> I don't understand why people are so quick to dismiss SpaceX's ambitions as unrealistic.
I expect that part may be an attempt to not get their hopes up. One of the things I learned as a child was that if someone told you something that you really wanted to be true, and you believed it, then when it turned out to not be true you felt really really horrible. So instead you disbelieve it, and when it turns out to not be true you feel satisfied that you knew it wasn't true. If it turns out to be true after all, then you are surprised (in a good way) and excited because its a great thing. Of the choices, disbelieving gives a better future emotional outcome.
That said, the older version of me has come to appreciate people who are sincere even if they aren't able to deliver on their promises. Elon is pushing the edge of space travel at a rate that is much more exciting than NASA and other governments were. As a result I can cheer him on in the hopes he will be successful without becoming so invested in that success that it would crush me if it didn't come to pass. As a kid I really believed NASA when they said we'd have a lunar colony in 2001 after the lunar landing in 1969, and their inability to come close to delivering was really painful[1].
The launch of Falcon Heavy is going to be a significant milestone for SpaceX. If they can pull it off, they will have proven they can tame the complexity of adding rockets in parallel to tune their mass fraction to space. No one has done that yet. And if they can recover a second stage, and do so in a way that they can re-use its engines at least, it will demonstrate that the economics of such an effort can be managed as well.
High hopes, realistic expectations.
[1] Yes, I know that if they had kept their funding they would have made better strides, and yes I know that isn't there fault. But neither reality mitigated the impact of NASA essentially "giving up" on the moon.
> Of the choices, disbelieving gives a better future emotional outcome.
However, emotions aside, disbelief slows actions and hinders cooperation. I would rather my feelings be hurt then face the actual barriers disbelief provides.
I would say that having a healthy skepticism (which is not the same thing as pessimism or cynicism) helps make it more likely for things to work out in the long run.
It's the difference between saying, "Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars, wouldn't that be cool?" and "you're going to be living on Mars someday, better get ready". It's also the difference between saying, "self-driving cars would be great, let's try to make that happen" vs. "I'm not going to buy another car until I can get a self-driving one, that's how sure I am that this is imminent".
Really it's the difference between underpromising and overdelivering vs. overpromising and underdelivering. The people who are the most enthusiastic and vocally certain about the inevitability of these things in the near future are more of a threat to making those things happen than the people who are cautiously optimistic but skeptical about them.
IMO that's the reason to be skeptical- just to be realistic and to help the general population set their expectations appropriately. Nothing to do with bracing yourself for an emotional letdown. If overenthusiastic Mars/self-driving cars/AI people are vocal enough to convince the media and the general population about the near-term revolutionary inevitability of these things, then after a few years of those things not happening, the public will flip in the opposite direction. Then voila, no more tax breaks or research funding or other public support for those things, and they go from "might happen in my lifetime" to "will never happen in my lifetime" in reality, not just perception. Right now if you want to work on autonomous vehicles and know your stuff, then maybe there's a job or a grant for you someplace. If public opinion flips to "these people have been saying this stuff is just around the corner for 20 years, this has all been a waste of time and money", then boom, no more government assistance, no more venture capital, no more big companies spending lots of money on R&D for this stuff.
The skepticism of someone on the net is in no way going to hinder Musk from getting to Mars. It might, however, prevent them from wasting their time on another failed promise, and there are many of those.
My default reaction is disbelief (I'd prefer skepticism) especially when someone is trying to sell something because that's their whole goal, they are selling you something.
Not to mention, if you are a US citizen you're already supporting him whether you want to or not through government funding.
I really think the big steps forward come from people who have thought deeply about the challenges and are just as passionate about overcoming those challenges, not from people who weren't aware of the challenges going into it that didn't know how hard the thing they were trying to do was.
It's the difference between the George Hotzes of the world and the people who actually do the boring hard work to push through obstacles and make things happen. A George Hotz is a person who doesn't know what they don't know, and therefore gets their inspired, genius projects completely derailed by trivially avoidable, trivially predictable stumbling blocks, because of their overconfidence and lack of intellectual maturity. A not-George Hotz is someone who is probably a lot more boring to watch on YouTube, but is equally inspired and passionate. They obsess over potential obstacles far more than they talk about how awesome their project is going to be when it's done, and how confident they are in its success.
I expect that part may be an attempt to not get their hopes up. One of the things I learned as a child was that if someone told you something that you really wanted to be true, and you believed it, then when it turned out to not be true you felt really really horrible. So instead you disbelieve it, and when it turns out to not be true you feel satisfied that you knew it wasn't true. If it turns out to be true after all, then you are surprised (in a good way) and excited because its a great thing. Of the choices, disbelieving gives a better future emotional outcome.
That said, the older version of me has come to appreciate people who are sincere even if they aren't able to deliver on their promises. Elon is pushing the edge of space travel at a rate that is much more exciting than NASA and other governments were. As a result I can cheer him on in the hopes he will be successful without becoming so invested in that success that it would crush me if it didn't come to pass. As a kid I really believed NASA when they said we'd have a lunar colony in 2001 after the lunar landing in 1969, and their inability to come close to delivering was really painful[1].
The launch of Falcon Heavy is going to be a significant milestone for SpaceX. If they can pull it off, they will have proven they can tame the complexity of adding rockets in parallel to tune their mass fraction to space. No one has done that yet. And if they can recover a second stage, and do so in a way that they can re-use its engines at least, it will demonstrate that the economics of such an effort can be managed as well.
High hopes, realistic expectations.
[1] Yes, I know that if they had kept their funding they would have made better strides, and yes I know that isn't there fault. But neither reality mitigated the impact of NASA essentially "giving up" on the moon.