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SpaceX Starship Explodes

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SpaceX Starship Explodes

Old 24th Nov 2019, 04:39
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SpaceX has is a remarkable success story in a very difficult and competitive environment. He does seem to be going bipolar or something similar but he is like a modern day Tesla who has achieved a lot more.
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Old 24th Nov 2019, 07:38
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Originally Posted by etudiant
Between Paypal, SpaceX and Tesla, Musk has launched three transformative businesses. If that is failure, I'd like to see more of it.
Oookay, a little history lesson is in order, methinks.

PayPal was founded by six people and Elon Musk... wasn't one of them. He tried to ride the dot-com wave and founded a company called X.com. His idea was to sell very expensive PDAs to people who would then somehow perform banking transactions using the said PDA's... infrared port. The idea failed miserably, but Musk was backed by Greg Kouri who had money. X.com offered a merger to a company called Confinity. The companies merged in 1999. In 2000, Musk "decided that X.com would cease operations", read "it flopped". Since being the cash cow was his only role in the affair, two weeks later Musk was thrown out of Confinity (or, as his official biography says, "he was replaced as the CEO", and the name of the company was changed to PayPal.

Tesla is a more interesting endeavour. Tesla hired an engineer called Henrik Fisker who wanted to make a car where the engine would charge a battery, i.e. a hybrid. After a few years of working on the project, Fisker left Tesla and founded his own company to produce Fisker Karma. Tesla tried to sue him but lost and had to pay a million bucks in legal fees and costs. Oh, and do wake me up when Tesla, Inc. makes a profit. It's five billion dollars in debt and counting.

And finally, the SpaceX. Musk's fast talking gained him access to NASA's technology which helped built something resembling a rocket. And it kind of works, even though "reusing" rocket boosters has been proven to be a very bad and very expensive idea. It's not the technical part of the project that's of interest, however, but the financial one. Must finances SpaceX with the money advances for future launches, including from DoD and NASA. Rings a bell?

Hope it helps with your rosy shades.
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Old 24th Nov 2019, 07:53
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UltraFan I work closely with SpaceX, my company is their customer. Your remarks about SpaceX are inaccurate and misleading, at least on the subject of SpaceX you're letting whatever problem you have with Musk cloud reality.
"something resembling a rocket"? "kind of works"? "very bad and very expensive"? Utter tripe, and I say that as someone who has a strong dislike of Musk (having, probably unlike you, actually met him multiple times).
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Old 24th Nov 2019, 08:52
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Originally Posted by UltraFan
Oookay, a little history lesson is in order, methinks.

PayPal was founded by six people and Elon Musk... wasn't one of them. He tried to ride the dot-com wave and founded a company called X.com. His idea was to sell very expensive PDAs to people who would then somehow perform banking transactions using the said PDA's... infrared port. The idea failed miserably, but Musk was backed by Greg Kouri who had money. X.com offered a merger to a company called Confinity. The companies merged in 1999. In 2000, Musk "decided that X.com would cease operations", read "it flopped". Since being the cash cow was his only role in the affair, two weeks later Musk was thrown out of Confinity (or, as his official biography says, "he was replaced as the CEO", and the name of the company was changed to PayPal.
He was, but you failed to mention he remained on the board and collected $165M in 2002.

Originally Posted by UltraFan
And finally, the SpaceX. Musk's fast talking gained him access to NASA's technology which helped built something resembling a rocket. And it kind of works, even though "reusing" rocket boosters has been proven to be a very bad and very expensive idea. It's not the technical part of the project that's of interest, however, but the financial one. Must finances SpaceX with the money advances for future launches, including from DoD and NASA. Rings a bell?
Laughable...
That'll be why Ariane is developing reuseable boosters...


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Old 24th Nov 2019, 09:28
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Originally Posted by UltraFan
Oookay, a little history lesson is in order, methinks.

PayPal was founded by six people and Elon Musk... wasn't one of them. He tried to ride the dot-com wave and founded a company called X.com. His idea was to sell very expensive PDAs to people who would then somehow perform banking transactions using the said PDA's... infrared port. The idea failed miserably, but Musk was backed by Greg Kouri who had money. X.com offered a merger to a company called Confinity. The companies merged in 1999. In 2000, Musk "decided that X.com would cease operations", read "it flopped". Since being the cash cow was his only role in the affair, two weeks later Musk was thrown out of Confinity (or, as his official biography says, "he was replaced as the CEO", and the name of the company was changed to PayPal.

Tesla is a more interesting endeavour. Tesla hired an engineer called Henrik Fisker who wanted to make a car where the engine would charge a battery, i.e. a hybrid. After a few years of working on the project, Fisker left Tesla and founded his own company to produce Fisker Karma. Tesla tried to sue him but lost and had to pay a million bucks in legal fees and costs. Oh, and do wake me up when Tesla, Inc. makes a profit. It's five billion dollars in debt and counting.

And finally, the SpaceX. Musk's fast talking gained him access to NASA's technology which helped built something resembling a rocket. And it kind of works, even though "reusing" rocket boosters has been proven to be a very bad and very expensive idea. It's not the technical part of the project that's of interest, however, but the financial one. Must finances SpaceX with the money advances for future launches, including from DoD and NASA. Rings a bell?

Hope it helps with your rosy shades.
Are you referring to all the rest of the companies building rocket systems for DoD and NASA?
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Old 24th Nov 2019, 10:39
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Originally Posted by UltraFan
What's laughable is how accurate and up-to-date your knowledge is. They were studying fly-back boosters, and then the project was cancelled. FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. Read and weep:
Basically, the same conclusions NASA had about Space Shuttle's "reusable" boosters.
What's laughable is how accurate and up-to-date your knowledge is. They ARE studying fly-back boosters

Dated THIS September...

Europe's rocket-launching industry is gearing up to go reusable.
The European launch provider Arianespace — best known as the manufacturer of the heavy-lift Ariane 5 and the future Ariane 6 — has a plan to make its future rockets more competitive in a tight launch industry.
As you might guess from looking at the U.S. company SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, reusability is what Arianespace wants to do as well.

Back in February, ArianeGroup and CNES (the French space agency) signed a memorandum of understanding for a new "acceleration platform" that will work to develop new launchers, including reusable ones.

The platform, called ArianeWorks, unites teams under one roof and provides all the ingredients possible for innovation: "a highly flexible environment, open to new players and internationally," according to a press release from the time.
And with that, I'm out of this discussion.
Bye...
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Old 24th Nov 2019, 11:25
  #27 (permalink)  
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With that said, the final one is also expected to have a shiny stainless steel finish, on the basis that this works as well as white paint (for keeping it from warming up in the sun) and weighs less.
No, it’s made of stainless steel. A fraction of the price of the equivalent in composites, and lighter than the composites plus heat tiles.

As stated, a very early, single-engined, test bed. I believe the final design has around 27 engines.

https://www.space.com/43101-elon-mus...-starship.html



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Old 24th Nov 2019, 12:34
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I'm always puzzled by the hate for Elon Musk. Obviously, no one is perfect and can be criticized, but invariably the reasons given for Musk's perceived "lack of success" are quite irrational. As is often the case, it seems jealousy and envy are the main drivers of criticism.

Even only counting Musk's failures, he has achieved a lot more than most. Building a successful space company in a short time, plus with new technology advances and a reduced cost, is remarkable.

Although, I am interested to see if these "backyard rockets" become a viable space ship. Rapid prototypes can appear to be failures, but it's the fear of trying something new that enables Boeing charging $2B for a single rocket launch.
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Old 24th Nov 2019, 13:25
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Originally Posted by donotdespisethesnake
but it's the fear of trying something new that enables Boeing charging $2B for a single rocket launch.
While I agree with the rest of your post, Boeing doesn't charge anywhere near that for a launch. The pricetag - at most - is on the order of $200M and often quite a bit less than that.
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Old 24th Nov 2019, 13:30
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Musk is the classic 'entrepreneur', someone who catalyses innovation by bringing together the technology, the money and the marketing needed to make it happen.
That role does not require him to be the innovative genius or the industrialist, he's found enough of those to serve his turn.
Whatever his role or lack thereof at Paypal, it was enough to net him a substantial stake, some $200MM.
Unlike many, he did not retire with this first fortune, but rather greatly multiplied it with his space and automotive ventures.
Now the automotive and aerospace giants are following the trails he has blazed. Not many can match that.
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Old 24th Nov 2019, 16:54
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No, it’s made of stainless steel. A fraction of the price of the equivalent in composites, and lighter than the composites plus heat tiles.
Musk says the machine will use tiles, although originally there were thoughts of using coolant between skins or, perhaps, transpiration. Per Musk's tweet, 24 September, 2019:
Could do it, but we developed low cost reusable tiles that are much lighter than transpiration cooling & quite robust
Also, the rocket will be powered by six engines, not 27; three are optimized for atmospheric use and three for vacuum conditions.
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Old 24th Nov 2019, 21:04
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Originally Posted by Takwis
It looks much earlier than that...more like "Lost In Space".
closer would be the 1950 movie Destination Moon

Destination Moon was the first major U.S. science fiction film to deal with the practical scientific and engineering challenges of space travel and to speculate on what a manned expedition to the Moon would look like. Famed science fiction author Robert a Heinlein contributed to the script.

The film's premise is that private industry will mobilize, finance, and manufacture the first spacecraft to the Moon, and that the U.S. government will be forced to purchase or lease the technology to remain the dominant power in space. Different industrialists cooperate to support the private venture. In the final scene, as the crew approaches the Earth, the traditional "The End" heralds the dawn of the coming Space Age: "This is THE END...of the Beginning"

And then read

[QUOTE] "The Man Who Sold the Moon" is a science fiction novella by American author Robert A. Heinlein, written in 1949 and published in 1950. A part of his Future History and prequel to "Requiem", it covers events around a fictional first Moon landing in 1978 and the schemes of Delos D. Harriman, a businessman who is determined to personally reach and control the Moon.
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Old 24th Nov 2019, 21:52
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Originally Posted by UltraFan
Oh, and do wake me up when Tesla, Inc. makes a profit. It's five billion dollars in debt and counting.
You're being too generous. It's over $10 billion, and when Sollar City is thrown in, it's a few billion more.

The outlook is bleak for those who blindly follow Musk. Their blindness, however, is easily seen in their willingness to overlook Tesla’s history of value destruction. I believe a five-year period is the most relevant to judge any company. I compiled the figures at the end of this article from figures published in Tesla’s 2Q2019 10-Q and Tesla’s 2Q2014 10-Q. The conclusion is inescapable: It’s just not working for this company. Musk is living on borrowed time

These figures are absolutely extraordinary. Tesla has issued 55.5mm shares (a 44% increase in shares outstanding over that time) and $10.7 billion of debt (a 450% increase over that time) in the past five years. Yet, Tesla lost more money on an operating basis in the second quarter of 2019 than it did in the second quarter of 2014. This is incomprehensible.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcoll.../#d36a1b41dc22
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Old 24th Nov 2019, 23:26
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Originally Posted by ThreeThreeMike
You're being too generous. It's over $10 billion, and when Sollar City is thrown in, it's a few billion more.
I'm quite impressed by what Space X had done - they've completely moved the goalposts for space launches and done things that the rest of the industry frankly didn't think was possible. Further, indications are they are not loosing money hand over fist doing it.
Tesla, not so much. I give Tesla credit for showing that an electric car can in fact be practical and even desirable. But at some point a manufacturer has to stop borrowing money and become self-sustaining, and Tesla is nowhere close to that. I read an interview with a former auto exec a while back who semi-joked that being the head of Tesla would be a dream job - who wouldn't want to be in charge of a company that wasn't expected to make money . Now that the other automakers have jumped into the electric band wagon and are producing similarly capable electric cars and selling them at competitive prices, consumers are going to wonder if a Tesla is really worth the dodgy build quality and spotty customer support when they can go down to the local Ford or Volkswagen/Audi dealer and get something at least as good, often at a better price.



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Old 25th Nov 2019, 06:52
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Originally Posted by donotdespisethesnake
I'm always puzzled by the hate for Elon Musk. Obviously, no one is perfect and can be criticized, but invariably the reasons given for Musk's perceived "lack of success" are quite irrational. As is often the case, it seems jealousy and envy are the main drivers of criticism.
There are two perfectly rational reasons for negative reactions to Musk, both connected with Tesla. He made tweets that would affect the stock price of his company, and when the SEC told him it was illegal to do that, he dissed the SEC. Frankly, Trumpian. When Tesla was having huge production problems, he went and lived in the factory, attending to production line problems himself. This is probably not good practice for a CEO, but what is contemptible is that he expected his wage-earning employees to commit their whole lives to his company in the same way. It has also been suggested that while some of the technology in the Teslas, especially the electric motors, is good, and the total vision of an electric car system is obviously the way to go, the practical engineering of the cars for profitable production is poor, and it begins to look as though Tesla may never make a profit, which is rather a big problem in a car manufacturer.

The rockets are a different issue, Most of the employees are likely to be the crazy driven types whose jobs are most of their lives, the customers are not especially price sensitive (or at least, the margins can be large), and it's not really a mass production business. It seems to match his abilities well.

The comparison with Nikola Tesla seems apt: one or two killer ideas, and a lot of crazy; genuinely talented, but hugely over-rated by his fans.

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Old 25th Nov 2019, 09:35
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Originally Posted by ThreeThreeMike
You're being too generous. It's over $10 billion, and when Sollar City is thrown in, it's a few billion more.

The outlook is bleak for those who blindly follow Musk. Their blindness, however, is easily seen in their willingness to overlook Tesla’s history of value destruction. I believe a five-year period is the most relevant to judge any company. I compiled the figures at the end of this article from figures published in Tesla’s 2Q2019 10-Q and Tesla’s 2Q2014 10-Q. The conclusion is inescapable: It’s just not working for this company. Musk is living on borrowed time

These figures are absolutely extraordinary. Tesla has issued 55.5mm shares (a 44% increase in shares outstanding over that time) and $10.7 billion of debt (a 450% increase over that time) in the past five years. Yet, Tesla lost more money on an operating basis in the second quarter of 2019 than it did in the second quarter of 2014. This is incomprehensible.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcoll.../#d36a1b41dc22
It's absolutely comprehensible. Just look at "Wework" and Mr.Adam Neuman. He was backed by a banker who gave initial capital to Alibaba. And when people hit a jackpot like that, they tend to believe they are genii. They are not. And the story of Wework is the proof of that. And to this day, Neuman is considered a visionary by his fanboys.

Fellon Elon is exactly the same. Worse actually. NONE of his ventures ever made any money. (Paypal wasn't his and he walked away with a severance pay.) HE made money out of all of them, I'll give him that, but everyone who ever invested in him, and that includes the US Government, are either bankrupt or waiting for their enormous profits to materialize. Or, in case of US Government, both.

He is untouchable for now, because a lot of three-star generals and high-up politicians were involved in decisions to invest in SpaceX. The same way Neuman was untouchable for a while because he was backed by Goldman Sachs, Leeman Brothers and JP Morgan, and who wants to admit to investors they sunk billions in a blunder. But if Musk thinks it'll last, he is very wrong. His time is coming.
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Old 25th Nov 2019, 09:47
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Originally Posted by UltraFan
His time is coming.
I'm not sure why you are looking forward to his downfall so much.

I'm an entrepreneur myself, and I've had to deal with exactly the same negativity from some people. Oh it'll never work. You'll never make it profitable. You've never built a [insert name of black box here], why should we trust you. You failed in the last venture, you must be a failure. You've not made a profit in 3 years, just burned money, you'll never be profitable, I'm not going to invest in you.

Even when we had millions of pounds of firm orders from government, the banks were still saying no, we won't lend to you because you've not done this before.

So unless you've actually been there and put your entire finances and house on the line and risked everything, or created a business employing people, please think a bit about this before you launch in and flame someone who has.
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Old 25th Nov 2019, 11:12
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Originally Posted by UltraFan
It's absolutely comprehensible. Just look at "Wework" and Mr.Adam Neuman. He was backed by a banker who gave initial capital to Alibaba. And when people hit a jackpot like that, they tend to believe they are genii. They are not. And the story of Wework is the proof of that. And to this day, Neuman is considered a visionary by his fanboys.

Fellon Elon is exactly the same. Worse actually. NONE of his ventures ever made any money. (Paypal wasn't his and he walked away with a severance pay.) HE made money out of all of them, I'll give him that, but everyone who ever invested in him, and that includes the US Government, are either bankrupt or waiting for their enormous profits to materialize. Or, in case of US Government, both.

He is untouchable for now, because a lot of three-star generals and high-up politicians were involved in decisions to invest in SpaceX. The same way Neuman was untouchable for a while because he was backed by Goldman Sachs, Leeman Brothers and JP Morgan, and who wants to admit to investors they sunk billions in a blunder. But if Musk thinks it'll last, he is very wrong. His time is coming.
And with that, I'm out of this discussion.
So you throw your toys when people disagree with you, delete your comments that show you haven't got a clue, then carry on posting this rubbish.
Your time is coming...

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Old 25th Nov 2019, 16:36
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Originally Posted by Nige321
delete your comments
Excuse me? Would you be so kind as to tell which comments I have deleted? Unlike you, who in a few years will go "...but I thought...", I stand by every word I say and never say a word that I don't believe in.

And yes, I ended the discussion with fanboys about how shiny your wooden idol is. And I stand by that word, too.

Last edited by UltraFan; 25th Nov 2019 at 16:47. Reason: unnecessary emotions removed
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Old 25th Nov 2019, 21:21
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Originally Posted by UltraFan
Excuse me? Would you be so kind as to tell which comments I have deleted? Unlike you, who in a few years will go "...but I thought...", I stand by every word I say and never say a word that I don't believe in.

And yes, I ended the discussion with fanboys about how shiny your wooden idol is. And I stand by that word, too.
The one starting:
Originally Posted by UltraFan What's laughable is how accurate and up-to-date your knowledge is. They were studying fly-back boosters, and then the project was cancelled. FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. Read and weep:
Basically, the same conclusions NASA had about Space Shuttle's "reusable" boosters.
You know, the one that's missing.
And wrong...
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