At the current rate of horrible fiery deaths, FuelArc projects the Cybertruck will have 14.52 fatalities per 100,000 units — far eclipsing the Pinto’s 0.85. (In absolute terms, FuelArc found, 27 Pinto drivers died in fires, while five Cybertruck drivers have suffered the same fate, at least so far.)
Was the Pinto really that bad, though, or did Mother Jones do them dirty?
In the numbers above, the Pinto is hardly a standout deathtrap; I mean, by modern standards, sure, everything on that list is a horrible deathtrap, but the Pinto was safer than the Toyota Corolla or the Beetle or the Datsun 210, and none of those cars are as burdened with the oppressive fiery deathtrap narrative as the Pinto is. In fact, the Pinto’s overall deaths per million vehicles is better than the average!
https://www.theautopian.com/its-long-past-time-to-stop-making-fun-of-the-ford-pinto/
1/6887 is not good odds.
Better than the early days of COVID when they were up in arms about having to smell their own breath.
cough.
Garbage in, garbage out
What a dumpster fire that truck is.
I look at the cartoon from Byrnes and it reminds me of the US healthcare system.
¿Por qué no las dos?
And some people wonder why the cybertruck is barely sold outside the US.
Everything I hear about this thing is bad.
It’s only available in North America / Mexico. It won’t fly with many vehicle regulations outside of the US.
I imagine the sharp edges are more than enough to keep it out of Europe forever. Pedestrians need to be able to roll onto a vehicle in an EU pedestrian collision. The Cybertruck will lop you in half.
keep in mind that while the cybertruck might seem like a bad vehicle, it also is a bad vehicle
It’s barely sold outside the US because other places (like the EU) also care about the safety of people outside the vehicle. That’s why European and Asian cars (except the models explicitly for the US market like the Tacoma) are designed for pedestrians to be deflected, while US cars are a moving brick wall which will squish them like a bug.
Also, I suspect you’d need commercial plates and a special license to drive it most other places, due to the weight.
Do you have a reasonable alternative solution to teach pedestrians lessons?
Edit: (/s)
Pedestrians would probably learn more from the experience if they don’t die.
(sorry dropped /s)
It’s barely sold in the US as well.
Might have something to do with it looking fucking stupid.
Most US trucks look fucking stupid. In my honest opinion.
I have no problem with something looking stupid. The problem for me is not just that it looks stupid, but that it is stupid. It’s a stupid thing that shouldn’t exist.
…and unlike the Pinto, because we are so deep into fucked-reality-ville, it won’t get recalled.
These are cybertruck owners…
Nah. The Ford Pinto laid the groundwork for the NHTSA’s regulatory control of forced recalls. The only way this thing doesn’t get recalled for being dangerous is if Musk’s D. o. g. e manages to undercut or defund the NHTSA.
Additionally, other countries with better regulatory bodies won’t even allow it to be sold or will require mandatory recall of these vehicles which means the end of the cyber truck. They can’t even sell them because people don’t want them.
The other thing is that insurance companies can absolutely refuse to insure them and if I’m honest, they may be the main reason that the NHTSA doesn’t back down from regulating them (insurance companies are a powerful lobby, and they absolutely can countermand the automotive lobby in some cases).
My point is, it’s more complicated than just “Musk is a government official now, and historically dangerous cars weren’t recalled”.
I mean, the thing is already outright illegal in most countries where pedestrian safety is taken into account. An EU version would have to look completely different.
Let me simplify it for you… Musk has been targeting agencies that stood in the way of SpaceX. Did you hear he started targeting OSHA this week because of the spotlight on Musk’s intentional dismissal of safety regulations? Or that he is also targeting the consumer protection agency? Everything that protects regular citizens is being shut down as “wasteful”, and his only criteria is anything that costs him money or prevents him from exploiting workers.
Don’t forget the revelation that USAID was looking into Starlink in a critical way…
Yeah I’ve seen some bits about that, they were looking into how Musk was interfering with the Ukraine war I think?
I’d like to thank you for this measured take in response to my unbridled cynicism.
To be fair, you made a good point. In the article it states pretty definitively that the NHTSA hasn’t been allowed to have the Cybertruck independently crash tested which is bogus as hell.
The fact that it can’t force that from any car manufacturer doesn’t really make sense. They haven’t even received relevant data related to Tesla’s in house crash testing and I can’t even begin to understand how that’s legal.
They will be neutered even further soon, they’re on the project 2025 list.
I believe they’re absolutely not street legal in the UK, nor in the EU. Those were never “ridiculous sized trucks” Walhalla to begin with (although I see more Rams than I care to, these days), so there’s roughly zero chance those things will become mainstream here.
Heck, we have rain here, that’s enough of a wankpanzer repellant.
They haven’t been banned from sale in the UK or EU so far as I can tell, according to the article.
But the relevant safety organizations and municipalities have been impounding them when they show up, so that’s something.
They don’t have to explicitly ban the Cybertruck if it doesn’t pass the existing regulations. It’s not legal to drive in UK/EU. You could buy one for display-only or something I’m sure.
It will take Leon 20 minutes to shut down the whole agency claiming that they actually eat babies and people will just go with it.
I don’t know why you keep saying intentionally inflammatory things that don’t take into account the full list of factors and facts we have about how the real world works, but you do you, I guess.
Because the way the world worked changed a few months ago. Trump is immune and has pardon powers.
You’d be surprised at how little it’s changed. Oligarchs are still oligarchs. You think the Ford and GMC CEOs are just gonna let Musk come in and eat their lunch when they have a whole swathe of legal teams just waiting for the government to breach a contract?
NHTSA
Project 2025 has explicit targets for reforming NHTSA. It is unambiguously in their sights, just lower on the priority list.
Agreed. And that’s where consumer choice comes in. People don’t want them. Tesla is having to rework their entire plant to use the assembly lines that produce cybertrucks because they can’t sell the ones they’ve already made. They projected and prepared to manufacturer and sell 500,000 and they’ve sold something like 40,000 and the rest are just sitting in retail lots or holding lots collecting dust. The best estimate seems to be that they might be able to sell another 30,000 in 2025. But with tax credits for EV’s going away and other regulations going into effect world wide, that is probably a pipe dream.
Look, all I’m asking is that Tesla investors lose all their goddamn money.
Lol. You’re getting your wish. They basically would be in the red if it weren’t for some credits and Bitcoin they sold.
I would love it if the board voted Elon out. I know it won’t happen because they’re a bunch of sycophants, but “Elons antics and poor decisions are causing us to lose money” is a great reason to do so.
On a scale from 0 to 3 (out of 10), how surprised would you be to read that the DHS decided to purchase 250.000 cybertrucks, because they are bulletproof? Before you go to Google it - I made it up, but there is a 50% chance of it coming in the next weeks.
I would be surprised for a lot of reasons. The main one being, they’d have to be dirt cheap and have an exceptional warranty agreement attached in order to compete with other automakers who make bulletproof vehicles. And, further there’s too many other problems with the amount of information they collect that the DHS would not have full and direct control over. Tesla’s are well known for recording anything and everything. We learned when they blew one up outside that Trump Hotel that they can be remotely locked by Tesla the company. A private company should not have that kind of direct access to government vehicles of any kind.
I think that really underestimates how corruption would work. Tesla might make a show of a “government edition” software loadout, whether because they had to or even as theater to pretend they catered to government requirements when in actuality it’s largely the same but maybe with some branding.
In terms of pricing, I’m sure that any actually “bulletproof” vehicles cost plenty. Which is why even departments like the DHS have largely unarmored fleets. Tesla wouldn’t meet those standards, but the marketing might be sufficient to serve as a bullet point over the current non-armored vehicles they use.
I think we can count on the corruption and legal rights of other companies more than you think apparently. Tesla’s not the only car company. They certainly don’t have the same pull in the government as Ford and GMC and Dodge. Tesla is a brand new player who cannot be trusted to follow the rules and deactivate or unequip any sensors and components for tracking that the government would require (on trucks they have already manufactured for the civilian market - which would be the case because Tesla already has significant stock it can’t sell). The government don’t have the qualified personnel to upkeep these vehicles, and that’s assuming they even have a place to store a fleet of them that’s covered parking.
A government software load out is not going to be enough. When the government buys vehicles they specifically have them manufactured to a spec and that spec would have to involve the removal and or lack of installation of most of the sensors and capabilities the vehicle comes with stock. So they either have to buy them as is and modify them (which requires personnel with a specific set of training and qualifications), or they have to be manufactured to that spec at the Tesla factory (or retrofitted to remove the unwanted components).
DHS’s armored and unarmored fleets can be washed, can be parked in an uncovered lot, can be maintenanced by the personnel they already have. There’s way more to buying a fleet of vehicles than just the price tag for individual units.
I work on planes for a living including government planes when we get the contract for those and let me tell you, they differ quite a lot from conventional civilian planes even when the base plane is the same. Tesla doesn’t already have a contract, and even if they get one that money isn’t allocated to them in the budget. There’s plenty of other reasons why I think this is a BS take, but man even corruption has a shelf life. Trump may be out of office in a couple of years but the entire government won’t just up and retire with him. Their corruption will definitely conflict with his because these are career politicians and Trump is liable to die in office.
The skin is literally handgun resistant not anything more than that. And the windows aren’t bullet proof. They’d have to modify each door to take bulletproof glass. It’s prohibitively expensive on a vehicle that wasn’t engineered for that.
It’s the kind of thing I’ll believe when I see it and not a moment before.
You mean that dog killer lady and Nazi weirdo care about competition and data security?
They aren’t the only people who have a say in what happens. It’s funny to me that y’all clearly don’t know how the government works or how much red tape there is. Tesla is an overvalued and under performing company that barely deserves to be called an automotive manufacturer.
The government has already signed contracts with other car manufacturers for the purposes of armored vehicles. Those manufacturers will absolutely sue for breach of contract in the event that the government doesn’t pay them and utilize their vehicles. Further, there are still regulations and specifications that are required to be met. They can’t fire everyone no matter how much they think they can. And Congress will not jeopardize their cash cows.
It’s a lot of different echelons of the government that this type of thing has to go through and it’s definitely not going to happen overnight. I’m not saying it can’t happen. I’m saying that it’ll take time and the other automotive companies will fight back against anything they see as a conflict of interest.
I can understand that people think things look bleak. But like half of what’s going on right now is scare tactics to make the general populace capitulate without a fight. The people who know how things work are very rarely ever at the top of anything. The people who get shit done are rarely at the top.
The budget is already signed sealed and delivered. Where’s DHS gonna get this money? Because I would bet other car manufacturers have already bid for the contract for new vehicles. So unless you’ve got something that says Tesla won the bid, quit playing with me.
Nah, he will just get more government grants to “fix” it. (Aren’t they up to like 30% grants at this point?)
Probably why he’s closed the CFPB.
Ford’s reasoning was that it was cheaper to pay out for the injuries and deaths than to change the car. Cybertruck has a much better plot armor, a fanbase that refuses to believe it’s crap.
I think that fanbase is staying to wane. But who knows, maybe the gas loving Maga rednecks will start buying…who am I kidding, most of them can’t afford the ridiculous price tag.
Not only that, it’s not even a proper truck. They could have come up with a standard truck design and used tech and EV to create a new niche that was usable. But no one can tell Elon no, so his 5-year-old self’s vision had to be made because it’s different. Sometimes different doesn’t mean better.
You mean he drew the design with a crayon?
The kind of car Blade Runner would have driven.
Blade Runner vehicles were more aligned with 1960s coupes
According to the article there are already five less of them than there used to be.
They can just buy a used one since the value of these fucking hunks of junk drops dramatically once its driven at all.
I read a reddit post recently by a guy who had bought one for $135K after shelling out $50K to a broker to find him one. He was wanting to sell but couldn’t get more than $70K for it lol.
What often happens in cases like that is people on the edge leave, but those who remain are now distilled insanity.
the maga crowd has diesel truck attached to their very masculinity, thats never happening.
The MAGA crowd mostly needs to give their truck gender-affirming care by giving them truck nuts.
I don’t know. I’m not sure I’ve seen or encountered strong pro cyber truck sentiment. Maybe a bit of online excitement for like a day when they were first rolling out but now it’s been a laughing stock.
IRL owners are something else to deal with. they get mad when you point and laugh at their rolling dumpster
I sped up and passed one on the freeway just to give him the finger. He even looked like pre-gender affirming surgery Elon. Who looks a lot like Andrew Tate.
There’s 3-4 Wankpazers around here and I see them around once a week. I flip them off every chance I get.
I’m a school bus driver - kids love the things and go apeshit whenever they see one. Fortunately, not many elementary school kids can afford one.
The very real origin of the Fight Club joke about not doing a recall
“joke”
Fight Club - The Recall Coordinator’s Formula
The Pinto got well known for a couple of reasons.
One, the classic “exploding in a rear end collision.” The design flaw here was that in certain rear collisions, the fuel tank would be pushed into the rear differential. Not only could this rupture the fuel tank, it could also produce a spark. Boom. Lots of cars had this same design in the 70s, with the fuel tank low in the rear, right behind the rear differential.
Two, the infamous Pinto Memo, which did a cost benefit analysis that determined it would be cheaper for Ford to not fix the problem, and just settle whatever cases came up. This very clearly inspired the Fight Club recall formula scene. Take note that the car used in that scene is a Lincoln Town Car, produced by Ford Motor Company.
The kicker for the Pinto recall? What they did to fix it:
- Two sheets of 1/8" plastic, each about 18" square
- Some long zip ties
- Layer the two sheets over the rear diff, zip tie them to the axle
That’s it. My dad pointed this out to me in his shop some time in the late 80s or early 90s. He had a Pinto in for an oil change or something, “Hey, let me show you this.” It was such a hacky “repair.”
Hackey, but I guess some plastic would be enough to stop metal on metal contact and prevent sparks?
Not that my Miata “temporarily” has cardboard wrapped in tape wrapped around the cold air intake pipe to prevent it from rubbing against the frame. Nope, definitely not.
Curious: how effective was that “repair”? Did it actually make a difference at all?
It would have prevented the “spark” part of the failure condition, but not the tank rupturing part.
Stopping the explosions seems like a good enough sort of solution to me
A more appropriate solution would be a plastic shield designed to fit around the whole front of the gas tank, and then appropriately fixed to the vehicle, as opposed to “some hardware store shit.”
Leaking fuel is generally a bad thing. It may not hit the differential but let’s say the exhaust or muffler is banged up and pointed downwards – still gonna have a nasty fire
The bolts on the back of the diff would puncture the fuel tank, so it would help with both.
That’s not how Pinto axles were. The differential assembly bolts in from the front.
Lots of cars had this same design in the 70s, with the fuel tank low in the rear, right behind the rear differential.
Jeep Grand Cherokees were this way between 1993 and 2004 and Jeep Libertys were this way between 2002 and 2007.
I do believe they were plastic though.
But they are jeeps. Quality was never an expectation
Reads like clickbait. There’s 34K Cybetrucks, so the actual number of fire fatalities is rounded to 5, one of which is the trumptower guy (so 20% is already intentional). Not that these are encouraging numbers, but you can’t draw conclusions from an N of 4.
You can draw conclusions because there’s only 35,000 on the road. That is a terrible rate.
that’s how confirmation bias works, not statistical probabilities.
EM’s still a nazi and the CT is a horrible joke, but this is still insufficient data.
Are you telling me that 35,000 vehicles is not a sufficient sample size to assess safety? Are you for real?
No. Incidence is a measure of probability of events over time (or with cars alternatively over miles). If the number of events is low (and 4 is low), your confidence intervals are extremely wide (which is the statistical way to say, we have no idea what the real number may be). The comparison is striking, the pinto had 27 fires over 9 years in >3M vehicles. https://fuelarc.com/evs/its-official-the-cybertruck-is-more-explosive-than-the-ford-pinto/
Let’s add that idiots buy cybertrucks who disproportionately think it’s bulletproof…
Again, “analyses” like this make great clickbait but contribute very little to our understanding, and that will remain the case even regardless of you getting angry at me about it or not.
It’s so great to be able to find comments such as yours, unfortunately it feels uncommon in Lemmy specially when certain names are mentioned, the bias and willfulness to shit on those are making people a bit blindsided and easy to guide through bad data usage. My first thought reading the title was about the statistical value of the numbers given, which doesn’t detract from the actual quality or lack thereof of the vehicle. At the moment using elon musk or tesla in a title of an article will increase the traffic automatically. Which is why we constantly get every single shitty comment made by him reported with useless data.
Yeah it’s part of the enshitification process. This is why Lemmy appears superior to reddit thus far. On reddit, the quintessential early “are you stupid?” response is enough to shut down the conversation. I’m glad it didn’t happen here.
And it’s not even that I disagree that Teslas have major safety design faults, you cannot put door opening mechanism on an electric actuator, because you’ll get trapped. I’d never buy a car that doesn’t have a mechanical door latch at hand (it’s hidden on teslas). Interestingly Teslas used to be considered one of the safest vehicles, but I think a lot of it is, the early EV adopter demographic is simply characterized by much safer driving, and as this demographic shifted, more and more reckless drivers obtained Teslas. (I’ve been driving EVs since 2017 and around 2022 the demographic shift, at least for Teslas, became very obvious)
And the answer is"What is the Poisson Distribution" Alex.
There is literally a distribution that describes the occurences of low probability events in large populations. It was developed to study deaths by horse kick in the Prussian army. So confidence intervals never come into it. You’re applying Stats for Communications Majors reasoning to an adult problem.
Well, the problem is, even if I take the single case where this one guy exploded himself with his truck and compare it to the Pinto data, the poisson distribution difference will probably be statistically significant, yet the measure would be absolutely useless from a real-world perspective, because it has nothing to do with the vehicle’s design.
I’d also argue that many of these events might not even be entirely occurring independently from each other (i.e., some of the key assumptions of Poisson are incorrect here) when people do all sorts of stupid shit with these rolling garbage cans like shooting at them, submerging them, etc. in a meme-like fashion for Tiktok views. So 4 events might very well be influenced by non-design-based, non-random human factors, which applied to other vehicles could generate similar results, and if the analysis were serious, they would have individually reviewed how these whopping 4 events happened, accounted for reporting bias towards EV fires (especially Tesla) and compared it to the F150 or the Ford Lightning as an analogous vehicle.
And I know the internet tends to conflate condescension with competence, but seriously, you should understand the above-listed things as a stats teacher.
edits for clarity
edit 2: also, in the times of the prussian army they did not have to account for stuff like people suddenly starting to pull the horses’ tails for social media views.
god bless American auto regulations for allowing unique vehicles on the road (and the ability to sue for damages when the idiot driver hits you)
The thing is a very obvious death trap to anyone that knows simple physics. There are videos testing what happens when a Cybertruck hits a hard wall at certain speeds. That thing didn’t crumple at all until speeds greater than 35 mph. And even then it only barely crumples at all. The damage it could produce hitting another vehicle would be catastrophic and fatal.
Seems like natural selection in progress.
Buy a Cybertruck, fuck around, see what happens.
It also handily preselects for douche.
I love Elon Bad posts, but I think it’s worthwhile to examine why Elon bad in this case.
Like many reactionaries, Elon’s business philosophy is pure tech-bro-libertarianism. And like all libertarians, he’s stuck in the neoliberal mindset of less regulation (don’t scrutinize) and more efficiency (let me be cheap), in order to create the safe space that industrialists need to
extract, er create.He’s literally said things like (paraphrasing)
When I see a specification for three bolts I ask: why can’t we do it with two?
His transparent reasoning is that if he’s allowed to cut corners, he’ll save money today and consequences can be dealt with when they arise.
He’s following the software model of release a minimally viable product and patch it later. Only instead of user frustration at being beta testers, you fucking die maybe.
You can’t use “literally” and “paraphrasing” like that.
You can’t use “literally” and
… be over 14
That’s literally not true.
Thank you, my pedantic friend. (I say this because I’m often the one making the comment and getting the eyerolls)
Normally I don’t point it out. But this one was just too much.
You just literally said (interpretive paraphrasing), “I like big butts and I cannot lie”
I think it’s also worth noting that Elon Musk is a scammer. Every other word out of his mouth is likely a lie. He’s been claiming to already have technologies available for his Tesla cars, his SpaceX rockets, etc, all ready to go and… it never happened. Tesla full self driving? The Tesla taxis? SpaceX on Mars? The Tesla laughably stupid robots? Even those were faked.
Claims after claims for decades and literally no results
The guy is a full on bait and switch yet everyone seems to lap up everything this scammer says.
is pure tech-bro-libertarianism
Tech bros are usually not libertarian. Being excited about a failed solution to only one of libertarian problems (blockchain) doesn’t make one libertarian, too.
And like all libertarians, he’s stuck in the neoliberal mindset of less regulation (don’t scrutinize) and more efficiency (let me be cheap)
That’s not libertarianism, more like Ayn Rand and her inverse bolshevism with good mighty benevolent industrial aristocracy and bad stupid mischievous everyone else. She even reads like one of Valentin Pikul’s “historical novels”, only with inverted good and bad guys. That ideology is radically different from libertarianism, instead of freedom, voluntarism, non-aggression and such, resulting in a free society with free contracts, Ayn Rand says that some people are better than the others and thus freedom, voluntarism, non-aggression etc are measures by relative value of the offender and the victim. It’s jungle law.
Anyway, it’s not “neoliberal” either, anti-monopoly regulations are part of the “ideal” free market model. And I think Elon likes patents and trademarks, which are not necessarily there (and in libertarianism are not a thing).
His transparent reasoning is that if he’s allowed to cut corners, he’ll save money today and consequences can be dealt with when they arise.
You might have seen the recent news about Tesla sales falling. Maybe it took so long because of accumulated trust into regulators not allowing car makers to make dangerous crap. So - then maybe in other reality, where Elon came to an industry already allowed to cut corners, he’d go bankrupt by now because of consumers understanding who he is.
Life is complex, I’m not saying he’s right, just that.
He’s following the software model of release a minimally viable product and patch it later. Only instead of user frustration at being beta testers, you fucking die maybe.
The way software industry works, a lot of people have died due to its failures. One has to count people who’ve committed suicide due to events cause by some bug or even UX problem, people who failed to communicate something in time, thus possibly saving someone, people who disclosed what they shouldn’t have, thus possibly causing a criminal death, medical errors due to software problems, wars, catastrophes.
But yes, it’s already allowed to do that and Elon wants such wonders in other industries, so that we’d have a bit of natural selection in our daily lives. Dystopian cyberpunk is called dystopian because it’s not utopian, but being a billionaire, I guess, one would dream of living in such instead of utopian version of boring past.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a simplification mindset. Automotive manufacturers certainly do like to overcomplicate things. Unfortunately people like him only care about costs and not quality.
oh god that quote. he’s so lame and fucking stupid.
I’m sure corner cutting is a concern but also he’s so insecure he probably read things about Steve Jobs or something, and tried to ape him. I remember something about Jobs supposedly telling employees to reduce steps in some processes or whatever. this idiot doesn’t understand anything so he thinks asking for fewer bolts is the same thing.
why can’t we do it in two? cause that’s how you secure things you fucking dumbass. your proud fascination for “fewer bolts” is why your hypercuck tried to kill a driver.
An MVP should not be a beta version, but fully functional and bug-free. The idea is to reduce scope to not necessarily even release it (though that’s possible) but to have a solid foundation onto which to duct-tape bells and whistles.
The MVP of a car doesn’t have heated seats, heck the seats might not even be adjustable without a wrench, but it’s absolutely going to drive and drive well and be crash-safe. Because if it doesn’t it’s nowhere close to being a viable car, go back and fix that before spending time on those seats.
He is like a child who is still rebelling against his parents who made him go to bed early too many times.
Him and his libertarian friends fuck up left and right. Crashing startups and just getting more money for another. Constant recalls. Blowing up rockets until it works.
Yet they hold the government to a standard of being perfect and high performing with no room for failure. NASA can’t be blowing up rockets. As soon as they do the world comes down on them.
And Trump is the biggest fuckup of all these guys.
Blowing up rockets until it works is a far better approach than trying to get everything to work on the first try and ending up with a hugely overpriced white elephant.
Sure, if it was cheaper than just doing it correctly the first time which it’s not
How do you do something “correctly” when nobody knows what that is? If your main priority is to do it “correctly” you will never develop anything fundamentally new.
A rocket is not fundamentally new and hasn’t been for almost 100 years.
Rockets perform correctly when they deliver their payload to the correct orbit.
You can calculate the energy density of fuels, the efficiency of your engines at various atmospheric pressures, and determine the payload size you can deliver with your engines and fuel. Blowing up rockets for “tests” is so 1950s. We have whole college programs on rocket design. We have desktop computers more powerful than anything available in the 1960s, and NASA managed to design the Saturn V, a rocket of similar size to starship, with the computers of the time and fucking slide rules. The Saturn V had its problem, but each rocket managed to deliver its payload and perform its part of the mission without blowing up.
Your comment is classic tech bro. No understanding of real engineering principles and only a desire to shove some shit out of the door as fast as possible.
There are two American rocket projects in the works that can carry a significant payload to the moon. One is using existing parts in a new configuration. It had one successful launch and cost $4B ($2.5B in launch costs alone). One is building a largely new system and improving existing elements and is estimated to have cost less than $2B so far, although it hasn’t reached the moon yet. That said, they have done 7 tests, at least 3 with a full configuration. How is that not better than the other option?
Also, you are acting like there are no fundamental advances happening in space engineering. Sure, the physics is pretty well-known, but the engineering problem of landing and reusing stages/rockets commercially has only been done since the Falcon series, so I think it’s safe to assume the technology and associated product lines is still maturing.
Okay so say your testing a brand new rocket engine idea. It uses a fuel nobody has tried to use before. So what you do is you figure out how much energy this fuel has and do some math to figure out how much you’ll need to take with you for the typical rocket. You design an engine for this spec or better and thoroughly test it to make sure it’s behaving like expected. You eventually mount it to a rocket and make sure in practice it behaves as you expect. Next you put a payload in the rocket and test it again. If at any point things don’t behave as expected you have to fix your whole model.
SpaceX struggles to go a launch without their engines destroying themselves. Perhaps they should go back a few steps?
I see you don’t understand testing things before they are safe for humans to be inside of. So by this logic, you are saying “blowing up rockets until it works” is also saying “crash testing cars is stupid.”
<blank stare>
If NASA was funded properly, we may not be leaning on one private company, whose owner is a nazi, to be paving our way forward for daily space activities. Can’t say things won’t blow up during testing, but at least it won’t be headed by that guy.
The issue isn’t the way of testing, but the two standards. If Musk blows up rockets in testing it’s a genius move with rapid iteration. If NASA does this it’s irresponsible handling of tax payer’s money on risky endeavors.
I stand by my comment. Things break, shit happens, this is why we test them.
Also, normally the cost savings should go to the client, not into some billionaires bank account.
Really took the wind out of my satirical comment that Musk wanted to bring back the Pinto.
Who needs satire when you have reality?
I would trust a Smart Fortwo more than the POS Cybertruck.
Climate Change Simulator
