Murdered by Words

Let's be very clear about one thing: Musk is not an engineer. He employs engineers, but he is not an engineer himself. He has given himself the title of Chief Engineer at SpaceX, but that's no different than me giving myself the title of Chief Surgeon. It's meaningless. The actual engineers at Tesla and SpaceX are very capable, though perhaps misguided, as one would have to be to work to further the interests of a megalomaniacal mega-dork like Musk. Unfortunately, many of these actual engineers must also have a kind of cult-like, sycophantic devotion to Musk, which is why none of them have the guts to tell him that AI data centers in space is a stupid fucking idea.

This guy really thought Elon Musk was one of the engineers designing Tesla cars?

I get wanting to respect someone, but he’s literally just a rich person. He’s not an engineering wiz.

One would think an academic would realize that the hype man doesn't actually do any engineering.

Elon never was an engineer. He hired amazing engineers who managed to make amazing things despite his constant incompetent meddling.

Dude, the only thing Musk engineered in his life were Tesla stocks.

Honestly though, how fucking naive do you need to be to ever think Elon was a competent engineer?

188k people like Elon’s ableist deflection.

What the goddamned fuck.

"The route of least intellectual resistance" is my new favorite insult.

Okay we all hate Musk, but calling the cooling of a datacenter in space "easy" is correct if you read "easy" as "something we already know how to do," which is kind of how he talks. Pretending to dismiss the idea simply because space is a vacuum ignores realities like the ISS.

Anyway, if you want an explanation of cooling a space datacenter, this video by physicist/astronomer Scott Manly explains it in exhaustive technical detail. There's some pretty good layman's language at around the 15-minute point.

TL;DR: Yes, you could cool a large datacenter in space by doing various things we already know how to do.

To be fair, Elon was right: to have ever believed that Elon was respectable or an engineer was indeed "fully r-------".

Elon is mad that a scientist is pointing out the flaws in his latest grift.

There never were going to be data centers in space, that's just another way to dupe investors.

The science is sound. Otherwise a Thermos would be as effective at keeping things hot as any other bottle.

I think he has an undergraduate degree in economics.

That is the thing that annoys me most. Getting heat away in vacuum / space is super complicated. Plus, what if a component breaks down? You can't send an engineer to replace a faulty cable.

I remember hearing that in Walter Isaacson's hagiography it said something like "Musk continuously and ruthlessly pushes to first principles of physics"...

Maybe not so much

Elon is right, he called Teslas great cars.

I wouldn't be nearly so confident that data centers in space are impossible engineering, but it probably won't happen in my lifetime or Elon's.

I actually know someone who worked on the MIRI instrument & they keep going on and on about heat transmission in wiring being a huge challenge.

So you thought he was a good engineer up until this one thing? Okay at least something. But people here, why is this person suddenly relevant that we need to share this tweet, posted on the Nazis fucking own platform?

I don't use twitter, this is satire right? cause if this is a real conversation im glad i was never on twitter to begin with lol

The only skills Elon has is exploiting workers and milking the government for money. By all accounts he's terrible at everything else

Tbf elon was probably just talking to a mirror