[sfblah]

The entire video is not the same thing over and over. He lodges specific, credible criticisms of all manner of Musk claims. I think any reasonable person looking at the history of Musks' businesses would come away viewing Musk as a pathological liar, not Musk's critics.

As for the specific quote about laser communications and latency, Thunderf00t's criticism was specifically talking about the latency claims. I actually thought you might be right, but some research indicates that the laser links do not currently provide improved latency, and they are only used when no ground station is available.

I very much appreciate that Thunderf00t does it for every SpaceX event. Someone needs to tell people the truth. I've known Musk was a con artist for decades (since he was fired from Paypal for gross incompetence), but it seems America just woke up to it when he bought Twitter.

[mardifoufs]

I mean, if you ignore the fact that he displays blatant ignorance in the streams he does. And what reports are you referring to exactly?

It has nothing to do with musk, and that's the entire issue. The dude is obsessed with him, clouding anything he says about SpaceX. SpaceX isn't just musk. It's actually super cringe how he seems genuinely mad whenever SpaceX staff celebrates or when a success happens. Or when he literally makes up stuff as he goes while the stream happens ("wow this is super bad, this shouldn't look like this" or even simple stuff like thinking that the water release before launch is for cooling the engines (???))

It's not the first time thunderfoot has obsessed over someone, he used to do the same with Anita sarkeesian. And the same thing happened, it got to the point where it was so weird and obsessive that it made him lose any credibility.

[sfblah]

I googled for about 15 minutes for reports about starlink’s lasers and latency and found several articles saying what I wrote above. Feel free to look it up for yourself.

As for his focus on Musk, I feel the same way about that as I did about Carreyrou’s “obsession” with Elizabeth Holmes. Good! I’m glad people are debunking our generation’s greatest fraud (which is Musk. Holmes doesn’t even make the top 10).

I’ve never personally paid a dime for a Musk product, but unfortunately my government has financed his frauds to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. So, I’m glad someone is pointing it out

Edit: I just asked GPT about water sprayed on rockets before launch. It specifically mentioned cooling the engines. I’m not sure what your game is here, but i suggest, like, learning some stuff. I’m tired of fact checking you only to find out instantly that you’re lying. Here’s the text:

Water is sprayed on a rocket before launch as part of a sound suppression system to protect the rocket and the launch pad. The intense noise generated during a rocket launch creates powerful sound waves that can damage the rocket or surrounding structures. Water absorbs and dampens these sound waves, reducing their intensity. Additionally, the water helps to cool the launch pad and the rocket’s exhaust, preventing overheating or damage from the extreme heat generated by the rocket engines during liftoff.

[rlt]

If you’re claiming the guy who started companies that revolutionized two industries is “our generation’s greatest fraud” then you’re a lost cause.

He is prone to very unrealistic timelines and some hype, but at the end of the day he delivers so much that normal people (those without Elon Derangement Syndrome) are happy to look past that.

Some things not working out is inevitable if you have extreme ambitions.

Who fucking cares if the latency isn’t better than fiber, Starlink is providing broadband globally that is orders of magnitude better than previous satellite.

He was confidently dismissive of the entire laser link idea, not just the latency claim:

“Starlink can’t do any of that at the moment. Probably something to with the fact that the satellites are hundreds of kilometers apart and you’re trying to hit a tiny moving target from another moving target and then chaining those together”

That’s in fact exactly what they’re doing now. They just haven’t optimized it enough yet to reduce the total latency.

[mardifoufs]

First of all, no, absolutely no article I've read portray a picture that is even a bit similar to what thunderf00t claimed in that video (especially with regards to bandwidth). It is such a weird argument to fall back on "well ground stations are still needed", as if that was his original claim. The laser interconnects work, and his arguments about alignement/bandwidth/cost were just wrong.

And yes. Even chatgpt says that it is used to prevent vibrations. It could also help cooling the launch pad I guess. But not the engines! That's a completely different thing, the engines get absolutely 0 cooling from the water. The entire point is to allow them to get as hot and powerful as possible without damaging everything around! It's almost entirely for vibration control btw, so any cooling to the launchpad isn't the point. You don't even need chatgpt to know that, it's literally something that a lot of launch platforms have done for decades.

As for frauds, how exactly is SpaceX a fraud? Again, I don't care about musk. I'm specifically talking about SpaceX. And in any case, there is so much legitimate reasons to dislike Musk that it is actually super unhelpful to have personalities like thunderf00t obsessing on something as visibly successful as spacex.