Moon Mission
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@Kirwan said in Moon Mission:
@Tim On the plus side, didn't they find ice a while ago?
so the Community is fucked before they get there? Just send the Huks in first
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The moon shot thing coincidentally came out at the same time as -
Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Elon Musk has taken big risks repeatedly since going public in 2010, but investors were spooked on Thursday after he said the electric car company could get "close to the edge" as it burns cash ahead of its crucial Model 3 launch. Facing yet another cash crunch, Tesla will likely be forced to head to Wall Street for more capital, analysts said. Shares tumbled 5.8 percent on Thursday, their biggest intraday percentage fall in eight months.
Musk told investors after the company released its fourth-quarter results on Wednesday that the upcoming Model 3 sedan, the $35,000 mass-market vehicle on which the company's future profitability hinges, requires no additional outside funding as it readies for production this year. "But we get very close to the edge," Musk said. "So we're considering a number of options but I think it probably makes sense to raise capital to reduce risk."
And their CFO quit.
Basically Musk has a fantastic vision, but it involves bleeding cash till.. well, almost forever. So he needs people to buy the dream & give him more cash. So far so good.
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@gollum said in Moon Mission:
Basically Musk has a fantastic vision, but it involves bleeding cash till.. well, almost forever. So he needs people to buy the dream & give him more cash. So far so good.
Diversion of sort, but I read an interesting piece the other day about Steve Jobs and Pixar. I had never really been interested in the Jobs story so I didn't realise that he 'bled cash' for years propping up Pixar without even really understanding why he was doing it. I don't know if it was a gut feel that it was a worthy thing to keep going but it's funny how things turn out. It seemed from the story that Apple (as we know it) would never have happened if it wasn't for Woody and Buzz
Sometimes I guess the best entrepreneurs are the ones whose gut feel pans out -
Yeah that Sunday Times write up was great. This -
is basically the same story with no paywall (the times one is too long to paste).
Tho' the diffeence between Jobs & Musk is Jobs could 100% cashflow Pixar, Musk has already way over reached that, to the extent that he's bailing out one of his companies using his other company. And not using his own cash to do it.
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@gollum said in Moon Mission:
Basically Musk has a fantastic vision, but it involves bleeding cash till.. well, almost forever. So he needs people to buy the dream & give him more cash. So far so good.
The theory among Musk fanbois (of which I am, unashamedly, one) is that he gives scant fucks about profit. He needs about enough to keep the lights on, and carry out his plan of decarbonisation and getting onto other planets etc.
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@NTA said in Moon Mission:
@gollum said in Moon Mission:
Basically Musk has a fantastic vision, but it involves bleeding cash till.. well, almost forever. So he needs people to buy the dream & give him more cash. So far so good.
The theory among Musk fanbois (of which I am, unashamedly, one) is that he gives scant fucks about profit. He needs about enough to keep the lights on, and carry out his plan of decarbonisation and getting onto other planets etc.
Yup, I am such a Musk fanboi, but from an investing point of view (what I do for a living) I think a lot of people still don't fully get it. The implications of his companies not being run for profit / not being run for the benefit of shareholders, but instead being run for the benefit of his vision (of which the ultimate beneficiary is all mankind) are far-reaching.
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The issue I have with Musk is I don't buy the logic of sending humans in the first 100 years of Mars. For me its all robots. I think its lunacy to try to stick 100 humans on Mars, I'd be trying to stick 100 semi autonomous little bulldozer / basic construction robots up there. Its less cool. But would actually work.
Its like deciding you have oil in the Mariana Trench & your firsr thought is to send some people down there instead of a bog standard drilling robot
His dreams are beautiful, but impractical. He'll put 20 humans up there who will acheive nothing then die, meanwhile GE & Catapillar will actually colonise Mars using Intel AI.
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@gollum said in Moon Mission:
The moon shot thing coincidentally came out at the same time as -
Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Elon Musk has taken big risks repeatedly since going public in 2010, but investors were spooked on Thursday after he said the electric car company could get "close to the edge" as it burns cash ahead of its crucial Model 3 launch. Facing yet another cash crunch, Tesla will likely be forced to head to Wall Street for more capital, analysts said. Shares tumbled 5.8 percent on Thursday, their biggest intraday percentage fall in eight months.
Musk told investors after the company released its fourth-quarter results on Wednesday that the upcoming Model 3 sedan, the $35,000 mass-market vehicle on which the company's future profitability hinges, requires no additional outside funding as it readies for production this year. "But we get very close to the edge," Musk said. "So we're considering a number of options but I think it probably makes sense to raise capital to reduce risk."
And their CFO quit.
Basically Musk has a fantastic vision, but it involves bleeding cash till.. well, almost forever. So he needs people to buy the dream & give him more cash. So far so good.
That shouldn't come as a shock. Tesla has never made money and hasn't looked remotely close to doing so. Model 3, their car for the masses, needs to change that.
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@antipodean said in Moon Mission:
@gollum That reminds me of the excitement about finding seven Earth-like planets. Everyone seemed to ignore the distance; ~40 light years. I normally pack light, but should I take my entire record collection?
I'm a firm believer than humans will never colonise dick. It'll all be AI. AI is perfectly suited to go out & explore, no life support needed, minimal heating, no food, doesn't go insane, doesn't give a shit about time. Space is almost a perfect environment for them once you toss on some basic raditation sheilding. Why send humans to those planets, send a ship with no life support, no food, minimal heating & full of AIs out there.
Even on Mars, close as that is, I expect there will be basic AIs building all the habs, exploring everything, mining everything for 100 years before any scale human populations go there. The most important thing on Mars wont be a fragile human wandering about, it'll be a basic tractor that hoovers up mars soil, filters it & shits out breeze blocks.
Same with space flight. AI can already park cars better than 99% of people, like we are going to let a human manually pilot a space craft in 50 years time FFS... we wont even be trusted to drive to the shops.
To be fair I've read a LOT of Iain M Banks books...
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@Crucial said in Moon Mission:
@gollum what rubbish.
AI could never pilot the Millennium Falcon as well as Han and Chewie.I think obviously if we find Wookies in the next few years then fine, we wont need the AI, and Musk has done some amazing things with basic Wookie-making, but it doesn't scale. My concern is he is going to run out of cash before he can make enough Wookies, so we need a fall back.
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@gollum said in Moon Mission:
Yeah that Sunday Times write up was great. This -
is basically the same story with no paywall (the times one is too long to paste).
Tho' the diffeence between Jobs & Musk is Jobs could 100% cashflow Pixar, Musk has already way over reached that, to the extent that he's bailing out one of his companies using his other company. And not using his own cash to do it.
Not sure that is right, the Pixar stuff was right around Next, not a very successful period for Jobs. Pixar was a punt that paid off big time, and was what made Jobs a billionaire.
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@NTA said in Moon Mission:
@Crucial said in Moon Mission:
@gollum what rubbish.
AI could never pilot the Millennium Falcon as well as Han and Chewie.Now you've done it - @MN5 will be here on the flog in minutes
The falcon was never as fast as Han claimed.
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@Kirwan said in Moon Mission:
Not sure that is right, the Pixar stuff was right around Next, not a very successful period for Jobs. Pixar was a punt that paid off big time, and was what made Jobs a billionaire.
He was 100% cashflowing Pixar right up till Toy Story hit. The article pointed out every month the Pixar guiys would go to Jobs & go "umm... we have no money" & he'd write them a cheque. But the numbers were tiny by most standards - he'd put $50m into Pixar & it was 100% his deal, so he could fully cashflow it. Ross Perot stuck a big wedge of cash into NEXT, so Jobs wasn't cashflowing that.
In contrast Tesla, Solar City & Space X are all WAY beyond Musks ability to personally cashflow even as a billionaire.