Comment Huh? (Score 2) 87
Since when was Mansa Munsa accused of handing out *fake* gold?
Since when was Mansa Munsa accused of handing out *fake* gold?
It was even worse outside the US.
Europe adds VAT (usually ~24% or so, but depends on on the country**) atop a 10% import tariff on cars from the US, atop shipping etc. It has nothing to do with Musk, and everything to do with the EU. Don't like it? Lobby your government.
** US cars - and US products in general - are priced without taxes, as sales taxes are highly varied by jurisdiction (and generally low). In the US, tax is added on after the list price; it's not included in the list price. Whether you're talking cars,or a hamburger at MacDonalds.
and those early cars were Tesla's proprietary connector too,
Model 3/Y has never been sold in Europe without CCS combo. That was S/X. Model 3 was Tesla's first switch to CCS Combo in Europe.
I doubt they will produce a cheaper model this decade
(And note that before 3/Y, there was only the much more expensive S/X.... and before that, the even-more-expensive Roadster)
And literally, what do you think they're tooling for? It's IMHO insane how CONSTANTLY, for a decade and a half, people are constantly saying "Tesla will NEVER sell [next model here]", and then as soon as Tesla starts selling it, people just move on to the NEXT model to insist that THAT will never be sold. Roadster, Model S, Model X, Model 3, Model Y, Semi, Cybertruck. *EVERY* time, "It's never going to happen!".
I mean, you'd think being wrong once or twice would be enough, but why do people like you insist on being wrong about Tesla shipping models again and again and again?
Protip: they're not tooling factories for giggles. Feel free to speculate on what pricing and stats of the next platform will be, but insisting that *they're not going to make a new platform* is just absurdity.
** Initially *production* was supposed to start...
So, let's correct the record here.
Model 3 was sold for $35k on the website for several weeks. It was sold off the website for nearly a year. There was no question Tesla wanted to discourage its sales - their profit on it was basically nil - but then again, "basically nil profit" on EVs is what most automakers get on *all* their EVs.
The "$25k Tesla" was not a concept from before the Model Y. It was first mentioned as a "we could do that in a few years" in an interview in 2020, the same year that the Model Y was *released* (it was unveiled the previous year). Plans have steadily solidified over the years, though it's not certain that after inflation it still will be $25k. It is to be built on an entirely different platform than the Model 3 / Y. Initially planning was supposed to start at the Mexico Gigafactory, but they've changed it so that it'll start at small scale at Giga Texas (where most of their engineers are, to better debug the new production system), with Giga Mexico following with a delay. The target release is summer 2025, with the unveiling at some point before that.
It's fairly simple. The only companies with sustainable (aka sufficiently low COGS) EV manufacturing businesses are Tesla, and Chinese companies. While India's relationship with the US isn't always super-warm, it's generally considerably cooler in its relationship to China.
Bringing in foreign manufacturers helps kickstart the industry. China did this exact thing with Tesla. And it's worked out extremely well for them. It helps you build greater economies of scale, develop local talent, build up a supplier base, expand consumer acceptance, etc etc.
Don't be stupid. Thrust is a meaningless metric without mass.
Thrust, dry mass, and wet mass aren't meaningful metrics at all. Meaningful metrics involve things like how heavy the payload can be, how large it can be, and what it costs to put it up there.
Thrust to dry weight tells you how much payload you can carry.
I guess the Sprint ballistic missile interceptor had the highest payload ever then! *eyeroll*
That's why Starship can barely carry more than a Saturn V, but requires 210% more thrust
In its expendible configuration (not that it was at all optimized to be an expendable rocket) it carries 250-300t to LEO. Approximately double that of Saturn V.
An expendable Starship is estimated to cost $300M in 2023 dollars at present build rates, probably down to $150-200M (2023 dollars) in the future. An expendable Saturn V cost $185M in 1970 dollars. Using Nasa's New Start Index (available here) for inflation (NASA's inflation rate is different than that of the general economy), we see about a 8,2-ish ifnlation rate, so about $1,5B in 2023 dollars. Starship in its fully expendible configuration thus launches double the payload for 10-20% of the cost. In its reusable configuration it launches about the same payload, but at high launch rates should be less than 1% of the cost per launch.
(and fuel) to do it.
LOL. Apparently you know so little about rocketry that you actually think that fuel is a meaningful fraction of launch costs.
Making fuel become a meaningful fraction of launch costs is the goal of reusable rocketry. But that goal is far, far away at present. If you don't believe me, run the numbers yourself.
Did you think it could do it without orbital refueling...
Saturn V's capacity to Mars was 0kg. It could launch some custom-designed satellite to Mars, but that applies to literally every orbital rocket ever; it had no capacity to Mars itself, via any sequences of (very expensive) launches. And it's dead in the water even before we talk about getting into a transfer orbit because it has no heat shield for aerocapture, no means of controlled descent, and no means of landing. Lest we even talk about how to get back.
(Also, when seeing these numbers, keep in mind that Starship also has a lot of dead mass dedicated to being reusable)
It is the largest rocket, and it's the most powerful in terms of raw thrust, but it isn't the most powerful in terms of thrust-to-weight ratio
What the heck sort of metric is that supposed to be? T/W ratio determines how fast you accelerate. You want us to award "most powerful rocket" to ballistic missile interceptors I guess?
, and the thing is practically useless past LEO.
Given that it was literally designed for Mars, it distinctly is not. Even without refueling, its payload capacity to GEO is 27t (vs. 100-150t for LEO), which isn't even remotely "useless". By contrast, Delta IV Heavy is 14t to GEO. Vulcan is designed for 8,5t to GEO. Ariane 5 maxes out at 10,5t. Etc.
I assume you got this erroneous misconception based on the fact that its upper stage isn't hydrolox. But ignoring that it has higher ISP and than kerosene, and MUCH lower tankage mass than hydrolox, people who make this argument always boggle the mind to me. Because all this means is you change the optimal staging ratios. That is to say, a satellite designed for a launch vehicle with a hydrolox upper stage will generally have a smaller propellant tank and have the launch vehicle do more of the work, while a satellite designed for a vehicle with a non-hydrolox upper stage will generally have a larger propellant tank and do more of the work itself. Wherein what you effectively now have is a three stage rocket, which gives you far better performance for high-delta-V launches than a two-stage with a hydrolox upper.
But even ignoring that, the difference between hydrolox and methalox upper stages isn't THAT huge to the point where you can say "It's awesome in LEO but worthless beyond LEO!" It just doesn't work that way. There's greater falloff in performance with methalox, but if you have 100-150t LEO performance, you're still going to have great GEO performance.
That's the advantage of rapidly churning out new models: iterate, iterate, iterate. Wasn't an option for something like the Shuttle where every single orbiter cost a small fortune.
E-band is very easily blocked, as water vapour absorption in this band is very high, and more temperature sensitive. So E-band can only be supplemental to other bands, but provides a significant boost when it's usable. On the upside, it's much more directional, so you can have a significantly smaller number of users sharing a given beam.
Old-school automakers strike again. It always goes like this. People project what old-school automakers actually are doing onto Tesla.
Tesla offers insurance, as an option, sign-up only, for people who want their data to be used in exchange for a potential discount? F*** YOU! But then mainstream automakers just sell your data without your consent, for THEIR exclusive profit.
Tesla offers nuanced data-collection options for users to choose what to share and not share? F*** YOU! But then old-school automakers just collect, and even sell, whatever user data they're legally allowed to in any given jurisdictions.
Tesla structures pricing to avoid subscriptions and "nickel-and-diming", ongoing-charging only for (very reasonably priced) mobile data service, but then - after being hassled by a minority of buyers for years to LET them pay for things they CHOSE not to buy - offers a small handful of subscription services? F*** YOU! But then many old-school competitors make bloody everything a service, by default, often as the only option.
On and on. It honestly gets tiring. It's the same thing that corrupt populist politicians do to their opponents.
It's the same problem as the question, "The loss of which hair makes a man bald?"
Western governments have been easily exploited by less-than-unambiguous means of warfare by less scrupulous actors. But this situation is slowly changing. It has to be clear that hybrid warfare leads to harsh enough responses, from the perspective of the attacker, that it functions as deterrence - and "strategic ambiguity" (deliberately murky attribution of the attack, etc) doesn't work.
And thankfully, what attackers fear, they generally wear it on their sleeve. In Putin's case, he unambiguously fears his own people and tries to shut down any means to organize, and any means to resist. So he's painted his own target for hybrid-war countermeasures to Russian hybrid-war attacks. "Man, all those opposition media resources that you tried to starve of funding, somehow they got funded! Oh man, all those protestors who previously were communicating openly on the internet where they were easy to track, somehow they managed to make themselves secure communications networks! Oh man, someone hacked into your domestic security apparatus and bricked your facial recognition cameras! Oh no, all those underpaid military subcommanders, someone just informed them of the vast wealth their commanders have been embezzling, at their expense, with photographs! Oh man, those Dagestanis that are protesting somehow got their hands on a stock of old Soviet light arms - I hear you can get those in any military surplus store, you know!"
So, minor fun fact.
In Slavic languages, the root "Vlad-" relates to governmental rulership and power. In modern Russian, you have vlast' (power / authority), vladet' (to own / rule / possess / subjugate), vladyka (lord / ruler), etc. Similar in Ukrainian - for example, vlada (power / authority). While the "-mir" comes from the same Germanic root as the English "more", meaning "the great", modern folk etymologies relate it to "mir" (meaning either "peace" or "the world"). Orig. "The Great Ruler", modern closer to "Ruler of the Peace" or "Ruler of the World".
Of course he'll trace his name back to who he refers to as "Vladimir the Great", who solidified the rule of the Kyivan Rus and converted to Christianityi (to marry the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor). Ukrainians of course refer to him as *Volodymyr* the Great (myr, BTW, only meaning "peace" in Ukrainian, not "the world"). Historians commonly spell it more like Volodimer. As the Kyivan Rus was closely tied to Varangian vikings, the name has cognates in the Nordic world, such as the Icelandic "Valdimar" (Vald = power in Icelandic as well).
Note that in Russian, the nickname for Vladimir usually isn't "Vlad" (that's for Vladislav), but rather Vova or Volodya. The latter is a diminutive form, so it's sort of mocking to use when referring to a ruler. For example, there was a video from early in the war when an ethnic Russian family in eastern Ukraine filmed themselves in front of the flaming remains of their burning house after an attack, mockingly saying, "Good job, Volodya! Thank you for freeing us - this is everything we ever expected from you!" (gestures at the fire) "Now we can be warm this winter!" (leans over to her child) "Say thank you to Mr. Putin!" (Child) "Spasibo!"
"Good Job Volodya" has since become a meme, referring to backlash from the Russian invasion. For example, Sweden and Finland join NATO? "Good Job, Volodya!"
Ugh, yes. I shuold porfraed beter.
Behind every great computer sits a skinny little geek.