Musk was in the “generally positive” category in my mind (granted I knew next-to-nothing about him other than Tesla and SpaceX) until I found out about his hyper loop and other transportation “solutions”:
There’s no requirement that he name his ship exactly the same as the fictional ship, so there’s no right or wrong here.
Thanks for those videos! They’re great.
They point out the idiocy of the hyperloop in a straight-faced, common sense way.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet his plan to terraform Mars by nuking its poles.
From the running gag on Gravitas… Ship names, it was screamingly obvious which one he was referencing.
If they’d come up with a new variant and continued the gag, I’d be less dismissive. As it is, a Muntz laugh is the only appropriate response. Ha Ha!
Would you care to take one of the points I or others highlighted and explain how they are misinformation?
That’s 99% of it for me. I actually like his business ventures for the most part. But he’s a massive asshole, condescending and just flat out strange a lot of the time. And he’s very outspoken with it all.
I mean, who challenges heads of state to personal combat via Twitter? That’s the sort of weird-ass stuff he spouts that makes him obnoxious.
[quote=“Stranger_On_A_Train, post:76, topic:961053”]Links to news articles
[/quote]
I’m not going to go through each one of these because I find back & forth divided posts too cumbersome to read. But I hope you spend some more time actually reading the articles and what you claim and see if they actually agree. Each one of your cites, except one, is more congruent with my stated facts than yours although if you’re just reading headlines you wouldn’t know that.
The lone exception is about the 250 MW plant which I can’t deny is in the draft Environmental Assessment. Although I don’t see why that fact would make Elon an asshole.
Of course, that ‘plan’ is hardly original. In fact, most of the concepts presented in the popsci press as “Elon’s ideas” are merely warmed over notions from decades past but novel to the general public who doesn’t read old technical studies and ‘Golden Age’ science fiction stories. Most of these conceits are also easily invalidated with high school math and an understanding of basic science.
For example:Popular Mechanics: “Elon Musk Says We Need to Live in /glass Domes Before We Can Terraform Mars”. Now, living under geodesic domes on another planet is a popular sci-fi trope going back to the ‘Fifties, basically as soon as R. Buckminster Fuller popularized it as a large structure, so it is an idea embedded in the public consciousness through decades of artists concept paintings and more recently movies and television shows. But even setting aside the complexity of logistics of transporting the components or somehow setting up a manufacturing chain on the surface of Mars to produce large glass panels, structural members, and equipment to assemble them, the concept has a number of fundamental problems which Musk totally fails to address and by all available evidence isn’t even aware of. It’s an unsophisticated enthusiast’s notion of how you would ‘colonize’ Mars with no consideration of the practicalities of doing so.
This isn’t reason for “hating” Musk, of course, but when his legions of devotees thoughtlessly reiterate such notions without consideration and then actively attack anyone who questions his ideas or brings any well-founded technical objections to the discussion, it does engender the thought of, “Why are these people so devoted to a guy whose greatest accomplishments are claiming the ideas and work of others as his own?” Musk’s smuggy “I know more than actual experts” attitude, his fostering of conspiranoia and flaunting of laws and rules that apply to everyone else, his whinging about the unfairness of having to pay taxes, his demonstrably insincere claims of sacrificing himself on the alter of helping humanity, his scammy scheming with cryptocurrency and business practices, his habit of aggressive litigiousness, his petty vindictiveness toward people who have not actually done him any ill, and his adoption of a label for a social disorder as plaintive cover for jerkish and trolling behavior is the real reason people people dislike, dismiss, or “hate” him.
Stranger
Then I don’t see how you can rationally expect anybody to believe you’ve made a persuasive case. “I claim your position is wrong but I can’t be bothered to rebut the actual evidence you’ve presented in favor of your position, I’ll just repeat that you’re wrong” is hardly a convincing argument.
So, you’ve called me out for making “false” claims, refuse to read the actual cites provided but through some process of divination somehow still insist that they are “congruent with [your] stated facts”, and generally avoid acknowledging that many of the statements made about Musk in this thread by multiple posters are supported by objective evidence.
Well, let’s be clear; I didn’t say Elon was an “asshole” for wanting to build a plant at Boca Chica. What I said was:
Oh, and while Elon is convincing his fans that he’s the Great White Hope of Environmental Salvation (never mind the paltry impact that Tesla would have on oil consumption even at ten times its current rate of production, and that Solar City is less than 6% of residential installation market share) his plans for SpaceX include building a 250 MW power plant in Boca Chica for processing fuel that has an enormous carbon emissions footprint:
So, I highlighted the hypocrisy of Musk claiming to be a martyr for environmentalism while building a massive gas processing and conversion plant that has already impacted the local nature preserves. Of course, if SpaceX is going to be launching multiple rockets a day from the location they’ll have to be able to produce fuel and oxidizer on site rather than trucking it in from a remote processing facility, so it is unavoidable and understandable in the context of running such a high volume launch facility. Except that SpaceX originally claimed that the Boca Chica site would only be used for a limited number of launchesand would not be disruptive to the local residents. Want a cite?:
From that article (so that you don’t have to go to the effort of clicking a link):
In 2013, the Texas Legislature changed the law to make it easier for SpaceX to operate in Texas.
Under the new state law, SpaceX could launch rockets up to 12 times a year, mostly between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., but not on weekends or holidays unless the company can show local and state authorities that scrubbing a launch would cause significant business consequences. At least one nighttime launch would be allowed per year.
He also received over $15 million dollars in incentives to do so…you know, taxpayer money, or as Elon thinks of it, Other Peoples’ Money, which is the best kind of money to spend.
Of course, in the 2014 Environmental Impact Statement provided to get FAA approval, SpaceX stated they would be launching Falcon 9/Heavy vehicles from the Boca Chica location. Need a cite?:
From the article:
- The FAA last year began an environmental review of SpaceX’s Starship development facility, as Musk’s company said it planned to apply for licenses to launch the next-generation rocket prototypes from Boca Chica. While the FAA completed an environmental assessment of the area in 2014, that review was specific to SpaceX’s much-smaller Falcon series of rockets.*
Musk, of course, has altered the deal. Pray he does not alter it further.
Stranger
Ignoring inconvenient facts makes it easy to claim victory (cf. Trump supporters and Star Citizen fanbois).
Then you lose the argument.
That’s how this works.
Meaning, I’ve read the articles but I’m not going to go one-by-one and point out the obvious. If you’ve read the articles, you’ve already discovered that your initial claims are not exactly honest. But if you need me to point out why:
Well, it is “ignorable” if you aren’t a Tesla employee forced to violate county health standards and risk exposure to a pandemic under threat of being fired;
“Under threat of being fired” and then you post a link to an article that says
If “you feel uncomfortable coming back to work at this time, please do not feel obligated to do so,” he wrote in an email sent to the company’s factory workers in early May that was viewed by The Washington Post.
The article goes on to state that two workers received termination notice for failure to return to work and being unreachable. The workers provided evidence of their correspondence with the managers (it isn’t clear whether this was to HR or to the author). One worker was offered her job back but was asked for a return date.
If they were indeed unreachable, I don’t think it’s assholish behavior for them to be fired. I don’t see any other way of dealing with an employee that does not show for days and you can not reach in a timely manner.
As far as the Tesla/Solar City trial, you can pick a side and regurgitate the side’s argument but a $60M settlement was reach on a case seeking $2.6B in damages. I think if the plaintiffs thought they had a shot at winning they would not settle for 2% of the damages.
You claimed Boca Chica residents were denied access to their homes and public beaches but the articles you linked talks about a security guard wrongly telling a citizen that a public road was private (and SpaceX apologized for this incident) with a single paragraph where someone says they’ve closed the beach too much. The beach closures are allowed for 300 hours a year under Texas law, but says nothing about the need for resident evacuation. Residents, like the workers, bypass the road closures. During the 7 test hops last year, I’m sure the 2 residents were given notice to evacuate, but don’t equate closing a road for testing (the 300 hr / year law) with this.
And as I’m sure you are well aware, the FAA is currently performing an Environmental Assessment for changes to the launch license. And I’m sure you are aware that public comments are looked at very seriously, especially from any residents in the immediate area. 1 current resident makes a living off of filming the sites. If there are others, do you have any proof that they are unhappy with the situation?
I find it a bit ironic that he supports the Truck convoy while at the same time working towards technology that will automate their jobs out of existence. Not that I’m against self driving cars, I just find it ironic
Yeah, that’s just weird.
It’s not weird at all. He supports the trucker convoy for their efforts to protest things that Musk himself finds personally annoying and would like eliminated, and he also supports the establishment of a shiny libertechbrotopia with himself in a leading role. He doesn’t actually give a shit about the truckers themselves in any way. There’s no inconsistency here.
Elon Musk always looks like he’s pooped his pants. Watch any video of him and tell me I’m wrong.
So you are finding issue with what is the weakest complaint?
OK, let’s drop that.
Please shed some light on the “pedo guy” story. I’m really interested how you can spin that without Musk looking like a narcissist douche. (and a total joke as an engineer)
What I dislike is the extreme polarization, it’s pretty much impossible to say anything positive about Space X, Starlink, or Tesla without being accused of being a fanboy or gleeful supplicant or thoughtless devotee.
He’s certainly an ass and a douche, and I disagree with him on most of the political and social positions that he’s made public, but he’s also made a number of changes to some industries that were in no hurry to change themselves.
Would we eventually get reusable rockets? Maybe, but not from ULA, and not anytime soon. People have been talking about creating a satellite based internet for nearly as long as there’s been an internet, he’s doing it, and it is actually up and running. People never thought that electric cars would become viable, but he’s selling them, and all the other car manufacturers are now playing catch-up.
On every step of the way has been plenty of doubt that he would be able to accomplish any of this, and some of his projects like hyperloop are too ambitious to be accomplished anytime soon, but I don’t really know that that’s really something that should be held against him, if you never try anything ambitious, if you don’t try what hasn’t been done, then you never advance.
Thomas Edison also took credit for the work of his employees, made an ass of himself regularly and by all accounts was a terrible person to work for, but most look back on him as an inventor that brought about the electric age. I think it likely that people will look back on Musk as the one who brought on the space age. Just as electricity had been discovered and harnessed well before Edison’s time, but Edison turned it into a viable commercial industry, space technologies have been around before Musk, but he is turning it into a viable commercial industry.
So, sure, cringe when he calls an emergency rescuer a pedo for not accepting unwanted and useless help, facepalm when he offers to usher in world peace through single combat, file suit when he violates FTC and SEC rules, and rightly criticize him for any other issues that he has caused, but acknowledge what he has done, and the improvements that he has made to the world that will outlast him and overshadow his missteps and poor behaviors.
I’m sure that this post puts me squarely in the drooling fanboy club since I dared to say anything positive about Musk and his accomplishments, so it is likely that this is my only post in this thread as I don’t anticipate many responses that can be answered without digging out the straw bailer.