Why does anyone still believe that Musk is a genius?
Once he made his money, everything else has been a slow slide down hill.
1) The legacy of Tesla is largely going to be efficient battery production, not the cars. Raise your hand if you've ever seen a Tesla charging station, let alone a Tesla itself.
2) The Hyperloop. Physics basically made this not feasible from the word go, yet he's now suggesting it can be done underground. Being immensely clear, vacuum tube transit has been around for a century at this point, and nobody made a mass transit variant not because of lack of trying, but because the materials required to do so violate all versions of mechanics that science and engineering have.
3) Nuke the planet, blanketing it is energy collecting clouds. Assume a non-trivial amount of the radiation is also trapped, and somehow can create a run-away greenhouse gas effect. Assuming all of this magic happens, answer a few more questions. The water is locked away in hydrate crystals, effectively preventing plant life from taking root and sustaining that greenhouse. Overcome the water storage, and you're left with a hell-scape blasted by enough radiation to render life on the surface functionally suicide. Develop a system to live underground, now find anybody to volunteer for a literal suicide mission.
Let me suggest that Musk had an excellent time with the Falcon because NASA functionally backed out of development, and the combination of soviet and US technologies with new materials allowed for an incremental improvement in the technology.
Tesla's success is massive production and automation.
Hyperloop fails for a stupidly simple reason. Go to any bridge. Find the expansion plates which are built into every one of any significant length. Locally we have a bridge less than a mile long, with expansion plates/joints that allow 6"+ of variation on either side. Apply that same basic materials science (thermal expansion) to a hyperloop 100 miles long and you could have a 600" or 50' long variation. Once you then factor in temperature differences between the top and bottom of the tube any dream of maintaining vacuum is quashed.
Nuking Mars is another stunt. He's finally being challenged, and he's doubling down on stupidity rather than admitting he's more of an Edison than a Tesla. Musk is a business person, who makes grand promises and stands on the back of very smart people who made him seem prescient. Remove those people, or allow him to shoot off at the mouth without checking, and what you get is a person willing to shove his own foot so far into his mouth that it comes out the other end.
I guess it's good to know more regular people finally understand that he's beyond the pale. The fine line between genius and stupidity was crossed long ago, and it's time we stop listening.
Damn, I'm old. Bill Nye the science guy is now a left wing joke. The four horsemen are dead. Atheism, Atheism +, and Atheism ++ have come and gone as relevant cultural things. Now Musk has finally been recognized for being a nutter supported by scientists and engineers trying to make his crazy work. It's like watching Feynman being replaced slowly by Bozo the clown, and being powerless to stop it. Honk, honk I guess.
Edit:
But what about the lack of air/oxygen. Shouldn't that affect the thermonuclear reaction?? But at the same time tests between the 30s and 50s have found that any small amount of explosive power is multiplied in an atmosphere with no oxygen. Hence why limpet mines and underwater mines and to a lesser extent torpedos were so devastating during WWII.
Without oxygen, i would probably be right in saying that it wouldnt be an explosion but an implosion but i have not seen or heard of any nuclear tests that test nukes in zero g. At the same time. the implosion could be massive.
But i digress...
"the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. "
"Just because you don't have evidence that something does exist does not mean you have evidence of something that doesn't exist." -
Gin Rummy.
Are you trolling? I ask because I cannot tell the difference.
A thermonuclear reaction is by nature independent of the presence of air. A large atom is destabilized, decays into two daughter particles and energy, and the resulting material is generally non-stable isotopes and enough released energy to force the process in another atom. This is why a thermonuclear reaction requires enough local matter and energy to reach a critical mass, otherwise it simply fizzles out. This is also how carbon rods in a nuclear reactor control heat production (absorb energetic decompositions without breaking down themselves, preventing the chain reaction).
Explosive powders, based upon combustion, don't multiply in an atmosphere with no oxygen by definition. The chemical reaction requires free oxygen to decompose a longer chain molecule and release energy. Think something similar to a camp fire, over a much shorter time. C6H12O6 + 6O2 = 6(CO2) + 6(H2O), or basic glucose decomposition creating the energy that runs you. Explosives can carry what they need to decompose themselves (TNT for example, C6H2(NO2)3CH3 = 7C + 5H + 3N + 6O ), but then they wouldn't be an explosive powder.
Regarding the amplified influences of explosives under water...wow. The speed of a compression wave, which is what an explosion functionally is, is based upon the density of the medium in which it occurs (assuming the goal isn't shrapnel).
basics on sound
This means that under water the compression wave is capable of moving much faster, and therefore creating much more localized damage. I haven't the foggiest idea how you come to the conclusion that a reaction not requiring oxygen, which is not a compression wave but a massive release of energy which would have the propensity to generate heat , would somehow create an implosion. Nor do I see how a nuclear decomposition would be influenced by a lack of gravity when achieving the critical mass requires only that enough atoms be present in a small enough volume. Nor do I see exactly how you believe that the planet Mars has no gravity is a statement based in this universe (less yes, but none?).
Please, for the love of all that is holy tell me you are joking. If not....I have severe doubts that you should be given anything more dangerous than a soup spoon (given those last few quotes).
We can't live there at all; Mars is livable with suits; way better than the moon.
