I actually think landing an orbital rocket is probably easier by an order of magnitude, possibly even two.
Rocket science is a matter of applied physics, with materials science thrown in, and a bit of very well understood and straightforward software engineering.
Autonomous driving is a matter of getting AI models functioning to a well enough degree. My understanding of how this is done is you try to find more and better data to throw at it and tweak the models to hopefully make it learn better until the point it seems to pass your tests, which are whatever you've been able to come up with that you can think to test.
It's like trying to throw a pitch over home plate, but in one case you have a pitching machine you can aim and dial in the speed, and in the other you have a living pitcher. Only that living pitcher is an Orangutan you're trying to train.
One of those is a lot more art than science, and as such, getting well understood and reproducible outcomes that don't fall apart at a fundamental level when you add one more variable is harder.
If Tesla’s cars were as good in parking as that, one in six attempts to park a car would lead to a fender-bender or worse.
Yes, that isn’t a valid comparison, but it does show that we accept way higher failure rates for rockets than we do for cars (aside: that also is the reason I don’t see space tourism become popular soon. If, say, the 20th or 30th millionaire who books a flight dies, the market will dry up rapidly)
Seriously? Well then you just don't understand machine learning, robotics and the tyranny of the rocket equation. If you did, it would be easy to see that landing an orbital rocket is much harder than autonomous driving. The only problem is that nobody will pay 300M to get one fully self driving car after 13 years of research. And selfdriving needs tons of data which first need to be collected, which is what Tesla is doing at the highest rate than anyone in the industry by far.
Edit: one way to realize this is true is if you consider that the rocket already IS fully self driving. Everything after 1 minute mark before the liftoff is fully controlled by onboard computers, people are only there to push the big red autodestruct button if anything goes wrong.
Anyway, my point was something else. That something might seem impossible, and then after just 5 years it can be considered mundane. And I think that's what we will see with self driving too. Unless oil industry manages to manipulate public opinion in a way that stops Tesla before that.
I don't know, you tell me...
"The SpaceX ORBCOMM-2 Mission successfully landed the first stage of a rocket during an orbital launch, a feat never before accomplished."
Rocket science is a matter of applied physics, with materials science thrown in, and a bit of very well understood and straightforward software engineering.
Autonomous driving is a matter of getting AI models functioning to a well enough degree. My understanding of how this is done is you try to find more and better data to throw at it and tweak the models to hopefully make it learn better until the point it seems to pass your tests, which are whatever you've been able to come up with that you can think to test.
It's like trying to throw a pitch over home plate, but in one case you have a pitching machine you can aim and dial in the speed, and in the other you have a living pitcher. Only that living pitcher is an Orangutan you're trying to train.
One of those is a lot more art than science, and as such, getting well understood and reproducible outcomes that don't fall apart at a fundamental level when you add one more variable is harder.