Starship Launch / Spectacular Explosion April 17th?

…Look, test rockets blow up on the pad all the damn time. Even Elon Musk himself isn’t going to commit to it working on the first try. This is why they had to have FAA approval.

So adjust your expectations. The important thing will be, What do we learn from any oopsies? Failure is just another data point.

The DOOM that came to Twitter.

I was never expecting 75% cuts. 50%, though? Oh, yeah.

Elon Musk plans to cut about 3,700 jobs at Twitter Inc or half of the company’s workforce in a bid to cut costs, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter… Bloomberg also reported that Musk intends to reverse the social media company’s existing work from anywhere policy and will require employees to work from office though some exceptions could be made.

That’s the thing that’s gonna cause heartache, agita, and the rampaging staggers, mind you. Elon Musk apparently does not like work-from-home, these days – and it seems he’s going to be treating his new acquisition the same as the old one. Gonna be interesting to see how that plays out*.

(H/T: Instapundit)

*I’m agnostic on work-from-home. It’s working out all right for my wife’s job, but I don’t think it’s a universal panacea (or disaster).

Musk buys Twitter.

I am not exactly of two minds on this; it’s more like I had two mildly divergent impulses in my response. First one:

.aannnnd here’s the other.

I know, I know. I just couldn’t resist. I’m only flesh and blood!

Tweet of Last September, HA! edition.

Saw this line on Facebook (you’ll know it when you see it), and I had to look up the original Tweets:

Continue reading Tweet of Last September, HA! edition.

See, THIS is what I was expecting out of The Future.

It’s not quite right. Yet. But I don’t think I’m getting a Bradbury or Heinlein-style rocketship – self-contained, easy to refuel, and with a turnaround time in hours – until we get a few more iterations of our engines. Or, hey, a reactionless drive, since I’m blue-skying it. But this would do, for my fifties. This would very well do.

Blue Origins lodges complaint with GAO over SpaceX.

It’s about NASA lunar lander contract: “The protest focuses on the decision to award only one company, SpaceX, the lunar lander contract from a three-way competition. Alabama-based Dynetics also had developed a lunar lander for the contest.” (Via Instapundit) …Look, I like Amazon just fine. Amazon Prime, affiliate revenue, it’s my publisher.

But… Blue Origins is a privately funded spaceflight research organization that brings payloads along for the ride, and SpaceX is an unmanned and manned orbital transport enterprise. I have no doubt (and some hopes) that Jeff Bezos will eventually have an extremely profitable company and a fleet of silver rocketships; it’s just that, in the meantime, we’re trying to get back to the moon before I die of old age. Well, that’s maybe not NASA’s specific rationale – but it absolutely should be. I’d have given SpaceX the contract, too: they’ve got direct experience at this point. That includes, again, manned missions.

Moe Lane

Question: Why Does Elon Musk keep doing things like the Cybertruck?

A: Because people keep putting down cash for them.

When Tesla unveiled its new pickup truck last Wednesday, many critics blasted it as ugly and impractical. But despite these criticisms, more than 200,000 people have put down a $100 deposit to reserve a spot in line for the new vehicle, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on Sunday.

All-electric designs have helped every Tesla vehicle stand out from its competition, but Tesla’s Cybertruck is unconventional even by Tesla’s standards. Other pickup trucks are boxy, with a square cabin in the front and a flatbed in the back. The Cybertruck has a triangular design that looks a bit like the DeLorean in Back to the Future.

Continue reading Question: Why Does Elon Musk keep doing things like the Cybertruck?

So, how much *should* you sell out for, when it’s Elon Musk?

Background: Elon Musk’s building a spaceport out there in Texas for his Mars rocket — and God DAMN but that’s just an observation that’s chock-full of crystallized awesome — and the retirement community next door is possibly not entirely enthralled with having regular bouts of Rocket Summer. So Musk’s offering three times the appraised value of their houses to buy them out. No fuss, no muss, he’ll even throw in VIP passes to see the rockets go up.

Continue reading So, how much *should* you sell out for, when it’s Elon Musk?

Falcon Heavy rocket brought back with *more* of its pieces.

Nice:

SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk said Thursday that the company’s recovery fleet in the Atlantic Ocean recovered the two halves of the Falcon Heavy’s payload shroud after the heavy-lifter’s second launch from the Kennedy Space Center. Musk said the company plans to reuse the fairing for the first time later this year.

As Fark Geek noted: recovering the rockets themselves for reuse? Whatever, man. That’s old news at this point. But retrieving and reusing a component that makes up 10% of the launch cost? Yeah, that’s noteworthy. As was the originally rocket recovery, of course, but one gets jaded so quickly, these days.