The bounty and danger of bots, Tesla’s big year, protecting your face on Facebook, the tech we use to relax and more!
With Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Len Peralta, Amber Mac, Annie Gaus, and Ashley Esqueda.
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Show Notes
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Hi Tom,
some remarks about the section where Tesla was discussed.
About the cargo of the multi-year delayed first launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket: what Elon Musk announced was that a 2008 Tesla roadster will fly on the Falcon Heavy.
Ashley was under the impression that a 2020 roadster would be launched, and unfortunately none of the other panel members corrected her. (Was it Roger who showed a picture of the 2020 roadster?)
Not that it matters much, of course, in both cases it’s a ridiculous cargo, which is the whole point.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BdA94kVgQhU/?taken-by=elonmusk
The intention is to insert the second stage carrying the car into an orbit around the Sun.
(The usual fate of the second stage is that it disintegrates on reentering the Earth’s atmosphere.
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/7814/what-happens-to-the-falcon-9-second-stage-after-payload-separation )
Hi Tom
As mentioned by the panel, model S and model X owners tend to not blame Tesla for the glitches of their cars. There is a loyalty, not so much to the brand, but to the mission of Elon Musk.
The purpose of Tesla is to accelerate the transition away from using fossil fuels. If that transition happens too late then global warming will make large parts of the planet uninhabitable.
Elon Musk is in the first place an activist. His goal is to increase the probability that humanity has any future.
Some of the governments of the world recognize the acute danger, and they are working towards addressing it.
Other governments, including the current USA adminstration, are in denial.
From the start Elon Musk has decided that he wanted to mass produce an electric car that is so much value for money that even people who are oblivious to the danger of climate change will buy it.
The way Elon Musk leads his engineers:
The journalist Ashlee Vance recounts: “Many of the people I interviewed have seen it with their own eyes. If you are an engineer working for Elon Musk and you say so-and-so can’t be done then Elon takes over the project and does it.” https://youtu.be/EEDDVbnYoP8?t=1572
That is why the admiration of Elon Musk has that messianistic flavor to it. One admirer expressed his emotion in the form of a quip by paraphrasing a line from a movie:
“Help us Elon Musk. You are our only hope.”
It’s funny because it’s true.