Thursday, December 2, 2021

Mrmusk faces a physics scaling problem

 Reference


He's done this many times before, but let's just imagine that it's the truth.  Top people fleeing is a good sign.

His management style is to be totally obnoxious, but he pays a lot.  Thus, brilliant people with no social skills do well there, and it is amazing how they have met his 'stretch targets'.  But previous leaders with his 'problem' always want to eventually invade Russia during a cold cycle.

He pushed this 'tin tin' rocket idea on his poor staff, in an act of 'madness' (not yet proven by history).  For his fans, it was another 'stretch target', that the minions could achieve.  But maybe not.  I'm on record as saying it was 'too much', and it's still a coin toss.

The problem is scaling.  I've been following the engine design, and they achieved the first engines by a brilliant redesign of the injection system, following a failed Russian design.  Yeah!  But, he yelled 'Bigger!', and they plunged right into it.  It's a bit like vw's top people yelling 'clean diesel!'.  It couldn't be done, because of the laws of physics.

History is littered with engineering failures due to scaling.  We know that spiders can't grow to be monsters because they collapse under their own weight.  Mass goes up by the cube, and strength only by the square.  Very sad.

Rocket designers fleeing muskville is a big thing, since they were paid a lot.  There are only a few good ones in the world, and they aren't at bo-ing, or nasa.  The remains will toil under the lash, but it might not work.


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