Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Thunderf00t" channel.

  1. AEROSPACE ENGINEER HERE: Just some perspective on Crew Dragon and SORRY that this is long. First I absolutely agree that there's massive issues with Elon Musk and how he does business that's perfectly obvious. There's also no doubt the Gwynne Shotwell has said some dumb things which Thunderf00t and others have pointed out. I am also of the same opinion that both Starlink and Starship are doomed to fail (see below). If we are going to fairly judge Falcon9/Crew Dragon then it needs to be compared against its actual competition. You pointed out that a Falcon9 launch costs $67 Million. I have seen Crew Dragon costed at $70 Million. Crew Dragon delivers 4 people to the ISS on each flight making it a cost of $17.5 million per astronaut to the ISS. The last seat an American had on Soyuz has been reported at $80 Million for 1 person. The Space Shuttle cost $350-450 Million per launch and despite its ability to carry up to 8 people it only ever delivered 3 to the ISS for a crew rotation but the others on a flight did stuff while there so its harder to cost but its safe to say it cost over $80 Million for each astronaut who stayed and did a stint on the ISS. However the Space shuttle could also deliver at the same time 16 tons of cargo to the ISS and that's basically 4-5 times Cargo Dragon. So when you consider the Space shuttle on each flight did the equivalent of 5-6 Falcon 9s its in the same ball park as Falcon 9. Here's the ugly comparison - Boeing Starliner the Boeing Max-8 of space flight. The Boeing Starliner which has had more than $550 Million in US Government money ($92M in 2011 and another $460M in 2012) for development is yet to fly successfully. According to Wikipedia Boeing has incurred costs between 2020 and 2022 of $883M and considering its cost plus contracting the US tax payer will eventually cop those costs. So for more than $1.3 Trillion (with a 't') the Boeing Starliner has flown twice for 1 failed mission and 1 partly failed mission. Basically Crew Dragon is NOT a major step forward or a revolutionary rocket. It is however an improvement on what NASA had especially following the demise of the Space Shuttle. Importantly compared to its main opposition (Starliner) it "looks" pretty magical but that's because Starliner really sucks. Crew Dragon is a step backwards so that NASA can go forwards. Thunderf00t has been around enough engineering project and research work to know that at times you simply have to step backwards because you've run into a wall. Going back to the SPACE SHUTTLE and heads up I did a comprehensive review of its history several years ago as part of the lessons learned section of a proposal. Its basic dry weight is 75 tons. So before you even give it people and cargo you have to lift 75t around 200km and then accelerate it to around 25,000 kmh. Those numbers get bigger going to the Space Station which is why its LEO payload is listed as 30t and its payload to the ISS is listed at 16t. So that 75t is a massive cost but it was sort of offset by reusability, but even that had issues. On top of those fuel costs the Space Shuttle required a lot more manpower to service it than first planned. Its one of the main reasons manned space flight stalled. All the things needed to go further and do things like build a lunar base needed people working on the technologies needed. Not only did the Space Shuttle consume money it also consumed the time people needed to do other things. THAT'S what made the Space Shuttle a failure. Technically it was an amazing achievement but for manned space flight it cost us 30-40 years. STARLINK It will fail just like the Iridium satellite phone system failed. Its a solution to a problem that does not exist. This is what kills many (what people think are) great ideas. If you are in a remote location it might provide a service but for anyone with an easy link to broad band then what does it offer? Plus the optic fibres that broad band is based on don't need to be replaced every few years in the same way the Starlink satellites drop out of orbit. Plus if you want to upgrade your broad band system Bob the Builder's mate Eric the Electro-tech can drive to the network hub and swap out the nodes. 🤷‍♂🤷‍♂ STARSHIP Not long after the Soviet Union collapsed the Russians released a trove of information on their lunar program based around the N-1 rocket. Go have a look at the arrangement of the motors in the N-1's first stage. YES Starship has a similar arrangement and when you know what the issues with the N-1 were, which I have known for over 20 years having read reviews on the N-1 back in the 1990s. The big problem the N-1 had was if they had a motor failure in the outer ring they needed to shut down the motor directly opposite or the off centre load would make the rocket uncontrollable. The Soviets had a system to do that automatically but it failed to work properly and the N-1 did a very similar thing to what we saw with Starship. Starship not only has the same inherent issue of the N-1 their control system for handling engine failures has the same issues the Russians had in the 1970s. Clearly that first flight showed it does NOT have the control range to handle the sorts of failures it had. But that's nothing. STARSHIP LAUNCH SITE. I have spent most of my engineering career in industrial control systems which has included safety systems. I had the second highest qualification available in that area at one stage. SO I AM FORMALLY TRAINED in assessing sites and systems for hazard identification, risk assessments and risk mitigation strategies. That launch site should never have been approved. for use. 1) The launch pad had no thrust diverter and when you consider the mass flow out of those engines (~26 tons per second at over 3.2km/s) and its just slamming into a flat surface. Look up the Wikipedia page for the N-1 and look at the size of the 3 exhaust tunnels. No one should have been surprised that the launch platform failed and chunks of concrete were ripped up and tossed 100s of meters. 2) Right beside the launch pad are the rocket fuel and oxygen storage tanks. If you look at the photos it had a small deflection barrier less than 1/2 the height of those tanks. That barrier means they expected rocket exhaust gases to head towards those tanks and they were left seriously exposed. On basic safety grounds that site should never have been allowed to be used for such a launch and quite possibly ANY LAUNCH. For anyone who wants to hold Gwynne Shotwell to account this is your opportunity. As the Chief Operating Officer and a highly qualified engineer she should KNOW BETTER should be held personally accountable. I have a pilots license and that's the sort of thing that gets airlines grounded and in some cases LOSE THEIR OPERATING LICENSE. SORRY to all this is as long as it is. I mostly agree with Thunerf00t and others like Common Sense Skeptic but I also think that a few things need better context. Especially that applies to comparing Crew Dragon to its competition which in the case of Boeing Starliner its a lot better than some people think, but I'd agree with anyone who says its neither revolutionary nor an ideal solution BUT IT DOES WORK.
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  2. I'm an aerospace engineer who works in industrial control systems, automation and robotics. NOTHING Elon has ever said about self driving cars made any sense. If you ever get the chance to talk to experts in what we call vision systems which are the camera systems we use to recognize parts or do inspections, then those people will explain just how hard that stuff is. You need things like controlled lighting and aspects of target objects that are readily identifiable. Go and watch the TED talk on when they tried to teach AI how to recognise fish to see how easy it is to screw that up. Once you realise what it takes to get a camera to flawlessly recognize what's in front of it under any lighting or background compared to what the average human can do then NOTHING about self driving cars makes sense because just getting them to do the basic task of identifying what's going on about the car is impossible with current technology.
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  3. I did aerospace at U. Illinois. I literally had to stop the video and walk out of the room just before the 5 minute mark. On one hand I really like Elon Musk a lot. He's managed to break the stranglehold the big aerospace club (Boeing, Lockheed, Rockwell, etc.) had on NASA budgeting. It still remains to be seen if he's done right by everyone or if he's just muscled his way into the club. On the other hand is persistent garbage PR is idiotically bad for future space exploration and likely to end in disaster. Its fine to push the boundaries a bit and motivate people but deceiving with delusions and fantasy IS NOT.
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  4.  @Darrylizer1  It was the fact he claimed it as an original idea that triggered me. As an engineer I knew it wasn't a new idea, but then who can argue with a billionaire's PR machine?
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  5. As an engineer (aerospace) its utterly infuriating to see yet another con job. This idea is straight out of Star Wars. Remember what Luke's uncle Owen did for a living - moisture farmer.
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  6. Aerospace engineer here: You are 100% correct. I actually work in industrial control systems and automation which includes the safety systems. Anyone who's ever done maintenance knows that if you ignore the data you have failures. In the late 90s I had a boss who had race cars. I once asked one of the mechanics WHY the pulled the cars apart after going to the track. He told me they are looking for signs of things failing. They'd pull the entire gearbox out and dismantle it and crack test everything, because if a gearbox fails in a race car it costs so much and is potentially so dangerous that its not worth the risk AND RISK is really the major issue. One of the major issues in the world right now is we have an elite with extraordinary power and money who are willing to risk the entire planet because in their brains its acceptable and because these people are so sure of themselves that any other opinion does NOT MATTER. Just look at how people like Stockton Rush, Elon Musk and others respond to contrary opinions. Just this week a bunch of people walked out of OpenAI because they said Sam Altman has lost hos mind and wont listen to anyone.
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  7. This is the sort of video I love people like Thunderf00t doing. Thunderf00t's a Chemical Engineer and I'm an Aerospace Engineer who works in industrial control systems and automation. So much of what's in the media is infuriating. I used to install and program robots like the type he shows at 19:05, although not that brand. When Thunderf00t says they are used for _"tedious dangerous and monotonous jobs" he's 100% right. I've been informally studying economics for a few years and (like journalists) those clowns are always claiming that robots and automation costs jobs. Its a trope they endlessly spew out and its WRONG. Most people will not do things which are "tedious dangerous and monotonous" so we end up having to use robots and automation. But do you think any of the economists, journalists or other clowns will admit they don't know a damn thing about what they are talking about? Its infuriating how many people listen to clowns like Elon Musk, take them for geniuses and regurgitate their nonsense again and again and again.
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  8. Yeah as a Gen-Xr getting laugh at the Millennials who go suckered into this nonsense is the best LMAO moment I have had in a while and a great way to start 2024.
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  9. I wouldn't call this a busted video because he keeps pointing out where the Veritasium video was right. Its more like he's a more comprehensive explanation of what's going on with electrostatics and various fluids.
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  10. If a glass of beer can kill a few 100 braincells then this guy is about 1/2 a glass form becoming a Flat Earther. I am an engineer. I find this sort of stuff incredibly frustrating because we end up having to WASTE TIME explaining why its BS instead of discussing solutions that can actually do some good. I have worked with electric motor controls for 30+ years and the idea of using regenerative braking to power CO2 removal is so idiotic its barely believable someone would publish something this stupid.
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  11. WHICH CHANNEL are you talking about, he's actually pointing out at least 4 that I recognize. 3 of them Matt Ferrell, Alex Guberman (E for Electric) and Ricky (Two Bit da Vinci) are this new classification of social media type called "science communicators." In the past most science communicators where science people - physicists, chemists engineers, etc. These days a lot of them have NO SCIETIFIC qualifications or training. Its basically a fancy way of saying journalist who reports on technology. It does NOT mean they have ANY science background and for some it shows. Occasionally you'll see a person with genuine tech credentials stuffing up. The 4th guy shown here is Sandy Munro (the old guy just before 2 minutes) who actually is a real car guy and does know his stuff regarding cars and manufacturing them. I'd expect he's going to be making a retraction on this once he finds out its a dodgy technology. This vid actually highlights how bad most of the Science Communicators are. Even thunderf00t made a couple of mistakes here. 1: Early on he talks about there is no hydrogen in the atmosphere THAT'S NOT TRUE. There is free hydrogen in the atmosphere there's just not much of it. 2: Where thuderf00t talks about greenhouse gases at the end he's talking as if CO2 is the only green house gas which ITS NOT. Methane which is the main component of biogas like that found in sewers and waste treatment plants is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. In fact gram for gram its far more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Thunderf00t should know that. 3: On the positively charged subject. Yes Hydrogen gas (H2) is not positively charged. Yes free Hydrogen atoms (H2) are not positively charged. BUT hydrogen ATOMS stripped of their electron ARE positively charged. Thunderf00t should have also jumped on that because to create ionized hydrogen plasma takes energy and these guys are claiming there is no energy required. Where thunderf00t has this totally correct is the energy density, but even on that there is a point he missed. The only way these guys could claim they are getting the energy density is if they were capturing and storing the hydrogen as Metallic Hydrogen. If these people are claiming or even suggesting they are creating metallic hydrogen then that's even crazier than all the other claims put together.
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  12. Actually Derek Muller (Veratasium) has a BA in Applied Science from Queens University in Ontario. So unlike many Science Communicators he actually does at least have a technical qualification. I wouldn't call this a busted video because he keeps pointing out where the Veritasium video was right. Its more like he's a more comprehensive explanation of what's going on with electrostatics and various fluids.
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  13. I did aerospace engineering and I love your sentiments but unfortunately Thunderfoot is pretty much on with the costs. I love Elon's enthusiasm but what I hate are his ridiculous estimates and I am sorry to say they are ridiculous. On the super plus side of Elon is that he's broken Boeings strangle hold on NASA funding. One thing that's rarely discussed is the change in business model that happened AFTER Apollo. Prior to that pretty much all of the development programs delivered. The X-Plane programs delivered plane after plane. But during the 70s they just stopped ever delivering. Go check how many x-planes never flew in the 70s compared to the earlier programs. A rare exception was the X-29 forward sweep. What Boeing and others had worked out was that NOT completing NASA funded programs was more profitable than completing them. All they needed was to do enough to get the funding for next development project. One of my class mates ended up at NASA and is still there and years ago she told me about how the funding is decided. She also told me the 2 biggest problems they had with manned flight beyond LEO were life support and propulsion. Nearly 20 years later that hasn't changed. One of the great problems with a moon base or a Mars base is that we have dozens of technologies only part developed. Yes there's been lots of research and development but none of its actually ready. And some of those issues are huge. To keep humans alive they need water, food and breathable air. When Trump called for 4 men on the moon for 2 weeks what very few pointed out the enormous difference that was. The Apollo LM was capable of 75 hours life support for 2 guys - that's 150 man hours. 4 men for 2 weeks -> 4 x 24 x 14 = 1344 so its basically 9 or 10x the previous mission. And they have to fly all those materials to the moon and land them. Last I heard they skimmed it back to 3 guys on the moon for 10 days which means the lander only needs life support for 720 hours (3 x 24 x 10). That's way more practical as its basically half as much everything - oxygen, food & water. Just imagine Elon's 1000 people to Mars. That's 1000 people and all their food, water & oxygen for 6 months of flight and several more after they land while they get the systems on Mars up and running. If you can shorten the flight time by any amount its a big deal in terms of how much you have to launch. Yeah its all possible but we need billions and billions spent on the life support & propulsion. Maybe Elon or Jeff really has solved one of these problems if they have they aren't telling anyone.🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️
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  14. Finally - looking down the list somebody else got it. I'm an engineer (aerospace) and it just infuriates me that here's another con-job exploiting the ignorance of main stream media. Theranos should have been obvious that it was ripped off from the film Gattaca. This is equally a rip off of Star Wars and a few other films. It really is infuriating how ignorant mainstream media is these days. And after they convince the general public about this crap we have to spend days, weeks, months, years explaining this stuff again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.............
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  15. There actually are people doing those sorts of projects out in desert locations. The problem is they are all underfunded. The problem is Elon has gotten insanely lucky with his timing a couple of times. Getting into PayPal right when that sort of system was needed. Getting into Tesla when all of the hard development work had already been done. Picking up some disgruntled but super talented aerospace engineers to start SpaceX and then NOT interfering with them as the developed Falcon.ng Starship is going to break him. He got lucky and sold off his Hyperloop business to a pack of gullible clowns, but he has no one to sell off Starship too. Who's going to buy it? After all he's spent he still hasn't had one fly into space yet, let alone go to the Moon or Mars. He's very rapidly approaching the point where instead of helping further space flight and exploration to where he's wrecking it by wasting time and money.
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  16. I'm an aerospace engineer who's worked in automation for 30+ years and it F*CKING AGGRAVATES me that people are still misrepresenting robots and what they actually do. Anyone can just go and look up Fanuc, Kuka, Motoman, ABB, Staubli and other robotic companies and see what robots actually look like and what they actually do. First off robots (real industrial robots) are nothing like the BS crap that Hollywood makes out. One of the very things Hollywood got close was the original Terminator when it was described as having no feelings, no morals just a program. Second robots are damn heavy seriously heavy. They need mass or they're unstable and shake too much which can make them hard to do accurate work. The more spindly robots you see doing 3d printing get rigidity by the types of mechanisms they use. Third go watch the Canadarm its moves slowly so they can avoid inertia and accuracy issues. Those are less problematic in a factory on earth because we can bolt robots down to solid slabs of concrete. In space inertia and momentum are issues not so easily solved. Like many engineers I am truly over these snake oil salesmen. There are some really serious tasks right here on Earth that if we don't deal with SOON we are in deep shite. Forget climate for a moment almost every Western Developed Nation has serious infrastructure issues that if they aren't dealt with we risk major economic collapses. We don't need clowns wasting money and time on fantasy flights. I'd love it if we started a new major space station YESTERDAY, but I also realise that we have more important priorities.
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  17. You've hit the most important thing too many engineers forget on too many projects. WHAT IS ITS PRIMARY TASK and HOW DOES IT NEED TO DO THAT TASK. A truck needs to RELIABLY HAUL CARGO. By far the most successful engineering project in history was the Apollo program. Disclosure - Yes I am an aerospace engineer, so I am a bit biased. But If you look at its basic task "Put a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth." It was that simple and after the Apollo 1 tragedy they got back to that task of SAFELY RETURN. You can't safely return if you die on the launch pad! They ended up going to the moon 9 times and landing 6 times and did it in less than 10 years from the start. Go look at most of Musk's fantasies. He's always off task. The things his companies do get right they get right because he's fortunate enough to have a few people who DO KEEP THINGS ON TASK.
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  18. How about all those early astronomers who looked through their telescopes and saw "canals" on Mars??? In a documentary (back in the 80s or 90s) I remember seeing a psychologist do an experiment on it once they took groups of high school arts class students and asked them to draw an object they had put at a distance beyond what most people could clearly distinguish details. The object was simply a circle on a flat surface with some random blobs inside the circle. No matter how many times they did it the majority of people would include lines connecting the blobs. There is something weird about the human visual cortex that when it can't distinguish details on a distant object it will add details in an effort to recognise what it might be. Psychologists have known about this stuff for decades.
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  19.  @SimplestUsername  yeah I'd agree on your Tesla assessment so long as you realise the real development had already been done. His real contribution was the marketing, which I have to acknowledge is brilliant. He's one of those rare people who can say almost anything and convince people its magic. He's like the prince charming type who can walk up to any girl and tell her she looks fat in that dress and she just giggles back at him. Elon's similar in that he can stand in front of a crowd tell them obvious BS and they just go yeah. Look at the share price of Tesla. I saw an analyst compare it to other car companies earlier this year and its completely ridiculous. But then its like a few other tech shares that have insane values despite no dividends being paid. People are not investing in returns they are investing in concepts and we all know how that went with Theranos.
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  20. Actually Sebastian Todor claims he studied physics in Munich and has a PhD. A person with that name is certainly listed there and they did produce a number of research publications. So if he is the same person how can he not understand what EVERY engineer learns either in physics class or thermodynamics usually in the first year of a 4 year degree. I think thunderf00t's a bit of a smart ass at times but I get his frustration. As someone with a degree in aerospace I find it incredibly frustrating dealing with the garbage that's put into the blogosphere and social media landscape by so called "technology communicators" and "futurists".
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  21.  @Darrylizer1  Dude - what a great line. "Marketing talks and truth walks!" Hope you don't mind if I use it. You should put that on t-shirts.
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  22. Aerospace engineer with a PPL. Yeah same here. I think all this proves that the film "Idiocracy" wasn't a spoof its a documentary.
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  23. Its a awesome quote, but next time put in the link -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes#Early_life It only takes seconds, leaves no doubts and in the world we live in right now we need facts more than anything else.
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  24.  @freespam9236  As I just pointed out to another person making the same claim about British Columbia if we are gong to take a couple of Trillion tons of CO2 out of the Atmosphere we need to be thinking about planting 100s of BILLIONS of trees not 10s of Millions. We need something like every human on the planet planting 1,000 trees. That's 8 Trillion trees and if about 1 in ten reaches adult size then we'd have 800 Billion adult trees each taking a couple of tons of CO2 out of the air and capturing it as wood fibre. Millions of trees wont do the job and a few Billion wont either. We need to be thinking in terms of 100s of BILLIONS to do the job.
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  25. Circa 2010 professor Robert McChesney (U. Illinois) was in Australia (where I am). I saw the second 2/3 of a lecture he gave on Australian TV about the state of the media. He was prominent in the 2004 documentary "Outfoxed" about Rupert Murdoch's war on journalism. He spoke about a huge swap in the ratio of journalists and public relations (PR) that happened between the 1950s and early 2000s through commercialisation. The numbers of PR massively increased while the number of journalists collapsed and the ratio flipped from 5 :1 to 1:5. Journalists who used to gather information through research (investigations & interviews) went to people who just gathered what the PR people gave them and pump out the stories. Fact checking became a waste of time compared to the demands for pumping out the next story. People like Matt Ferrell and many others are just channels for PR people to push what their bosses want pumped into the airwaves. This is exactly the sort of stuff people like Robert McChesney were trying to warn the world about when they made "Outfoxed."
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  26. Yeah I'm an aerospace engineer and this shite is getting sadder and sadder as time goes by. I was doing my degree when Challenger happened and when the debacle that was Space Station Freedom went on. Most people don't know that the original budget was $20 Billion. When that was considered too much it was redesigned and the number came back at $30 Billion. When that was considered too much it was redesigned and the number came back at $40 Billion. Then we got the ISS for about $120Billion. I bet you have similar stories and as usual we have to put up with clowns like these causing all sorts of distractions.
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  27. As an engineer with over 30+ years in automation that definition (if it even exists) has nothing to do with what what industry does. I have worked with Kuka, Fanuc and Adept robotics and I have NEVER SEEN or HEARD ANYONE in general industry talk about a definition of "intelligent robots requiring at least 5-axis." But then this is one of the things people who ACTUALLY DO OR who HAVE worked in INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS hate about all the bullshite artists who make claims about various technologies like "humanoid robots" and "automation" and what it will do in future. Most of its not even remotely close to wild speculation and is closer to flat earth claims than science. A lot of technology stories we see or hear in the media are PR exercises trying to raise money. I can tell you its very frustrating to be an engineer these days. There are some way more important things than Elon's robot and driverless car fantasies. First of the rank is new power stations closely followed by clean water and waster water systems. Its not simply a matter of an energy transition its mostly NOBODY has kept upgrading their energy and water systems to match population growth these past 30-40 years. The expenditures in those areas are in the TRILLIONS. That's TRILLIONS with a 'T' and an 'S' on the end because its more than 1, in fact its in the double digit and maybe triple digit range. It all depends in how the next version of modern capitalist economics handles the task.
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  28.  @tolep  Your right but it goes to family behavior at the American Elitist level. She got into Stanford and that's not easy. Stanford is regarded in a few places as the West Coast Ivy. It incredibly elitist in its way. Ans going further American elitism is really starting to take its toll. America was started (at least on paper) as a place where there was no elitist cadre running everything, despite that fact from its outset it was run by an elitist cadre. I picked up the other day on a thread about the Federalist Society and someone advise to do a bit of background of who they are and what they push. Basically its a group from Yale and Harvard who believe that only they can adjudicate on the Constitution and they have to protect America from the rest of the scum. Elizabeth Holmes is just another Ivanka Trump type from a privileged background who thought the rules and common sense didn't apply to her.
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  29. I am an aerospace engineer and that's one of the better comments in this menagerie of social media shitfuckery. I'm mostly a fan of thunderf00t and what he exposes but I don't like his cheap shots at Gwynne Shotwell. He's always linking her to Elon's fantasies which isn't exactly fair. Yes she works for a clown, but thunderf00t needs to separate Falcon (& Crew Dragon) from Elon's fantasies of Starship & Mars. What he should be comparing Falcon & Crew Dragon to is Boeing's Starliner, which isn't easy because it hasn't flown a single successful mission and we don't know the costs. Thunderf00t mentions the Falcon & Crew Dragon at $60-70 million and that's a damn sight better than the space shuttle's $450million, which it was costing at the end. I've seen costs as high as $90 million for a single seat on Soyuz, but also closer to $20 million (for Denis Tito in 2001). So 4 Astronauts to the ISS for $70million is getting back to and under the 2001 Soyuz costs. THAT'S an IMPROVEMENT. Plus if you look at what she actually says there's nothing wrong technically with it. Reusable wont be that great until the usability is closer to a jet plane. I don't think it will ever get there with current materials and technology because your comparing something that goes into orbit, does 7km/s and then flies back down at Mach 20 reaching temperatures of several 1000 deg.C and the other just doesn't do that. IS tunderf00t 100% right on Gateway, John Blincow and Elon Musk? YEAH - ABSOLUTELY. IS he misrepresenting Gwynne Shotwell and what has been achieved with Falcon & Crew Dragon? Yeah, because he's linking that program to Elon & Starship instead of comparing it to Boeing Starliner or Soyuz.
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  30.  @Letsgosurfing-cc3ly  I'd agree for some things "just have a think does" but mostly he reports what he can cite. He rarely promotes things as definitive solutions or game changers and I emphasize promotes as in hype like happened with this. He's not perfect but clearly better than average, but then its a fairly low average.
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  31. This idea is straight out of Star Wars. Remember what Luke's uncle Owen did for a living - moisture farmer.
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  32. ​ @jameskelly3502  Great point, YOU ARE RIGHT and I checked it out and there's an explanation. Here's the second paragraph of that press release. "This is a firm fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract modification for the Crew-10, Crew-11, Crew-12, Crew-13, and Crew-14 flights. The value of this modification for all five missions and related mission services is $1,436,438,446. The amount includes ground, launch, in-orbit, and return and recovery operations, cargo transportation for each mission, and a lifeboat capability while docked to the International Space Station. The period of performance runs through 2030 and brings the total CCtCap contract value with SpaceX to $4,927,306,350." SHOR EXPLANATION When people are talking about the US$70Million that's the LAUNCH. What you are talking about is the ENTIRE PROJECT with all the other stuff added in. As you can see there's a difference and quite often it can be a massive difference. Those 5 Crew Dragon missions average just under US$300million which means that on top of the $70M for the launch there's almost another $230M for each flight. This is not simply a NASA problem. Its actually a major problem with projects EVERYWHERE. For Example: Right now in Australia (as I'll explain) we have the AUKUS submarine project. The current Block 5 Virginia subs have a cost AUD$5 Billion each. The project cost for the 8 subs is AU$33-46 Billion each. From what information that's available there's AU$20-32 Billion for each sub that is currently unaccounted for. LONGER EXPLANATION and again I am Sorry to all if this if this is long. With almost every wonderful announcement the devil is in the details and the magic words in that announcement are indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity and related mission services. BACKGROUND I'm Australian but did my degree in America. It was in the late 80s during Reagan's Star Wars Program. Most of the department was on DARPA funding as were most of the postgrads. We all sort of new it was BS but we liked the funding and a lot of people got their MS & PhDs. I came back to Australia afterwards which wasn't good timing and I ended up in industrial control systems, automation and robotics. In 2002 I met Apollo 17's Harrison Schmitt and he mentioned Helium-3, which meant we might be going back to the moon for mining. So I thought I'd go off to the Australian Mining sector and get some experience building mines so I could then do the same on the Moon. Yeah I know that didn't work out, but what I got was an education in large multi-billion dollar contracting jobs and how contractors milk them for all they are worth. I also learned how to build complex systems in remote places and I know NASAs plans for a lunar base are crap because of these very issues of "other stuff." Its not only in engineering and in fact the worst cases In Australia are in government department consulting. Go and check out the PwC scandal. ISSUES WITH ENGINEERING and COST PLUSS CONTRACTS 1 mine site I worked on was the BHP Ravensthorpe Nickel project. Now you'd think BHP the largest mining company in the world would know how to get a mine built - WRONG. That job was budgeted at AU$1.5 Billion and ended up costing over AU$3.5 Billion and then they found out that someone had skimped on the drilling program and the ore body was nowhere near what they had expected in either quality or quantity. WHERE it really blew out was the cost plus contracting. We had an electrician just not show for work one day on that project. He turned up at dinner time in the mess wearing another companies shirt and proudly announced he was getting an extra AU$10 and hour. Working 60+ hours a week, which you do on site that adds up to a lot of money. Within days other electricians were being snapped up in similar ways and the pay rate went from about AU$35/hr to AU$65/hr in about a week as people bounced from company to company. For those who have never worked on cost plus contracting it goes like this. You have expenses (labor & stuff) and you hand them in and if the contract is cost plus 20% (which is common) then for every $1 of expense you get $1.20 in cash back. The reason why cost plus happens is that for large projects that go for several years you just cant plan everything. They can be made to work but the managers running them have to know what they are doing. This is why we see so many government and private sector projects blow out on their costs. So when those electricians went from AU$35/hr to AU$65/hr their actual employers went from charging about $60/hr to over $100/hr. Here's where that adds up. If you have a 100 people and they suddenly cost an extra $10 that gets passed onto the company and they return (at 20%) $12 for which means your profit margin just went up $200 per hour. So with something like SpaceX every time NASA makes an adjustment to a mission it means extra profit to SpaceX and its in their interests as a commercial company to max out those expenses. Here in Australia we have a litany of projects both in the government and in the private sector that have blown out with some projects going billions over budget. The worst private sector project I heard of was the Gorgon Gas project which blew out by $15 Billion. You'd think Chevron would know their job and know how to manage a project BUT THEY DIDN'T. The Australian Navy is not only buying submarines but new frigates and that project recently jumped from AUD$30 Billion to AUD$45 Billion. These things happen from contract variations and that word "variation" is the sound of cash being printed to a cost+ contractor. MORE EXAMPLES Back in the day before the ISS came into being there was the Space Station Freedom project. Me and Classmates all believed that was what we'd be building before heading back to the Moon. The 1st budget was USD$20 Billon and VP George Bush told them that was too expensive and to redesign it. The 2nd budget was USD$30 Billon and VP George Bush told them stop being ridiculous. The 3rd budget was USD$40 Billion and VP George Bush scrapped it, but not before a lot of money got spent doing those design studies. In the end the ISS cost America $120 Billion to build and I think the current estimate puts it over $220 Billion so far when you add in the operations AND NOBODY has ever explained where its all gone. The F35 program cost over a $Trillion in development AND NOBODY has ever explained where its all gone. Here in Oz other than submarines and frigates we also have a patrol boat project underway. The previous class cost under AUD$30 Million each and these new ones are AUD$300 Million each - more than 10x the cost to do the same job AND NOBODY can explain the costs. As part of Australia's AUKUS submarine project there was a AU$4.3 Billion dollar upgrade to facilities at the base near Perth. Knowing what they are basically doing I checked with a couple of people I know and that project shouldn't cost more than AU$1 Billion. Just 2 days ago they announced new plans and its now budgeted at AU$8 Billion with NO EXPLANTION what this extra AU$3.7 Billion is for let alone what most of the AU$4.3 was for. BACK TO FALCON 9/CREW DRAGON We know the cost of each Falcon 9 Crew Dragon launch is $70 Million but what you have shown is a fundamental problem in all these sorts of contracts. There's a lot more than just the basic costs than can be itemised and a lot of it we know nothing about. So you are right there's a lot more, but when we are comparing apples to apples we have to compare what we can. The reason we talk about the at $70 Million is because we know its real and we can compare it to other things. We know the Shuttle flights cost US$350-450 million each, but that doesn't include the development and operational costs. We know the Soyuz seats at the end cost US$80 million each but we don't know what other costs with training (including language training) were incurred. Hope that all explains it.
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  33. I started with a degree in aerospace but have worked in automation, robotics and control systems for more than 30 years and most of the last 20 in Australia's mining industry. So I do understand the points you make about tunneling. Elon relies on 3 things in particular and this goes across all his technologies. 1) the medias absolute drive to be first to report anything no matter how much BS and PR is involved; and 2) the staggering ignorance the general public to ANYTHING involving technology; and 3) the desperation of so many people to think somebody is going to just wave a magic technology wand and fix humanities issues. The second one is the thing that infuriates most people in technology (engineers, physicists, etc.). There's a number of almost insane beliefs in modern societies. 1) I live in a modern society that's based on technology therefore I am a technological person. WRONG. 2) I can use a particular technology like computers and therefore I understand technology. WRONG. 3) I saw, heard or read about a technology and therefore don't need to go to college for 4 years or have any real world training or get any real world experience with that technology to be an expert on that technology. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG and WRONG. There's almost a mass delusion of a form close to Dunning-Kruger syndrome. We generally associate DK with idiotic ideas like flat earth but it actually is more applicable to how the general population regards technology.
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  34. ENGINEER HERE: This video that Thunderf00t is busting is so egregious the entire ASAPScience channel should be BANNED from YouTube for peddling misinformation. As an engineer I find this sort of stuff incredibly frustrating because we end up having to WASTE TIME explaining why its BS instead of discussing solutions that can actually do some good. I have worked with electric motor controls for 30+ years and the idea of using regenerative braking to power CO2 removal is so idiotic its barely believable someone would publish something this stupid.
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  35. Imagine how they feel about the claims "Tesla has just won the robot contest!" I am an engineer who has worked in industrial robotics and I think the humanoid robot claims are horribly overrated. I actually think a lot of what companies like Boston Dynamics is garbage. We don't need electronic dogs and we don't need to replace people. We do need some of the things those robots do but they are NOT the panacea that gets hyped up in the media.
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  36.  @grantadamson3478  Its was actually the classmate who's at NASA you should thank. About 20 years ago I was the one being mouthy and very "Elon like," and she rammed some hard truths back down my throat. What I am really frustrated with the se days is the very same problems THEN are still the same problems we have NOW. Half the problem is that we take so much of what nature does in terms of life support. No matter how you want to consider it - if we want manned spaceflight beyond LEO the life support is an absolute. Only 24 men have been beyond LEO and they did it in equipment that was incredibly limited. Its just kept them alive and just got there and only just got back. One reason why they stopped was they were afraid of losing a crew. By 1972 they really had pushed their luck with 1960s technology. One analogy I like to use for the moon is a remote mine site here on Earth. I actually met Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17) in 2002 and he told me we were headed back tot he moon to mine it for He3. So I went off into the Australian mining industry for some hard on the ground experience with remote mining. The actual number of similarities between the Australian Outback and the Moon are more than you'd think. For starters the first thing is a long range survey (Satellite & aerial) kind of like they did with the Ranger & Mariner probes. Then they do an on the ground survey with a couple of geologists and an SUV. They go out with all their food, water & supplies check the place out and come home with a few samples. The only go for a few days or weeks. Then they send out drilling crews for deeper exploration. The big difference at that point is the amount of equipment and men and supplies and for the first time accommodation, water storage, toilets, showers, communications and power generation. They don't simply go for a few days - they go for weeks. Some stay out there for months. If they find a suitable site with suitable resources then they go with huge amounts of gear. They send in a cast of 1000s to build a mine, the processing plant, the trucks, diggers, more accommodation, more water, more sewerage, more of everything. All that infrastructure takes time effort and construction people and construction equipment. Apollo was just like those couple of geologists doing the on the ground survey who bring back samples from site. The Apollo LM was like a space SUV, but for the next phase we need trucks not SUVs. I can build a mine site here only using SUVs but it would take 1000s of trips. What we need next is the space equivalent of a Kenworth and I don't know if Elon's new rocket is a Kenworth or just a bigger SUV. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️
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  37. I'm an aerospace engineer and I does make a few mistakes, but overall slapping down these fraudsters is fantastic. So you know I disagree with thundef00t and a couple of others on a few technical points. The Tesla is actually a damn good car, but Elon had zip to do with its development (he lucked into that). Plus breaking the recalcitrant behavior of the established manufacturers on electric cars is something special. The Falcon Series of rockets (NOT the starship) is an outstanding achievement (but Elon had zip to do with that). Especially when its put up against what the rest of that industry has done. SpaceX can put 4 people in space for less money ($70 million for 4 seats) than the last few seats NASA paid for on Soyuz ($90 million for 1 seat). Plus it at least works, Boeing's Starliner is yet to have a proven safe flight let alone a manned flight. BUT NONE OF THAT EXCUSES ELON'S BULLSHIT And none of it excuses the BULLSHIT of his fanbots.
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  38. I'm an aerospace engineer and did my degree during the Reagan "Star Wars" era. Its hard to describe the way money was being spent other than bonkers. In my final year when we did a couple of high level classes that also had post grad students in them a couple of those guys were SW funded. As they were postgrads they also had to do term papers and presentations. One class I did was space craft dynamics (damn seriously hard stuff) but the post grad guys did some amazing stuff. One guy was doing the dynamics of rail guns (this was 86/87) and another focusing mirror systems for laser batteries. It was fairly obvious that most of it was bonkers but the money was being delivered by dump truck. But then the Soviets crashed in 88/89 and the whole show vanished. At one point my academic advisor called it "damn peace" because all of his funding had vanished. What people had failed to realise was Reagan spent about 20 years of research funding in about 4 years. But it did scare Moscow enough that they also went on a spending spree and it was what ended up bankrupting them which effectively ended the cold war.
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  39. That effect is even more profound with sea water because the salt affects the resin matrix. Its why they thought for a long time that carbon fibre for yachts, boats & ships was impractical. It wasn't until the New Zealanders won the America's Cup with a carbon fibre boat that anyone realised it can be done but that it takes real skill AND ATTENTION TO DETAILS to do it. Its why the guys who build carbon fibre sailing vessels are so careful to make sure its sealed properly. I'm yet to see or hear any of those guys comment on how they do Carbon Fibre or how they get it done in a way that works. BUT lets not forget they aren't going 4km down.
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  40. This idea is straight out of Star Wars. Remember what Luke's uncle Owen did for a living - moisture farmer.
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  41.  @DibIrken  Narcissistic Sociopaths don't care they just take what they want. The narcissistic part drives their greed and the sociopathic part doesn't care.
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  42. That's a good point. Nobody was actually questioning this technology and its claims. I'm an aerospace engineer and I didn't pick it as a SCAM but it was fairly obvious something was wrong. I usually avoid these so called "science communicators" because they get so many basic things WRONG. In the past most science communicators were actual physicists, chemists, engineers, etc. Even when they were journalists they were journalists who usually took the time to get their facts right. Neil DGT recently commented that these days the "news industry" is so geared to being first to report something they don't check anything. Its in the first few minutes of this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S58vlJwhwDw Just in the aerospace area I see so many BADLY researched stories produced. Half the problem is there are so many companies trying to promote their ideas and get funding. That's such a competitive space and its a space where there are so many people scamming investors.
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  43.  @trashkumaneko4539  The Germans (as part of ESA) are actually working on it. They are doing an isolated lab in the Antarctic at the moment. But the top top guy on complex bio-systems is a guy named Jonathon Trent. He's done a few TEDx talks and other more complex lectures on YT. He recently left NASA after 20years and started promoting what he calls "Up-Cycling" as something different to recycling. From his NASA work he was involve din bio-processes where they converted human waste back into usable materials (food, air, etc.) In simplest terms humans generally downcycle in that they take raw materials and through various process produce waste. Upcycling is where you take biological processes to "Up-Cycle" waste back into raw materials. Its the other side of the biological cycles that mother earth does for us every day. Composting (what gardeners do) is a simple from of an up-cycle process in that takes waste and with bacteria and worms shifts it back up the scale into raw plant food. Photosynthesis is an up-cycle process in that it takes our waste C02 and converts it back into raw O2 for us to breath. Basically, moon and Mars bases can't happen without the sort of work he was doing. What he is into now is doing some of that work and using it to drive food and energy production here in our societies. Instead of simply dumping all our waste into old quarries he wants to fuel society with it. What they worked out is for Moon & Mars bases the shit out of your ass is one of the most valuable resources those bases will have if its used properly. The human gut is great for turning raw material into actively biological raw material that other processes can then use.
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  44.  @ericgulseth74  You have it dead right. He's got a pack of clowns following him the EXACT same way Trumpsters follow Trump and the EXACT same way North Koreans follow Kim. Anybody who dares question a single word of the leader is an abomination that must be put down. Meanwhile they all chant freedom and understanding!!! They are called cults of personality or cults of celebrity. Its all the same thing, mobs of people too lazy to think for themselves. About the only thing we have to do is give them a name. Thunderf00t calls them Muskrats. I call them Muskbots. In general I call all such people fanbots because they behave like Dr. Who's Daleks anything they don't like or they think is inferior must be exterminated.
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  45. Off course he does when there's millions of people cheering him on. Thunderf00t's a Chemical Engineer and I'm an aerospace engineer who works in industrial control systems and automation. So much of what's in the media is infuriating. I used to install and program robots like type he shows at 19:05, although not that brand. When Thunderf00t says they are used for _"tedious dangerous and monotonous jobs" he's 100% right. I've been informally studying economics for a few years and those clowns are always claiming that robots and automation costs jobs. Its a trope they endlessly spew out and its WRONG. Most people will not do things which are "tedious dangerous and monotonous" so we end up having to use robots and automation. But do you think any of the economists, journalists or other clowns will admit they don't know a damn thing about what they are talking about? Its infuriating how many people listen to clowns like Elon Musk, take them for geniuses and regurgitate their nonsense again and again and again.
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  46. Go watch Common Sense Skeptic's channel, he adds in math to rip Elon.
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  47. That's a great point. As an engineer I hate these people because they confuse the crap out of the general public with what we can and can't do. You've pointed out a major issue with these for vehicles. Even when there are good technologies they often confuse people about what those technologies can and can't do. In this video above there's a reference to the liquid metal battery. That's a technology that's been developed by MIT Professor Donald Sadoway. He's cofounded the company Ambri to manufacture them. That's a technology that has great potential for FIXED (not mobile) energy storage. As in things like community batteries. So its shame that clowns like Matt Farrell are confusing people with garbage because some of its NOT garbage but most people can;t tell what is and isn't garbage.
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  48.  @markusschellenberg4684  It stuns me nobody is pointing to that obvious point. Whatever the motor is, that's what defines the rate it can soak up power and also the limit it can deliver power. With pumped hydro you can have a small pump or collection of pumps it does not have to be the same size as the turbine. Personally I think the grid scale tech that's about to take off is hydrogen. We know how to generate it from water. We know how to pump gas down a pipe. Companies like Rolls Royce solved all the issues with hydrogen fuelled turbines years ago. The only reason its not taken off is because there hasn't been a market. Guess what there now is a market and NONE of the battery technology can deliver sustained gigawatt delivery. The batteries are awesome for short term power smoothing, because they can react so fast, but they suck for sustained delivery because they just can't hold enough. We built what was the biggest battery in the world near Adelaide. But if Adelaide's main power station completely tripped out that battery can supply that demand for maybe 2 hours. I once heard that if all the power went off in California they have about 27minutes of battery time. Hydrogen can do days. Pumped hydro can also do days but that's provided you have the right geography. Plus you can build hydrogen power stations on existing sites because the grid connection already exists.
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  49.  @trashkumaneko4539  The actual key to manned space flight is the life support. Its called manned spaceflight not corpse spaceflight because you want them alive and humans produce waste - waste air, waste water & waste solids. Nothing is better at scrubbing air, cleaning water and providing food as the existing natural environmental solar powered processes. I know I sound a bit like a Greenie, but spaceship earth is what we need to learn to maintain. Because in doing that we can learn how to construct systems suitable for other places. I work in automation and one of the main methods is called integration. It where you take existing solutions and equipment and "integrate" them into a new solution. We need to start doing this with our natural environment. We need to integrate existing systems into our environment. There are people doing this but not enough.
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  50.  @Adrobiel  That's a great comment. You're 100% right there's no harm in having students throw up ideas and work through them even if they work out that it won't work. You're 100% right that when people try and promote it through the media to RAISE MONEY its WRONG and the fact that we have to waste time explaining it only makes it worse.
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