What do you think about Elon Musk?

[GOLGO 13]

Musk is anti-union so he can go **** himself.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Musk is anti-union so he can go **** himself.

Having gone from the military (Navy) to service in the federal government, I have no concept of what it's like to belong to a union, but yeah, that's certainly bad on Musk's part.

[achilles]

That doesn't mean remotely what you think it does.

Stanford is good, but MIT is better, lol! Or even Berkeley.

As for Musk and his grandstanding...colonizing Mars and settling there is a major pipedream because the planet and its atmosphere is uninhabitable as of present. We haven't solved problems on energy and so far his ideas are essentially based on dated science-fiction and not real science.



Oy vey, if you are going to use the qualifier "sort of" then you have lost.

No one is "sort of" a scientist. You are either a scientist or you are not. You either publish papers for peer review, have a solid documentary record of engineering and blueprints that you design or not, you either develop the algorithms or you don't.

I don't know about Musk and papers, but he certainly does have his blueprints, and so does the patent office.

And I think you're missing my point about stuff like Mars. No, he probably isn't going to do it with Space X, but he's been a cheerleader for the idea, one that had largely died. Maybe 30 or so years in the future, we might start something like his grand plan with some initial scientific manned stations there. But every endeavor needs a champion.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

...but he's been a cheerleader for the idea, one that had largely died.

The idea never died. No more than a host of other ideas, it's just that technology needed to develop there wasn't anywhere near at the time and all the time society was developing technology incrementally.

The current NASA Ingenuity helicopter for instance had no influence or support from Musk. And in any case, flying a helicopter a few inches is not gonna augur Space Colonization any time soon.

"cheerleading" isn't science. Doing the actual work is science. Cheerleading is just personal PR brand building and narcissism.

[achilles]

The idea never died. No more than a host of other ideas, it's just that technology needed to develop there wasn't anywhere near at the time and all the time society was developing technology incrementally.

The current NASA Ingenuity helicopter for instance had no influence or support from Musk. And in any case, flying a helicopter a few inches is not gonna augur Space Colonization any time soon.

"cheerleading" isn't science. Doing the actual work is science. Cheerleading is just personal PR brand building and narcissism.

Space X seems to have accomplished quite a lot in terms of advancing the tech. As have some of his other ventures.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Space X seems to have accomplished quite a lot in terms of advancing the tech. As have some of his other ventures.

Again the tech that's actually on Mars and doing the actual work had nothing to do with SpaceX.

[Scott Taylor]

He's a weather balloon. Full of hot air and people mistake him all the time for something mysterious and advanced.

[achilles]

Again the tech that's actually on Mars and doing the actual work had nothing to do with SpaceX.

It seems I'm saying one thing and you're saying something completely different. NASA sending rovers now and then to Mars is nice, but not my point. That's just unmanned stuff. They had no real plan for manned missions to Mars or colonization beyond broad, well, maybe someday we'll do it. Which day keeps getting pushed back. He's the guy, one of them anyway, that people now go to for launches. His tech is certainly interesting at the least, especially his accomplishments with rockets. He's the guy who can inspire us to actually do it.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

It seems I'm saying one thing and you're saying something completely different.

You're saying Musk is "sort of" a scientist and a cheerleader.

I am saying ACTUAL science by ACTUAL scientists is not done by cheerleaders or 'sort of' people. Nothing against cheerleaders of course. But cheerleading is cheerleading and actual stuff is actual stuff.

You are conflating the two, you are conflating talking up an idea as if that's somehow the same as someday achieving it, and that's insane.

NASA sending rovers now and then to Mars is nice, but not my point. That's just unmanned stuff.

Yes because "manned missions" is something that can be wished into being by magical thinking.

So much for science standing on the shoulders of giants, or you know how incremental leaps and decades of original research shared by peer review ultimately sets the stage for big technological breakthrough.

What were people thinking when they named Albert Einstein -- the guy who never invented anything, never worked for NASA or any large corporation but simply worked a dead-end job while mapping out on pen and paper the theoretical physics that serve as a bedrock for modern physics -- the greatest scientist of the 20th Century? So what if he worked out on pen-and-paper the existence of black holes a century or so before the technology (free of Elon Musk stains happily enough) confirmed its existence?

Obviously Elon Musk wishing it is what's gonna make Space Exploration possible? Personally, if I could wish stuff into being, I'd go for something bigger. I mean colonizing Mars is good, but you know what's really cool, a Dyson Sphere. Might as well wish that into being because it's as likely to materialize as Musk's PR-blitz.

They had no real plan for manned missions to Mars or colonization beyond broad, well, maybe someday we'll do it. Which day keeps getting pushed back.

Do you even understand how science works? You can't skip the hard part. Science is nothing but the hard part, the harder parts and the even more punishing parts. You have to make it work incrementally and throwing money at things isn't going to make the science happen in and of itself.

Colonizing Mars is impossible based on what we know about Mars' climate at present, to even make it possible we would have terraform the planet or somehow find a new kind of artificial power source, not to mention the logistics of space travel or sending people in space which so far we've never managed to send anyone further than the moon (and even then only some parts of the moon). Musk is nowhere close to making it happen, he keeps promising building better space ships and so on but that's not actually solving the real issues for his long project.

Ultimately dudes working on pen and paper, or word-processor, the ones struggling for the grants and so on, they're the ones at work at solving these problem and not billionaire white trash.

[CSTowle]

I don't mean to s##t on your obvious admiration for the man achilles, but he's not forging new ground. Every kid who ever dreamed of space (even those of us who got to watch the Challenger disaster live as a kid in school) think about landing on another planet, and Mars is the closest/most likely. Like I said about Steve Jobs, having ideas but hiring others to accomplish them is nice but it's not really that impressive. Certainly not worthy of any kind of hero worship. But if you're a fan, be a fan. If others aren't, don't take it as an insult or undermining your fandom. Different strokes. A person puts there name out there and promotes themselves and their brand and they're going to get feedback, not all of it good.