/(and more), controlled high efficiency farming, human health science, mobile hospitals and so on, will all be developed and have many applications. Even things like battery technology for this use case will have interesting question to ask and can have impact on batteries on earth.

So if it was literally just the backup to life, it wouldn't be worth it, but its not done in a vacuum.

And its inspiring. A whole generation of engineers all around the world were inspired. And the moon landing did bring humanity together to an extent, many people even in the Soviet Union talked about 'we' landed on the moon.

Seems to me to be worthwhile to push at the very least to a small settlement, and from there you can see if its makes sense to continue.

⬐ sfblah

Let's say someone argued instead that we should figure out a way to establish a human settlement inside of a volcano, or at the bottom of the deep ocean. Couldn't you make all the arguments you just made in favor of doing that as well? What makes Mars any different? Why is this specific Quixotic activity more valid than the ones I just mentioned?

⬐ panick21_

Because Mars could be self sustainable. It has water and the temperatures in the right areas are not that hostile. Mars soil can be used for agriculture. There is sun light.

From Mars its effective to launch to Orbit. Its easy to transport and move around on Mars, Supersonic electric flight is very doable for example.

Low density makes super fast trains very doable as well, massive movement of resources on Mars is orders of magnitude easier on Mars then even in deep water.

⬐ fastball

Who do you know that is fired up about building a base in a volcano?

But gonna have to disagree with GC here and say that I think a self-sustaining Mars base is worth it entirely for having a backup of intelligent life, which the deep ocean base doesn't deliver.

⬐ sfblah

How does Mars help if the sun explodes?

⬐ fastball

It doesn't, but different planet is a step better than nothing at all. New solar system can come next ;)

⬐ elihu

Mars is different because it has a lot of resources, a lot of empty land, it has easier access to space than Earth due to the reduced gravity, and space is really big. Maybe in the long run we'll be able to house more people in the asteroid belt than we do on Earth now. If it happens it'll be pretty far in the future, but it might happen eventually. Mars is a very convenient waystation to make that possible.

⬐ mlindner

> Why do we need to fly 3 months to some inhospitable planet that is in worse condition than Earth would be (even after nuclear wars and global warming) to make progress?

Why do we need to pick?

Also the Earth has limited resources and even of the resources we have, people are already attacking the idea of mining on Earth more and more, even when it's for things like stopping global warming by creating EVs. At some point it's going to be considered downright evil to dig into the ground to pull resources out of it with how things are going. The only alternative will be to pull it out of space.

⬐ labster

Nobody wants to go to Earth these days. It’s too crowded.

⬐ credit_guy

Let me introduce you to the idea of freedom. You are free to not go. Me too; I have no intention to ever go to Mars. But if some people want to go to Mars, why should I question their pursuit of happiness?

⬐ datameta

Now that I think about it, we would get real good at settling desert and polar regions with the experience and data coming back from an established Mars colony. We could also learn more about more efficient habitation? Think of all the tech we have developed just for LEO (you know, like those listicles show) and imagine how much knowledge we would convert to use in helping everyday peoples' lives?

⬐ belter

The answer is that one solution will fail quickly and will not do as much to pump stock value. The other one will pump your stock shares to the moon, as the market will inflate your companies valuations, by pricing in for the next 50 years, your plans to become the new Mars emperor.

⬐ dotnet00

Most people don't want to live in Antarctica etc because what's the point? There's the research, for which people do live there. For everyone else, it's at worst a few days away from comfort, with very little to be gained or lost.

A good comparison would be for settling the Americas. Although they obviously weren't as inhospitable as Mars, it was still a months long trip that was often one way to a destination with none of the comforts of their previous homes. Yet people came and worked to build. There was plenty of land and plenty of resources in the old world, yet we chose to go through the challenges of settling the new world. Should they also have waited to solve all their problems at home and utilize all their resources and land before looking outwards?

It's the same with Mars, plenty of people get bright-eyed at the idea of going to Mars and helping build a colony because it's a challenging task that would give meaning to many of us. No matter how often you say that Earth is more hospitable, the fact stands that if we do succeed at setting up a self-sustaining colony on Mars, we'll be more secure than just on Earth. Those are way higher stakes than living in Antarctica/the Sahara etc.

Hell, SpaceX essentially gets its pick of top engineering talent because of inspiring people towards the goal of Mars. Is that not already evidence that people are interested in going? It isn't like they're making significantly more money taking on the large workloads expected at the company. There are plenty more cushy jobs available at ULA, Blue Origin etc and plenty of technical challenges at all the space startups. Yet SpaceX gets its pick to the point that their technological lead over everyone else is only increasing.

⬐ beambot

Pioneering spirit, without the colonialism.

⬐ irrational

The basic idea is to not have all your eggs in one basket. We are one asteroid strike away from losing all human life on earth. Having 2 habited planets spreads the risk. Obviously having those planets in different solar systems would be even better, but we don’t have the technology for that, yet.

⬐ giantrobot

> We are one asteroid strike away from losing all human life on earth.

We're one asteroid strike from losing all human life in the solar system even if you had a bunch of people living on Mars. It would take a very long time to get even a single Mars colony self sufficient. Without resources of Earth supporting the colony it would die out the first time the air conditioner broke.

Putting people on Mars isn't putting our eggs in a second basket. It's putting an egg in a wet napkin on a mouse trap positioned under a precariously balanced boulder.

⬐ irrational

By that logic we will never leave Earth. Let’s say it takes 200 years to get a fully self sufficient colony on Mars. If we start now, it could be self-sufficient by around 2222. But, according to your logic, we shouldn’t start since the colony won’t be immediately self-sufficient. Instead we should wait until… until when? Assuming it will always take 200 years to make the colony self-sufficient, do we wait until 2222 to start so that it is self-sufficient by 2422?

⬐ giantrobot

A 200 year timeline is likely far too short. There's nowhere on the planet a human (or any multicellular Earth life) can survive without an active life support system. Every square meter of living and farming space needs to be enclosed with powered life support. There's no lubricants, easily accessed water, or even raw materials for heavy industry.

Even if Starship was ready to go tomorrow zero percent of any of the infrastructure needed to keep humans alive on Mars exists. The infrastructure needed to let some Martians be self sufficient only exists in artist renderings.

Getting a hundred tons of crap to Mars is the easiest part of the problem. Building a reliable toilet that won't clog and kill everyone or an air filter that never breaks is hard. Having enough food and medical supplies to keep people alive after a crop fails is hard. Building a factory that doesn't need a huge supply of oil-based lubricants is hard. Crowing crops in shitty soil is hard. Shit just building a big sealed structure is hard.

I don't find any claims of colonizing Mars believable because there's only lip service paid to boring infrastructure. Infrastructure can't just be patched in later.

⬐ irrational

So… give up and don’t even bother trying, because failure is probable but not certain. Got it.

⬐ giantrobot

That's not what I said. I do not find any claims of "colonization" believable because there's absolutely zero interest in solving or even realistically addressing the Hard Problems involved. There's little interest in solving the easier but boring problems.

If the toilets on a Starship get clogged [0] the crew can't wear diapers for a year and a half on their way to Mars. In space a clogged toilet has the fun side effect of aerosolizing feces that the crew will then breathe in, likely killing them.

Big talk about colonizing Mars is just talk without any actual movement on important infrastructure. A big rocket is only the first tiny step on a very very long road and itself is not really all that useful.

If you want to make pithy statements about not trying, direct your energy towards everyone fantasizing about Mars colonies with zero intent to tackle any of the Hard Problems involved.

[0] https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-tourist-toilet-alarm

⬐ mchusma

Musk says basically this in his presentation. Very very hard.

⬐ dotnet00

You have to start building the basket at some point. If you never start working on the colony you'll always have an excuse ("it'll take a long time!", "it'll be too expensive!", "the technology doesn't exist" and so on).

The technology to be self-sustaining won't exist without demand for it, and starting to setup a colony creates a lot of demand.

⬐ lamontcg

Gonna be interesting to see how many people actually pony up to really take part in that kind of vision.

Are there any economic incentives for colonizing Mars? Asteroid mining makes sense and bases on and around the Moon make some kind of economic sense at least. I don't know how Mars fits into that picture in the 50-100 year "medium" term picture.

⬐ elihu

Economic incentives include government-funded basic science, mining, tourism, real-estate speculation (i.e. claim a bunch of land while it's cheap), entertainment (sports and movies/TV shows), the ability to do things in a presumably lax regulatory environment that might not be allowed on Earth, and long-term care for those who have disabilities that would require a wheelchair in full gravity but not on Mars, and the establishment of Mars as a more convenient source of food/fuel/raw materials for any human presence in the belt or outer solar system.

⬐ lamontcg

A lot of that assumes an already functioning economy on Mars. We're not going to be sending anyone other than the richest people up to Mars in their old age. And for stuff like food and hydroponics you could have that on the Moon which is the natural waystation to the Asteroids. The Asteroids are going to be where all the mining is. Entertainment also assumes an already existing economy. Space tourism is the only thing that seems viable in the short term.

About all I can see is producing methane for rockets in Asteroids and being in a much shallower gravity well than Earth. That assumes having an economy established in the Asteroid belt already though, and the cost of sustaining a colony on Mars is going to be its own kind of high overhead. It may be expensive to ship fuel off of Earth, but the people to support the refinement process already exist.

At some point there will be a flip where a Mars economy becomes self-sustaining, but so far I'm not seeing it during my lifetime. My guess is that we're going to be tethered to the Earth for a lot longer.

(Basic science is also great but that's the kind of things that governments support and its not self-sustaining any more than Antarctica is -- which I suspect is closer to the model for Mars in the next 50 years).

⬐ elihu

The ability to make methane on Mars is pretty huge, though. If you're mining the asteroid belt and need to refuel your ships, it's a lot easier to ferry fuel from Mars to the belt than haul it all the way from Earth. And methane/oxygen production is likely to be one of the first things we get going on Mars because we'll want our rockets to be able to make return trips back to Earth and we really don't want to haul the extra fuel and oxygen we need all that way.

Most of the economic incentives I suggest don't really start paying off until you have at least some decent infrastructure and a population of semi-permanent residents, though. It might not happen in our lifetimes, but you never know. Once the technology exists, it's just a matter of whether someone has deep enough pockets to make human settlement of Mars a reality. Once someone has a foothold, it gets easier for others to expand on that.

⬐ lamontcg

Again though lifting methane off of Earth is expensive, but ships from the Asteroid belt will naturally be coming back to Earth, so refueling around the Earth or Moon doesn't go out of the way. Mars is a detour, and you have to sink the costs to sustain the colony which offsets the smaller gravity well.

⬐ elihu

I figure that any large-scale asteroid mining operation is likely to employ a fairly complicated supply chain that doesn't ship everything to or from Earth.

Earth would probably continue to manufacture high-value, complex machines like rocket engines and computers and robots. Earth would receive high-value minerals from the asteroid belt like gold or platinum or silver. Maybe nickel or copper. Iron wouldn't be worth it unless shipping costs were really low, aluminum would probably be the same. On the other hand, iron and aluminum might be worth enough on Mars to be worth shipping there. It'd be cheaper than shipping from Earth, anyways. And hauling rocket fuel/oxygen all the way from Earth really doesn't make sense if you can get it on Mars.

Basically, you'd have ships going back and forth between Earth and the belt delivering equipment and bringing back high-value metals, and you'd have another set of ships going back and forth between Mars and the belt hauling fuel and oxygen and maybe bringing back low value metals to be used on Mars. If there are people living in the belt, the ships can bring them whatever else is easier to make on Mars than in space. Maybe food.

It's kind of a weird thought, but I would suggest that a lot of the output of industrial infrastructure in space is going to be used in space rather than returned to Earth. What's the point (you might ask) if it doesn't come back to Earth? Well, people on Earth might for various reasons want to expand their foothold in space, and then once it reaches a certain critical mass those footholds in space become their own thing. Like Europeans coming to America and eventually rebuilding more-or-less what they left behind, but with some differences.

⬐ Supermancho

> The basic idea is to not have all your eggs in one basket.

A moon base is the precursor to a base on Mars and having humans get anywhere near Mars in the next 50 years (if they return or not) is a PR stunt.

⬐ more_corn

Planning for mars is making the moon shot significantly better. Starship can basically replace the whole complicated and expensive orbiter lander situation with a fast, cheap, reusable craft with a fantastic payload capacity. That craft is being designed and built with Mars in mind. It’s also going to be fantastically useful for other things.

⬐ renox

From a species POV sure, from an individual POV living on Mars would be miserable..

⬐ garbagetime

You're presenting a false dichotomy. Our options aren't only (a) live only on Earth, and (b) live on Earth and Mars and potentially other planets. There is, for example, (c) live in man-made structures orbiting the sun at a distance of 1AU, which is debatedly much more sensible than trying to live on Mars.

⬐ terafo

It is much easier to get protected from radiation on mars, than in the outer space. Nobody knows for certain how would childbirth look like in zero g and it's just the one of many problems. Mars is much more hospitable than pure vacuum.

⬐ elkos

By building underground structures?

⬐ DocTomoe

Technically, every structure encapsulating space makes that space "underground" - the distinction between natural rocks or poured concrete as a ceiling is negligible when it comes to radiation protection. Whenever we set up a sunshade, we are protecting ourselves from harmful radiation.

Putting more material between you and radiation by burying into the ground is a good idea, especially when your concrete-pouring capabilities are limited.

⬐ mmmm2

Mars is difficult of course, but it does have resources. You can get water, oxygen, rocket fuel, various ores, etc. It's also not a vacuum, and there are places where the temperature profile is vaguely similar to Earth.

None of that is true in space, unless you're thinking of something I'm not, but like another poster has said, none of this is zero sum. The technology developed to try to settle on mars can be devoted to building large, habitable objects in space if people think that's a better plan. We should also have a moon base, etc. etc.

⬐ oxplot

> much more sensible than trying to live on Mars

It's more sensible if you plan to keep a bunch of people there with constant supply from Earth. Elon wants to build a *self-sustaining* city on Mars. There isn't any other choice of location, be it man-made, or in the solar system:

- that has enough resources, atmosphere, gravity, water to allow a non-trivial population to survive without help from Earth

- that is hospitable to life

I suggest you watch his previous presentation where he talks exactly on why Mars is the destination, and not somewhere else.

⬐ garbagetime

Yes, we are talking about permanent, Earth-independent settlement in space. I didn't mean to imply that the settlements in the man-made structures would be Earth-dependent.

Atmosphere is possible in man-made structures.

Gravity can be simulated in man-made structures.

I don't believe water is particularly scarce, and it is reusable except for when it's used to create fuel.

With the Sun + plants a lot can be done.

Mars, on the other hand, has low gravity and is far away from the Sun.

⬐ garbagetime

The plan isn't to rely on a constant supply from Earth. The idea is to have ecosystems in space, and to have mining operations in space.

You say that only Mars is the only place with enough resources, atmosphere, gravity, and water to allow a non-trivial population to survive without help from Earth. But atmosphere, simulated gravity, and water are all easily provided within man-made structures. Water must be collected from somewhere - but there is no shortage of it, and once you have it, you never need to lose it - it can remain in the ecosystem.

You also say that Mars is the only place other than Earth that is hospitable to life. I don't think Mars is particularly hospitable to life. It is too far from the Sun and the gravity is wrong. I think that it is not very difficult to make a structure that would be hospitable to life.

> I suggest you watch his previous presentation where he talks exactly on why Mars is the destination, and not somewhere else.

I suspect the vast majority of people here have heard at least one presentation on why Mars is a great destination. Mars has fantastic PR thanks largely to Musk.

⬐ asdfasgasdgasdg

How many tons would you need to get out of the gravity well before you had enough orbital manufacturing capacity to begin building that sort of thing? I mean, I love the dream, but I don't know how you can make it a reality.

⬐ elihu

In the video Elon makes an estimate of a million tons to Mars (if I remember correctly) in order to establish an entirely self-sufficient colony there. Building orbital manufacturing would be a different kind of problem, but in some respects it's kind of similar. I suspect it'll make sense to establish a foothold on Mars first (which has a lot of necessary resources and less gravity means you can transition from the planet to orbit much more cheaply) and then maybe use Phobos and/or Deimos as manufacturing hubs for space-based hardware like habitats. Or maybe it makes sense in the short term (before Mars has the necessary infrastructure for big projects) to do manufacturing on the moon.

⬐ mlindner

> live in man-made structures orbiting the sun at a distance of 1AU, which is debatedly much more sensible than trying to live on Mars.

The resources still need to come from somewhere. Either we mine them on Mars, asteroids, or the moon. Mining is a lot easier when you have gravity you can push against to apply force. Rather than move the resources off-body though, its easier and cheaper to use them directly in-situ.

⬐ EvanAnderson

Mars has gravity going for it. Man-made structures at 1AU with as much gravity as Mars would be (as I've heard, at least) a major engineering challenge. The human body doesn't seem to fare too well in freefall, long-term.

⬐ chriswarbo

Your proposed alternative would also benefit from something like Starship.

Of course, we can (and should, eventually) do both.

⬐ more_corn

Better rockets and better spacecraft serve all space exploration and colonization efforts.

⬐ datameta

Hmm. With Starship's lifting capacity, that might become a side project. Maybe they could even sling something to become part of the orbital station and continue to Mars

⬐ kortex

That's true, but there is no fuel source out in space. Outside of Earth orbit, eg Lagrange points, you need fuel deliveries.

On Mars they can make methane with the Sabatier process.

So you have:

- LEO/MEO - vulnerable to asteroid impact ejecta

- GEO/moon/L-points - avoid ejecta, but need regular refueling. If Earth is toast, there goes resupply

- Mars - close enough to the sun for solar, able to conceivably bootstrap in a few centuries

⬐ Isinlor

Actually there is fuel in space - water and sunlight.

You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity from sunlight.

In long term, most likely both Hydrolox and Methalox will be in use.

⬐ maccam94

I think the parent comment meant to say there is no propellant in space.

⬐ Andrew_nenakhov

Solar sails can get you to anywhere in the Solar system. Not very fast, but essentially free. So a swarm of drone ships with solar sails can transport an almost infinite amount of propellant to your refueling bases from mining sites.

⬐ Isinlor

There are comets in space, so there is water and water can be made into propellant.

Ceres also seems to have a lot of water: https://astronomy.com/news/2020/08/ceres-an-ocean-world-in-t...

⬐ irrational

This is the first time I’ve ever heard him speak. Is he always this awkward? Based off of the 5 minutes I watched, he clearly hasn’t gotten to where he is through charisma and public speaking skills. I’m just wondering if this is typical for him.

Also, a million tons to Mars? If each starship lifts 100 tons, that is 10,000 launches. I think he said launch windows only come around every 2 years. He is either planning on building thousands of Starships or taking many years.

⬐ anonporridge

Honestly, I think this is a big part of his brand, to the degree that I wouldn't be shocked to discover he does it intentionally.

His brand really is the super awkward nerd who's somewhere on the spectrum but technically brilliant. This is part of what creates such enamor for him in the engineering/tech community.

He's the king of nerds, and to a community of nerds who are sick and tired of being led by wellkempt MBAs who don't have any deep understanding of the technology they make leadership decisions for, he's a breadth of fresh air.

I'm not making a judgement on whether this brand is actually accurate of who he really is, but that's true of any brand.

⬐ cperciva

Launch windows for leaving Earth orbit come around every couple years. But most of that million tons can be lifted to orbit and assembled well in advance. It's only a relatively small weight which is perishable -- some food and a few humans.

⬐ fasteddie31003

I just wrote 700 lines of code today and I could hardly talk to another human after that. I feel for Elon.

⬐ oh_sigh

Yes, he is always extremely awkward. Stumbling over his own words, telling jokes that only he has context for, going into unscripted mini-tangents without much of a point, "ums" 30x in a row, waiting for applause at inappropriate times. An all around zero when it comes to public speaking. Despite me saying all this, I like Elon when he isn't on twitter. I still own TSLA since the IPO and he has made me a lot of money(I doubt TSLA would be where it was without him, even if the products would have been exactly the same). But he still should take a public speaking crash course, and maybe some beta blockers before these events.

⬐ colechristensen

I think it is good that we have a tech leader succeeding without a polished, coached, focus group approved self presentation.

It’s good to have an entirely different brand of bullshit out there and a person demonstrating that a different type of brain can fit in any role.

⬐ mrspeaker

I think it's a bit of a hack for people like me: everyone has been taught to sound super-confident, make everything super glossy and slick and over-produced. Almost always it's to cover the lack of original or substantial content underlying the delivery.

Now the more confident-sounding and charismatic someone is, the less I believe there will be anything interesting I can learn from them, and the less I trust them!

⬐ djokkataja

> These days, the more confident-sounding and charismatic someone is, the less I believe there is anything interesting I can learn from them, and the less I trust them!

Probably a good metric anyway; if someone puts all their points into charisma, they have opportunity costs in other dimensions (excluding any "natural" charisma that some people may arbitrarily have, to the degree that's actually a thing or not).

⬐ gpm

Honestly, this is "better" than usual for him, in that he's speaking more smoothly. I think it's coming across worse though. He sounds less enthusiastic than usual.

⬐ kortex

Settling Mars is gonna be some multi-generational Bene Gesserit long term thinking shit. In fact when he dies I hope someone else takes up his obsession with Mars or bust. Settling North America took decades. It's like that, except you need a minimum tech tree to even just breathe and grow potatoes.

⬐ ajross

> I think he said launch windows only come around every 2 years. He is either planning on building thousands of Starships or taking many years.

The window to Mars opens every two years or so, but it doesn't need to start at the ground. You can park the payloads in orbit over months or years waiting for the chance to boost to mars. The vehicles themselves are intended to be just shuttles (in the way that the actual Space Shuttle, ironically, was not).

⬐ mlindner

I've been watching his speeches for over 10 years now. He's always this awkward when trying to speak on non-technical topics.

Here's an alternative though where he can talk intelligently and clearly about a subject: https://youtu.be/da3iF2Np51A?t=944

⬐ kadonoishi

He doesn't practice any of his speeches ahead of time. Too busy. When you hear it that's the first time he's said it, generated right there in realtime. Often he'll repeat something he said in another talk, but when it's the same idea that's hard/pointless to avoid.

⬐ liamwire

From my reading of his biography by Ashlee Vance, with imperfect recollection, Musk has always stuttered/struggled with his speech.

⬐ oxplot

> He is either planning on building thousands of Starships or taking many years.

Yes, he does have a plan to build thousands of spaceships. See previous presentations of his from 2016, 2017 and 2019.

Starting a self sustaining civilization on another planet is not a walk in the park. It will take decades and a lot of $$$.

⬐ londons_explore

I worry about the economics of that $$$...

How many people in England invested in the exploration of America and got a return on their investment?

And in today's political landscape it seems even less likely you'd get a decent return on investment - the days of high taxes on the colonies to pay for expansion are over...

⬐ dvirsky

I think the tension between how successful he is and how awkward he is, _is_ a key part of his charisma.

⬐ mattr47

He was born autistic.

⬐ mlindner

Autistic spectrum disorder, but not full on autism.

⬐ shthed

Aspergers

⬐ foota

I've heard him talk in the cybertruck announcement and during a neutral link thing, yes.

⬐ childintime

he was actually comparatively relaxed this time, as if it were his party. also didn't really have much new content and (believe it) none of the prior outlandish ambitions.

⬐ bongoman37

None

⬐ barbacoa

>This is the first time I’ve ever heard him speak. Is he always this awkward?

Elon Musk did a Joe Rogan podcast where they smoked a blunt and drank whiskey. Elon went on random mumbling stoner pontifications. It was cringe. It was so bad it made Tesla stock tank.

⬐ sillysaurusx

Yeah, he's always like this. See his Neuralink presentations.

He got to where he is through a combination of hard work and luck (a large part of which was the birth lottery), like everyone. Imagine if Woz was intensely interested in building Apple, and had Jobs' judgement.

As far as I know, he's planning on a time frame of 200 years to build a sustainable city. He's also intending on building thousands of Starships, by making them as rugged and as cheap as possible without sacrificing safety.

⬐ nickpp

> birth lottery

Elon Musk was born in South Africa so compared to anyone born in the USA or EU he has lost the birth lottery, I guess.

⬐ TwoFerMaggie

I would argue that it doesn't just depend on which country. Being born into a privileged class in a less developed country is often times better than an average family in, let's say, US.

The inequality is much more severe meaning that you might actually have access to more resource and power.

⬐ nickpp

Sure, the type of family one grows up in has a tremendous impact on one’s outcome in life, but Elon deliberately moved to the USA to have access to opportunities Americans have access to. Location matters too.

⬐ pageandrew

> birth lottery

There are plenty of people born into more favorable conditions than Elon Musk, who haven’t had 1/10,000th of the success that he has had.

⬐ Barrin92

Most successful tech entrepreneurs seem to come from more or less his demographics, which is a upper middle/professional class upbringing. I don't think coming from extreme old money generally lends itself to entrepreneurship, there's a goldilocks zone that involves some degree of having to work for a living, having migrated or something along those lines.

⬐ anonporridge

Most people who achieve massive success are born into privilege. Being able to spend your time studying and getting exposed to cutting edge developments rather than struggling to just survive is a massive advantage.

It's largely a necessary, but not sufficient condition for major success.

People that rise from nothing to achieve massive success are the exception that prove the rule.

⬐ ameister14

That's a pretty small group of people to start with.

Apparently there have been only nine people between 1750 and 1950 worth over $100 billion dollars. (Wikipedia, so who knows) Of them, 6 were not born into privilege:

Cornelius Vanderbilt, Stephen Girard, John D. Rockefeller, Carnegie, John Jakob Astor, and Henry Ford.

Including the modern era adds another 9, only 2 of which were not born into privilege - Larry Ellison and Jeff Bezos. You could argue definition of privilege and add Sergey Brin in there maybe.

So depending on your definition of privilege and 'massive success,' you might be only just correct, with 10/18 people worth over $100 billion in the last 250 years or so coming from privilege.

⬐ aradox66

Well put.

I've never seen someone use the phrase "exception that proves the rule" non-ironically. Why is it more than just a class of exceptions? How does it prove anything?

⬐ anonporridge

I use that phrase as, we usually elevate exceptional things because they are exceptions. That elevation itself implies that it's something special that goes against the norms (or against the rule).

So, our awareness of a small number of exceptions proves the fact that there is an underlying rule that applies to the majority of non exceptional instances.

⬐ pageandrew

Yes, if someone is struggling to survive, that will limit their ability to become a world-changing entrepreneur.

That said, the average westerner is not struggling to survive, and the average westerner does not end up founding 3 world changing companies and amassing a wealth of $200 billion. Not even the average birthright 1%er achieves that.

⬐ flyt

Oh, but they are. The average westerner (in the US, at least) is a $400 unexpected bill away from bankruptcy.

Also, Musk was not a founder of Tesla.

⬐ mlindner

> Also, Musk was not a founder of Tesla.

Musk was a co-founder. He joined the company as effectively employee 4. He became chairman of the board after employee 3 (including the two original co-founders) and was the primary designer of the Roadster from that early point. He basically bankrolled the entire original set of funding (around 90% of it).

⬐ fastball

> Also, Musk was not a founder of Tesla.

Lawsuit says otherwise.

⬐ jjulius

The settlement just said that they could call themselves founders. Equally, a settlement could've also been reached that said that everyone involved could call themselves "buttholes".

What doesn't change regardless of that settlement is the fact that Musk didn't actually found (or "start" if folk wanna get all nitpicky bEcAuSe SeTtLeMeNt SaYs So) the company, invested a year after it was founded, and didn't become CEO for another four years.

⬐ fastball

What is a founder?

If I incorporate a company and then bring my friend onboard a day later, is he a founder? Why or why not?

⬐ jjulius

First, there's a difference between bringing someone onboard the day after incorporation and the timeline I mentioned. Second, what are you bringing your friend onboard for? Were you collaborating on this idea with them before you incorporated? Or did you bring them on because you realized you needed more money (eg, Musk)?

Early investor is what he was, along with chairman, then CEO, but it's disingenuous to call him a founder. The settlement you referenced is really just dick swinging.

⬐ virgilp

The legal result of the settlement is that Musk can call himself a (co)founder, and so can Straubel & Wright. Even Eberhard agreed to that.

You may personally feel he's not entitled to the title, but that's just it, a personal feeling. He's literally legally entitled to have this title. Why contradict people on the internet, and say "actually, Musk is not a founder of Tesla"? If anything, it is (right now) disingenuous to claim he is not a founder, given that maybe not all people know the full history and some may believe that he didn't (legally) earn the title.

⬐ sillysaurusx

Legal isn’t some gotcha. He is entitled. But he wasn’t a founder of Tesla.

I think pg would agree. He’s made the distinction in the past, and he knows more about startups than pretty much anybody. You can’t onboard a founder; it’s not a personal feeling, and some legal ruling doesn’t change that.

⬐ virgilp

"he says/ she says". I think pg would disagree. Let's see if he intervenes directly? Otherwise, we can just discard his speculated opinions.

And if we appeal to authority, there's actual evidence that Musk (who knows a lot about startups!) feels he was a founder. So should we believe Musk, until pg says otherwise?

⬐ pverghese

Don't buy an iPhone you'll be 1000 less away from bankruptcy

⬐ jandrewrogers

The average American is not an unexpected $400 bill away from bankruptcy. This has been debunked countless times. Per the US government's own detailed statistics (BLS), the median household has $1000 per month leftover after all ordinary expenses. That's literally money available to piss away on whatever after all the basic lifestyle expenses, so it will definitely cover a $400 expense.

Americans have a lot of discretionary income. While there is a part of the population that cannot afford an unexpected $400 expense, that only applies to 10-15% of the population, per Federal Reserve studies.

⬐ lamontcg

how many people would have a $50,000 expense set their retirement savings back at last a couple years, if not bankrupt them?

none of these people are building a rocket company in their lives.

⬐ ameister14

$400 =/= $50000

Also Jeff Bezos was born to a high school attending mom who worked as a secretary and went to night school after she quickly became a single mom - he built a rocket company

⬐ sillysaurusx

Good lord. Jeff Bezos worked in finance and had a six figure job lined up if Amazon failed.

I can’t figure out if this is an HN thing, but this cult mentality of “anyone can do it” needs to die out.

⬐ ameister14

I honestly don't understand. If your point is someone who has only worked jobs for minimum wage is never going to suddenly start a rocket company I'd say you're correct. Especially if someone built or found their safety net on their own, I don't think we should begrudge them having it.

How do you think this works? Do you think 'anyone can do it' means winning the lottery? It means working really hard, getting lucky along the way, and being smart - that likely means getting into finance if it's the 80's and early 90's and tech if it's late nineties and aughts. It doesn't happen overnight.

The reality is, though, that you don't have to be born to millionaires to be one of the richest people in the world.

⬐ sillysaurusx

Am American. Did go bankrupt. Bill was $4k. Hospital trip.

You’re quoting the fed and seem a little out of touch with the realities that most Americans face on a day to day basis. I didn’t grow up in a bad part of town. I’m a successful programmer.

⬐ jandrewrogers

I am probably more in touch with that reality than most people here. I have decades of first-hand experience with the economics of being poor in America, and had to dig out of holes much larger than $4k. Never went bankrupt, though I came close once. I am financially comfortable now but I still have a lot of contact with that world, and am familiar with their finances.

The Federal Reserve and BLS data accurately reflects the realities average Americans face day to day in my experience. Individual situations are always somewhat unique and varies a bit depending on where you live in the US, but the statistics are broadly correct.

⬐ CharlesW

> That said, the average westerner is not struggling to survive…

This is an extremely privileged and out-of-touch POV.

⬐ signatoremo

Care to prove your POV? The average people of country like China isn’t struggling to survive. The average westerner — Americans, Europeans, Japanese, is definitely not either.

⬐ fartcannon

Its not even that complex. If there was an identical Elon that came one year after Elon, he wouldn't be able to have what Elon has. It's all luck of the draw all the way down.

⬐ varjag

How about why no idential Elon came the year before Elon? It's not like the idea of powered landing was unheard of, and tech ingredients were there for arguably decades.

⬐ ralfd

> Its not even that complex. If there was an identical Elon that came one year after Elon, he wouldn't be able to have what Elon has.

The universe actually did run that experiment: Kimbal Musk is the younger brother of Elon. He too was born at the right time, the explosion of the word wide web, and made very favorable investments and is presumably filthy rich. But he doesn't have the drive to build rockets.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/11/11/the-ot...

It is similar to Jeff Bezos brother Mark. Mark Bezos lead by every conventional measure a successful life: high managing career in advertising and at a charity non-profit, wife and 4 kids. But without his brother he wouldn't have a Wiki entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Bezos

⬐ sillysaurusx

People seem to be confusing birth lottery with determination. Working hard is table stakes. But you seem to imply that anyone who isn’t poor can do it, if only they work hard enough.

I think this mindset is mistaken.

⬐ kortex

I love how some folks are like "Elon isn't a real engineer!" and then he starts going on a tangent in the middle of a presser about how flanges are a PITA to seal once you exceed a few hundred bar (just over a few thousand PSI), and how welding improves the plumbing significantly.

Like, what!? That's not how C-suite bigwigs talk. That's primo enginerd banter.

⬐ Waterluvian

I have no opinion to express on Elon but I will say that I’ve heard non-technical managers lap up stuff like that in meetings with the engineers and then regurgitate it elsewhere.

If I had to guess his technical competence is somewhere in the middle of the distribution of opinions on the matter. I’m sure he’s fine.

⬐ anonporridge

Certainly plausible, though I've seen enough interviews with him talking to other engineers where he can pro-actively engage in a freeflowing conversation to believe that it's far more than mere regurgitation.

⬐ mlindner

This one is a favorite: https://youtu.be/da3iF2Np51A?t=944

⬐ jowday

This is definitely the sense I get when I hear him discuss ML.

⬐ mlindner

I feel like he has a much worse understanding of ML than other subjects. He's not nearly as mathematically inclined as he is engineering inclined and ML is heavy on math.

⬐ mlindner

I've never heard a manager be able to talk like this. https://youtu.be/da3iF2Np51A?t=944

Have you had an experience like that?

⬐ kortex

Sure but if you ever listen to his longer interviews, in particular those with Tim Dodd (Everyday Astronaut), it's very clear he has a deep understanding of rocket mechanics, production, logistics, launch pad development, etc. It's well beyond manager-just-regurgitating-stuff they hear. One interview he stops briefly and gets into some nitty gritty about hold-downs on the starship pad or something.

⬐ JaimeThompson

He also has a deep understanding of how important government assistance was to getting SpaceX where it is now but that hasn't stopped him from trying to stop others from benefiting from the same.

He shows a lack of rational thought in regards too SpaceX that is sometimes rather worrying. Take, for example, the time he smoked a blunt on camera which isn't exactly what one of his largest customers likes to see in their executives they are entrusting with launching one of a kind national security assets.

I'm glad SpaceX has an actual professional management team to run most day to day operations.

⬐ mlindner

> He also has a deep understanding of how important government assistance was to getting SpaceX where it is now but that hasn't stopped him from trying to stop others from benefiting from the same.

That is false. The only companies he has objected to are ULA which was getting a 1 billion dollar a year retainer (effectively a subsidy) from the US government, which is rightfully bad, and Blue Origin which basically wanted NASA to bankroll it's entire development program with little of their own money spent. SpaceX spends a lot of it's own money on things and then is thankful for the little bit on top that NASA has provided to them for portions of development. In no case that I can remember has SpaceX investment on a project been less than 50%, and it is often 100% but with a guaranteed government customer.

⬐ JaimeThompson

That isn't correct. He has spoken out against EV subsidies recently.

https://readon.substack.com/p/-musk-doesnt-want-subsidies

⬐ drsnow

Weed use makes no difference as to his leadership abilities or trustworthiness

⬐ JaimeThompson

It does in the eyes of the US military which is the customer in this case.

⬐ panick21_

> but that hasn't stopped him from trying to stop others from benefiting from the same.

That's complete nonsense. Unlike others SpaceX has never really attack other space companies. Musk has been supportive of other space companies.

SpaceX busted open the establishment in both DoD and NASA so the contracts are fairly competent, and everybody coming in the industry benefits from that.

SpaceX just recently lost a contract about Commercial Leo Destination but unlike BlueOrigin they didn't release a pamphlet, an army of lobbyist and a bunch of lawyers.

Can you be specific of what actions SpaceX has taken to prevent others space company from gaining government contracts (other then competing for them)?

> Take, for example, the time he smoked a blunt on camera which isn't exactly what one of his largest customers likes to see in their executives they are entrusting with launching one of a kind national security assets.

Something that had basically no impact other then some not really serious slap on the wrist because the military is federal and not state law and they had to pretend to give a shit.

It wasn't the smartest thing to do but to hold that up as some great example about how he is a bad manager is ridiculous for a company that has been as successful as SpaceX.

> I'm glad SpaceX has an actual professional management team to run most day to day operations.

A lot of those manager are engineers that came up in SpaceX. Early on it was basically Elon and his secretary and a group of senior technical team lead that did everything. Musk was heavily in involved in recruitment, supply chain and other typical management things.

He is very capable of doing management work for small or large company but whenever he can avoid it, he doesn't do it, because its not where he adds most value beyond overall strategy.

⬐ CharlesW

> Unlike others SpaceX has never really attack other space companies.

I mean, Musk hasn't called Bezos a pedo (yet), but you haven't been paying attention if you believe that.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-mocks-jeff-bezos-aft...

⬐ panick21_

You mean when Blue did everything they could to prevent SpaceX from gaining a contract. Blue complained to GAO and lost. Then Blue started a propaganda campaign propagating lies about SpaceX and tried to get is bought politicians to force NASA to change, then they sued NASA.

After all of that, with SpaceX never actually doing anything to Blue, all they did was offer a way better option to the government.

⬐ mlindner

This was a case where Bezos wanted NASA to fund it's entire development program from scratch at a cost much higher than NASA ever funded SpaceX's development program. See my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30297198

⬐ JaimeThompson

In a recent WSJ he, Musk, spoke out against government subsidies. I don't mind such subsidies but I do mind when people who benefit from government help want to stop others from doing the same.

⬐ panick21_

There is a difference between government contracts and subsidies.

And he multiple time argued against subsidies that Tesla would benefit from more then anybody else.

⬐ belter

That might be the case for rocket mechanics but watching this interview between:

https://youtu.be/DxREm3s1scA?t=3760 1.02.40

and

https://youtu.be/DxREm3s1scA?t=5641 1:34.01

looks more like the case of the manager repeating stuff heard from the engineers discussion.

Lex Fridman asked the questions, was the one that clearly layout the challenges, and kindly enough repeated the answer that Elon Musk was not providing. Meaning its not a problem of "vector space". Humans interpret the world and give semantic meaning to the scene in front of them.

He repeated it several times as Elon Musk answers completely missed the critical challenges, until he was perceptive enough to pick and regurgitate back the examples Lex Fridman was providing. Like the one where a human would not miss the fact that although some children temporarily disappear from your field a vision as you overtake a school bus for example, they are likely to appear in front of you as they will try to cross from the front of the bus to the other side of the road.

The interview is actually concerning, as its basically Lex Fridman explaining to Elon Musk the challenges and points he is supposed to address, and throwing him a soft ball while he was running around as this is simple, easy problem of creating a "vector space".

Curiously he does pick up on hints a bit later, but still concludes and reluctantly goes on to declare the problem will be fully solved by middle 2022... At 1:26:48: https://youtu.be/DxREm3s1scA?t=5206

⬐ belter

Which one of these personalities is he, when making statements about Tesla FSD?

Edit: The answer to this question will be highly relevant during the lawsuits that will follow, the first time the Beta FSD kills somebody.

⬐ mlindner

As someone who has been following him for a long time and as someone who likes him a lot, I feel his understanding of ML and technologies related to FSD to be the worst of his knowledge. He fails to answer interesting technical questions when they are posed to him by audiences in the past. His lack of understanding of ML and FSD make me highly doubt that Tesla will ever achieve it. I still like Tesla and they have revolutionized an industry, but they need to completely end the FSD program and move on with mass production of cool vehicles. It's a boondoggle.

⬐ panick21_

Engineers can never be wrong about anything. Any engineer making any statement that is wrong must be fundamentally evil.

⬐ JaimeThompson

He has been making such statements for 5+ years so I suggest he isn't being an engineer when making them, he is being a PR person.

⬐ more_corn

Elon is wrong about FSD being easy and about his approach, and his timeline. If he can be wrong about those things with grace it’ll be fine. I don’t know if he can do that. His track record for admitting he was wrong hasn’t been great.

⬐ dymk

The kind that raises capital, probably

⬐ vardump

Capital... for SpaceX? Because Tesla is already self-funding, with practically no capital access requirements.

⬐ toomuchtodo

California DMV is on the record that the driver is responsible while FSD is active, which is why Tesla doesn’t have to provide FSD data.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

⬐ ipspam

Your comment illustrates the absurdity of said lawsuit. No one has been run over yet.

⬐ belter

By pure luck.

And any driver facing several years in jail for an accident caused while using the Beta FSD, will engage a proper legal team. Any legal team worth its salt, will immediately subpoena Tesla for documents.

They will present a legal case, that will include past YouTube videos and Tesla company presentations. They will state that their client was misled by the company statements, Twitter and YouTube endorsers, and the contents of the car documentation were minor standard disclaimers.

Contrarily to what many think, most legal teams are actually pretty smart and astute;-)

⬐ Retric

Tesla autopilot has already been driving during multiple accidents that killed people. Tesla the company isn’t at significant risk from these accidents or related lawsuits as the driver and thus their insurance is still considered legally responsible.

Further, car accidents in general have relatively low payouts even when someone is blatantly at fault. Even being held responsible for say 10 fatalities per year would be a rounding error on their balance sheet, which is consistent with other industries that have killed vastly more people via things like pollution.

It’s reasonable to suggest human lives should have more value, but when you look at an airplane crash that kills hundreds it’s mostly an issue for an airlines reputation.

⬐ belter

A legal theory that might be challenged soon. We will see what comes out of this case:

"Two people killed in fiery Tesla crash with no one driving" https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/18/22390612/two-people-kille...

⬐ Retric

The car wasn’t empty, it’s just nobody was in the drivers seat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L18Jhi84wT8

Aka people did dumb thing in car, and then died. But again even if they are held either 100% responsible or say 50% the payouts on such lawsuits don’t amount to that much.

⬐ belter

That is called the Ford Pinto theory...

"Ford Pinto" https://philosophia.uncg.edu/phi361-matteson/module-1-why-do...

"...Thus, Ford knew that the Pinto represented a serious fire hazard when struck from the rear, even in low-speed collisions. Ford officials faced a decision. Should they go ahead with the existing design, thereby meeting the production timetable but possibly jeopardizing consumer safety? Or should they delay production of the Pinto by redesigning the gas tank to make it safer and thus concede another year of subcompact dominance to foreign companies? Ford not only pushed ahead with the original design but stuck to it for the next six years.

What explains Ford’s decision? The evidence suggests that Ford relied, at least in part, on cost-benefit reasoning, which is an analysis in monetary terms of the expected costs and benefits of doing something. There were various ways of making the Pinto’s gas tank safer. Although the estimated price of these safety improvements ranged from only $5 to $8 per vehicle, Ford evidently reasoned that the increased cost outweighed the benefits of a new tank design...

How exactly did Ford reach that conclusion? We don’t know for sure, but an internal report, “Fatalities Associated with Crash-Induced Fuel Leakage and Fires,” reveals the cost-benefit reasoning that the company used in cases like this. This report was not written with the pinto in mind; rather, it concerns fuel leakage in rollover accidents (not rear-end collisions), and its computations applied to all Ford vehicles, not just the Pinto. Nevertheless, it illustrates the type of reasoning that was probably used in the Pinto case.

In the “Fatalities” report, Ford engineers estimated the cost of technical improvements that would prevent gas tanks from leaking in rollover accidents to be $11 per vehicle. The authors go on to discuss various estimates of the number of people killed by fires from car rollovers before settling on the relatively low figure of 180 deaths per year. But given that number, how can the value of those individuals’ lives be gauged?..."

⬐ Retric

I know, but just because it’s unpleasant does not mean it’s untrue.

⬐ kortex

I think he's more in-depth about the rocket stuff than the Tesla stuff. He seems to exhibit more of the broad sentiments and more manager-esque talk when it comes to FSD.

I don't know how that plays into legal ramifications at all; I'm sure there will be the inevitable "well Elon said it can drive itself and make breakfast and solve P=NP!" but I have no clue if that carries any legal weight and frankly I don't care. He's a bit of a massive douche (no worse than bog-standard billionaires) but he has nerd chops and done a good job of hyping electric cars and space.

Honestly I kinda wish he'd just focus on the rocket stuff and lay off the FSD until it's a bit more mature exactly because of the media and lawyers chomping at the bit.

⬐ fasteddie31003

I just wrote 700 lines of code today and I could hardly talk to another human after that. I feel for Elon.

⬐ panick21_

One of the secrets about Musk is that he is actually a much better speaker when he just goes of on technical stuff like that.

The problem with Musk is that when you ask him an even slightly open question, he always basically goes to the what he considers the fundamental answer. That's why so many of his answer are the same and people who know him well can already tell what most answers to most question will be.

However good interviewer can actually lead him into explaining into going into actual detail and ask smart follow up question and his answers are usually very good. The problem is, far to often he is either doing presentations like this with Q/A or he does podcast aimed at general audiences.

The best interviews with him are with people like Everyday Austronaut where he gets to follow up multible time to actually get out really good information.

I wish he would do more interviews like that, where people can prepare questions and be more direct at what they want to learn. Musk comes of much better in interviews like that and its where you actually learn more of the technical information. We understand that reusable rockets are important, but not why the engine doesn't blow up after 5 runs.

⬐ mlindner

This is a good example of that as well: https://youtu.be/da3iF2Np51A?t=944

⬐ kortex

Yep, I can really feel the friction from the gears in his head when he's trying to explain something at a general level, or express broad empty platitudes about space, electric cars, AI, or whatnot. That's something I've definitely struggled with, and also why I dig it when he shuts off the filter and starts talking about leaky flanges or deleting some crufty noise-absorbing padding that was the engineering equivalent of the parable of monkeys with a ladder. Like if I wanted to hear billionaires bloviating boring bullet points about business buzzwords, I'd listen to Bezos.

⬐ onion2k

The numbers on mass to orbit are fascinating. To date humans have sent 15,517 tons of stuff into space. SpaceX wants to be able to send 15,500 per year with a single Starship, and Elon wants a fleet of 10. That's amazing. That really is "we can have a moonbase now" levels of ambition.

⬐ fireflymetavrse

>15,517 tons

What is the source for this and how was this calculated?

⬐ onion2k

The source is SpaceX's presentation in the video. How it was calculated ... Elon guessed?

⬐ dividedbyzero

It'll be very interesting to see how and if that's going to work out. There will have to be a lot of actual demand for that launch capacity, and it'll have to build up fairly quickly, else SpaceX may not be around anymore when those payloads are ready. I guess lots of companies could do with some zero-g R&D, but actually building a platform to do this, how long will that take? Asteroid mining seems to be a long way from becoming practical, there aren't that many short-term military launches. What's going to keep them afloat for the first decade-or-so of this? Will they get their costs down far enough to make space tourism viable?

I mean, despite all the violent optimism from the Elon Musk fan base, I'm pretty stoked to see how this will pan out. Historical game changer and within a decade everyone will wear Made-on-Mars space foam sneakers to their annual vacation to orbit? Incremental and boring like, neat, Netflix has its own fleet of broadcasting satellites and Adidas is saving 3% annually due to some R&D they do in orbit? Or will it fizzle out entirely, great tech but arrived too early?

⬐ xiphias2

The demand for cheap satellite internet that Starship can provide is clear. Just look in another thread about Starlink of people complaining that the demand is not met fast enough.

⬐ onion2k

There will have to be a lot of actual demand for that launch capacity...

Demand is often a chicken-and-egg problem. Having the capacity available will go a long way to creating the demand. There are plenty of incredibly wealthy people who could be persuaded to build the first moonbase, space hotel, low-gravity manufacturing plant, manned Earth observatory ... and a practically endless list of things we've not thought up yet ... but they can't do those things now because even if they paid the money there just isn't the launch capacity to do it. Putting the capacity in place fixes that problem and frees those people to start spending.

⬐ geerlingguy

In a somewhat unique occurrence, the event was close to starting on-time.

⬐ mitchellgoffpc

I was shooketh

⬐ renewiltord

This dude is genuine and it's fucking great. Love it. Inspirational dude.

⬐ spookyuser

Exactly - to the people saying he speaks awkwardly, I prefer Elon speaking awkwardly and genuinely so much more than Sundar Pichai or Tim Cook giving a perfectly spoken but essentially 100% marketing bs presentation.

⬐ spookyuser

Exactly - to the people saying he speaks awkwardly, I prefer Elon speaking awkwardly and genuinely so much more than Sundar Pichai or Tim Cook giving a perfectly spoken but essentially 100% marketing bs presentation.

⬐ justahuman74

The chamber melting on raptor2 is concerning. I hope they find a solution

⬐ rklaehn

Remember that they are trying to push raptor 2 to even higher pressures, and try to be as efficient as possible. And they want the engine to be rapidly reusable hundreds of times.

I am sure they could run the engines at a lower chamber pressure with massive amounts of film cooling and have it be safe for a single launch. It would still be a very high performance engine by today's standards. 330 bar chamber pressure is just nuts.

Also, if the biggest remaining problem is the chamber melting, that means that they think they have the pumps under control. Which is a major achievement on its own.

⬐ colechristensen

Not really concerning. When you are designing a rocket engine that’s what it does before you’re done, it melts and explodes. In fact it’s what all rocket engines do past their limits. If that wasn’t the problem you were having, it would be concerning.

⬐ 6510

<sarcasm>Who would have thought space travel was much "easier" than self driving cars.

⬐ udbhavs

Colliding into random objects is pretty unlikely in space, even in the asteroid belt

⬐ wffurr

As hard and complex as spacecraft are, they seem like tractable engineering problems.

The sheer raw complexity of the human built environment and traffic is very daunting for computing. Calculating orbits and rocket burns seems trivial by comparison.

⬐ jcun4128

Ha looks like there's a drone flying around watching the thing get stacked at night

Twin launch music composed by Vangelis /s

Wow, hope they keep succeeding as they have

⬐ sidcool

Would it be easier building a huge habitable space station near Mars than on the surface of Mars itself.

Reason why near Mars if because we want redundancy for life. So at a safe distance from Earth.

⬐ rklaehn

Once mars settlement gets going, the moons of mars Phobos and Deimos also make for attractive targets.

It might be that once starship works, we do all kinds of things, and it turns out that asteroids work better than planetary surfaces. So the belt becomes the focus of economic activity, and the mars colony is just a novelty kept alive by the Musk Foundation.

⬐ blable2

You just know their next CEO is going to be boring as hell.

⬐ vernie

Anyone ask about the jacket?

⬐ credit_guy

Elon Musk's greatest contribution to humankind will be to end war. In a few short years from now, the Reagan era brilliant pebbles will be economically feasible. Which means nobody will be able to keep the nuclear gun pointed at America's head anymore. At which point the US will make Russia and China (and maybe Pakistan and India) an offer they can't refuse: give up all your nukes, please. We'll denuclearize ourselves too, but a bit later.

If you don't like trillion dollar annual defense spendings, here's the cheapest way to get rid of that: make sure you're the only guy with nukes.

In which case, you will stop seeing things like Russia wanting to invade Ukraine.

⬐ me_me_me

PSA

Link to Common Sense Skeptics channel shredding the whole idea of Starship starting from the rocket to logistics of Mars settlement to bits where even one point means total dealbreaker for the whole idea.

TLDR The whole thing is a wishful thinking at best if not an outright scam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDYt-phUAxY&list=PL-eVf9RWeo...

⬐ stvkoch

nothing better than letting the earth be destroyed so that the idea of multi-planetary life has relevance. better future for humanity is have a better earth

⬐ chriswarbo

What a load of nonsense. Going to space lets us have a better Earth! Even at a simple level, we use satellites to monitor sea level, methane emissions (even identifying leaky pipelines from orbit!), atmospheric levels of CO2, NO2, SO2, etc., vegetation cover, ice cover, and on and on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_observation_satellite#En...

⬐ macco

Yeah, more CGI. This fixation on Mars seems to me like a scam/distraction to secure funds.

⬐ nullifidian

Transport is not the main technical issue in making life multi-planetary. For the amount of time Elon spends talking about it, SpaceX spends surprisingly little time on the actual research that is needed for making an actual Martian colony self-sustainable.

⬐ wiz21c

That'd be so great if Musk would apply his might to help us (his fellow humans) solve our current problems instead of inventing a future for the 0.001%...

⬐ thecrumb

You'd think someone with Elon's money would spend a few bucks on a public speaking course on Udemy or something.

⬐ renewiltord

Some people have to conform. You've got to wear a tailored suit, you've got to sound slick, you've got to have your message clean and correct. But that's the point. It's because you're not exceptional so you have to meet the standard signals of being bare competent. But you take a generational talent, and he can sound however he sounds because it's obvious he is what he is and just being himself is the best thing he can be.

He can suck at all these things but you know he's one of a kind. Or maybe you don't think it. But it doesn't matter. There's enough people who do. And they'll listen.

⬐ sfblah

I may not agree with all of his ideas, but I find his speaking style just fine. Honestly, I prefer someone who reaches for words but says what he means to say.

⬐ nixarn

Totally agree. I like his style a lot, it's a normal conversation, he is who he is and it's honest. But every time he speaks someone has to point out how he's not the greatest presenter, even if he presents the most amazing new things.

⬐ extheat

He has Asperger’s syndrome

⬐ nwiswell

Realistically so does half of Hacker News

⬐ smlacy

He takes too many "smart drugs"

⬐ ChrisMarshallNY

I’ve been doing public speaking for many years, and I’ve never gotten particularly good at it.

Not my strong suit. My writing is fairly decent, though.

⬐ sillysaurusx

> implying that Elon's speaking style is bad

It's a relief that it's not some slick slide deck.

⬐ deegles

Watch it again and count the “ums” and “uuhs”… just one hour of practice before standing in front of so many people would have made this a much better presentation.

⬐ panick21_

The Raptor 2 engine is just an absurd. The original specs were already kind of insane. But Raptor 2 is an monster. They really pushed already significantly into a second generation design before first flight. Raptor 2 is not just a slight upgrade, its a huge upgrade.

If it can actually launch multiple times a day without any refurbishment, it will simply totally break space travel as we have known it. This engine makes everything else possible.

⬐ chasd00

I like how small and slender Raptor 2 is compared to Raptor 1. The turbo pump looks even scarier than usual though. It's amazing that something so small is producing 100k HP (the pump turbine).

⬐ ewjt

I thought 100k HP was either too incredible or a typo. Then I looked it up:

“You def don’t want electric pumps on a rocket engine! Raptor turbopumps alone need 100,000 horsepower per engine. That’s not a typo.” —Elon Musk

x 32 engines. Amazing! For comparison, this is an internal combustion engine with 100k HP:

https://www.zmescience.com/science/biggest-most-poweful-engi...

⬐ tim333

>You def don’t want electric pumps on a rocket engine

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Lab_Electron has them and made it to orbit

⬐ panick21_

Yes, for a tiny rocket and they are not using them for anything larger.

Its doable if you throw batteries out of your second stage when flying.

But no company that makes a rocket payload then maybe a few 100kg would ever use them. And for sure not launch humans or go to Mars.

Even if you assume gigantic improvements in batteries by 400% you wouldn't use if for anything major.

It has potential for in space applications as there you can charge it with sunlight.

⬐ iliketrains

That is interesting, so could you replace the biggest and most powerful internal combustion engine in the world that weighs 2,300 tons by [whatever powers] turbopumps from a raptor engine and get the same power output? Where is the catch? Less fuel efficient? Less torque?

Edit: What I meant to ask was: Can one use "whatever is powering the turbopumps and delivering the 100k HP" to power say a ship propeller, instead of that 2.3k ton internal combustion engine. Like, make some variant of raptor engine that delivers this power to a shaft.

⬐ extrapickles

You could in theory do that. The downsides are that a turbopump needs comparatively perfect fuel, requires liquid oxygen instead of air, and would be inefficient in non-rocket applications (the ‘waste’ has other uses like cooling/protecting the rocket nozzle in some rockets).

Think of it as an engineering tradeoff where you get to pick 2 things to optimize for: weight, efficiency and size. A turbopump (and preburner) optimizes for weight/size. A ships engine picks efficiency twice, making it massive and heavy.

⬐ bagels

The turbopump on its own won't do anything. The turbopump takes the 100k hp, and uses that to compress fuel and liquid oxygen. It's powered by the engine. It doesn't produce power on its own.

⬐ gpm

IIRC it's powered by a relatively small in size pre-burner - and I think it's fair to assume that he was including that pre-burner in his comparison.

⬐ avmich

Also known as gas generator, and while it's small, in Raptor two of them consume all (or practically all?) of both fuel and oxidizer in tanks.

⬐ tim333

Here's a guy with a 48,000 HP marine turbine for doing ships propellers. https://www.navyhistory.org/2016/12/commercial-use-of-marine...

And some other images https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Rolls-Royce+MT+30&sxsrf=AP...

It's not as small and powerful as the SpaceX one but I guess it needs some extra bits. Also it runs off air rather than liquid oxygen which must reduce power a tad.

⬐ Gwypaas

Used everywhere, more complex and has a more limited operating parameters though. In the maritime industry it has generally been military or high speed ferries using them. Essentially, if your ship can get away with a larger more mechanically simple engine it is more economical because as long as they stay on the surface you are not paying the fuel price of also lifting the engine.

Commercial jets use the same mechanics with their turbofan engines. That is why they are growing huge, we're just encasing the propeller inside the cowling, with some other nice side-effects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboshaft

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbofan

⬐ causi

Every time I look at jet engine diagrams I get chills thinking about what it must take to make mechanical parts that function with that much precision for that many revolutions under that much heat and pressure.

⬐ chasd00

like many here, I've spent my professional life in software. You can goto walmart, buy a $500 laptop, hook it up to free wifi at a coffee shop and you have access to all the tools you need to build cutting edge software technology. That is not the case in meatspace. Going from an empty space in a factory to a jet engine ready to be installed on a plane blows me away on so many different levels.

⬐ byw

You could potentially use a turbine engine as a generator in a hydrocarbon-electric setup. It would in theory be lighter, simpler, and require less maintenance.

For now there's already a lot of momentum with ICE and they are very polished products. But I think the potential for turbine is there given the shift towards electrification.

Some hurdles include working with materials that can tolerate very high stress, and finding ways to improve efficiency from significant heat loss.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Microturbine

⬐ hoseja

The raptor burns highly purified methalox for a couple minutes at most. The ship engines have to work for weeks and years economically running on bunker fuel. From fundamental thermodynamics, the bigger an engine is the more efficient it is but you obviously need to compromise on that in a rocket.

⬐ avmich

Soyuz rocket takes 9 minutes to get to orbit. Raptors are multiple-use engines, their lifetimes could be hours of work, which is a lot for rocket engines. However it could be possible to increase lifetimes at least another order of magnitude - an NK-33 engine once run uninterrupted for 14 thousands seconds. Consumed a lot of kerosene.

RL-10 can avoid too big stresses, at least not heating to high temperatures, so this is another hint on possibly long working rocket engines...

⬐ gpm

It's a totally different problem.

Yes it's less efficient, you spent all this energy cooling off all the fuel and oxidizer to cryogenic temperatures before using it. The turbopumps in the raptors are also running very far off from stochiometric fuel mixtures (which is fine in the rocket because they're exhaust is used as fuel for the next stage) - which means if you're just using it for the pump your not actually burning most of the fuel. The exhaust is also really hot, and if you're not somehow using that energy it's definitely inefficient.

None of those issues matter to the rocket. Energy used on the ground to cool down propellants is "free", the colder the better because it means you can fit more propellants in the same tanks. The exhaust is just being piped into the main combustion chamber, so it will eventually be fully combusted extracting the left over chemical energy. The heat of the exhaust (after the main chamber) is the whole point, with a nozzle converting it into kinetic energy.

You've also got a bunch of safety issues. High pressures, liquid oxygen, and so on.

⬐ chasd00

> You've also got a bunch of safety issues.

Yeah, plus, there’s no fixing a broken or poorly running turbo pump turbine. It either works or explodes, no inbetween.

⬐ ksec

>This engine makes everything else possible.

I have seen lot of tweets ( from highly intelligent people and engineers ) suggesting Starship is not possible. Raptor 2 is not possible.

But now it seems it really is coming.

It is easy to fault him for robotaxi and FSD, which a lot of people do. But sometimes he really does the impossible.

⬐ mlindner

All the tweets from people who should know better tells me that even smart people are highly influenced by propaganda and bad takes from the media.

⬐ johnyzee

Seriously, it's only a matter of time before Elon Musk announces the space elevator.

⬐ panick21_

Space elevator on earth doesn't really make much sense. On Mars maybe, it will happen on Mars way before it happens on earth.

⬐ avmich

Space elevators conflict with satellites, so not really advisable.

⬐ panick21_

On Mars it would actually clash with one of the moons. But if you coordinate 1000s of pods correctly you can let the elevator wiggle so it never gets hit by the moon. It sounds insane but its doable.

Check out the talk about elevators from Mars Society conference.

⬐ traceelement

"He" does it. Our god and savior.

⬐ czottmann

Annoying, isn't it. SpaceX, like all worthwhile and impressing endeavours in the past, is the work of a legion of people in front of and behind the curtain!

⬐ hoseja

The chamber is still melting. Hopefully they can figure that one out.

⬐ Azrael3000

Source? Several raptors have been fired for long duration and even multiple times. If the chambers would melt that should not be possible.

Of course RUDs of engines happened but they were the exception and not the norm.

⬐ virgilp

Also, the only non-intentional engine RUD that I know of is SN8, where debris from ground destroyed the engine avionics at takeoff. Any other incident?

⬐ nycdotnet

Elon himself said this was one of the major remaining problems in last night’s presentation.

⬐ panick21_

But I think what he means is that currently the chamber gets to much damage to be full reusable on a daily bases over a long period of time, not that it doesn't work at all.

⬐ londons_explore

If they are making such big upgrades before even getting to orbit, it suggests the rest of their design is falling short of expectations on mass/performance, and they need more thrust to make up for it.

⬐ panick21_

No, they are always evolving everything as fast as they possible can. They don't have a 'target performance' that they need to hit because the military or somebody told them.

They are just iterating each individual part pushing towards ever higher performance.

⬐ KptMarchewa

Or that they don't shy from making changes just because of the fact that current design is "good enough".

⬐ causi

I wonder how much an orbital flight would cost if it were reduced to, say, the price of fuel plus ten percent.

⬐ bagels

About 10k-100k based on 10m launch cost and 100 tonne capacity.

⬐ inasio

My theory is that they aim to disrupt Earth travel (airlines). Elon pointed out that the reliability of Starship would exceed that of commercial airplanes, and the fuel costs are not that different than, say, a 747. Fewer moving parts than an airplane, less human costs, order of magnitude faster...

⬐ verytrivial

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can you explain what you are comparing?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrust-specific_fuel_consump...

My understanding is that rockets are good at getting a small mass to move really quickly. They will never win moving a lot of mass within the atmosphere. The fuel costs are radically different.

A 747 can lift and land ~80% of Starship's design cargo but uses something like 7 times less fuel.

⬐ DrBazza

> A 747 can lift and land ~80% of Starship's design cargo but uses something like 7 times less fuel.

That's why something like the Sabre engine will always be of interest for a proper space plane.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABRE_(rocket_engine)

⬐ verytrivial

Yeah, I've kept a close but unfortunately deeply skeptical eye on that technology. Seems that all the tolerances are razor thin and all the failure modes catastrophic. Like, water vapour in the pre-cooler tubes? This is waaay out there in engineering terms IMHO.

Reading the recent heat exchanger news [1] the are very careful to talk about Mach 5 airflow temperatures, not velocity. Surely it the product of these two that produce the mind-boggling heat flux that the pre-cooler is tasked with cooling. It feels like they're going to keep carving out smaller and smaller targets until they run out of money.

[1] https://reactionengines.co.uk/reaction-engines-test-programm...

⬐ panick21_

If you look at the cost the calculated originally for the Skylon, it doesn't actually beat Falcon 9 even.

And when I listened to some presentation with the people involved, it seem they had no real understanding of some of the complexity involved. Their history is mostly in academic and British space industry, and all the project they worked on before are canceled paper studies that were kicked around in Britain.

When asked about the structure of Skylon the answer was vague hand waving about some new materials that might exist. Nothing at all concrete that has even begun being tested for high complexity air frames and high requirements.

Elon himself was asked about this when he presented in Britain. And he answered by saying that investing massive amount of complexity in the easiest part of your flight was counter productive.

Pushing the thrust of your traditional rocket engine a little bit higher, is far, far easier then engines.

And if you are really optimizing to that kind of extreme, doing even more advanced version of second stage engines and structural optimization on the second stage would likely always have a higher pay off per complexity invested.

⬐ DrBazza

SpaceX vs Skylon/Sabre, feels a bit like the Henry Ford quote about "faster horses". I do appreciate the scale of the engineering problems and neither is easy, but SpaceX and rocketry just seems like another "faster horse", whereas Skylon/Sabre is something totally new. But I don't have much hope given how long it's taken to get to where we are now. It's the space equivalent of tech - get to market first with something that works, not something that's a tech tour-de-force.

⬐ Isinlor

Elon thinking is that on long distance flight you increase moved cargo per vehicle per unit of time.

He was saying that flying to the other end of the world will be 20x faster vs. airplane.

So if you move 20x more cargo per unit of time, then cost of cargo per vehicle + static infrastructure are proportionally lower.

But we need to take into account that number of cycles of a rocket engine may not be as good as jet engines, ground / water infrastructure seems a lot more complicated, fuel costs are higher etc. etc.

I doubt the math will close on it taking everything into account, but maybe there will be some limited use cases. USA army seems to be thinking about it. Extremely rapid deployment capability all around the world may be worthwhile for them.

⬐ elihu

...also, shipping high-value time-sensitive things across the planet in a few hours or less may be a viable business model.

⬐ midasuni

Didn’t work for Concorde, and that was in the days before widespread electronic documents and video conferencing.

⬐ Andrew_nenakhov

There are other people working on it, actually:

https://destinus.ch/hyperplane/

⬐ etrautmann

Elon seemed to indicate that it would be stretching to get individual launch costs below $1M. That seems at least 2-3 orders of magnitude out of range for most conventional travel?

⬐ inasio

There is no way the cost per trip (airline) is in the $1K - $10K range. The Boeing 787-8 has a fuel capacity of 33,500 gallons. I don't think an intercontinental flight costs significantly less than $1M

⬐ mikeyouse

In round numbers, airlines’ cost basis is ~$0.15 per available seat mile.

So a trip from NYC to Rome of 4,300 miles in a 777-300ER with 350 passengers would cost in the ballpark of $225k.

LA to Shanghai at 6,500 miles in the same capacity plane would be more like $350k.

$1M wouldn’t make much sense because with 350pax you’d need them to pay $2,900 each leg just to cover the operating costs. So a round trip flight to Shanghai that was completely sold out in both directions would need to have an average ticket price of nearly $6k.

⬐ jazzyjackson

I’m sure they would find their customers. The Concorde from NY to Paris ran about 10k USD round trip. There are many more millionaires now than there were in the 90s.

⬐ mlindner

I think their benchmark is a 100% business/first class ride with every seat having business/first class prices. The idea being they can beat that for long distance. Also time is money arguments as well. As most airlines actually make the majority of their money on business/first class seats for long distance international flights, which is used to subsidize the economy seats. This starts to make long distance flights uneconomic for airlines versus Starship.

⬐ midasuni

That’s a falicy, why would air airline subsidise economy?

Several airlines have tried all business flights. I’ve taken some - Qatar to London for example, Paris-NY I think was all business too when I flew it, and there a London-New York one

But they are rare exceptions. Yes if you can fill a 787 with 100 first class passengers paying 5k each way you can make money, but the demand isn’t there.

⬐ omgwtfbyobbq

Flying from Los Angeles is $1000 round trip, so $500 one way, which is $250k on a 500 passenger airliner. If Starship can carry 1000 people for $1000k, it would be twice the cost per passenger.

⬐ gpm

I believe that $1M includes the booster stage, and that for suborbital p2p travel you should be able to skip that. The booster consumes the majority of the fuel, has a lot more engines (which require upkeep), and so on.

$1M for an orbital flight strikes me as an insanely aggressive target, but if they can achieve that, they can probably achieve half that, or less, for suborbital hops.

⬐ pmontra

I'm not sure that this will ever be viable for the general population. Think about the acceleration at launch and reentry. It's more an amusement park experience than travel by car, ship or plane. There will be people mentally and physically fit for that (past some age and before another one) and people that will never be.

Other problems like cost, time from home to spaceport and boarding can be fixed or be irrelevant (if I live too far away, too bad for me, I'll fly.)

⬐ deadbunny

Man If I could fly (rocket?) to AUS from the UK in a handful of hours I'd be all over that vs. the 24+ hour flights + connections. Sure it doesn't make sense for all routes but for super long distance I can see it being competitive for some section of the market.

⬐ midasuni

27 hours of travelling in a first class suite isn’t that bad

⬐ avmich

8 days of traveling USA to Europe by ship could be nice, but markets largely killed that.

⬐ pintxo

People able to afford first class are mostly time constraint, not money constraint. If you offer something using only 1/10 the time, they will buy it.

⬐ midasuni

But they didn’t with Concorde. There are more first class seats across the Atlantic (well pre covid) than Concorde, but the latter failed to be as profitable, and super sonic business jets aren’t a thing.

⬐ pintxo

Afaik, Concord was run profitable.

But due to noise protection regulation on both sides of the Atlantic, there where not enough profitable routes available to be able to recoup development costs.

⬐ pmontra

I'd do that too, but I keep my point that it's not for everyone in the same way that a flight is. Babies, old people, pets. They can fly to space (untested for babies AFAIK) but is it advisable? I think that there will be a market for 27 hours long flights to Australia even after starships. We'll wait and see.

⬐ tim333

They launched people to the space station ok. The max acceleration isn't actually at launch as the rocket is heavy with fuel then - it increases as it gets lighter.

⬐ londons_explore

You can launch and land with fewer g-forces if you like. It just uses more fuel, reduces payload, and increases costs. But it could be done.

⬐ tim333

>reliability of Starship would exceed that of commercial airplanes

I don't think he said that. Maybe you're thinking of:

>44:31 "so the interesting thing is that the

capital efficiency of

of a rocket is is is much better than

the capital efficiency of a plane for

long distance flights"

⬐ vanattab

Oh really? Musk said that? Then it's be true...

⬐ penisverse

Just like robotaxis would disrupt Uber.

⬐ proggy

Concerns about cost per flight aside, how would one go about locating spaceports near enough to urban centers for this concept to be viable? If a fully fueled airliner crashes in an urban area, it’s devastating. Now consider a fully fueled rocket — would the crash be an order of of magnitude worse?

Perhaps I still have the “rockets are inherently dangerous, mitigate bad outcomes by isolating them” mentality. Maybe designs will get the the point where the likelihood of a bad outcome is so remote that it would make sense to locate a spaceport in the same way one locates an airport. Or maybe the spaceport could be way out there and just connected to the urban center with high speed ground transportation. Either way, if spaceports become commercially viable, it’s an interesting thing to consider from an urban planning perspective.

⬐ cloutchaser

Why not start with replacing loads of trans continental freight cargo? There's no risk of human casualties, you can land away from cities and transport it in. And I'm sure there's plenty of business to be had.

It's also a great way to fund the development of starship.

⬐ jltsiren

There are many safety and security issues that must be solved before suborbital passenger flights become viable. Some involve national security. For example, can you imagine a world where the US, Russia, and China keep launching ICBMs at each other all the time?

Others involve more mundane risks that are pretty much guaranteed to occur once in a while. Things like losing cabin pressure or something catching fire. How do you deal with such situations, how quickly can you get the rocket to land safely, and how quickly can you evacuate the passengers?

⬐ beambot

China is supposedly doing it: "China’s New Winged Rocket Can Soar From New York to Beijing in 1 Hour"

https://interestingengineering.com/chinas-new-winged-rocket-...

And SpaceX won a contract to transport cargo: "SpaceX wins $102 million Air Force contract to transport military cargo and humanitarian aid around the world in a rocket"

https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-wins-air-force-contra...

⬐ cookingrobot

In the presentation he says one of the main problems is that launches are loud, and so would probably need to be 30mi from anything. The plan is lots of sea based launch & landing platforms.

⬐ sfblah

And then what? What's the use case?

⬐ toomuchtodo

Lifting enormous amounts of mass to orbit and Mars.

Arguing the merits of these activities is beyond the scope of this thread.

⬐ sfblah

Sorry, I didn't realize we weren't allowed to discuss the point of the presentation.

⬐ toomuchtodo

We can! Cut a new thread that discusses if we need cheap orbital lift or if humanity should be a multi-planetary species. That’s not a Starship question though; how vs why.

https://news.ycombinator.com/submit

⬐ toomuchtodo

I’m unsure there’s much to discuss in that specific regard? If you believe in cheap heavy lift and humans colonizing Mars, you agree this project has merit (and the costs and human effort involved reasonable). If you don’t, you see this project as superfluous and wasteful. Is that interpretation inaccurate? It’s somewhat, but not entirely, binary.

From the presentation, development costs will be 5-10% of the Saturn V program (2020 dollars adjusted). Thats a bargain for the capabilities delivered.

⬐ HWR_14

What if I believe in government run Mars colonies, but don't believe in private ones like one run as Musk's empire? Am I not allowed a nuanced opinion?

⬐ krisoft

Mars is a big place. If we have the tech to create colonies governments can pay SpaceX for a ticket to get whatever flavour of structure they wish there.

⬐ toomuchtodo

That’s a very ambitious view of government! I haven’t been terribly impressed with the success of developed world infrastructure projects, but more power to them if they can outcompete SpaceX. The evidence is not in their favor. Should we place a bet if France can actually build the six nuclear generators Macron said they will by 2035? Or will Elon be walking on Mars and there will be no nuclear generators completed?

⬐ chriswarbo

> private ones like one run as Musk's empire

Where have you got this idea from?

SpaceX are a haulage company: they currently haul crew and cargo to and from Earth orbit (plus a few deep-space probes, and one deep-space car); Starship will extend this further through the solar system (Moon, Mars, asteroids, etc.).

At the moment, their main "destination" is the government-run ISS. There are no off-world colonies (public or private); there aren't even any private space stations yet. (NASA recently funded some private space station proposals; SpaceX made a token effort, which was rejected).

Musk himself has stated that he wants humans to be multi-planetary, and doesn't care who does it; that he would be happy for someone to out-compete SpaceX, since that would mean the goal has been achieved. SpaceX will gladly help governments set up off-world colonies; in fact, that seems like the only feasible way to build them. The problem is the cost was too high, even for government; the point of Starship is to reduce that cost.

The only reason Musk started SpaceX was because the Boeings/Lockheed Martins/etc. were happy to keep prices high; and Russia wouldn't sell him a Mars-capable rocket.

⬐ fastball

Moon colonies, mars colonies, space stations in orbit for science, space stations for leisure, space stations for industry. Shipyards for building bigger spaceships in orbit. Mining asteroids. Etc.

⬐ panick21_

I guess you can listen to the presentation yourself.

⬐ ksec

I am by no means an expert or even enthusiast. Space Manufacturing, New innovation possibility with near zero gravity. New way to harness energy from the sun. Or the real possibility of space tourism.

⬐ boxed

Can turn out this will save all of humanity. This could make a sunshade feasible: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009457652...

If you don't recognize him, one of the authors of this paper is Swedens only astronaut :)

⬐ bjelkeman-again

Mass to orbit gives you lots of options: Starlink completed, more telescopes like James Webb but cheaper, a moon base, radio telescope on the far side of the moon, orbital rotational space stations (for G forces), missions to asteroids, Mars, outer planets, are just a few things. Point to point transport on Earth, halfway around the world in less than an hour.

⬐ vanattab

The launch costs of James Webb were an insignificant part of the spending on the telescope.

⬐ krisoft

Yes. But the telescope cost as much as it did because they needed to origami it into the available space. If you have much more volume and weight you can design a simpler structure which achieves the same goal. Simpler structures cost less.

⬐ bjelkeman-again

Indeed, but with a bigger launch vehicle, much of the complexity of JW would have been simplified and the cost of building it gone down.

⬐ boxed

Well yes. But that's partly because the launch weight was restrained, and the launch cost high. It's a bit unituitive!

The limits on launch weight means enormous costs to remove every single grma they can. This makes the launch cost go down in percent. If thy could just make it 50% heavier they could cut development costs by a lot. They could also build one much faster and allow it to fail constructively where you learn a bunch and then build number 2, 3, 4 with the things you learned. So now you have 3 telescopes instead of one.

Launch cost changes everything.

⬐ bqmjjx0kac

Space mining.

⬐ senectus1

for building in space.

⬐ monocasa

It also opens up off planet manufacturing in a way that can snowball into self sustaining growth. Which IMO is how we're going to mint the first trillionaire.

⬐ Seanambers

If this pans out and rapid and full reusability of the starship system is realized - which by all accounts looks more than very likely at this stage its more a question of when.

Elon Musk will be the world's first trillionaire and he also got Tesla's FSD to pull out of the hat.

⬐ XorNot

Also the only true way we'll save the biosphere IMO - doing it all somewhere there isn't one, and where your pollutants basically don't matter.

⬐ jnsaff2

Whenever I read enthusiasm like this for space travel .. especially talk of Musks interplanetary species and stuff, I get a flashback to Stark by Ben Elton . Published in 1989, getting closer to true by the day. Also probably the funniest book I've ever read.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stark_(novel)

⬐ nickpp

I prefer to think of The Expanse instead. It seems a much more likely future to me.

There are countless dystopic futures (they sell better) we already avoided so I prefer optimism.

⬐ LargoLasskhyfv

Like living in airlocked spaces, with the constant hum of air conditioning? Oh, the slummers on earth have UBI which is basically worth nothing.

⬐ PicassoCTs

Can't wait to have 9/11 but with disenfranchised people up in the gravity well pounding down on us well-dwellers..

⬐ __s

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

⬐ WalterGR

they sell better

Citation?

⬐ nickpp

My shelves full of years and years of SciFi. Great majority - dystopias. Utopias are rather boring, I guess.

⬐ the_other

Where's the utopia in The Expanse? Humans move offworld; two communities with stable infrastructure spend a century abusing a scattered sub-class; then they all get into a war because a sociopath egotist finds alien technology powerful enough to wipe them all out or mutate them into components of itself. And then there's the meteorites...

Sounds idyllic.

⬐ dragonelite

Yeah its as if politics while single planet species isn't hard enough already. Still i guess a lot of series and movies are still stuck in this end of history mode of the late 1990s and pre-2008 GFC. One single government inspired by the US system. A lot has changed in the last 14 years we seems to wade into a west vs east planet lets hope its stays a tech cold war.

⬐ LargoLasskhyfv

There is no mutation. That's just the upload into a biocybernetical cloud substrate. Prepare to be disassembled for scanning!

⬐ nickpp

The utopia is that humanity is not stuck on a single planet anymore, with all eggs in one basket - so to speak.

The rest I find just realistic though. I do not expect humans in space to behave much differently from humans on earth.

⬐ timeon

If I sum your two paragraphs new title can be: Swarm Of Locusts.

⬐ XorNot

I mean sure but who cares? It's a big empty universe - we owe it no moral consideration.

⬐ nickpp

Yes, we are a result of evolution and it is our evolutionary imperative to find and fill any biological niche available. You can try denying our nature but it is a futile endeavor.

However, these "locusts" can discover and create. We can do art, science, understand the Reality and the Universe. I find this absolutely beautiful and breathtaking, especially for a "swarm of locusts".