this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
367 points (94.6% liked)
Technology
59605 readers
4202 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah. My understanding is that Deloreans were shockingly rust resistant but were also panels specifically so that they could be replaced.
I don't know metallurgy/material science well enough to know if cybertrucks actually used good quality stainless steel or cut corners. And I can easily see a world where people assume the dirt is rust because of paranoia or just looking for internet drama/clout.
But... Rust or no rust, those cars are pretty fucked. Because they don't even have a clearcoat. And considering we are in the season where roads are covered with salt and sand and cars are constantly bombarded with a highly abrasive slurry at speed, those panels are going to see a LOT of wear and damage.
Tesla uses SS301 stainless. DeLorean used SS304.
301 is cheaper, less resistant to corrosion, can resist more force applied to it before failure, formes better in stamping, doesn't tolerate high-temperatures as well.
My guess is they used 301 due to cost and forming properties. Supposedly they use 301 on the Starships, so bulk pricing would help keep production costs low. Had they used 304 the raw material cost and cost of production at volume would be higher but they would be less likely to have these corrosion issues, assuming they aren't welding the panels.
Well, starships don't usually need to worry about rain storms
They do have a habit of blowing up tho.
Seems to be a theme with Elon’s contraptions.
Tbf spacex has extremely good reliability with their falcons, and their spaceship tests are literally just that, see how it blows up to learn more.
There's better things to criticize the company, such as their "what do you mean I can't fuck my subordinates?" -CEO
Name a rocket company that haven't had rockets blow up.
Some of the Falcon 9 stage one boosters have been re-used 16 times.
All I’m gonna say is that ULAs Vulcan flew for the first time last month, and performed perfectly.
Blue origin developed the engines for Vulcan, and they performed perfectly.
Starship has had 2 test flights that they’ve had to backtrack and spin as “successful” because they cleared the pad. This is supposed to be a human rated launch vehicle, and it took SpaceX a few minutes on the second launch to even notice that the fucking thing blew up on the edge of space.
I don’t really care how reliable the falcon is, when they haven’t seemed to apply a single thing they learned from it to Starship.
Starship is supposed to put the next humans on the moon. They got the contract because they quoted to NASA that they could do it cheaper than anybody else. They’ve now blown up 2 test vehicles, and failed to demonstrate a single example of any of the new technologies they need in order for the Starship lander to work.
Likely due to this, the next moon landing has been pushed back a year, and likely will keep slipping until NASA grows the balls to pull the contract from SpaceX and give it to a company with more realistic development strategies.
As much as I am annoyed by the time table slip, What I really, really don’t want to see is the first people to land on the moon in 50 years crashing and burning because of Elon’s cartoon rocket. Or getting trapped on the surface because the stupid fucking elevator gets jammed due to moon dust. Or getting all the way out to the moon, only to discover the dammed turbo pumped engines won’t spool up after sitting in space for a week. Or if the thing will be capable of getting to the moon, we’ve never transferred cryogenic fuels in space before, and it’s going to take over a dozen of these transfers to fuel the starship for the landing.
My point is that there’s 2 primary mantras when it comes to human space flight, and we’ve learned them through blood and sacrifice: Keep It Simple Stupid, and Failure is Not an Option. Starship, and SpaceX in general, fundamentally does not follow these. It’s already an over complicated and unproven design, and their whole design strategy is that blowing up is a success. That is unacceptable and contrary to developing a vehicle that is supposed to work 100% of the time while it’s 240,000 miles away. If you don’t design with those 2 goals in mind, you will get people killed, and we will have the very first bodies off of earth.
To end this, I want to talk about some of the procedures that Apollo had. If they were going to leave the moon, and the ascent engine wouldn’t light, they still had options. Option 1 was to exit the lander, and flip a switch that would release a blade to cut safety wires that prevent the engine from lighting accidentally. If that didn’t work, they had a literal pair of bolt cutters, and would go in and cut the safety wires and bolts by hand before coming in and opening the valves for the fuel, which would light itself. Ask yourself what those emergency procedures look like on starship. Ask yourself what the procedure is if those engines won’t light, or the elevator jams with people on the surface, or any of the other dozen things that can go wrong and kill you in space.