What? Tesla revolutionized the car industry. SpaceX has had a massive impact on space exploration. The Boring Company has the potential to revolutionize public transportation. Starlink has had a huge impact on the war in Ukraine.
yet for a while he was the left poster child for sustainability, even though the battery charge comes from fossil fuels - SMH. Now he has joined the ranks as a snake oil salesman like the majority of the politicians and is loathed by the left for his promotion of free speech that burn their ears - WTF.
starlink will also provide the means for high speed internet to places that currently are not serviced. That's been a goal for quite a while
Right. In Ukraine, Starlink has disallowed the Russian army to take out communications centers. meanwhile, the Ukrainians have handed the Russians their lunch by disrupting their wire-based and cellular-based communications.
please explain more as that is a crazy hot take.
I don't know anything about Neuralink but how can you say Tesla & SpaceX have been buggy as hell?
Tesla is a nice idea, but the reality not so much. There are open investigations regarding self-driving due to a number of crashes, and battery fires are becoming a real problem. Also research Tesla owners being locked out and basically extorted. Plus as someone mentioned, the battery mining process is a real issue. I honestly don't know much about SpaceX beyond it being "space tourism" for rich guys with small dicks, but if people want to be excited about it, then have at it. And the fact that he uses satellite technology to provide basic broadband to (nearly) 3rd world countries at a huge markup just doesn’t impress me. The guy is a weird, drug-addicted megalomaniac playing shell games with investor $, and his story will not end well. His own kids want nothing to do with him, which speaks volumes.
everyone is entitled to his/her/their opinion. But you should look a little further at spaceX. While I wouldn't say it has revolutionized commercial space, it has made launches of satellites - not just starlink and not just for the US -almost routine. SpaceX has been a huge success
I know dozens of people that own teslas and rave about them. All of them. Tesla was at least ten years ahead a few years ago but didn’t patent their work. They wanted to give it away for the good of mankind.
I think he has already eclipsed Gates (the king of the unforgivable blue screen of death errors!) but Jobs is still the king. For both good and bad, Jobs popularized a device has become so essential that most cannot live without it.
I can disagree with that but Jobs is no longer with us. So let's look at where Musk is:
That dude is the most impactful human on the planet during out lifetimes. it is important to note that the initial thrust of this company is to help people who have lost the ability to control parts of their body, for whatever reason. Amazing hope for people suffering today and in the future.
You cannot be a liberal and still have brain activity.
If I close my eyes and wear noise canceling head gear I will never have to know anything. What a life
Agreed. When people complain about an EV I am reminded of the Einstein quote:
Sailing vessels at sea can get access to starlink for weather updates, ocean currents etc.
Musk is one of the top innovators of my lifetime, if not number one. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos are up there as well but Elon has crossed over into many different industries and been very successful.
I agree that overall Musk is amazing but I think there's an upper limit on how far he can go with the solar stuff just because solar power isn't very energy dense even when the Sun shines, which it doesn't do a lot in some places. I think in the long term some form of nuclear energy will be the big blessing for humanity. E = mc*2. That's a lot of energy for just a little matter.
I agree. Solar is inefficient and the ROI takes 20 + years. In some locations in the US, the sun is rolling 300 days per year.
Because the left has demonized that too. And if the left demonizes it, the media, education and government bend over.
Yeah but he allowed X to be open to free speech so there's that.
"SpaceX is buggy"
Greens: There's a climate catastrophe due to CO2. The earth only has 17 years left. HOW DARE YOU!
Yep, and 30 years of drought in CA caused by climate change is now "Atmospheric rivers" caused by climate change.
Until a few months ago, I worked for the biggest battery making in the world (depending on the quarter), which also supplied Tesla. Current battery tech is a disaster. Mining Lithium and other rare earth minerals is bad enough. Almost all of the world's cobalt comes from a small region in Congo, with horrible working conditions. Every major company says they don't source material from places like Congo, but they are either lying or are willfully ignorant. There isn't enough CObalt produced in other areas of the world for any major battery producer to avoid it. It's pretty disgusting, really. Further, there just isn't enough rare earths to produce the battery energy storage needed to replace the extreme energy storage inherent in fossil fuels. WRT fires, let me say that I'll never willingly buy a current EV. The energy density in a chemical battery is scary. As the service manage of the computer division I worked for said after a battery safety recall..."No way in hell I'll ever drive a car with a 1000 laptop batteries between my legs."
Don't forget...more hurricanes than average is a clear sign of catastrophic Climate Change. Also, fewer hurricanes than normal is a clear sign of catastrophic Climate change.
Musk has said that we in a plateau for EVs. He said what we have is what we have until new tech emerges. And new tech is always unpredictable.
Historians will ignore or condemn him because he is not a fascist supporting synchphant. He is the Edison or Einstein of our day.
There are some companies, through federal grants of course, looking at the abundant coal mine waste piles we have in PA (and I'm assuming other states) for rare earth minerals. I haven't heard, but I would think that all the piles left from precious metals mining in the western US would be promising.
How dare you!!! There's no money in actually solving problems like energy generation.
To me, the problem is the group think. If you are not 100% totally invested in renewable energy, you are cast out But NatGas, for example, is very clear (not as clean as renewables) and realistically inexhaustible. Nuclear has a ton of upside. Old nuke plants were built in the 70s. Its like comparing SpaceX to Gemini. But there seems to be this notion that if we invest in NatGas or Nukes, the idea of green energy is dead. And that may be true. But we aren't going to solve energy problems in the 2020s with renewables.
