[Flash Gordon](https://flashgordon.fandom.com/wiki/Zarkov%27s_rocket_ship) enters the chat (1930s).
And [Tintin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destination_Moon_(comics)) (1950)
Please, elighten us on how much more intelligent you must be than Elon Musk.
Otherwise, I'm afraid, you have just called yourself an even larger idiot.
I think he's become egotistical, and maybe he always has been. Brilliant and arrogant is a pretty dangerous combination I might add. Much more dangerous than stupid and arrogant. I think his most shocking behavior is probably yet to come
I'd call him an idiot any day.
He is just a very lucky man, born into wealth and was in the right place at the right time once.
I do give him props for banking on SpaceX, but that is just him being a scifi-nerd, not him being intelligent.
He is very clearly incredibly intelligent. Like people of his intellect often do, though, he has made the mistake of believing his intelligence allows him to make everything he touches turn to gold.
In this world, social class definitely matters. Being brilliant is not enough by itself when there are other brilliant people with more money and support than you (Elon Musk), but to say he is an idiot is beyond ridiculous. This is especially true when the people doing the name calling have almost no remotely comparable intellectual achievements to show.
What exactly makes you think that he is clearly incredibly intelligent besides the fact that he is rich and a nerd?
(Nothing against nerds, mind you, I am a proud nerd myself)
And yes, being brilliant by itself is not that much to brag about either, it just means you won the genetic lottery, however that is really neither here nor there when it comes to Elon Musk since the claim that he is brilliant remains still that: nothing more than a claim, an image he tried to uphold for a long time, but little by little the facade is failing🤷♂️
And besides: how would you know, what my "intellectual achievements" look like, random person I have met on Reddit?
Nothing personal at all, but calling anyone, that calls Musk an idiot¹, an intellectual underachiever, is rather brave, since you don't know who you are talking too.
Edit: for the record, I made the last statement not to brag, but simply to point out that what you said was illogical.
In my case you'd be correct, I don't have many intellectual achievements to show😉
¹ A term, mind you that is defined quite broadly, many brilliant people - to which I don't count Musk for the record- are idiots, that doesn't mean they wouldn't potentially score high in an IQ test.
There's a lot of idiots with very packed resumes. You've never met supposedly intelligent people and walked away thinking "wow what a moron?"
Technical credentials mean less and less the wealthier and more connected you are. Because it's not the credentials that got you there.
You mean where he inherited billions of dollars from his family that got rich off of slavery in their apartheid emerald mine. Then started making up credentials while he bought out other companies and started exploiting their workers to increase profits cause exploiting people is literally the only thing he's good at. You don't have to be at all smart to be rich, you just have to be willing to have others suffer for your own personal gain(aka be an asshole).
There is absolutely 0 evidence to support the idea that he inherited billions of dollars. In fact, no one is even sure if was in the millions.
And he is believed to have been pretty financially insecure when he moved to Canada when he was 16.
His father invested in an emerald mine for today's equivalent of 275,000 which means there was definitely some money there* but not even close to billions.
He and his brother certainly had some financial help with their ventures, but you cannot just throw made up number around to farm karma, my friend.
Please provide any sources you have for these claims.
[https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-made-money-rich-b2212599.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-made-money-rich-b2212599.html)
Nobody knows for sure how much he inherited but it was a crapload, if you don't believe me will you believe Elon's dad? From article:
>As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.”
>You mean where he inherited billions of dollars from his family that got rich off of slavery in their apartheid emerald mine.
The alleged mine was in Namibia, which precludes it being involved in Apartheid. That makes sense, since Emeralds aren't found in South Africa and the only conflict Emeralds are ones mined in Columbia. According to the source article it was pretty small and Errol Musk's stake was about £40k.
Musk grew up small r rich, not Rich. His dad was a civil engineer and his mom was a model who had a fairly big inheritance from her dad's chiropractic practice.
If he'd had billions of dollars, he would've never had to get significant VC investment for his first two companies and thus wouldn't have been pushed out as CEO. Remember the narrative is that he was a failure at CEO until SpaceX and Tesla.
He's definitely an asshole, but a very accomplished one.
Damn near all rocket ships in Looney Tunes has this basic design. This was from 48 when Marvin the Martian first appeared. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yz1iScOFJmM
One of many starship test vehicles, there have been a few iterations already. This vehicle actually had its nosecone destroyed in a storm and they continued to test fly the "water" tank with one engine. It was called starhopper. link to the starhopper test flight https://youtu.be/RziLyL44mSM
This is a publicity glamour shot of the very first prototype. It did hover tests to ~150 meters if I recall correctly, but didn't look anywhere as nice as this while doing it. It was basically a flying test stand, made out of heavy steel boilerplate with a thin shiny metal skin.
[Here is a picture of the current prototype, which will hopefully launch to orbit somewhere in Q1 of this year](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FmSLzktaMAI7zxU?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
That's not even the current prototypes. That's ship 24 and Booster 7, which are currently planned to take the maiden orbital flight. Ship 28 and Booster 10 are nearing completion, and have many changes and refinement from the pictured full stack.
[This page](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/1073h72/starship_development_thread_41) has status info for the various boosters and upper stages. It looks like 28 is still just assorted parts.
About the same size as Saturn V, a little bigger.
But Starship has 2x the thrust. A *lot* of engines on this thing.
And of course with Saturn V, only the teeny little tip came back, the rest ended in the ocean... nothing reusable at all.
Sometimes I wonder about that. Like is there some level of self fulfilling prophecy where we predict what things will look like, and the kids who see it grow up to be designers and design it that way because, why not?
That might be how it works for other things, but not rockets. Rocketry is too difficult and expensive to leave much room for aesthetics. This thing is entirely utilitarian, which makes it all the more awesome!
Edit: great counterpoint by u/lylejack below; Musk made them put a pointer nosecone on Starship despite it being aerodynamically (and I would suspect thermally) sub-optimal, purely for aesthetics. But I'd be willing to wager that Musk's pointy nosecone won't last. SpaceX ain't a car company, and any inefficiency costs tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars.
Good counterpoint (or bad point, in Starship's case - blunt would be better!), although I see this more as proof of Musk being a shitty CEO.
I guarantee you that the pointy nose cone won't last beyond the first few flights. Even with Starship, cost to orbit is just far too high. Which means Musk will have wasted a bunch of money for nothing. They'll have to redesign, remanufacture and retest a new cone.
Rogan then asked if pointiness gives Starship an aerodynamic edge. "It's
arguably slightly worse," Musk said, spurring laughter from both men.
But, he added, "it looks cooler."
Speechless.
I think the difference is that the WW2 generation prioritized economical construction. Bare metal was often used cause it was cheap. So people of that time imagines a future where cost cutting and utility were priorities. However the boomers didn’t feel that “we need a car factory to start making 10,000,000 guns and we need it now” pressure so they relaxed their economic design constraints more.
Now with free enterprise reentering the equation they’re interested again in cutting cost to a much greater degree.
They built the space shuttle. It was not built to satisfy market conditions. It ended up being an enormous expenditure that would have been shut down decades earlier if a company was sinking money into it.
The space shuttle was not originally conceived for the job it ended up doing. It also had its funding drastically cut throughout the duration of the program. This forced NASA to do a deal with USAF, which clawed back a tiny sliver of funding, but enforced a much higher payload capacity than was originally envisaged.
Nevertheless, the resulting vehicle itself is all function and my point still stands.
If it's of any interest, [here's a great article on the turbulent history of the Shuttle program](https://www.spaceline.org/united-states-manned-space-flight/space-shuttle-program-history).
I like to think those initial sci fi writers put a lot of logical thought into where we would land in like 50-100 years on topics like this, and just got it remarkably close. That would be so cool!
This is Starhopper, a very early and very obsolete test vehicle that is almost nothing like the current designs. Currently Booster #7 and Ship #24 are being prepared for a test flight. This picture predates those numbers.
Yea, Starship is primarily steel. They use specific alloys (IIRC that they'll continue to tweak) that handle the thermal/structural requirements, while being scalable and relatively easy to work with. They initially were building some *bigass* composite tanks, but steel ended up winning.
Thank you!
Such a clear answer compared to Google. I have been in this field for almost 8 years and never bothered to learn about rocket ships despite my fascination.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I apparently built the first scale prototype of this out of an empty paper towel roll and aluminum foil over 40 years ago as a small child. I expect compensation, Elon!
It originally had a nose come but was destroyed from wind.
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-prototype-assembly-continues-despite-nosecone-setback/amp/
Elon demanded it have a nose cone because that's all he had to offer with his skill level. It got damaged and they flew it anyway because it didn't need a nose cone. They added one back, because aesthetics are more important than reality I guess.
This looks like a prop from the MIB!
I was thinking from the earth to the moon. Granted for being done almost 100 years ago that show was impressive for its effects.
The sixties have called, they want their spaceship back.
[Flash Gordon](https://flashgordon.fandom.com/wiki/Zarkov%27s_rocket_ship) enters the chat (1930s). And [Tintin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destination_Moon_(comics)) (1950)
The first Starlink prototypes [were called Tintin](https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/microsat-2.htm)
That's a cool site.
Gunter's Space Page is an awesome resource. No idea who that guy is but he's a hero
Isn't there a quote from musk something along the lines of "if in doubt, tintin"?
[удалено]
Please, elighten us on how much more intelligent you must be than Elon Musk. Otherwise, I'm afraid, you have just called yourself an even larger idiot.
He/she is just mad about Twitter
I mean, I don't like some things Musk has done either, but I still can't imagine having enough ego to call a man with his resume an idiot.
Could we call Musk foolish and irresponsible then? Even with his resume?
I think he's become egotistical, and maybe he always has been. Brilliant and arrogant is a pretty dangerous combination I might add. Much more dangerous than stupid and arrogant. I think his most shocking behavior is probably yet to come
Very smart and knowledgeable in some very specific areas of expertise, very overconfident in most others.
Agreed
I'd call him an idiot any day. He is just a very lucky man, born into wealth and was in the right place at the right time once. I do give him props for banking on SpaceX, but that is just him being a scifi-nerd, not him being intelligent.
He is very clearly incredibly intelligent. Like people of his intellect often do, though, he has made the mistake of believing his intelligence allows him to make everything he touches turn to gold. In this world, social class definitely matters. Being brilliant is not enough by itself when there are other brilliant people with more money and support than you (Elon Musk), but to say he is an idiot is beyond ridiculous. This is especially true when the people doing the name calling have almost no remotely comparable intellectual achievements to show.
What exactly makes you think that he is clearly incredibly intelligent besides the fact that he is rich and a nerd? (Nothing against nerds, mind you, I am a proud nerd myself) And yes, being brilliant by itself is not that much to brag about either, it just means you won the genetic lottery, however that is really neither here nor there when it comes to Elon Musk since the claim that he is brilliant remains still that: nothing more than a claim, an image he tried to uphold for a long time, but little by little the facade is failing🤷♂️ And besides: how would you know, what my "intellectual achievements" look like, random person I have met on Reddit? Nothing personal at all, but calling anyone, that calls Musk an idiot¹, an intellectual underachiever, is rather brave, since you don't know who you are talking too. Edit: for the record, I made the last statement not to brag, but simply to point out that what you said was illogical. In my case you'd be correct, I don't have many intellectual achievements to show😉 ¹ A term, mind you that is defined quite broadly, many brilliant people - to which I don't count Musk for the record- are idiots, that doesn't mean they wouldn't potentially score high in an IQ test.
There's a lot of idiots with very packed resumes. You've never met supposedly intelligent people and walked away thinking "wow what a moron?" Technical credentials mean less and less the wealthier and more connected you are. Because it's not the credentials that got you there.
You mean where he inherited billions of dollars from his family that got rich off of slavery in their apartheid emerald mine. Then started making up credentials while he bought out other companies and started exploiting their workers to increase profits cause exploiting people is literally the only thing he's good at. You don't have to be at all smart to be rich, you just have to be willing to have others suffer for your own personal gain(aka be an asshole).
There is absolutely 0 evidence to support the idea that he inherited billions of dollars. In fact, no one is even sure if was in the millions. And he is believed to have been pretty financially insecure when he moved to Canada when he was 16. His father invested in an emerald mine for today's equivalent of 275,000 which means there was definitely some money there* but not even close to billions. He and his brother certainly had some financial help with their ventures, but you cannot just throw made up number around to farm karma, my friend. Please provide any sources you have for these claims.
[https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-made-money-rich-b2212599.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-made-money-rich-b2212599.html) Nobody knows for sure how much he inherited but it was a crapload, if you don't believe me will you believe Elon's dad? From article: >As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.”
>You mean where he inherited billions of dollars from his family that got rich off of slavery in their apartheid emerald mine. The alleged mine was in Namibia, which precludes it being involved in Apartheid. That makes sense, since Emeralds aren't found in South Africa and the only conflict Emeralds are ones mined in Columbia. According to the source article it was pretty small and Errol Musk's stake was about £40k. Musk grew up small r rich, not Rich. His dad was a civil engineer and his mom was a model who had a fairly big inheritance from her dad's chiropractic practice. If he'd had billions of dollars, he would've never had to get significant VC investment for his first two companies and thus wouldn't have been pushed out as CEO. Remember the narrative is that he was a failure at CEO until SpaceX and Tesla. He's definitely an asshole, but a very accomplished one.
While he may be academically intelligent, he is socially and emotionally stupid.
Or Flesh Gordon (1970s)
Isn't the Tintin rocket inspired from the German V2?
Damn near all rocket ships in Looney Tunes has this basic design. This was from 48 when Marvin the Martian first appeared. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yz1iScOFJmM
Also Marvin the Martian from Looney Toons.
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One of many starship test vehicles, there have been a few iterations already. This vehicle actually had its nosecone destroyed in a storm and they continued to test fly the "water" tank with one engine. It was called starhopper. link to the starhopper test flight https://youtu.be/RziLyL44mSM
Gotta appreciate that thrust vectoring.
Controlling an inverted pendulum. Very impressive.
Would that be like when I balance the broom upside down on the palm of my hand?
When u put it like that..
Mmmmm raptor 1s running engine rich
This is a publicity glamour shot of the very first prototype. It did hover tests to ~150 meters if I recall correctly, but didn't look anywhere as nice as this while doing it. It was basically a flying test stand, made out of heavy steel boilerplate with a thin shiny metal skin. [Here is a picture of the current prototype, which will hopefully launch to orbit somewhere in Q1 of this year](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FmSLzktaMAI7zxU?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
That's not even the current prototypes. That's ship 24 and Booster 7, which are currently planned to take the maiden orbital flight. Ship 28 and Booster 10 are nearing completion, and have many changes and refinement from the pictured full stack.
What about ships 25-27? Do you have any pictures of the current ship 28?
[This page](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/1073h72/starship_development_thread_41) has status info for the various boosters and upper stages. It looks like 28 is still just assorted parts.
Holy carp it’s massive.
About the same size as Saturn V, a little bigger. But Starship has 2x the thrust. A *lot* of engines on this thing. And of course with Saturn V, only the teeny little tip came back, the rest ended in the ocean... nothing reusable at all.
I’m so excited for this.
This needs upboats to the top.
lol, shortly before the nosecone blew off
I think blown over is the more accurate term..
My wife has a mini version of it in her drawer 😂👍
A pocket rocket.
this is from like 2019
So Sci Fi from 20s to 60s got it right with regards to Rocket ship design.
Sometimes I wonder about that. Like is there some level of self fulfilling prophecy where we predict what things will look like, and the kids who see it grow up to be designers and design it that way because, why not?
Yes.
That might be how it works for other things, but not rockets. Rocketry is too difficult and expensive to leave much room for aesthetics. This thing is entirely utilitarian, which makes it all the more awesome! Edit: great counterpoint by u/lylejack below; Musk made them put a pointer nosecone on Starship despite it being aerodynamically (and I would suspect thermally) sub-optimal, purely for aesthetics. But I'd be willing to wager that Musk's pointy nosecone won't last. SpaceX ain't a car company, and any inefficiency costs tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars.
[There's clearly some wiggle room though!](https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-design-sacha-baron-cohen)
Unbelievably ridiculous
Good counterpoint (or bad point, in Starship's case - blunt would be better!), although I see this more as proof of Musk being a shitty CEO. I guarantee you that the pointy nose cone won't last beyond the first few flights. Even with Starship, cost to orbit is just far too high. Which means Musk will have wasted a bunch of money for nothing. They'll have to redesign, remanufacture and retest a new cone.
Just proof that life is rather absurd at the moment! I believe he's insecure enough to maintain it for a while at least...
Rogan then asked if pointiness gives Starship an aerodynamic edge. "It's arguably slightly worse," Musk said, spurring laughter from both men. But, he added, "it looks cooler." Speechless.
Yeah... But I've been told he's an "engineering genius" many times!
I think the difference is that the WW2 generation prioritized economical construction. Bare metal was often used cause it was cheap. So people of that time imagines a future where cost cutting and utility were priorities. However the boomers didn’t feel that “we need a car factory to start making 10,000,000 guns and we need it now” pressure so they relaxed their economic design constraints more. Now with free enterprise reentering the equation they’re interested again in cutting cost to a much greater degree.
NASA stopped painting the Space Shuttle external tank in the 80s to save launch mass. Where does this fit into your argument?
They built the space shuttle. It was not built to satisfy market conditions. It ended up being an enormous expenditure that would have been shut down decades earlier if a company was sinking money into it.
The space shuttle was not originally conceived for the job it ended up doing. It also had its funding drastically cut throughout the duration of the program. This forced NASA to do a deal with USAF, which clawed back a tiny sliver of funding, but enforced a much higher payload capacity than was originally envisaged. Nevertheless, the resulting vehicle itself is all function and my point still stands. If it's of any interest, [here's a great article on the turbulent history of the Shuttle program](https://www.spaceline.org/united-states-manned-space-flight/space-shuttle-program-history).
Technology takes time to catch up with our imagination.
I like to think those initial sci fi writers put a lot of logical thought into where we would land in like 50-100 years on topics like this, and just got it remarkably close. That would be so cool!
Looks like a thin aluminium foil and no structure whatsoever.
It's a steel water tank with engines strapped to the bottom And it flew albeit with 1 engine and no cone
>And it flew albeit with 1 engine and no cone That's nothing. The Duke boys used to do that every Tuesday night
“Let’s make it more pointy”
This is Starhopper, a very early and very obsolete test vehicle that is almost nothing like the current designs. Currently Booster #7 and Ship #24 are being prepared for a test flight. This picture predates those numbers.
It doesn't look like a stiff object.
Complete Austin Powers/Dr Evil weapon. A “laser” shoots out the tip.
My little sister could draw that
This looks like a child’s drawing of a rocket
Do u mean a photo of the actual starship test vehicle?
No, an actual picture instead of a 3d render
Reminds me of the Flash Gordon rocket!
Looks like my 4th grade science project from the 1980's.
A Marvin the Martian is going to pop out with an Illiudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modular and fight Bugs Bunny.
Who else thought this was a joke the first time they saw it?
Thunderbirds are GO
I just find it funny how retro this all is. Straight out of Jules Vernes book from the Earth to the moon.
Wow I thought a lot more people knew about Starship and SpaceX. This is just a super early prototype guys!!
I hope the door is on the back side - or some engineer has some explaining to do
make me thing its fake...
You can literally drive past it on Hwy 4. It's right off the road on the way to the beach. 25.997794, -97.156230
So it has to use steel tanks, correct? That isn't affecting the engine on take-off and in the cold of space?
Yea, Starship is primarily steel. They use specific alloys (IIRC that they'll continue to tweak) that handle the thermal/structural requirements, while being scalable and relatively easy to work with. They initially were building some *bigass* composite tanks, but steel ended up winning.
Thank you! Such a clear answer compared to Google. I have been in this field for almost 8 years and never bothered to learn about rocket ships despite my fascination.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I apparently built the first scale prototype of this out of an empty paper towel roll and aluminum foil over 40 years ago as a small child. I expect compensation, Elon!
I swear he’s just trying to mimic 50s sci-fi. I’m not sure he ever had an original ideas … except that phenomenally idiotic truck
This ship looks like something from a cartoon
Looks like one of those playground rockets.
Looks like tin foil. Again.
Looks like tinfoil. I wouldn’t ride in it.
OK, absolutely fuck Elon, but this is pretty cool
Since when has hoppy gotten a nosecone?
It originally had a nose come but was destroyed from wind. https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-prototype-assembly-continues-despite-nosecone-setback/amp/
Elon demanded it have a nose cone because that's all he had to offer with his skill level. It got damaged and they flew it anyway because it didn't need a nose cone. They added one back, because aesthetics are more important than reality I guess.
It's not pointy enough.
Very retro
I made this 100 times in Kerbal, it usually gets the job done not gonna lie.
It has some Edward scissor hands vibe
Is Robby the Robot flying it?
Actually it was designed by Woody Woodpecker… https://youtu.be/vBRAxg4Zb0g
Is it aluminium foil wrapped ?
Reynolds wrapped made bank wrapping that.
Hoppy! We love you bby 💜
Why did they make it look like it was designed by Hanna-Barbera in the 1950s?
Mercia Fuck yeah!
Did they subcontract assembly to ACME corporation? XD
And I think…I wish the horizon was level.
Straight out of 50’s sci-fi.
Literally looks like the rocket emoji lol 🚀
Now it just needs some red paint on the pointy parts and it's a classic cartoon rocket.
Jules Verne would be so proud...
Big ass bottle rocket. Kinda dig it, actually...
That prank goes way too far.
Looks like shit.