. Thunderf00t has been saying for years that Musk is a Vaporware Salesman & every video is backed up by facts. They're well worth checking out. https://youtu.be/VpI8i-iTI6U?si=FEVpSpFEG9qsAknV
WAY more than a showman. He is a grifter, thug, and apparently an illegal immigrant, according to his telling of the story, involved in a coup. You’re right - he is not an engineer. He is, exactly as is Trump, in questionable mental health and a self absorbed opportunistic grifting, foreign agent.
* Hiring good people: ugh. This is kinda lucky imo. The basic concepts of reusable rockets were understood & all the pieces were there, they just had to go together.
This is a huge but eminently surmountable engineering challenge, and they did it in spite of his contributions.
This article is not accurately describing events.
Starship has indeed used the belly flop descent and twice successfully landed in the ocean in a controlled manner.
So take this piece with a massive grain if salt.
The current problem is related to harmonic resonance causing the plumbing to fail.
Rock solid analysis. I’ll give SpaceX their due for Falcon as it is the only domestic human space flight option right now and improved on 50+ years of iterative design going back to Mercury and Vostok. Starship is a flashy boondoggle which will need enormous changes and, thus, render it unusable.
Sheesh, this piece is fantastic - and fantastically written. I know Absolute 0 about real-world rocket stuff, and even I could understand the technical points being made.
ah, but the problem is - knowing more than Absolute 0 about real-world rocket stuff, i can tell you that some of the claims the author makes are hogwash
which is not to say that Starship will work! just that *this* analysis is poor.
This is the part that convinced me the author is talking outside of his area of expertise, for a couple reasons:
1) He's getting the re-entry physics wrong. Retro-rockets don't scrub off any significant amount of the velocity of the vehicle. For example, the Space Shuttle's deorbit burn (1/n)
slowed it from 17,500 mph to 17,300 mph - that's only about 2% of its kinetic energy removed. The point of a deorbit burn is not to slow the vehicle directly, it's to lower the perigee of its orbit into the atmosphere so the *air* can slow it down. "More retro rockets" isn't really a thing. (2/n)
2) He's getting the facts of Starship's testing campaign wrong. The bellyflop maneuver more or less works - here's a video of it making a precision landing on Flight 6. There are still issues to work out, particularly regarding heat shielding on the flap hinges (3/n)
There are so many reasons why the tech to do it is a long way off but the biggest is the lack of a magnetosphere. You can try to terraform all you want, but if the planet can't stop the atmosphere you're making from burning off it's a non starter
The list of problems to be solved is VERY long, and right now, the answers to most of them are "we don't know"
One of the easier ones is "How do we select a crew that can stand being cooped up in a tin can for years with the only outside contact being email?"
It seems feasible but then what you're talking about is a research station like the ones we have in Antarctica and not really a settlement
If you can't hold an atmosphere and a reasonable amount of water on the surface why would you settle there? Even in deserts you can find food and water on earth
Musk is an empty T shirt, which is why he gets on so well with Trump, who is an empty suit. They're both just showmen. Musk is certainly not the modern Howard Hughes he's built himself up to be and Trump's business mogul persona was a fiction created entirely for The Apprentice.
Great article. The question is how many more billions of dollars and tons of debris are we going to incinerate over the Caribbean before they can't hide the lie anymore?
I disagree it's an act. He's evil but also delusional. He genuinely believed in reusable spaceships, and only pivoted to Exploding Moller Skycars because plan "A" failed.
The dotcom boom was built on "that's probably against the law". Elon's learning that physics doesn't care about your lawyers.
Half of all active satellites currently in orbit around the Earth were launched by SpaceX, partly as a result of SpaceX drastically reducing the launch $/kg
I too like to laugh at Elon but the data on SpaceX is undeniably impressive. Elon is no engineer, yes, but SpaceX has a lot of great engineers
Well that metric 'half of all active satellites' was actively skewed by putting constellations into LEO.
Their orbitlifetimes are so abysmally low and the numbers so comically high that the metric doesn't mean anything.
great engineering, indeed, for littering our skies with light and debris. Satellites that have a life span of five (5!) years, only for putting internet access to a cabin in the woods. /s
Long seemed to me there's a pretty reliable inverse correlation between degree of Musk's personal involvement & likelihood of project failure.
Glad for writeups like this but I wish they could stab at who's doing the design. Is Musk injecting himself Howard-Hughes-style, into engineering process?
Can you imagine how stupid it would get if he did? Can you imagine the martyrdom built around him riding a rapid unscheduled disassembly? It would be insufferable.
You know I wasn't going quite that far but you have wonderfully illustrated a key difference between Musk & Hughes: the latter would put his ass in the seat if his engineers & test pilots disagreed with him (& without firing them).
Also Hughes seemed to be aware to some extent of his compulsions.
The more I compare the two of them the more I think Hughes' relatively well-preserved reputation boils down to not making it personal when he overruled his subordinates. That left them feeling more free to disagree with him, even if he'd overrule them (& sometimes destroy a project in the process).
(That Hughes was smarter than Musk I think is not really open for question. He was also a SERIOUS asshole on many dimensions. hmm...now I'm wondering if there was ever a BtB on him.)
Rumour has it that for Starship, Musk is, whereas Falcon 9 is now the dull routine product too boring for Musk to get involved with. That explains why Starship keeps on blowing up, whereas Falcon 9 is one of the cheapest and most reliable launchers in the world.
So much BS sold by this huckster - submarines in Thailand, subways under Vegas, rockets to Mars, self driving cars, cheating at video games, fake robotic bartenders.
Apparently there are more than one born on any given day.
Naaah, this is a bad hit piece.
Starship block 1s have survived reentry repeatedly with damage that would have disintegrated any known vehicle. Block 2s are definitely not designed to "slow down more with rockets" from orbital speed.
Elon being an ass isn't a licence to talk nonsense about physics.
As is Trump. We have two carnival barkers destroying the country while promising wild and amazing sights (mostly racism) that will thrill the susceptible hoi polloi. And corporate media cheers them on and the Republican Congress is giddy with their treason.
Over and over. As soon as Musk talks about something the listener knows about, whether it's cars, rockets, computers, or the workings of government, it's apparent he knows nothing and never has known anything. Just a grifter who came along at the right moment
All it takes for this understanding is a basic understanding of IT and looking at his tweets from the takeover of Twitter… and more recently Social Security.
He’s an empty suit executive with buzzwords. I have, in fact, never seen such a stereotypical executive. It’s legendary how vacuous he is
Excellent article!
Everyone should read it, especially the American public who are paying for a nonsensical rocket concept.
And by the way, sending humans to Mars is much more nonsensical.
NASA can't even bring back 1 kg of rocks in the next 10 years.
So how are they going to do humans to/from Mars?
Musk reminds me of the characters in the Prestige, only without the charisma or competence. Probably Angier, quite happy to keep killing his clone as long as no one notices
Aerospace engineer of 12+ years: a few problems with this article, even if fascist Elon's failures are nice to see. Vibration levels are not linked to payload. The mass of the vehicle does not need to increase dramatically to solve vibration problems.
I thought one of the biggest hurdles with Starship was their propulsion and fuel system. Namely that it's full-flow using oxygen and methane-rich turbopumps. And basically these types of engines haven't really gone beyond design to actual testing for until fairly recently (at least 2014).
That /was/ one of the biggest hurdles, yes. They've launched the booster 8 times, 33 engines each time, with only a few failures. The tech is now over 10 years old as you say. Think they have mostly solved that problem. The remaining problems with the vehicle seem solvable.
I'll be honest, I hadn't looked at previous flight failure analyses until just now. But, it does sound like the fuel system is still one of the contributing factors. Contributing in the sense that while it's harmonic resonance tearing apart the fuel lines, that's still part of the fuel system.
But, I'm not versed in this field at all, so I'm genuinely asking if that's not considered part of the fuel system and this is more of a structural issue? The way the synopsis of the previous failure was written makes it sound like some of it is how it's designed.
It's part of the fuel system, but the problem is purely mechanical, and the same analysis as structures is needed. They ran some long ground runs on the engines (to test these vibrations) but likely didn't get the same behaviour as in space. But they will have had more sensors/cameras on flight 8.
Vibration problems are caused by resonance, where a source frequency (eg engine) matches a natural frequency of some structure. A small bracket or extra bolt is enough to change a natural freq (like moving a finger on a guitar). Vibrations plummet if the freqs don't match.
The biggest problem I see with Starship is that Musk has no interest real in Mars (that's just a cover). Its designed to launch the Starlink v2 (or v3) satellites to connect directly to mobile phones. That could give him a global monopoly on internet access😬. This is why Bezos is also into rockets.
There's only so much spectrum, and ground infrastructure is always going to outcompete satellite Internet overall on speed and latency. Starlink is basically only good for the 1% of Internet access that needs it like people in isolated areas and to cover gaps in cell phone coverage.
Elon is a type of anti-intellectual that doesn't believe anything he didn't experience. Then when he finally (expensively) does, declares himself a genius for reaching baseline-level human knowledge. He's burned through $billions, when he could have just read up on the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation.
Hard to read this and not see Musk’s forced adoption of StarLink into every government agency he can in a new light. SpaceX is never going to deliver effective rockets, and he’s pivoting.
The Falcons are very effective rockets! They're pretty much the cheapest surface to orbit delivery system we have, or have ever had. It's this ambition to go bigger, just poisonous ego need to keep being relevant, that's killing him. And it.
The purpose of SpaceX originally was to hire NASA engineers to build the rockets they wanted to build anyway, and get paid on NASA contracts, while Musk stood in the middle taking money.
All Musk has ever done is buy into other companies or start them alongside actual experts. All he ever has been is the guy with money (which he was born with.) He hasn't invented or innovated a goddamn thing.
The first sentence is the 💣: “Musk’s impotent attempts to get his giant shiny phallus to work are the perfect metaphor for the man. Indeed, Starship seemed promising at first if you didn’t ask too many questions. But, after back-to-back failures …”
He was never the guy designing the tech, but the guys doing it aren't idiots. Nobody thought the Falcon 9 reuse plan was practical either, until it was. I can't stand Elon Musk and would absolutely love to see another company take the lead here, but until that happens...
Musk is also heavily influenced by science fiction. He's chasing his boy-ish (in the immature sense) dream of a sci-fi future, without any real care for people who live now. This extends beyond SpaceX. It seemingly what drives him in everything he does.
Some scientists believe constant radiation from thousands of low-orbit satellites could affect sleep, brain function, even long-term health. Critics warn we don’t yet fully understand the biological risks of being surrounded by so many satellites. SpaceX has not responded directly to the claims...
why can't we keep space travelling for the pros? NASA did a job there, has experts and engineers. Heck, they even reprogrammed 47 year old hardware over a distance of over 24 billion km so the Voyager 1 sends readable data again after 5 months of malfunctioning. THEY know engineering and programming
Comments
Musk hired good people* and, over time, has gotten in their way more and more. The Falcon 9 is actually legit.
This is a huge but eminently surmountable engineering challenge, and they did it in spite of his contributions.
Starship has indeed used the belly flop descent and twice successfully landed in the ocean in a controlled manner.
So take this piece with a massive grain if salt.
The current problem is related to harmonic resonance causing the plumbing to fail.
The article is filled with hyperbole and inaccuracy
he is not an engineer, he is not a scientist, and he is not a good person.
The only bigger pussy in the Trump admin is Vance, who faked his “combat” experience
which is not to say that Starship will work! just that *this* analysis is poor.
1) He's getting the re-entry physics wrong. Retro-rockets don't scrub off any significant amount of the velocity of the vehicle. For example, the Space Shuttle's deorbit burn (1/n)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pfKx4NUc-E
And that kind of tech isn't happening soon
One of the easier ones is "How do we select a crew that can stand being cooped up in a tin can for years with the only outside contact being email?"
If you can't hold an atmosphere and a reasonable amount of water on the surface why would you settle there? Even in deserts you can find food and water on earth
Thunderf00t on YouTube has been become a bit obsessed with pointing out the emporer has no clothes.
https://www.youtube.com/@commonsenseskeptic
And yet, Thunderf00t continues to be correct over and over and over.
His frustration with shouting against the wind of media hype (Hypeloop anyone? Teslas in tunnels anyone? Robotaxis anyone?) is natural.
The dotcom boom was built on "that's probably against the law". Elon's learning that physics doesn't care about your lawyers.
I too like to laugh at Elon but the data on SpaceX is undeniably impressive. Elon is no engineer, yes, but SpaceX has a lot of great engineers
Their orbitlifetimes are so abysmally low and the numbers so comically high that the metric doesn't mean anything.
Glad for writeups like this but I wish they could stab at who's doing the design. Is Musk injecting himself Howard-Hughes-style, into engineering process?
Also Hughes seemed to be aware to some extent of his compulsions.
Suffice to say if you're taking the trouble to comment, then probably 'yes'.👍
https://bsky.app/profile/bertin.bsky.social/post/3lknn4t3ook2d
Apparently there are more than one born on any given day.
Starship block 1s have survived reentry repeatedly with damage that would have disintegrated any known vehicle. Block 2s are definitely not designed to "slow down more with rockets" from orbital speed.
Elon being an ass isn't a licence to talk nonsense about physics.
Politics shouldn't be confused with science: it's like claiming that Soviet nukes would never work because Stalin was evil and Lysenko existed...
He’s an empty suit executive with buzzwords. I have, in fact, never seen such a stereotypical executive. It’s legendary how vacuous he is
Everyone should read it, especially the American public who are paying for a nonsensical rocket concept.
And by the way, sending humans to Mars is much more nonsensical.
NASA can't even bring back 1 kg of rocks in the next 10 years.
So how are they going to do humans to/from Mars?
https://www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/spacex-has-finally-figured-out-why?r=2jrudk
smartereveryday made a great video about it.
elon being a fascist has nothing to do with spacex's capabilities
#TeslaTakeDown
https://betterthanatesla.com
DOWNLOAD FLYERS: https://tinyurl.com/msn6wmse (Word, PDF, JPG)
The hard work was done in the 90s by the Delta Clipper.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
An investor & a salesman is all that Musk will ever be.