Re:Would von Braun's Mars Landers Have Worked?
by sparrowInHand on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @07:28AM
(#39452972)
Yes you are. And the problem with musk, is that we have one guy. We could have, with a normal, not oligarchy concentrated enconomy, several Elons in competition. What he does, used to be the normal thing, if you were enterprising.
Re:Would von Braun's Mars Landers Have Worked?
by snovv_crash on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @08:29AM
(#39453501)
I agree this used to be more normal, but I disagree with the fact that it isn't normal anymore somehow being his fault.
There are plenty of people who made more money than him in the dot-com booms and just whittered the money away on building Facebook for Cats or some zero-commercial-application deep tech project nobody will ever hear about.
In the end we wouldn't be talking about him if the Falcon 1 had a single additional failed launch.
Every major auto manufacturer is scrambling to build an EV because Tesla left them sitting without any potential market in 5-10 years if they don't. Tesla's goal, stated clearly from the beginning, was to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles. In this it has definitely succeeded. Yeah, it hasn't moved downmarket as quickly as people hoped. But as long as the more expensive models are being sold faster than produced, that's a capitalism problem not a Tesla problem.
SpaceX launches more commercial payloads than every other launch provider combined. They are investing heavily in next-gen launch capability despite being blocked by lots of red tape for environmental issues tha, a few miles away over the border, nobody cares about.
Starlink - what exactly did you expect here? It was never going to compete with urban FTTH.
Boring company - yeah not sure what you expected either. IMO this is more about having something that can build habitats on Mars. Hyperloop works on Mars without active vacuum systems or airtight sealing.
And no I'm not a fanboy. I think he's very anti-labour for example, which isn't the way to build a stable society. But from a tech standpoint I don't think these are valid criticisms.