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.)
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)
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.
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.