Might be time to finally change my sig...

The crescent Earth? You know what Mars looks like from here? Basically like a bright star. It's probably going to be a similar effect looking the other way.

(That was the only part of your comment sane enough to bother replying to)

Why? I say this man has vision!

Not sure that buying a ride in a Soyuz should be compared to starting a company to build next-generation cost-effective launch vehicles, but OK....

But one random sentence is not enough to make that determination.

We have a lot more than one random sentence by which to judge Elon's character. And accepting compromise does not appear to be one of his strong suits. He does, however, seem to have excellent goals, and there's no question that he gets things done...

I'm not sure the distinction is as clear as you're making it. It's not like NASA ever really built rockets. Rockwell International built the shuttle for them. They just set the spec and take bids, like any other government agency. The question is a somewhat less dramatic one: should the government specify the rockets it wants and get aerospace companies to build them, or should it let the aerospace companies build whatever they want, buy the products that fit best and make it work? For what it's worth (not much) my own view of the situation is that launch vehicle tech has progressed to the point where the latter approach is likely to save some cash. But let's not act like it's a difference between some free-market fantasy and a soviet design bureau.

Recent grid solar installations are far more efficient and cost-effective than their counterparts from five years ago. I'd say that suggests all this research is going somewhere. What, you thought that each of these announcements about laboratory successes would instantly result in a new product on the shelf of your local Wal-Mart?

Unless by "solar powered cars" they mean "electric cars attached to a solar-powered grid" that's pretty much exactly as stupid as the idea of a grid technology competing with oil. Cars don't have anywhere near enough surface area to produce useful energy, even if we didn't park them in garages all the time.

As dumb as this might sound my old neighbor had a coworker who created an engine that ran off water.

No he didn't. But you're right about one thing: that sounds really dumb to anyone who knows even the slightest bit of chemistry. Don't take my word for it.

I don't know what you mean by "take off the square from the unit" but I can assure you we're doing it the same way it's done in metric, and there's only one right way. Just as one square meter is 10,000 square centimeters rather than 100, one square meter is ~10.8 square feet rather than ~3.3

Maybe it'll help to draw it on graph paper.

Sounds like the oil lenses from Dune.

This isn't quite right. The reason a gas station has 5 cars filling up every 5 minutes is that the station is the only place they can refuel. When EV owners can "fill up" at home every night, there won't be nearly as many people looking to fill up at the station.

Of course, this is a double-edged sword. Personally I don't think battery-swap stations will ever be viable simply because there won't be enough demand to support a network of stations. Everybody will be filling up at home 99% of the time, and only need the stations for long road-trips. So, figure we could support 1% of the stations we have today. Suddenly there aren't enough stations that there's always one around the corner, which sort of defeats the purpose.

I can buy a little 1000W gas generator for $400.

Yes, but unless you think you're going to go speeding down the highway on 1.34 horsepower, it's not going to do you a lot of good.

Solar panels on cars is a dumb idea. Even if we had 100% efficient solar panels, the surface area of a vehicle just isn't large enough to provide meaningful charging. I don't have the math in my back pocket, but my recollection is that direct sunlight for a whole day might get you a mile or two in a really efficient car. Oh yeah...and people tend to park their cars in garages.

Uh, did you watch the program(me)? Because they absolutely acted like the thing ran out of juice on the track. They showed people pushing it off the track to a garage for Christ's sake.