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by rramadass·10d ago·view on hn ↗
Yet Mr Musk does appear to have lunar ambitions for Tesla’s humanoids. He outlined a “super sci-fi” future in which they would operate factories on the Moon building solar panels and radiators for SpaceX’s satellites. Humans may be the advanced guard. Ms Shotwell said SpaceX’s aim was to put “boots on the Moon” as early as 2028.

Do company executives really make these sort of claims with a straight face? More importantly, does anybody in the "public" really believe them?

1 comments
> > Ms Shotwell said SpaceX’s aim was to put “boots on the Moon” as early as 2028.

> Do company executives really make these sort of claims with a straight face? More importantly, does anybody in the "public" really believe them?

Why do you think this is far-fetched?

I’m sitting here in my driveway in my Tesla Roadster after it autonomously drove me from Boston back home to NYC. My robot servants are folding the laundry

I agree, totally not far fetched

Seems like Starship has a ways to go before carrying human passengers?
No point in carrying humans until you can launch the 15 refueling missions to get it out of low Earth orbit.

Elon hasn't got a single clue what a critical path is in a project plan.

> a ways to go before carrying human passengers?

SpaceX has safely flown 78 crewmembers from 20 countries across 20 human spaceflight missions using its Crew Dragon spacecraft since May 2020.

Crew dragon was designed by smart minds.

Those smart minds have mostly left spacex now, since musk changed political sides and became much less 'cool' for the brightest to work at.

That's why the company is struggling now - few smart minds means little progress.

> Those smart minds have mostly left spacex now since musk changed political sides

Care to name a few?

Tom Mueller, Chris Thompson, Hans Koenigsmann, Tim Buzza etc have all left.

Makes sense - they had been there ~20 years and must have a huge pile of stock.

But due to musks political aura (mostly right leaning), the smart minds from universities(which are mostly left leaning) are no longer joining spacex en-mass.

In turn, that means the companies are merely ticking along, not racing ahead.

> the smart minds from universities are no longer joining spacex

What data do you have to convince someone who is skeptical and suspicious of your claim?

Yes I know, but how do they plan to get to the moon?
On a rocket?

They make and launch them. More, in fact than the rest of the world combined.

At this point, anyone claiming "SpaceX can't do <generic space related thing>" is either 1) claiming that no one can or 2) blinded by some sort of ideological bias.

They had a landing there the other day

>SpaceX Achieves Its First Moon Landing by Accidentally Crashing Into It at 5,400 Miles Per Hour, Causing Huge Explosion and 60-Foot Crater https://futurism.com/space/spacex-crashes-into-moon

They also have a $2.9bn contract with NASA to land astronauts.

> how do they plan to get to the moon?

With Starship. Is that a trick question?

SpaceX, not Starship. While I don't agree with the “starship will never orbit” haters, the viewpoint itself is coherent.
I hate the mind-bogglingly incompetent approach to project management Elon takes. It's like a chess player who can't see even two moves ahead.

TBF a starship will orbit the planet at least once, just with a fraction of the spec payload and therefore no chance of being refueled to get out of orbit to the Moon. Starship's project dependencies each have a clusterfuck of dependencies, and they each...

It all has to go right or it fails. On top of all that his business strategies is brittle in the same way Tesla is crippled by not having a cheaper car instead of fantasy project like humanoid robots and cyber cab.