I find Elon Musk to be a pretty fascinating entrepreneur. In his early days, he co-founded PayPal and has since moved on to try and redefine transportation and energy. He currently runs Tesla Motors, SolarCity (which he recently acquired), and SpaceX, and he has new projects on the horizon like the Hyperloop and solar roof. His company also announced a new Roadster coming soon to production.
This thread is for news and opinions on him and his future projects.
Also with a weird persecution complex. Seems whatever goes wrong, itās never his company or his productās fault, itās always the big bad meanies trying to get him. Remember when he publicly accused a customer of being part of an anti-tesla conspiracy, because said customerās Tesla had a manufacturing issue with the suspension?
No, unless heās joked about it since. He said they couldnāt rule out something hitting the rocket, and some folk made hay about it.
What I think he really meant by that, well, they did do a pretty full-on investigation of the possibility of a sniper taking a shot at the rocket.
It turned out to be, as far as Iām aware, a simple engineering or manufacturing failure. A mechanical failure in the structure caused some sparks, ignited the fuel, and then - to use the technical nomenclature - Kablooey.
Iām eyeing the Solar Roof thing with keen interest. I love the idea of solar panels that blend into the existing aesthetic of your house, though I do have some concerns about effectiveness during the winter as I stare at accumulated snow on my roof.
With those tiles itās much easier to include heating elements than with either normal tiles or normal solar panels. And due to them clearing themselves of both frost and snow, the extra solar power pays back any electricity spent on the heating.
Iām interested in both SpaceX and Tesla, and would like to chat about them on the forum.
However, naming this thread simply āElon Muskā is exactly the kind of hero worship-type activity that seeps into conversations about Musk that both annoy me and seem to leave him confused too.
āThe plot and its cast of charactersāreplete with villains, heroes and whatever Musk isāmake for an interesting backstory and possibly a dramatic TV reenactment. ā
Today I drove past Gigafactory Berlin. Itās going up surprisingly quickly, and itās HUGE. I mean, know that itās called Gigafactory for a reason, but even in Berlin/Brandenburg, which has some famously large buildings this one stands out.
And the speed they are building is pretty crazy. I looked it up and yup, it isnāt just in my head.
āTesla has reportedly adopted a rather unique permit process for Giga Berlin. Instead of doing all permits at once like in traditional German construction projects, Tesla is reportedly using a system where many permits are requested in small steps, starting with a rough first design and moving on from there. This allows the company to work fast, while providing itself with enough space to adjust if it needs to. Voigt noted that this approach shows Teslaās Silicon Valley roots, with the company pretty much building Giga Berlin like a software program.ā
That is a photo of Starship serial number 1. The subject of that article is serial number 9. The photo is about a year out of data compared to the news in the article. Iāve got a feeling that the person who wrote the article wouldnāt have picked an image of the wrong space ship.