> Founded in 2016, Neuralink has devised a sewing machine-like device capable of implanting ultra-thin threads inside the brain.
I know people get elective surgeries all the time (plastics, etc), but I feel hard pressed that this company is going to convince people to open up their skull for some promise of cool technology.
Even if it is successful from a technology perspective, the chicken and egg problem they'll face with developers is an order of magnitude or two higher than with AR/VR headsets. It's already an uphill battle without having to convince people to open up their brain, I just can't see this gaining any adoption unless there's a surgery-lite path outside the skull.
I think you underestimate what people with disabilities are willing to try to lessen their disabilities. This isn't for making people pretty, it's to (potentially) help people lead mostly normal lives. Similar things that are currently on market are way more invasive than what Neuralink wants to offer, so it would already be a major upgrade, and look mostly normal from the outside.
Unfortunately, that's always the promise. To make the better world. But the money and investment will quickly and increasingly focus elsewhere once the concept is proven.
I can think of quite a few initiatives which have taken in countless billions of dollars, cancer research, Alzheimer's, Dementia, Cystic Fibrosis, etc.
Nothing sexy about that at all, just helping people lead normal lives.
Those are all 'good' causes by definition with gradual progress.
Here, the snake oil is in the comments similar to 'Neuralink will help disabled people'. But Neuralink so so wide spectrum that, if it works, it will spawn multiple different industries. And capital will find it's way to the most lucrative applications, as it always does ... and those applications won't be 'helping disable people'.
erm, if their latest "cranioplasty w/ eCoG" thing that's being rumored is real, that's way more invasive than the current deep brain stimulation or utah array systems...
Elon's ability to find willing sources of capital for his ventures seems nothing short of incredible. He has clearly deservedly earned a reputation for delivering, but some projects seem tangential and lacking his attention, and they are fully funded nevertheless. He really sets the bar high for being a mover.
That's not to avoid discussing the animal welfare concerns that merit attention, though. One can only speculate what's going on in the man's head at any given point, but I wonder where the truth lies in his pressuring for results.
In any case, it reminds me of the story from the KingKiller Chronicles of the member of the Amyr who killed tens of thousands of peasants in unethical medical experiments hundreds of years before the story of Kvolthe. Kvolthe reflects on the balances of lives saved with the medical knowledge gained, systemetized, and shared through those medical experiments, the balance being -to his estimate- positive.
> Elon's ability to find willing sources of capital for his ventures seems nothing short of incredible.
I think it is just a message via WhatsApp or other messaging app? I also wonder if he just has a group with many VCs and broadcast the message there.
I simplify the founding process in two group of founders: the ones for mere mortals and the ones that are oversubscribed and people ask YOU in random places if you have some access to the deal with dilated pupils.
he delivers if he has a good partner to keep him grounded...or is good enough to manage things when he's gone.
Tesla: Eberhard and Terpenning
SpaceX: Gwynne Shotwell, above all, but also Cantrell and Mueller.
vs. say - the Boring Company - what have they done recently that wasn't a joke?
I'd say I'd be more confident of Neuralink if someone who actually knows about BCI/BMI were involved, like I'd like to see names like Rich Andersen, Doris Tsao, or someone from the late Krisha Shenoy's lab involved...
He also transformed two industries producing the market dominating company in electric cars and satellite launches. The stock market values that stuff more than oh no he once was rude to someone type incidents.
From everything I've heard, the Boring Company was specifically intended to spike other mass-transit efforts in the Bay Area that Musk didn't want to see happen.
It has done its job, so why would he put any more effort into it?
I don't understand how people think so little of Musk to mention Eberhard and Tarpenning as essential to Tesla, when practically all of the difficulties in novel car manufacturing involve the factories that actually build these cars. Tesla started work inside their first factory in Fremont in late 2010, years after Eberhard and Tarpenning were gone. There's 20 different EV companies that have flashy designs on paper. Almost none of them are manufacturing for profit.
Have you tried the Copenhagen Metro? It has a twin-bore tunnel system that allows 24/7 service with a higher frequency than the New York City Subway. It's cheap to use thanks to the efficiency of driverless trains.
What does Boring Company bring to the table? Tunnel boring machines already exist. Having cars instead of trains just increases the cost of operation.
I think this says more about capitalism in current year than anything else. Speculative energy triumphs utility. Ford has a market cap of $41B. BNB, a token used by crypto exchange Binance, has a market cap of $35B.
Musk is just good at playing the game. And as they say, don't hate the player. Hate the game.
Shatner's reaction to his suborbital ride sums it up. "Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong."
The Mars rover and helicopter are much more of a contribution to knowledge than the tremendous expense of sending a human to Mars, and taking them home again. I suspect we will find that's something a human can just barely endure.
Commercialization of space is a scifi fantasy, nevermind "colonization."
Everything a Tesla does could be done and still can be done by a 2007 car. Sorry if I don't buy into the grandiose vision of substituting one pollutant with an other because the black pollutant is produced by Arabs.
> Which is something you couldn't do back in 2007.
Sending it from an iPhone, no. Sending it from a smartphone, yes. Palm VII could access the web, with limitations, in '99. Expansions were available for earlier devices.
That same year I worked on a iPad-like tablet (we were not first, nor did we have any illusions that we were) with a built-in phone.
Treo 90 (2002) provided a Palm OS PDA with a phone (but also a keyboard).
There were many other similar devices around then.
There was a whole multi-year fad of touch-focused smart devices that rose and died again because the hardware wasn't consumer-ready years before the iPhone.
Anyone around then with an interest in tech will have been aware of a wide range of app-capable devices that frankly made the first iPhones rather underwhelming to most power users.
The genius of the iPhone was to time the release right at a point where the available hardware was good enough to attract regular consumers, not in inventing something particularly new. That doesn't diminish what Apple did, but this idea that what they did was something revolutionary that wouldn't have happened in some variant without them is bizarre.
> > That doesn't diminish what Apple did, but this idea that what they did was something revolutionary that wouldn't have happened in some variant without them is bizarre.
My bad, Tesla is revolutionary instead, 150 year old automotive industry, 5000 year old history of the wheel.
Literally reinventing the wheel for political purpose. A true revolution in the history of virtue signaling and subsidies milking /s
You're the one obsessing over an imaginary need for them to be revolutionary to add value, while having given examples of companies that largely have had successes without doing anything revolutionary other than in sales and marketing, like you've criticized Musk for.
Look , at the global level I have been a 1%er my whole life.
Then I became a 1% at the country level.
My first Pc was a Dell with pirated XP
My first smartphone was an iPhone
My first social media was Facebook
My first online purchase delivered at home was Amazon.
My first car was my dad 2000 BMW.
After all the talk I have stepped and driven a Tesla, it’s the same experience of back in the BMW, and the same experience my dad had the first time he drove a car back in the 70s.
The hype is not warrented by the underlying product whereas the other stuff I mentioned produced a big leap in the quality of life of the majority of the population, even though they were not the first of their kind and you fancy 0.1%ers had access to the very early iterations in the form of products made by companies that have now ceased to exist.
None of the companies you listed started out offering something particularly unique. Facebook was not the first, or second, or third, social network, and "just" provided enough incremental improvements over its predecessors to finally be one to stick. Microsoft did good business deals and were good at competing with other OS and BASIC providers. Book Stacks Unlimited started 2-3 years before Amazon - I remember being amazed at being able to telnet to books.com and search their catalog. Google was not clearly the best from the outset - they had the best algorithm, but their simplistic search first became a major boon as the number of pages exploded and the more complex searches you needed on competing engines became a problem rather than an asset. None if this is to criticise any of them. They all provided something that eventually made them clear winners, but as much as I detest Musk it's ludicrous to condemn his companies by comparison to what Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Google look like in hindsight.
> there is nothing for us up there
Even if there weren't, just cheap access to launch satellites is enough to make SpaceX a big deal.
> > None of the companies you listed started out offering something particularly unique
It's not how you start, it's how you finish.
> > what Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Google look like in hindsight.
Musk is 50, he's been selling smoke for 30 years. Tesla was incorporated in 2002, they have been selling smoke for 21 years.
He had plenty of time to get his companies to the aforementioned "hindsight" status.
Instead his focus is to dominate in the financial press, the tech press and on twitter, but in real life once you kick the tires and get behind the wheel it's the same old 150 year old autombile ownership experience, only exchaning one pollutant with an other for political and virtue signaling purposes and because the black pollutant is produced by Arabs.
> > Even if there weren't, just cheap access to launch satellites is enough to make SpaceX a big deal.
Always a big deal in "the future", but you sent this message from 5G or fiber I guess. That's exactly what I mean, the perpetual machine of hype convincing people that there is some product or technology in the works in R&D centers of Musk companies that will radically change their lives in "the future". Just look at the top reply in this thread to get an idea.
In the present you are using other companies that might not be as sexy and dominating in the press but get the job done today, the most important timeline there is.
It is nothing but smoke at that price point because I can extract the same utility and satisfaction from my 2006 Mercedes C-Klasse valued some 5000$.
If anything an higher amount of exterior aestetics satisfaction and a much higher level of satisfaction for the interiors given the interior assembly quality and the beauty of the woods and white cream leather.
And also an higher utility because I can use my car 24/7/365 and I can do a quick 30 seconds splash and go of gas and I am ready to drive coast to coast if necessary.
And if I feel the need to go crazy I can go to the local track and rent a 600HP monster for one hour for some 500$. Push it to its limit in total safety and in an environment that is geared to let the car express all her power and feedback.
And if I feel the need to go even crazier I can go to same track and rent a 200HP bike for 170$ and really push and even overtake the guy in the 600HP Vette.
Think how many laps can I buy for the price of a Tesla.
All the above is stuff that you discover while hanging out in the real world among motorheads. A tight community of motorheads is the best antidote against PR campaigns from corporate overlords, and Musk is the worst offender among them all, but the same is true for all the brands if they were to start employing the same cult-like tactics.
None of the companies listed are delivering anything that is nearly as paradigm changing as you seem to want them to in order to justify dismissing Musks companies either.
> Always a big deal in "the future"
It's a big deal now, and has been for years. The last few months alone, SpaceX has launched more rockets and more satellites than all other launch operators, private or public, combined has for the entire year by a huge factor, and has e.g. launched the heaviest geostationary satellite ever (Jupiter-3), provided crew to the ISS (only one coming even close is China, in terms of number of launches, but not satellites), and launched more payloads than any other private provider (even when you exclude Starlink - though Starlink itself makes up the majority of all payloads launch into space this year), and been the launch provider for the first satellites from multiple countries.
The only way this is remotely financially viable is because of how significantly they've driven down launch costs.
It just gets comical when you try to downplay the scale of this.
> > None of the companies listed are delivering anything that is nearly as paradigm changing as you seem to want them to in order to justify dismissing Musks companies either.
I remember the pain in the ass of using a computer without a GUI, I also remember the pain in the ass of having to get to a computer instead of having one in my pocket, I remember the pain in the ass of having to go to a library instead of having the wealth of all human knowledge accessible thanks to a quick search, I remember how you lost track of friends that moved even just 10 miles away because you'd speak much less frequently, oh and I also remember the inconvenience of having to shop for groceries instead of having them delivered.
Quite simply when something removes pain in the ass and improves your life you tend to notice and remember.
Another thing I remember is the car ownership experience in 2002 and the 90s and 80s and 70s and I have been told stories about the car ownership experience in the 60s, 50s, 40s etc. The automobile is a 150 year old invention, the wheel itself is a 5000 year old invention, and yet here you are genuflecting to a guy you claim has brought forward something new. The only innovation is in the realm of milking subsidies, cult of personality, and reinventing the wheel for political purposes exchaning one pollutant for the other because the black pollutant is produced by Arabs.
> > It's a big deal now
For who? For the private jet and yacht owners? 80% of the population lives in urban areas (soon it will be 90%) , they'd be getting their internet with the 5G towers having a 2.5mi radius and fiber just like you are while you are typing this message.
The big rocket going up and landing on its butt is technical porn for the sake of technical porn, just like the Apollo program was, for the sole satisfaction of the same people who claim to be so far intellectually superior to stuff that impresses regular people like Michael Jordan's slam dunks or Patrick Mahomes throws on the run or Lionel Messi filtering passes.
In the end they fell for something even more useless and technical for the sake of technical, sold by a snake oil salesman. Irony.
> Quite simply when something removes pain in the ass and improves your life you tend to notice and remember.
None of the things you list came first from the companies you listed. Thank you for making my point for me.
> For who? For the private jet and yacht owners? 80% of the population lives in urban areas (soon it will be 90%) , they'd be getting their internet with the 5G towers having a 2.5mi radius and fiber just like you are while you are typing this message.
You can take every single Starlink launch out and SpaceX still has a huge impact as the largest, cheapest launch provider, and the biggest impact will be on things like weather prediction and the like, not private jet and yacht owners. You're revealing a major level of ignorance of what dominates the space industry.
> The big rocket going up and landing on its butt is technical porn for the sake of technical porn, just like the Apollo program was,
It represented a massive drop in launch costs, and you're against demonstrating a staggering level of ignorance.
> > None of the things you list came first from the companies you listed. Thank you for making my point for me.
If those companies have built on the shoulders of giants , then Tesla is an ant atop mount Everest considering that automotive is a 150 year old industry and the wheel is a 5000 year old invention and cult of personality is much older than both.
> > Weather predictions and the likes
Yeah sure weather and the like bro. Let us cook. As always with space enthusiasts people who want to play with rockets and watch technical porn for the sake of technical porn would find all sort of excuses to find fools who’d buy into the hype and finance them playing with expensive toys with no quality of life returns for consumers.
It already happened in the 60s with the Apollo program where the selling point to those who financed it was that somehow it was crucial to beat the Soviets to retrive those precious lunar rocks that contained god knows what secrets.
> > Ignorance
Unlike you, I do know exactly where
my quality of life comes from, who signs it off, and who is just talking and making empty promises. You instead seem confused and out of touch on the subject.
It has been interesting to watch what could end up being the biggest self-created trainwreck of a rich man in the 21st c: Tesla will not be valued 10X of other car makers forever. Cybertruck is an Elon idea. Deleting sensors other than cameras for autonomous driving is an Elon diktat. Starship has functional requirements impossible for one rocket architecture to meet, because of Elon. He bought Twitter as a means of rage-quitting litigation he was going to lose and it has gone as well as one would think. The movie is going to be a Shakespearean tragicomedy.
My daughter is five years old. She’s smart and adorable and can really turn on the charm. We went on vacation and she asked whole families “what’s your name” and introduced herself. Unfortunately she had the bad fortune of being born with the bottom of her spinal cord outside of her body.
She can’t walk, and she can’t control her bowels and bladder. She has a port in her skull, a brain shunt, that moves the cerebrospinal fluid into her belly which is extremely important for her continued wellbeing.
Her prognosis at this point is she should be able to live into her sixties or seventies with modern medical technology. But with modern technology she’ll never be able to walk.
I’m really hopeful that one day Neuralink will let my child walk. Things like this give me hope when I feel depressed about her quality of life or how she’ll be treated as an adult.
Thank you for sharing this. I believe there is more research into BCI and motor-control, for example this project: BrainGate (https://www.braingate.org/). Whatever becomes commercialized will be interesting, but the field is progressing.
Thanks for sharing. I'll definitely keep an eye on it. I think due to risks risk now (or trying to have the biggest impact) things are being focused on those with cervical spine injuries whereas hers is in the lumbar section.
The weird thing about Neuralink...they should have a heavy presence at things like SFN where there are a ton of BCI/BMI and neurophysiology posters and papers being presented, and where anyone who's anyone is there to keep tabs on the latest and greatest and what everyone else is doing. But...there was zero presence. Zilch. Nada. Whereas the only think Neuralink is known for is its director of operations having twins w/ Elon...
You might be happy to hear that while it was low-key, Neuralink did have some presence at SfN and had a joint poster there with University College London.
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadI know people get elective surgeries all the time (plastics, etc), but I feel hard pressed that this company is going to convince people to open up their skull for some promise of cool technology.
Even if it is successful from a technology perspective, the chicken and egg problem they'll face with developers is an order of magnitude or two higher than with AR/VR headsets. It's already an uphill battle without having to convince people to open up their brain, I just can't see this gaining any adoption unless there's a surgery-lite path outside the skull.
I can think of quite a few initiatives which have taken in countless billions of dollars, cancer research, Alzheimer's, Dementia, Cystic Fibrosis, etc.
Nothing sexy about that at all, just helping people lead normal lives.
Here, the snake oil is in the comments similar to 'Neuralink will help disabled people'. But Neuralink so so wide spectrum that, if it works, it will spawn multiple different industries. And capital will find it's way to the most lucrative applications, as it always does ... and those applications won't be 'helping disable people'.
Unless my brain has a bobbin in it, it probably doesn't work like a modern sewing machine.
This is your brain on dance music
That's not to avoid discussing the animal welfare concerns that merit attention, though. One can only speculate what's going on in the man's head at any given point, but I wonder where the truth lies in his pressuring for results.
In any case, it reminds me of the story from the KingKiller Chronicles of the member of the Amyr who killed tens of thousands of peasants in unethical medical experiments hundreds of years before the story of Kvolthe. Kvolthe reflects on the balances of lives saved with the medical knowledge gained, systemetized, and shared through those medical experiments, the balance being -to his estimate- positive.
I think it is just a message via WhatsApp or other messaging app? I also wonder if he just has a group with many VCs and broadcast the message there.
I simplify the founding process in two group of founders: the ones for mere mortals and the ones that are oversubscribed and people ask YOU in random places if you have some access to the deal with dilated pupils.
Which is why his ability to find sources of capital is not surprising in the least.
Tesla: Eberhard and Terpenning SpaceX: Gwynne Shotwell, above all, but also Cantrell and Mueller.
vs. say - the Boring Company - what have they done recently that wasn't a joke?
I'd say I'd be more confident of Neuralink if someone who actually knows about BCI/BMI were involved, like I'd like to see names like Rich Andersen, Doris Tsao, or someone from the late Krisha Shenoy's lab involved...
- moving servers by himself against advice from his own talent
- rescuing children trapped in caves by insulting other rescuers
- finishing international wars by wrestling dictators.
The fact that such person is able to secure funding convinces me that the stock exchange is quite disturbed (and disturbing) mechanism.
It has done its job, so why would he put any more effort into it?
presumably
What does Boring Company bring to the table? Tunnel boring machines already exist. Having cars instead of trains just increases the cost of operation.
Musk is just good at playing the game. And as they say, don't hate the player. Hate the game.
Just ~infinite area and resources and energy and ability to dominate the Earth from a physics standpoint?
The Mars rover and helicopter are much more of a contribution to knowledge than the tremendous expense of sending a human to Mars, and taking them home again. I suspect we will find that's something a human can just barely endure.
Commercialization of space is a scifi fantasy, nevermind "colonization."
This is a ridiculous straw man.
- Sent from rapsey's iPhone.
Which is something you couldn't do back in 2007.
Everything a Tesla does could be done and still can be done by a 2007 car. Sorry if I don't buy into the grandiose vision of substituting one pollutant with an other because the black pollutant is produced by Arabs.
Sending it from an iPhone, no. Sending it from a smartphone, yes. Palm VII could access the web, with limitations, in '99. Expansions were available for earlier devices.
That same year I worked on a iPad-like tablet (we were not first, nor did we have any illusions that we were) with a built-in phone.
Treo 90 (2002) provided a Palm OS PDA with a phone (but also a keyboard).
There were many other similar devices around then.
There was a whole multi-year fad of touch-focused smart devices that rose and died again because the hardware wasn't consumer-ready years before the iPhone.
Anyone around then with an interest in tech will have been aware of a wide range of app-capable devices that frankly made the first iPhones rather underwhelming to most power users.
The genius of the iPhone was to time the release right at a point where the available hardware was good enough to attract regular consumers, not in inventing something particularly new. That doesn't diminish what Apple did, but this idea that what they did was something revolutionary that wouldn't have happened in some variant without them is bizarre.
My bad, Tesla is revolutionary instead, 150 year old automotive industry, 5000 year old history of the wheel.
Literally reinventing the wheel for political purpose. A true revolution in the history of virtue signaling and subsidies milking /s
Then I became a 1% at the country level.
My first Pc was a Dell with pirated XP
My first smartphone was an iPhone
My first social media was Facebook
My first online purchase delivered at home was Amazon.
My first car was my dad 2000 BMW.
After all the talk I have stepped and driven a Tesla, it’s the same experience of back in the BMW, and the same experience my dad had the first time he drove a car back in the 70s.
The hype is not warrented by the underlying product whereas the other stuff I mentioned produced a big leap in the quality of life of the majority of the population, even though they were not the first of their kind and you fancy 0.1%ers had access to the very early iterations in the form of products made by companies that have now ceased to exist.
> there is nothing for us up there
Even if there weren't, just cheap access to launch satellites is enough to make SpaceX a big deal.
It's not how you start, it's how you finish.
> > what Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Google look like in hindsight.
Musk is 50, he's been selling smoke for 30 years. Tesla was incorporated in 2002, they have been selling smoke for 21 years.
He had plenty of time to get his companies to the aforementioned "hindsight" status.
Instead his focus is to dominate in the financial press, the tech press and on twitter, but in real life once you kick the tires and get behind the wheel it's the same old 150 year old autombile ownership experience, only exchaning one pollutant with an other for political and virtue signaling purposes and because the black pollutant is produced by Arabs.
> > Even if there weren't, just cheap access to launch satellites is enough to make SpaceX a big deal.
Always a big deal in "the future", but you sent this message from 5G or fiber I guess. That's exactly what I mean, the perpetual machine of hype convincing people that there is some product or technology in the works in R&D centers of Musk companies that will radically change their lives in "the future". Just look at the top reply in this thread to get an idea.
In the present you are using other companies that might not be as sexy and dominating in the press but get the job done today, the most important timeline there is.
If anything an higher amount of exterior aestetics satisfaction and a much higher level of satisfaction for the interiors given the interior assembly quality and the beauty of the woods and white cream leather.
And also an higher utility because I can use my car 24/7/365 and I can do a quick 30 seconds splash and go of gas and I am ready to drive coast to coast if necessary.
And if I feel the need to go crazy I can go to the local track and rent a 600HP monster for one hour for some 500$. Push it to its limit in total safety and in an environment that is geared to let the car express all her power and feedback.
And if I feel the need to go even crazier I can go to same track and rent a 200HP bike for 170$ and really push and even overtake the guy in the 600HP Vette.
Think how many laps can I buy for the price of a Tesla.
All the above is stuff that you discover while hanging out in the real world among motorheads. A tight community of motorheads is the best antidote against PR campaigns from corporate overlords, and Musk is the worst offender among them all, but the same is true for all the brands if they were to start employing the same cult-like tactics.
None of the companies listed are delivering anything that is nearly as paradigm changing as you seem to want them to in order to justify dismissing Musks companies either.
> Always a big deal in "the future"
It's a big deal now, and has been for years. The last few months alone, SpaceX has launched more rockets and more satellites than all other launch operators, private or public, combined has for the entire year by a huge factor, and has e.g. launched the heaviest geostationary satellite ever (Jupiter-3), provided crew to the ISS (only one coming even close is China, in terms of number of launches, but not satellites), and launched more payloads than any other private provider (even when you exclude Starlink - though Starlink itself makes up the majority of all payloads launch into space this year), and been the launch provider for the first satellites from multiple countries.
The only way this is remotely financially viable is because of how significantly they've driven down launch costs.
It just gets comical when you try to downplay the scale of this.
I remember the pain in the ass of using a computer without a GUI, I also remember the pain in the ass of having to get to a computer instead of having one in my pocket, I remember the pain in the ass of having to go to a library instead of having the wealth of all human knowledge accessible thanks to a quick search, I remember how you lost track of friends that moved even just 10 miles away because you'd speak much less frequently, oh and I also remember the inconvenience of having to shop for groceries instead of having them delivered.
Quite simply when something removes pain in the ass and improves your life you tend to notice and remember.
Another thing I remember is the car ownership experience in 2002 and the 90s and 80s and 70s and I have been told stories about the car ownership experience in the 60s, 50s, 40s etc. The automobile is a 150 year old invention, the wheel itself is a 5000 year old invention, and yet here you are genuflecting to a guy you claim has brought forward something new. The only innovation is in the realm of milking subsidies, cult of personality, and reinventing the wheel for political purposes exchaning one pollutant for the other because the black pollutant is produced by Arabs.
> > It's a big deal now
For who? For the private jet and yacht owners? 80% of the population lives in urban areas (soon it will be 90%) , they'd be getting their internet with the 5G towers having a 2.5mi radius and fiber just like you are while you are typing this message.
The big rocket going up and landing on its butt is technical porn for the sake of technical porn, just like the Apollo program was, for the sole satisfaction of the same people who claim to be so far intellectually superior to stuff that impresses regular people like Michael Jordan's slam dunks or Patrick Mahomes throws on the run or Lionel Messi filtering passes.
In the end they fell for something even more useless and technical for the sake of technical, sold by a snake oil salesman. Irony.
None of the things you list came first from the companies you listed. Thank you for making my point for me.
> For who? For the private jet and yacht owners? 80% of the population lives in urban areas (soon it will be 90%) , they'd be getting their internet with the 5G towers having a 2.5mi radius and fiber just like you are while you are typing this message.
You can take every single Starlink launch out and SpaceX still has a huge impact as the largest, cheapest launch provider, and the biggest impact will be on things like weather prediction and the like, not private jet and yacht owners. You're revealing a major level of ignorance of what dominates the space industry.
> The big rocket going up and landing on its butt is technical porn for the sake of technical porn, just like the Apollo program was,
It represented a massive drop in launch costs, and you're against demonstrating a staggering level of ignorance.
If those companies have built on the shoulders of giants , then Tesla is an ant atop mount Everest considering that automotive is a 150 year old industry and the wheel is a 5000 year old invention and cult of personality is much older than both.
> > Weather predictions and the likes
Yeah sure weather and the like bro. Let us cook. As always with space enthusiasts people who want to play with rockets and watch technical porn for the sake of technical porn would find all sort of excuses to find fools who’d buy into the hype and finance them playing with expensive toys with no quality of life returns for consumers.
It already happened in the 60s with the Apollo program where the selling point to those who financed it was that somehow it was crucial to beat the Soviets to retrive those precious lunar rocks that contained god knows what secrets.
> > Ignorance
Unlike you, I do know exactly where my quality of life comes from, who signs it off, and who is just talking and making empty promises. You instead seem confused and out of touch on the subject.
How about indigenous people in rural Alaska? Africa? Polynesia? Central Asia?
Look, I realize that Elon Musk has become the designated Emmanuel Goldstein du jour, but let's not be ridiculous.
No one put you in charge of speaking for "us".
Me, I enjoy having worldwide communications, accurate weather forecasts, crop information, and all manner of other remote sensing.
She can’t walk, and she can’t control her bowels and bladder. She has a port in her skull, a brain shunt, that moves the cerebrospinal fluid into her belly which is extremely important for her continued wellbeing.
Her prognosis at this point is she should be able to live into her sixties or seventies with modern medical technology. But with modern technology she’ll never be able to walk.
I’m really hopeful that one day Neuralink will let my child walk. Things like this give me hope when I feel depressed about her quality of life or how she’ll be treated as an adult.