Whatever you might think abut his stupid car tunnel, or his baby’s ridiculous name, or even his unwelcome attempts to insert himself into the rescue of a group of Thai soccer players trapped in a cave, you’ve got to give Elon Musk credit for one thing: he’s also a huge jackass on Twitter, perpetually tweeting “politically incorrect” quips like the aging edgelord he apparently thinks he is.
Musk’s highly improbable gender-neutral-friend — the musician Grimes –gets fed up with his Twitter nonsense like the rest of us. The style icon took him to the virtual woodshed some months back for an confusingly unfunny tweet mocking trans folks for having the temerity to want to be addressed with the pronouns that are most appropriate for their gender identity.
And then there was the whole red pill fiasco, in which Musk ended up being told to fuck off by none other than one of the inventors of the now sadly ruined metaphor.
You might wonder why or how Grimes manages to put up with what I imagine must be unending bullshit from that guy. But for whatever reasons they not only remain together; Grimes is willing to defend him on social media.
Last night Grimes posted a video of “sword dancing” on TikTok, but some of the commenters weren’t interested in discussing the artistry. Nope.
“GRIMESSS. HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS AND ACTIVELY SLEEPING WITH THE MAN WHO [IS LITERALLY DESTROYING] THE PLANET AND HUMANITY,” one commenter demanded,.
Grimes replied by singing his praises. Dear sweet Elon isn’t destroying the world; he’s trying to save it. “His whole career is about making travel/house power etc. sustainable and green,” Grimes wrote. “It’s worth a deep dive.”
(Though preferably not in the tiny submarine Musk wanted to use to rescue those soccer players in the cave.)
Another commenter asked a question that you never want to hear asked of someone you love: “Bestie, can you confirm he’s not a men’s rights activist? Some people online have been saying that & I’m concerned.”
“He’s not,” Grimes replied, “Def he’s been very immature at points on Twitter but for ex the president of spaceX is a woman, as is his right hand at Neuralink etc.”
I’ve been thinking about that response and I have to say that “he’s been very immature” is probably the best defense one could possibly give for someone who’s started to sound like an MRA. That at least suggests he’s not some unreconsructed misogynist but rather a dickhead going through a phase. A phase that, like all phases, has a possible ending date.
That is, if he’s capable of changing, If it turns out to be more than a phase and more like a deeply entrenched personality defect the only advice I have for Grimes is to GET OUT and take your swords and your weirdly named baby with you.
H/T — TakedownMRAs
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She’s 33. He’s 49. He has seven kids. She has one kid, a toddler — okay, two toddlers.
The last president also had women in leadership roles and as his right hand and yet nobody gets even the slightest whiff of anything but MRA from him. Does Musk also have Black friends we need to know about?
@Big Titty Demon:
There have been a few stories about software practices at Tesla which are not too impressive either.
There are undoubtedly very smart people working for both SpaceX and Tesla, but Musk fanboys seem to think that he does everything that matters.
@Alan:
Enough to have a copy of “The Apolo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation”, by Frank O’Brien? This is a brain-meltingly deep dive into the AGC. Essential if you ever need to know what to do about a 1201 alarm.
@Dalilama : working on reusable rocket is probably the point where SpaceX have value. I am not sure their current approach is the right one, but they seem to be the most advanced firm on that part, and it’s pretty much mandatory if we want to do more than tourism on the Moon, Mars, or elsewhere
The lift capacity of saturn is a bad point of reference. Saturn rockets are not really viable for moon permanent bases, and *definitely* aren’t viable for mars. Argument work for other rockets, Ariane or whatever. We would need to first massively improve the efficiency of us putting stuff in the air before working on capacity.
That being said, I think SpaceX is probably doing a shit work, based on the fact every other venture of Elon Musk is extremely badly engineered, to the point of caricature for his tunnel based “mass” transit. But Tesla cars too are giant pieces of shit made sellable only due to marketing. Maybe spaceX is the only firm where Elon let the engineer do their jobs, but I doubt it.
@Alan Robertshaw: that remind me of document about fusion reactor. Sadly, one of the needed material still isn’t invented, leading to delay 🙁
(something able to withstand the radiation from a fusion core without becoming a brittle, radioactive mess. The brittle part is the most important economic-wise, but the radioactive part put a big damper on fusion being clean)
Also, while for the Apollo mission using the lowest bidder wasn’t the wisest idea, any future moon development pretty much require this, since by far and away the biggest obstacle for leaving earth is that it cost way too much resources.
@ moggie
Luckily Jack Garman still has his notes for that.
Bearing in mind our previous comments; I guess he was fortunate someone hadn’t used them as cigarette papers.
I love all the Apollo Guidance Computer stuff though. From NASA having to send someone to MIT to threaten to break their legs with a baseball bat if they didn’t stop messing around, to engaging weavers to plait the ROM!
I also like that ‘verb’/’noun’ way of programming. Reminds me of the old point and click adventures.
@ surplus
I’m very disappointed the lunar rover didn’t have an ashtray.
But yeah, that was probably in the specs “Must be able to survive: temperatures in range -200 to + 150 degrees; cosmic radiation; mild nicotine staining…“
Since we were talking about Apollo: RIP Michael Collins, who died today.
@ moggie
Yeah, very sad. When I was born, there was nobody on Earth that had walked on the Moon. And, unless I get hit by a bus, that’s likely to be the case again one day.
I wonder what the conspiracy theorists will make of it. No doubt silenced by the authorities because he was about to speak out.
The cases of cancer in the Apollo astronauts does get me thinking about the Van Allen Belts. Although at 90 years old, perhaps that’s not exactly significant evidence. And the dosages they received were negligible.
https://history.nasa.gov/SP-368/s2ch3.htm
@Ohlmann
There’s detailed plans about for how to make a moonbase with Saturns for principal lift, although Mars is a nonstarter. Not that anyone can make them anymore. Any road, for any sort of large-scale endeavour you’d be wanting at least one orbital shipyard, because ground-to-orbit vehicles make absolutely crap long distance spacecraft and vice versa. For preference the shipyard would also be connected to a big honking mass driver, and probably some giant lasers. You can shift a lot more if you don’t have to bring all your fuel with you. Ideally there’s another station at your destination to decelerate incoming ships and transfer passengers and cargo to planetary landers. Building long-distance ships in orbit allows for giant rings to provide spin gravity (which may not work as well as scifi would have it), something you’d never manage if you were launching straight from the ground. All that said, we clearly agree onnthe basic point that the whole SpaceX thing is just posturing, not making significant contributions.
@ dali
There’s been a few papers on this. But to get around 0.25G, which is considered the minimum for things like bone density and toilets not being an horrific experience , but not have debilitating effects from the Coriolis Effect, you’d be looking at a ring the best part of half a mile across.
Further to the “Saturn V to Mars” discussion. By coincidence Amy Shira Teital (“Vintage Space”) just uploaded a video about the Apollo Applications Programme plan for a Venus-Mars flyby.
The idea was to use a modified Apollo stack on a Saturn V. The command module and service module would be more or less the same. Although it would be a block 4 SM with two LEM engines rather than that single big one. The LEM itself would be replaced by an extension Laboratory/Habitation module. Then they would also use the S4 stage as further space and for solar panels.
That got punted because of budget cuts. But they used the S4 as Skylab.
@Alan Robertshaw : was there a plan to come back ?
The moon have the significant advantage you don’t need much force to fly off it. Mars is a different beast on that regard.
(ok, ok, there’s also like thousands of other issues in that design, but a lot of them depend on how lucky and optimistic you feel. Like “what do we do in case of emergency ?” ; if you didn’t stock up on enough medication at the start you can be FUBAR quickly)
@ ohlmann
Oh yes. Unlike with Mr Musk NASA hadn’t gone with the ‘You’re all ok to die right?” option.
They’d worked out all the orbital mechanics, and a selection of launch windows. It was actually more efficient to go to Mars via Venus as they could utilise the slingshot effect. And they did have the return home part worked out too.
The mission would be flybys, not landings. I can’t find anything on the plans for when they got to Mars; but the Venus bit was as follows:
That seem a lot more doable than getting on the surface.
I guess at this point of time, mostly everything they wanted to do have been done with automated missions.
@ olhmann
Yeah, the Viking missions were probably more scientifically useful than a manned flyby would have been.
They did also want to study the effects of long term stays in space. But the budget people made the, not unreasonable, point that they could just stick the thing in low earth orbit for that. Which is what they did.
Better photo op with Venus in the background though (although that’s the wrong engine bell on the SM).
ETA: Original Skylab design
All this reminds me of how much I hate the famous short story “The Cold Equations.” It isn’t that the story is terribly contrived to bring about the desired ending, it is that it is dishonest, portraying the situation as an unavoidable result of the immutable laws of physics, when it is clearly the result of human decisions that showed a criminal disregard for basic safety and design.
And the fans of the story are even worse. All that their defenses of the story have done is convinced me that they are bad people.
(I expect there’s a lot of overlap between fans of the story and Musk fanboys.)
@Allandrel I agree with your assessment on both the short story and its fan.
It’s also probably popular with the republicans. The whole point of the story is to justify cruelty. It’s exactly like when they sheer for migrant boats to be sunk in the Mediteranean Sea because “we cannot harbor all the misery of the world”* : their goal is to make people suffer then kill them, they just need a veneer of plausible deniability.
(* : the full quote is from a center/left wing french politician, and is “we cannot harbor all the misery of the world, but must take our fair share of it”. The right have truncated the citation, for reasons clearly unknown)
Ohlmann: your claim that Tesla cars are “giant pieces of shit” will come as a surprise to rather a lot of Tesla owners.
Dalilama: SpaceX’s rocket reuse makes a lot possible since it means the cost of launch is down by almost an order of magnitude. Shuttle was supposed to be reusable and cheap, but refurbishment costs were so high that it would have been cheaper to keep building Saturn V. There’s a reason the Falcon 9 launches the vast bulk of commercial payloads these days (even ignoring Starlink launches).
Even with the relatively cheap launches by SpaceX, we’re still not particularly close to having humans land on Mars — never mind settling there. I have my doubts that Musk (or I) will see the day there’s a long-term presence on Mars.
@numerobis: Certainly some owners like them but this is not universal:
https://twitter.com/PostCultRev/status/1386876163964882946
@ allandrel & olhmann
Just for my own amusement, I tried to write an ‘uncontrived’ version of Cold Equations.
The parameters I set was that everything had to be possible with current real world tech (assuming suitable funds and time).
I set it in the solar system. The pandemic was on Mars. That’s where the main vessel was heading. Then there was a further outbreak on Phobos. Orbital mechanics precluded any sort of diversion there. But a plan was cobbled together to use the emergency ‘lifeboat’ capsule.
I was able to come up with plausible reasons for the weight being so critical, and why there was still an airlock.
The one area I couldn’t get round though was why anyone qualified to be on a spaceship would be daft enough to stow away in the first place.
Easy. Four seriously wounded, and you’ve enough fuel to evac two in time to possibly be saved – maybe, if the winds and the enemy both co-operate.
So, yeah, fuel/load equations can be fucking cold.
(I do hate that story though, albeit for significantly different reasons)
Huh, I know more than a few people with Teslas that are not giant Elon Musk fanboys (at the time, only real electric option was what they were going with) and I have not heard them make those complaints in the twitter thread. I sense some generalized bitterness there. Just because someone doesn’t like a man or company practice don’t make the product shit, it would legitimately fail as a company by now if it was that bad.
Never buying one myself, though, on account of the undisclosed eye-tracking cameras pointed at the driver built into all new models. That’s some shady shit, not explaining a camera is on you 24/7, feeding your footage to a giant company in a completely unsecured manner.
@numerobis : Tesla have faults often see on much cheaper cars, but is special in that they have all the issue at the same time.
Their self-driving software don’t work. It’s par for the course since nobody actually do working self driving software, but they are one that push it the most.
Then, there’s basic engineering issues. The Teslas have a shoddy finish, often worse than cheap new cars of other firm. A lot of owners seem to have stockholm syndrom about it, because pointing to a Tesla owner that the paint flake or that a piece is already giving way tend to be met by incredulity.
Then there’s basic design issue, like that one : https://nitter.snopyta.org/wtyppod/status/1384565697100066816
Note that the first time I had seen one, my reaction was “how on earth is that even authorized ?”. It’s a failure of basic security !
At the current point, I find that it’s a scandal that Tesla cars are still allowed on public road.
All in all, that’s why I flat out don’t believe that SpaceX don’t have a lot of skeleton in their closets. Sure, there is no obvious flaw revealed to the public in their rockets, but I don’t trust Elon to not have done the same thing as with the Tesla.
@Alan Robertshaw : the basic problem is that, regardless of how you put it, a space vessel *should* have more than enough leeway for one stowaway. Or even two. The scenario is only remotely realist with one of theses options :
Tchernobyl is a good start to think about theses scenarios. It took like five or six string of incident (some made by reckless decisions, other by fault in the design, and even some more by mechanical failure) to have a catastrophic failure. A Cold Calculation-like scenario need something akin to that for even remotely be in the situation where you have to kill someone to finish.
@ olhmann
Well, even now spaceships tend to operate on very narrow margins. And my ‘future’ isn’t that much more advanced.
The fundamental issue was that something was being used for a task it was never designed for; i.e. utilising what is effectively an escape pod as a transport. So even with as much extraneous material as possible removed, there was barely enough delta-v to not smack into Phobos. And the extra 60kg was enough to mean the launch (solid rocket boosters a la ejection seats) was too slow for the planned interception, So they had to use some of the delta-v just to get back on course.
I was able to cobble together explanations for the technical stuff. Like how to hide when even the locker doors had been removed.
But as I say, the hard part was explaining away why someone would even attempt to stow away; and also how they could do it without being noticed on something not much bigger than the ISS.
My solution to “The Cold Equations” was: Instead of dealing with stowaways by arming the pilot and ordering him to murder stowaways, the company prevents them by:
a) putting a damn lock on the rescue ship hatch,
b) changing the signage from a vague “No Admittance” to “Stowaways Will Be Executed,”
c) including a pre-flight checklist where the pilot stands up, walks over to the closet, and looks inside it, for God’s sake
But yeah, let’s blame “the immutable laws of physics” for why Barton and the company are Totally Not At Fault for killing a kid.