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A comment on The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees. Parent comment

Re:The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees by throwaway84742 on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @08:49AM (#16857762)
Not entirely. He has delivered a number of “firsts”, such as rockets that land upright, and is about to deliver more: the satellite internet business will operate a constellation of satellites that is vastly larger than all satellites currently in orbit. This means they can only be automatically controlled.

Frankly, even just delivering one innovation of this magnitude is impressive, being able to do it again and again deserves respect and admiration.

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Re:The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees by rohit2412 on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @09:06AM (#16857869)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X

Wait satellite internet business is new? What have you been smoking? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access

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Re:The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees by throwaway84742 on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @09:30AM (#16858068)
Satellite internet is not new. Flying and controlling thousands of satellites most definitely is new, however.
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Re:The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees by rohit2412 on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @09:34AM (#16858096)
Viaweb, oneweb etc do this. And it may be an operational challenge, not nothing revolutionary
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Re:The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees by throwaway84742 on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @09:48AM (#16858225)
Nobody flies thousands of satellites right now. There are about 1200 satellites in orbit _total_. And nobody controls their satellite constellations fully automatically. And even if OneWeb does end up launching its constellation, this is only viable with a reusable rocket fleet which is manufactured and operated by their main competitor. So I’m skeptical.
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Re:The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees by Gravityloss on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @09:24AM (#16858017)
DC-X was a nineties rocket that flew and landed on its tail. It was not orbital though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzXcTFfV3Ls

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Re:The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees by throwaway84742 on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @09:46AM (#16858210)
All right. “Orbital rockets that land upright”. Better now?
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Re:The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees by DmenshunlAnlsis on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @09:56AM (#16858295)
You kinda missed the main point. Musk's business is focused entirely on improving existing, proven, old technologies.

So we’re all in agreement then, very good.

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Re:The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees by throwaway84742 on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @10:00AM (#16858334)
It’s kind of like saying that a motorcycle is an “improved bicycle”.
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Re:The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees by afterburner on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @03:11PM (#16861355)
It's more like saying a self-balancing bicycle is an improved bicycle.
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Re:The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees by Gravityloss on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @04:05PM (#16861811)
There were separate technologies. Orbital rockets. Rockets with kerosene gas generator engines or balloon tanks or aluminium lithium tanks already. There were rockets that landed on their tail. These technologies were all combined into one.
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