[JumpCrisscross]

> Does anyone seriously still believe this?

I do. It’s not his singular focus. But he continues to personally invest himself in pushing the boundaries of human spacefaring capability. That goal seems more meaningful to him that it does to e.g. Bezos, who seems to have a rocket company to look cool.

[awesome_dude]

I know there's a risk when Musk's name comes up that everyone takes "all against" or "all for" approach - very polarising figure.

But I see a lot of that announcement, and the others someone else pointed to as his "aspirational, but ultimately never going to happen" goals - whether he believes the claims are achievable, or not, he says these things to energise people to working/paying for him to try

It costs him little to nothing to say, and other people's time, effort, and capital to try (and succeed/fail)

Tesla is falling to pieces now, and SpaceX is getting loaded up with completely unrelated projects (xAI) in order to try and make it look saleable (I guess) - it's very difficult to see the Mars announcement as anything but hype.

[JumpCrisscross]

> difficult to see the Mars announcement as anything but hype

Oh yeah, the announcement is hype. But there is actual work underneath it making real progress in science and engineering that moves us closer to Mars. Some of that, moreover, is work that has limited appeal outside a Martian context.

[fragmede]

The real thing is that the moon is a better stepping stone, but Bezos already claimed it so Musk had to out do him, which is why he's shooting for Mars.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the moon is a better stepping stone, but Bezos already claimed it so Musk had to out do him, which is why he's shooting for Mars

They were contemporaenous. Musk was trying to send stuff to Mars in 2001 [1]. Bezos started Blue Origin in 2000 before any Moon goals had been made concrete or public. I wouldn't say either of their goals really referenced each other until after the financial crisis (that is, after they were both comfortably billionaires with launch-vehicle programs).

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-elon-musk-spacex/

[usefulcat]

> It costs him little to nothing to say,

That all depends on how much he values his credibility, I think..

But to be fair, for someone as good at self promotion as he is, I can believe that the value of the hype could be greater than the cost in credibility.

[vardump]

> Tesla is falling to pieces now

Did I miss something?

[stickfigure]

Year over year sales are declining. Stratospheric stock price is propped up by promise of selling humanoid robots, a technology (and market) which are unproven.

I would not invest.

[scottyah]

That's a no, it's business as usual except they have massive cash reserves.

[rubyn00bie]

Having approximately $44 billion in cash on hand is not a massive cash reserve for any company with the market cap of Tesla ($1.3 trillion). Even less so when you realize how capital intensive its current car and non-existent robot business is… The entire EV market is risky right now for margin compression as Chinese EV manufacturers are really pulling ahead. It’s pretty wild to see just how far they’ve progressed while the west mostly does nothing. Even Tesla hasn’t provided any real innovation in years in regards to their core business. And from what I can tell, they’re pretty much outright ignoring their auxiliary businesses.

If Optimus fails to impress, and gain traction, I’d seriously expect Tesla to end up a subsidiary of SpaceX within the next ten years as Elon tries to protect up his net worth.

[billti]

That's why I think the Optimus thing might make sense from a 'market cap' perspective. Tesla is great at innovation and ramping global manufacturing for new tech. Ten years ago, that was EVs. But now EVs are becoming a commodity and every other car company is catching up.

I do think 'self driving' is still their 'moat' when it comes to EVs. I use it every day, and nothing else comes close. But other than that, building EVs is becoming a cut-throat slim-margin business. I don't think that's where Elon, or Tesla employees, want to spend their energy.

[lotsofpulp]

> It’s pretty wild to see just how far they’ve progressed while the west mostly does nothing.

The “west” came up with Tesla and Rivian, and their cars are on the road. And the US tariffed chinese EVs. What else can be done to combat China’s lower priced labor and possibly more lax environmental regulations?

[hcurtiss]

Tesla is falling to pieces?

https://stocks.apple.com/symbol/TSLA

[nixon_why69]

He slashed tons of basic science funding under DOGE.

At one point he was probably sincere but he's been consumed by culture war slop.

[JumpCrisscross]

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48186106

[nixon_why69]

Yeah, but slashing basic science funding isn't a "yes, and", it's more of a "no, but". It goes directly against trying to get to mars.

[4dfg]

What a load of crap. He pushes this narrative purely for valuation purposes.

He has a legion of people propping up his stock by manipulating them into believing he is a wizard.

[thejazzman]

It’s in his own biography (the older one) that spacex would pursue mars without distraction. That he went to great lengths to ensure it wouldn’t be used for military, tourism, etc.

You can’t believe musk without simultaneously believing he’s a liar. It’s in HIS fucking book.

[JumpCrisscross]

> It’s in his own biography (the older one) that spacex would pursue mars without distraction. That he went to great lengths to ensure it wouldn’t be used for military, tourism, etc.

I said I believe he wants to go to Mars and will put in the work to make that happen. I didn't say everything he's said is true. Musk absolutely lies. But his actions speak pretty consistently to Mars being a real goal.

[tehjoker]

This is a joint project of U.S. government military planners and an ostensible private individual. If Elon disappeared, rest assured, the contracts and development would still happen.

They want mega constellations for always-on drone guidance and for "golden dome" which would allow for the laser-based shoot-down of long range exo-atmospheric missiles. You need reusable spacecraft to make that tenable. This is not about Mars, don't buy the marketing. At best for civilians, this is about making broadband widely available such that America can dominate internet connectivity going forward and increase spying further. As an example, examine a map of Starlink connectivity, you will notice that Russia and Gaza are excluded.

The Artemis missions will eventually enable the placement of communications equipment on the moon, making anti-satellite weapons less effective at disrupting critical communications.

Fortress America will be invincible forever, so so they desire. The macroeconomics are not working out for them though even though the technological edge is still working for them on that level.

[JumpCrisscross]

> They want mega constellations for always-on drone guidance and for "golden dome" which would allow for the laser-based shoot-down of long range exo-atmospheric missiles

This is a conspiracy theory folks who just Googled In-Q-Tel have been stringing together since Covid. It's not true.

> examine a map of Starlink connectivity, you will notice that Russia and Gaza are excluded

Russia wasn't excluded until recently. That was a problem!

> The Artemis missions will eventually enable the placement of communications equipment on the moon, making anti-satellite weapons less effective at disrupting critical communications

Wat.

[tehjoker]

> This is a conspiracy theory folks who just Googled In-Q-Tel have been stringing together since Covid. It's not true.

??? It's documented that Ukraine is using Starlink extensively.

Golden dome: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/golden-dome-for-america-trump-m...

> Wat.

Communications are an exception to the lunar treaty that governs the militarization of space.

Don't forget that the original space program was designed to peacefully demonstrate a high degree of control over ICBM class rockets. They're so good and accurate, we can put a human on top of one. The government does not spend huge amounts of money on things like "art" or "science" without a motivating factor. This is the capitalist empire, not socialism.

[ben_w]

I believe the "Wat." is directed at the mandated-by-laws-of-physics fact that it adds a 2.6 second lag, and that at constant path loss and frequency it requires antennas have 768 times larger diameter (or close enough, the maths works out that it's the distance to moon divided by distance to wherever in LEO your default case is and all the other things involved cancel out).

This factor (and that it applies to all EM including both radio and optical) is also why we had to wait for lunar orbiter missions to get photos of the Apollo landing sites rather than take a picture with Hubble.

Oh, and then there's the problem with the moon having much longer and much darker nights than anywhere on Earth that isn't the [ant]arctic circle, though I have previously opined that anyone who isn't ready to put a few thousand tons of aluminium onto the moon and make a circumpolar power line *simply isn't ready for any plan like this in the first place*.

And the fact that there's only one moon, so half the planet doesn't get any signal from it at any given time.

[tehjoker]

These are good points. I don't really understand your point about the Hubble though that is very interesting. Are you saying that the pictures are too low-res?

Still, in the case of massive destruction of satellite communications, having 50% availability for crucial communications (e.g. continuity of government) etc. isn't ideal but is still something. 2.6 second lag is nothing if you aren't talking about real-time communications. Issuing strategic military orders isn't sensitive to 2.6 seconds of lag.

You can communicate to half the earth at once, you can maybe replace GPS if all the GPS sats are shot down, etc. Your point about large antennas is taken, but for USG installations, I don't doubt they would invest in a few large antennas.

[ben_w]

> These are good points. I don't really understand your point about the Hubble though that is very interesting. Are you saying that the pictures are too low-res?

Yes. Owing to the laws of physics, the size of the optics and the wavelengths of its sensors, it is limited to a minimum feature size on the moon of about 22 meters (which happens at the limit of it's ultraviolet sensor range, 115 nm, not visible light). To see the Apollo lander as a single pixel, it would need to have a primary mirror with an 11 metre diameter, to see footprints it would need one with a diameter of 150-200m metres. And proportionally even bigger than that for longer wavelengths such as visible light.

> Still, in the case of massive destruction of satellite communications, having 50% availability for crucial communications (e.g. continuity of government) etc. isn't ideal but is still something. 2.6 second lag is nothing if you aren't talking about real-time communications. Issuing strategic military orders isn't sensitive to 2.6 seconds of lag.

Or you could just use all the stuff on the ground. We used radio well before we went to space, and if the cable-based stuff (and line-of-sight microwave towers) isn't secure then neither is the even more critical power grid.

If you're willing to give up real-time comms, then we have a lot of bandwidth available for text messages that's currently being spent on TV.

> You can communicate to half the earth at once, you can maybe replace GPS if all the GPS sats are shot down, etc.

Nope. GPS fundamentally requires you can see at least four different satellites at the same moment. Also, they're in geosynchronous orbit not low orbit, there are at present no reported anti-satellite weapons that can get to geostationary orbit, nor would this be likely due to the energy budget needed to get there. Consider that while getting to LEO essentially requires the equivalent of an intercontinental missile, getting to geostationary requires the equivalent of such a missile whose payload is itself another intercontinental missile.

> Your point about large antennas is taken, but for USG installations, I don't doubt they would invest in a few large antennas.

I think you've not quite taken on board what I said.

768 times larger diameter.

Diameter, not area.

If your ground station is 1 meter across, like some satellite dishes I see, one 768 times larger is about the size of The Pentagon building and its surrounding car park.

While I look forward to us being able to build structures that size (and bigger) on the moon, the SpaceX website for Starship is currently listing prices to the moon of $100 million per metric ton.

[48terry]

> pushing the boundaries of human spacefaring capability

I guess polluting space with shitty satellites and causing environmental disasters with failed and questionably-permitted rocket launches is, technically, pushing on boundaries of human spacefaring capability.

[JumpCrisscross]

> guess polluting space with shitty satellites and causing environmental disasters with failed and questionably-permitted rocket launches is, technically, pushing on boundaries of human spacefaring capability

My cat is both cute and fluffy as well as a menace.

[thinkcontext]

I mean, I really dislike what Musk has become but SpaceX has brought about a huge leap in access to space. Last year they launched more than the rest of the world combined, including the rest of the US. They now own more operating satellites than the rest of the world combined. When the rest of the Western world's launchers have had problems over the last few years (Ariane, Vulcan, EU Soyuz, New Glenn, Antares) SpaceX has been able to absorb their payloads with relative ease rather than waiting many years for other arrangements. They've saved the US many $Bs in launch costs by undercutting the incumbent monopoly. Cheaply and easily reusing a rocket was thought impossible, now it's routine and every rocket maker on earth is attempting to copy them.

[matthewdgreen]

If you look at their filings, they are now pivoting into an "AI company". (Meaning, that's where the majority of their future value is described as coming from.) It's possible that this is a harmless investor swindle and they'll keep relentlessly innovating. But you should probably be worried.