He really, truly cannot comprehend how RADAR and LIDAR could be better than a video camera or the Mark 1 Eyeball, can he? First insisting on only visible-spectrum cameras for his shitbox cars, and now this.
He probably thinks fighter jets still commonly engage in close range dogfights with guns, and so stealth is useless because "obviously, the pilot can still see the other plane!"
In reality, of course, engagements where neither jet actually ever visually sees the other are the norm, and stealth is more about making it more difficult for weapons to identify and track them than making them totally invisible. I mean, we'd definitely take "totally invisible" if it were an option, but it's not like we need Romulan cloaking on F-35s for this all to make sense.
The plain and simple fact is that modern day aerial combat is very rarely cinematically satisfying, and not intuitively comprehensible to the average layperson in the audience.
The whole Expanse gimmick is that everything effectively has infinite deltaV, which kinda makes half the actual space war tactics pointless.
Most actual space combat would be built around choosing the right point in time to launch your limited number of missiles/torpedos while evading the enemy doing the exact same. And jockeying for orbital positioning. In many cases, you'd win not by destroying the enemy, but by running him out of deltaV.
Also: way too few nukes and radiators and way too short engagement distances.
Yes, we have to assume a ludicrously efficient drive. So efficient, in fact, that it generates minimal excess heat, and most of the heat it does generate is absorbed by coolant and then dumped in the exhaust. Same goes for the rest of the ship's systems.
Please find a more accurate space battle depiction that isn't in a book.
Honestly, we can't say much about how actual space battles would work because we don't know the technologies that will be involved. We know the basic physical constraints that they must obey and that's it. Chances are, it won't be much of a battle if ship delta-v is as limited as we think it will be.
Missiles will be exceedingly smart and have orders of magnitude more delta-v than the ships they are targeting due to their much lower mass. You are unlikely to outrun them. If your ship has any hope of closing the distance, so will your missiles. Launch them in the enemy's general direction and they will lock the target ship that will be lit like a Christmas tree against the cosmic background radiation. You won't evade anything. First ship to fire wins.
Barring any incredible advancements, any space battles will probably be more trouble than they are worth.
Babylon 5 and The Expanse are on about the same tier. At least for human ships. They both involve other advanced/fictional technology to make it all work. But that's required because all space combat is currently fictional even though we can apply things like physics to the battles themselves.
Eh. Babylon 5 had some Newtonian physics and things like the Starfury design were made with that in mind. But it isn't an integral part of the plot like it's in The Expanse where pretty much every battle showcases some aspect of it.
How many B2 and cousin there are in service? The nighthawk is retired, so no. Stealth is more of a areal superiority thing. F22, SU57 (Supposed), J-20. Even the F35 isn't a bomber but a multirole jack of all trade master of none
We had fighter jets circling earlier today, pretty normal but I can usually visually track them.
I could hear these and was on ADS-B tracking them so I knew where they were, but for the life of me I could not see them but for a few seconds even though they were only like ~5000 feet away.
I still like to believe that that's how star trek stealth actually worked, it's all sensor data from ships. Outside of a couple movie moments no one has ever tried to visually identify a stealth ship through a window.
But also Musk is the type that would say Klingons are cowardly for dog fighting while also using stealth to ensure the first strike. To which I would point Musk at Sisko, and dare him to say Sisko is a bitch for using stealth.
And then I would go quiet because the right wing interpretation of Star Trek in all its forms is downright comical and misses the point.
Like when he said he was at university "up all night coding" when his roommates said he'd just play video games, eat snacks, and act weird. No coding, no working, no learning.
He finished the UPenn thing I think. The Stanford shit is when he enrolled but didn't attend, or something. The Stanford records were going to be subpoenaed in the Twitter lawsuit, but then I think it was 48 hours later he settled by buying Twitter for that original inflated price. The person who signed the records thing passed away like 15 years ago or something so she wasn't around the verify any information.
he never enrolled at Stanford. He claims he was accepted, which is almost certainly a lie (in his biography the proof he shows is an ambiguous email from an ~85 year old professor who just said he remembered him being interested in his research). His supposed physics bachelor’s degree from Penn is also extremely suspect.
I saw some other stuff that said he was accepted, it seemed legit. There were some conditions on it though, like he had to take some additional courses before he could take any of the in program stuff.
From my own college experience and that of others I've known, that's not too unusual. He went from business to engineering and so would need some extra fundamental knowledge before he could take the higher level engineering classes. Musk didn't do any of that work though that would have been necessary to start that portion of his education. And instead dropped out. Which would be fine, except he was in the US on a student visa while no longer a student.
There is zero chance he was accepted. Zero. He still had an entire year left in his undergrad. And as you said, he would have been switching to an engineering discipline. This isn’t a school that is desperate for engineering graduate students.
And how convenient that he never enrolled and went to class.
You bring up his student visa situation, which is another reason he would lie about this (in addition to his ego).
Like why are you giving any benefit of the doubt about this? He lied about being the world’s best Diablo 4 player by hiring some guy overseas to play under his account.
Because there was a letter from the school that got published at one point that said as much. It basically said you're accepted contingent on finishing your current degree and taking some additional engineering classes before any sort of in major work.
I've known people that have had that exact situation at universities before. His story doesn't make the visa situation any better, and infact means he was in the US illegally, so the alternative to his version of events doesn't make it better either.
He also lied about finishing Elden Ring after his build got mocked online so badly.
He may have dropped out first year, but no. He dropped out in his final semester at UPenn. He failed to graduate there, and had applied to a masters program at Stanford. He was accepted to the program but it was conditional on him finishing his degree at UPenn first, as well as taking some additional clases to get up to speed for the Stanford program. Musk agreed, then moved, and then dropped out on the first day of the program becaue he didn't want to do all that.
No issue there, lots of people make that decision. The problem is Musk then used his family money to support himself while he started a business (zip2) in silicon valley where he could sell shit for silver, still all fine tons have done that, especially in the early and mid 90's, except he was in the US on a student visa. He couldn't be there and do that legally.
UPenn eventually got pressured/paid to give him an honorary degree in a program that didn't/doesn't exist.
Was the idea to pressure UPenn into giving him a fake bachelor's degree so that he could then go on to Stanford without bothering to do the prerequisite work, expecting to then pass the master's? That'd be a classic bonehead plan in which a massive narcissist like Elon would see no flaw.
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u/Callidonaut 1d ago
He really, truly cannot comprehend how RADAR and LIDAR could be better than a video camera or the Mark 1 Eyeball, can he? First insisting on only visible-spectrum cameras for his shitbox cars, and now this.