From a Twitter report on remarks Elon Musk is giving today:
"I got a bunch of nutty stories. SpaceX had to do this study to see if Starship would hit a shark. And I'm like... it's a big ocean. There are a lot of sharks! It’s not impossible, but it’s very unlikely. So we said, 'Fine, we’ll do the analysis. Can you give us the shark data?' They were like, 'No, we can’t give you the shark data.'
Well, then, okay, we’re in a bit of a quandary. How do we solve this shark probability issue? They said, 'Well, we could give it to our western division, but we don’t trust them.' I’m like, 'Am I in a comedy sketch here?!'
Eventually, we got the data and could run the analysis to say, 'Yeah, the sharks are going to be fine.' But they wouldn’t let us proceed with the launch until we did this crazy shark analysis.
Then we thought, 'Okay, now we’re done.' But then they said, 'What about whales?'
When you look at a picture of the Pacific, what percent of the surface area do you see as whale? If Starship did hit a whale, honestly, it’s like the whale had it coming, cause the odds are... so low. It’s like Final Destination: Whale Edition.
And then they said, 'What if the rocket goes underwater, then explodes, and the whales have hearing damage?' This is real!
This may be a reveal on where our tax dollars are going in our space program, then.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed his story about having to kidnap seals to make them listen to recordings of sonic booms.
ReplyDeleteWe hear these stories, and laugh, but the cost! How does any small enterprise without Musk's resources get any traction? It truly is a insane clown posse.
ReplyDeleteAgree with anon, you only laugh at this because otherwise it'd bring you to tears. I see the very real burdens of this almost daily trying to satisfy all the requirements for pulling building permits. It's incredibly frustrating.
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