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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

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Hold up, I'm still processing this statement which helps me ignore the price of socks at the moment.

SpaceX has already been working on the first part of the requisite industrial stack, which is the atmospheric carbon dioxide capture, water electrolysis, and Sabatier reactors which will output H2, O2 and CH4. From there, it’s relatively straightforward to convert CH4 and O2 to CO and H20 with steam reformation, and then the CO can be reacted with H2 via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis to make all the basic chemicals we Earthlings currently get from refining oil.
 
Rarely have I read of Mr Musk's experiences in South Africa qua South Africa as being instrumental in his subsequent innovations. "Self-sustaining life on Mars" and "the Fischer-Tropsch process" (FT) have been, however, ineluctably and unbreakably tied together in my mind since I first began following SpaceX. Long before South Africa was isolated by trade sanctions - though that greatly advanced the country's need for FT - the country's national energy company Sasol fine-tuned FT in order to use their large coal deposits (there are no oil fields) to develop synthetic hydrocarbons across a broad spectrum. I have zero doubt Mr Musk knows all connected with this process and how best to use it in interplanetary development.
 
Paid to be stupid. Or just a shill?


Many of these types of articles are simply supporting their advertisers, the people who pay them money. If you follow the money then the reasons why these types of articles keep getting published become very obvious and transparent.

Reality tells a very different tale however. :cool:
 
Vegas Loop is a trojan horse for Tesla to operate full robotaxi service in a city.
First it's only from Loop terminal to terminal. Then they will only pick you up at Terminal but finish the ride within a few miles of a terminal - and finally full robotaxi service across the city, using the tunnels only as needed to skip traffic - brilliant.

Speaking of Trojan horses, every EV from competition is a Trojan horse for the Tesla Supercharger stations. Once SC's open up, customer will be spending here rather than at the gas station ;) Captain Obvious :)
 
You know China has done this stuff before, right?


I really don’t understand this board’s tendency to simp for the CCP.


My view is many people, including many here, focus primarily on economics and the bull case for China’s future, but downplay or don’t understand the interface with politics. A case in point is the TMC prohibition on talking about politics at all.
 
Initially this is true but the goal is for the civilization on Mars to be able to survive even if the ships from Earth stop showing up for any reason, just as Earthly civilization doesn’t depend on trade with other planets. To meet that success condition, eventually everything must be produced locally on Mars.

Like I said in the OP, I agree that others might do it but honestly I’m expecting SpaceX to get very little help in setting up the colony for a long time. That’s just my conjecture though.

As far as Tesla investment relevance, what’s important is estimating the likelihood that the Fischer-Trospch synthesis (FTS) industry in general will become the primary source of these chemicals on Earth and Mars irrespective of who does it, because FTS would be an enormous demand driver for hydrogen gas which would 1) massively increase overall demand for electricity from solar power and 2) potentially reduce the relative importance of grid batteries while increasing the importance of solar panels by making hydrogen production relatively more useful as a sink for excess midday solar power than battery storage. I’m thinking that any long-term valuation model for Tesla Energy really needs to answer this FTS and chemicals question because it has a bigger effect on the total addressable market for electricity than just about any other factor I’ve identified.


Good point, that is technically possible and they might do it that way, so it wasn’t correct to say FTS is the only option. I researched this a bit after reading your comment and indeed people have invented some processes for converting sugar into various hydrocarbon chemicals such as fuels and the precursors for plastics.

However, today FTS is a lot more economical than chemical synthesis from biomass and I expect it will probably be that way forever for at least most chemicals because it requires far fewer steps and far less land. FTS has already been in commercial use on Earth for many decades, and cost analysis I’ve seen shows that the main reason we don’t already use it instead of oil is just the prohibitively high price of H2 gas, which is set to drop soon with ever-cheaper solar power.

Also, biomass from crops and from human waste will probably be a lot more valuable as compost feedstock, because the colony needs to create soil if they’re going to terraform the planet.

FTS is used on Earth to synthesize renewable jet fuel/diesel from wood and other cellulosic feedstocks. Mostly pilot plants in Scandinavia, but some larger plants are being developed in N. America. The economics has always been the greatest hurdle for these projects. Very simple bioreactors/digesters can also produce methane from plant and animal wastes and also organic residue for enriching the native Martian soils. Personally, I see Mars as more of a stepping stone to planets more suitable for human habitation. It may take a long time to reach those more suitable worlds, but there are a vast number of them, without doubt.
 
Oh boy, another post that's not going to age well!

Why are you like this, right at open *every single day*?
Because it’s the trend?

1 or 2 days of outperformance doesn’t make up for the consistent underperformance. As I’ve said many times now, I’m looking for a longer trend of outperformance that signals Wall St had decided now it’s time to ride TSLA higher to the value it’s rightfully deserves.

Happy to see the stock outperforming it’s beta today……one day doesn’t mean diddly squat. Let’s see if it actually outperforms for 2-3 days and holds that outperformance instead of giving it back in the matter of a single day of underperformance. I’m not going to be a happy camper until TSLA gets the valuation it deserves
 
Speaking of Trojan horses, every EV from competition is a Trojan horse for the Tesla Supercharger stations. Once SC's open up, customer will be spending here rather than at the gas station ;) Captain Obvious :)
Yes but it can go both ways.

I do see posts from “supposed” Tesla owners saying they would buy something else if they had access to the SC network.

But I suspect opening the network would still be a net positive for Tesla.
 
Paid to be stupid. Or just a shill?


I was under the impression that before a "dethroning" could occur, a coronation was necessary.

It looks like the government and the mainstream media skipped the coronation part. :oops: