undefined | Better HN

0 pointsawesome_dude7d ago0 comments

I know there's a risk when Musk's name comes up that everyone takes "all against" or "all for" approach - very polarising figure.

But I see a lot of that announcement, and the others someone else pointed to as his "aspirational, but ultimately never going to happen" goals - whether he believes the claims are achievable, or not, he says these things to energise people to working/paying for him to try

It costs him little to nothing to say, and other people's time, effort, and capital to try (and succeed/fail)

Tesla is falling to pieces now, and SpaceX is getting loaded up with completely unrelated projects (xAI) in order to try and make it look saleable (I guess) - it's very difficult to see the Mars announcement as anything but hype.

0 comments

JumpCrisscross7d ago

> difficult to see the Mars announcement as anything but hype

Oh yeah, the announcement is hype. But there is actual work underneath it making real progress in science and engineering that moves us closer to Mars. Some of that, moreover, is work that has limited appeal outside a Martian context.

fragmede6d ago

The real thing is that the moon is a better stepping stone, but Bezos already claimed it so Musk had to out do him, which is why he's shooting for Mars.

JumpCrisscross6d ago

> the moon is a better stepping stone, but Bezos already claimed it so Musk had to out do him, which is why he's shooting for Mars

They were contemporaenous. Musk was trying to send stuff to Mars in 2001 [1]. Bezos started Blue Origin in 2000 before any Moon goals had been made concrete or public. I wouldn't say either of their goals really referenced each other until after the financial crisis (that is, after they were both comfortably billionaires with launch-vehicle programs).

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-elon-musk-spacex/

usefulcat7d ago

> It costs him little to nothing to say,

That all depends on how much he values his credibility, I think..

But to be fair, for someone as good at self promotion as he is, I can believe that the value of the hype could be greater than the cost in credibility.

vardump7d ago

> Tesla is falling to pieces now

Did I miss something?

stickfigure7d ago

Year over year sales are declining. Stratospheric stock price is propped up by promise of selling humanoid robots, a technology (and market) which are unproven.

I would not invest.

scottyah7d ago

That's a no, it's business as usual except they have massive cash reserves.

rubyn00bie7d ago

Having approximately $44 billion in cash on hand is not a massive cash reserve for any company with the market cap of Tesla ($1.3 trillion). Even less so when you realize how capital intensive its current car and non-existent robot business is… The entire EV market is risky right now for margin compression as Chinese EV manufacturers are really pulling ahead. It’s pretty wild to see just how far they’ve progressed while the west mostly does nothing. Even Tesla hasn’t provided any real innovation in years in regards to their core business. And from what I can tell, they’re pretty much outright ignoring their auxiliary businesses.

If Optimus fails to impress, and gain traction, I’d seriously expect Tesla to end up a subsidiary of SpaceX within the next ten years as Elon tries to protect up his net worth.

2 more replies

hcurtiss6d ago

Tesla is falling to pieces?

https://stocks.apple.com/symbol/TSLA

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse