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NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 9 months agoConsidering the musk fanboys still pretend that tesla were the saviors of automobiles (because they marketed hybrids to death and overinflated their range so that other companies couldn’t compete on paper until recently) and all the insanity and revisionist history regarding spacex (even self landing rockets wasn’t an innovation…): Yeah
Because at the time when people might not be fully tribalized? The only voices who can actually speak to a cybertruck are, at worse, people like MKBHD who will say “I had some concerns and it is still a bit weird, but overall I love it”.
So by the time critical outlets that don’t have to worry about keeping good terms with The Emerald Apartheid get a hold of it? Everyone will have already made up their minds and all other information is “fake news” or “people who are pissy they didn’t get a free truck”
Tesla while not a lone savior of the EV market, did do a few things right, they showed that the EV concept could actually replace a car, and that you didn’t have to sacrifice styling or performance.
They also showed other manufacturers that there was a demand for EVs
Other manufacturers would have done the same in time, but Tesla did it first.
Space Karen’s contribution to Tesla’s success can obviously discussed…
There was already a demand for EVs. That is WHY Tesla Inc (before musk bought them and insisted he was a founder…) existed and why there was a gradual push for what we would now call plug-in hybrids.
What tesla, under musk, did was to push a strong narrative that PHEVs were worthless (thus slowing adoption and national infrastructure) while making completely baseless claims on range. Also while pushing much larger “minimum” ranges than the vast majority of drivers need. Which increases the hell out of car costs and deterred other automakers from pushing their own EVs.
It is almost like the cybertruck is not the first time that company has pushed poorly made cars with a narrative based on features they don’t actually need.
Also, no, tesla inc (even before musk) did not make the firs battery EV car en.wikipedia.org/…/History_of_the_electric_vehicl…
I’m sorry, are you saying that Falcon 9 wasn’t the first orbital class landable booster? Because I must’ve missed something important in space history.
Unless you’re talking about the Space Shuttle orbiter, which yes, is an astonishing piece of technology (and not a booster). But it’s not economically viable (or safe for humans) like Falcon is.
Please don’t let your (completely reasonable) hate for Musk cloud reality - SpaceX has the absolutely best rocket in the world, at a mathematically provable level.
overinflated their range
Did the maths back in the days when the Roadster was new: You could do Hamburg<->Berlin on one charge but you’d be sharing a lane with trucks and Pandas. Or you could drive fast, charge in the middle, and lose all the time you gained by driving at a speed necessarily to not look like an utter fool. See Pandas have an excuse for hanging out with trucks: They’re not roadsters. They’re barely even cars.
I guess the maths are different in the US where there’s simply no road on which it would be legal to drive 200km/h.
bassomitron@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Uhh, what? The Falcon 9 literally made history due to being the first orbital rocket to successfully go thru re-entry and land. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_flight_20
I agree with all your other points, but no need to discount SpaceX’s accomplishments just because Musk is an incompetent man child. Plenty of highly talented scientists and engineers work there, they can’t help it that their boss sucks ass, though. It’s not like he’s the one designing and engineering the rockets (but he’s surely the one claiming credit for all the work).
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
The DC-X was a self landing rocket long before musk got pissed off that the russians wouldn’t sell him an ICBM
discovermagazine.com/…/dc-x-the-nasa-rocket-that-…
Like most things spacex (and blue origin): it is less about “innovation” as it is more about having a filter between government funding and public oversight. When NASA fucks up? We best do a full investigation and slash their budget and blah blah blah. When private space industry fucks up? Oh ha ha, can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs and it is great that these heroic billionaires are spending their own money because I have no concept of government research grants or contracts.
And plenty of those talented engineers were poached from existing infrastructure (NASA, JPL, Boeing, etc). Which, inarguably, slowed down government and government adjacent research and development drastically.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You are muddling Boeing and Lockheed and ULA with the government and ignoring how badly those companies scammed the US taxpayer for how long. Nothing was stopping those companies from being successful except that they valued short term profit over long term success.
I also don’t buy your argument about the boosters, and want to see your raw data.
photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Huh? The DCX never made it off the drawing board. (They did build a smaller-scale demonstrator but it never made it to space.) Falcon 9 reusability is real and has been for almost a decade. And still, no one has built an orbital class rocket that can do the same.
If you want to argue that propulsive landing is nothing new, you’re right there. We’ve been doing it since the 60s, but on the Moon and Mars. A reusable, orbital-class rocket is a true innovation.