by ben_w | 2026-02-09 12:02:47+00:00
> So this is why you misunderstand me, and, I think, the conversation. Maybe the "sales pitch" works for people who don't know any better, but it isn't going to work on those with even junior level experience in the industry. The numbers are so off they will set of alarms and you get dismissed. It only makes it worse when pressed that the numbers look even worse.

Yes, absolutely this. I'm not even coming at it from the side of the conversation you're arguing here.

Again, I don't actually believe Musk, and all the stuff I'm saying absolutely should *not* be treated as a mission plan! None of this was intended to be a "he can do it!" cheerleader, because I don't believe he can, I'm saying "As a less bad alternative to him talking about a million people on mars by 2100…"

It's "what I'd be talking about if I had what he's promising", not what I think he can actually deliver. Even where Musk has beaten incumbents, it's by being less bad at price-timeline estimates rather than actually good at them.

Also:

> Look, I don't want to call you dumb, I actually think you're pretty smart.

Thanks, but do feel free to call me an idiot on this. I mean it: it took what I now regard to be an embarrassingly long time before I became skeptical of Musk's claims.

And I am not, and do not claim to be, even a junior level experience in space. Well, except for processing data from earth observation satellites, where I can claim *exactly* junior level experience and no more than that.

> You used LEO payload.

As per your own references, landings, not launches. Yes, this may be over-optimistic, but hopefully I'm saying often enough in this comment that I don't take Musk seriously any more.

I absolutely agree SpaceX have not demonstrated what they need to demonstrate to actually pull off the orbital refuelling plan, but (and as per your [1]) the target payload *if* they could was still 100 tons last I checked… well, assuming Musk doesn't randomly change everything again, which at this point I expect him to do instead of delivering any of this.

I'd like to not be skeptical of Musk, but, well, he's repeatedly demonstrated reason to be skeptical of every claim he makes in every field, and unfortunately SpaceX is merely his least-wrong domain rather than one where he's close to correct.

Still, steel-man and all that. Given what he's saying he plans to do, what would I do with that? Not Mars, not space data centres.

> Because 100 launches is a non-starter.

I don't expect Musk to actually succeed with his prices, but *hypothetically* if he did, the target price per launch is order-of $10M (and if that target price sounds stupid, I'm more inclined to believe anyone on this forum dissenting than Musk's own claims on this), *if* then it would be lower than a Falcon 9's current price to launch. Again, I don't believe him, Cybertruck was higher price for worse everything and that was something he should've been able to estimate better.

As someone who cares about the environment, I am not too happy about even the current rate of launches given the apparent lack of any of those Sabatier machines he kept saying would let them do ISRU for return trips from Mars. So I also kinda want him to fail here.

But if, *if* I was taking those numbers seriously, if I was worth a few hundred billion and wanted to demonstrate serious commitment to building up off-Earth infrastructure, *then*.