Man of Honour
Are we forgetting the Cyber Truck with unsmashable glass?
Elon Musk goes to court . . .
- Thread starter stockhausen
- Start date
- Status
Soldato
IIRC all the diver wanted at the time was an apology, and Musk basically told him to do one.
Soldato
Worse. He hired a private detective to snoop around into his private life and try to prove he was right.
Egotistical bell end.
NASA seem to be more aware of how badly things can go wrong. So they take things slower.
Soldato
The guy is a massive bell.
Soldato
But couldn't anyone with some money hire a team of scientists and design/build some rockets if they really wanted to? I don't think embarrassing NASA is anything special. The Russian Space Agency did that for years when NASA were having to pay the Russians to send people into space.
Soldato
Big difference between "some money" folk like Bezos and Branson, and Musk who has fair amount of knowledge of physics and aerospace engineering - you only have to look at his twitter feed and his interactions with other scientists/physicists/engineers to know that.
No argument that he's a bit of a ****-womble like in this case, but you can't say he's just a money man.
Both NASA and private space companies are put under the same scrutiny, especially in terms of safety. Rather it's more down to the approach, i.e. - a private company can go for a more of a 'suck it and see' type of approach which leads to rapid development where as, a government ran agency is mostly tied up in red-tape and budget constraints so it takes vastly longer for anything to get signed off and built.
Soldato
No, of course, he does have a degree in Physics so will know enough to read the right research papers, have unique thoughts, and talk to the right people.
From what I read, the SpaceX rocket (and their competition Blue Origin) basically just updates Russia's now 30 year old RD-170 and RD-180 units using modern resources and using methane instead of kerosene for the pre-combustion.
NASA has put the rocket business up to tender since the use of Russian RD-180s will be banned come 2022.
Permabanned
Given some of the basic, really basic, design errors in Tesla cars I would suggest his no doubt impressive credentials have somehow failed to impact the finished products. One example is they had the inner rear constant velocity joint splines running dry inside the rear electric motor casings. The splines naturally wore prematurely given no lubrication (they'd be immersed in the differential oil in a normal axle casing) producing copious electrically conductive magnetic dust. High current electric motors do not like their internals covered in metallic dust, the failure rate was shocking. It's something I would expect a sixth form engineering student or a farmer to foresee...
Don
I hope this is a short trial. Last thing we need is for ElonGate to be long and drawn out.
Soldato
I like what you did there. Well done.
that's disgraceful 
Man of Honour
I think the stunt with it dragging an F150 was an even better example of Muskism - deception and meaningless twaddle to create publicity(*).
* In case anyone is wondering, the stunt involved a heavier 4WD vehicle with all wheels loaded in a tug of war against a lighter RWD vehicle with the driven wheels unloaded. Of course the lighter RWD vehicle with unloaded wheels had far less traction than the 4WD vehicle with all wheels loaded, so of course it lost traction and was dragged. That's obvious to anyone with even the slightest smattering of relevant knowledge, but that doesn't matter when it comes to putting on a show for publicity. It's too deceptive to be allowed in a formal advert, but that can be avoided by not calling it an advert. I'm being generous and assuming that Musk didn't rig the show further by (for example) using different tyres.
Seemed 6 to one, half a dozen to the other at the time - he seemed to dislike Musk just because he is Musk (same as some people in this thread) and said some not very pleasant things. I don't have much sympathy for either of them.
Soldato
He told him to "stick your sub where it hurts" on TV during an interview, which seemed out of place and unnecessary. It probably could have culminated in any other mature adult saying "well that's not fair I'm only trying to help", but Musk went full tilt into calling him "paedo guy". What's weird is that he deleted it, then doubled down and said "only one reason for an old British guy to be Thailand". That kinda presents itself against Musk's defence today of "paedo guy just means creepy old man in South Africa".
The whole thing is ****** weird to be honest.
However unnecessary the diver was, though, it didn't deserve a hugely influential public figure making the kind of accusations that can ruin your life.
- Joined
- 30 Jul 2006
- Posts
- 12,129
No message.
Last edited:
To be fair, the US government has paid in to Musk's little Empire to the tune of billions, likely using it as a platform to fool private investors. The fact that he ran to the Saudi's not too long ago to take his Tesla private was deeply suspect, before he had to shelve it over fallout from the Khashoggi murder and the damage that connection would have done from other investors/public sentiment.
Indeed recently the Saudi's have taken most of their exposure out of Tesla instead... He seems rather shotgun with all of his plans, if there's ever a more professional competitor, i think his empire will crumble.
Indeed recently the Saudi's have taken most of their exposure out of Tesla instead... He seems rather shotgun with all of his plans, if there's ever a more professional competitor, i think his empire will crumble.
Last edited:
Caporegime
Good luck to the guy who was insulted. I hope he gets a nice pay out that sets him up for life.
Soldato
Empire? The only thing he owns is SpaceX which is worth a pretty penny, but if it doesn't win the NASA rocket contract for 2022, it will likely lose some value.
He is the largest shareholder currently in Tesla, but that is only 20% so doesn't own it and could easily be kicked out if the other shareholders
- Status