Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Surely there must be a news site - or a Tesla-friendly shareholder group could start a news site- that only publishes level headed information, methodically debunks all the FUD, and knows how to get viral traffic so everyone talks about it. We have owners making Tesla commercials for free, surely there must be one of us invested deeply enough and happens to have the resources and is social media savvy to create a well publicized news source in these days when even MSNBC floods us with fake news.

If shorts can commandeer the likes of MSNBC and Bloomburg, surely there's opportunity for Longs to do the same with honest news on a similar scale.

A nice idea, but sadly, negative news sells. Positive news, not so much.

Also, if you post something positive you are "sticking your neck out" -- warranted or not, if something bad happens (or is merely widely reported as having happened) then you are accused of drinking kool-aid or being subject to a reality distortion field.

Negative wins. It isn't just $TSLA, its also politics, weather, religion, etc.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Drumheller
A link to a UK newspaper about SpaceX deploying missiles.

Real-life Star Wars? SpaceX open to deploying WEAPONS in orbit for US

Okay, I'll bite. Its not Tesla, but Musk provides a link. It isn't market action, but ... hey, what else is this thread for?

I'm not sure why the comment is even news. I mean, SpaceX is in the business of launching packages into orbit for money, primarily for the USG. The statement was simply that if the USG wanted to pay SpaceX to put up a weapon package that SpaceX would take the business.

I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked.

One of the (many) things I have since wished I kept an exact quote and citation for was more than a decade ago when Bill Gates publicly stated that he'd happily backdoor Windows for the USG. I was surprised at the time that there wasn't any fuss over the statement. Fast forward to today and I'm surprised that anyone cares a company in a line of business will do that business.

I must've gotten older.
 
  • Like
Reactions: neroden
Or, more accurately, "SpaceX open to deploying MISSILE INTERCEPTORS in orbit for US". They make it sound like some sort of offensive system.

I've often felt that it would be more productive to switch from the paradigm of "large interceptor that creates as large of a cloud of shrapnel as possible to try to obliterate incoming warheads" to "small, very-high-dV explosive interceptor that does a velocity-matching low-speed impact with incoming warheads". Basically instead of trying to launch hundreds or thousands of tonnes of shrapnel, you launch projectiles that are only a few to a few dozen kilos each, but have ~15k m/s dV (aka, most of the launch mass is comprised of several boost stages), so that they can do a *low velocity* home-and-impact against their targets (and thus be pretty much immune from missing).

A potential implementation would be an MIRVed interceptor which provides most of the dV, first to match location, then to match velocity, and which contains its own radar transmitter to illuminate all warheads within range. Its independent smaller kill vehicles would provide only the final dV and have only a radar receiver; each would home in on a specific warhead in the event of a MIRVed ICBM (or contrarily, on separate ICBMs if on a similar enough trajectory that the kill vehicles' boost stages could match them). Low mass decoys could be detected by designing the kill vehicles to impact their target and measure the recoil from the impact before deciding whether to detonate, and if they decide it's a decoy but they have enough dV to reach another warhead, to switch targets. As an alternate implementaiton, rather than exploding, kill vehicles could fire "bullets" into their targets (a potential way to allow a single kill vehicle to target multiple warheads, assuming again that the dV requirement for maneuvering between warheads is within its capabilities)

What I like about the approach is that it helps you counter some asymmetry. Nuclear warheads have to be large (the primary ballistic missile warhead in the US arsenal, the W87, is 200-270kg). Kill vehicles do not. The smaller you can make your kill vehicle, the more of an advantage you can get (offset by the fact that the boost stages must be significantly more massive than the kill vehicles themselves).
 
Last edited:
Or, more accurately, "SpaceX open to deploying MISSILE INTERCEPTORS in orbit for US". They make it sound like some sort of offensive system.

Even if it were, so what? The news wouldn't be that an American company that does contract work for the USG would continue doing so, but rather that the USG was putting an offensive system into orbit.
 
A nice idea, but sadly, negative news sells. Positive news, not so much.

There's a couple of news sites with no Tesla FUD and quality reporting, such as:


I do think 'mainstream' news sites are going to change their Tesla reporting over the next year or so as well, like they did it when SpaceX started delivering success after success.

Right now both Tesla and Elon is making it somewhat easy to create negative false narratives about Tesla, and shorts are all too happy to help them out when it comes to citing "industry experts" - but robust execution and success is going to wipe away most of those false narratives.

Patience ...
 
There's a couple of news sites with no Tesla FUD and quality reporting, such as:


I do think 'mainstream' news sites are going to change their Tesla reporting over the next year or so as well, like they did it when SpaceX started delivering success after success.

Right now both Tesla and Elon is making it somewhat easy to create negative false narratives about Tesla, and shorts are all too happy to help them out when it comes to citing "industry experts" - but robust execution and success is going to wipe away most of those false narratives.

Patience ...

I'm not going to try and argue the material Tesla and Elon may or may not be handing the press, but when they recycle old as new -- that's intentionally deceptive. When they use a negative slant -- that's intentionally deceptive. When they steer an interviewer into negative territory -- that's manipulative. When they, at best mislead and at worst outright lie, about the contents of interview -- that's intentionally deceptive.

I like your list of news sources, but you implicitly acknowledged that it is not mainstream. I like your thesis (that it will change in the future) but given all the deception and outright lies about Tesla/Elon currently going on in the mainstream despite the significant success of the company -- they are choosing to marginalize, when they don't outright omit, mitigating or positive news.

Why is this happening? I don't know and it is likely multiple reasons. I think the fact that negative news sells is the biggest factor. The lack of Tesla paid advertising probably doesn't help -- so they indirectly take advertising revenue from Tesla in retaliation? I seriously doubt it would be that straightforward, but if an editor is frustrated by none of Tesla's money coming their way through ads I don't think its a stretch for him to find it easier to greenlight negative news stories.

In the end, I don't know why -- but I can see the facts and it isn't exactly a secret that negative news sells so I put that first as to leading cause. And that isn't going to change no matter how successful Tesla gets. The frequency may go down, it has with Apple, but there are still negative slant news stories or the occasional analyst claiming that Apple is going to go bankrupt. Success influences, but it doesn't control.
 
I've often felt that it would be more productive to switch from the paradigm of "large interceptor that creates as large of a cloud of shrapnel as possible to try to obliterate incoming warheads" to "small, very-high-dV explosive interceptor that does a velocity-matching low-speed impact with incoming warheads". Basically instead of trying to launch tonnes of shrapnel, you launch projectiles that are only a few kilos each, but have ~15k m/s dV (aka, several boost stages), so that they can do a *low velocity* home-and-impact against their targets (and thus be pretty much immune from missing).

Yes, and note that if you have an interception window of ~10 minutes and a cloud of LEO interceptors in well dispersed orbits, connected via a mesh network, you have:
  • all the spare Δv you need to match or over-match the velocity of incoming suborbital warheads
  • incredible robustness of location coverage, as your cloud of interceptors can within minutes adjust trajectories to intercept warheads from anywhere on the globe
  • incredible robustness of sensor coverage
  • incredible robustness of communications: such a self-sufficient mesh network would be very hard to disrupt even with atomic weapons.
The sheer kinetic energy of such LEO interceptors orbiting over 10 times the speed of a bullet is incredible - no explosives needed to gain energy for the interception. Every ton of mass in LEO orbit has the TNT-equivalent energy of 24 tons of TNT.

So yes, this makes (mega-)tons of sense.
 
Are you in Puts or sold calls? What’s behind your short confidence assuming there’s a good chance Kimbal’s mind blowing deliveries is true which is coming out in days?
Solds calls against positions. (although I've also sold puts down at 250$ in the past several months).

I'm waiting to get clear this week and will re-sell calls but certainly at higher strikes. I'm liking that premiums are back up to over 10% for the ATM front month strikes (but at higher levels)
 
  • Informative
  • Like
Reactions: neroden and Xpert
Or, more accurately, "SpaceX open to deploying MISSILE INTERCEPTORS in orbit for US". They make it sound like some sort of offensive system.

I've often felt that it would be more productive to switch from the paradigm of "large interceptor that creates as large of a cloud of shrapnel as possible to try to obliterate incoming warheads" to "small, very-high-dV explosive interceptor that does a velocity-matching low-speed impact with incoming warheads". Basically instead of trying to launch hundreds or thousands of tonnes of shrapnel, you launch projectiles that are only a few to a few dozen kilos each, but have ~15k m/s dV (aka, several boost stages), so that they can do a *low velocity* home-and-impact against their targets (and thus be pretty much immune from missing).

A potential implementation would be an MIRVed interceptor which provides most of the dV, first to match location, then to match velocity, and which contains its own radar transmitter to illuminate all warheads within range. Its independent smaller kill vehicles would provide only the final dV and have only a radar receiver; each would home in on a specific warhead in the event of a MIRVed ICBM (or contrarily, on separate ICBMs if on a similar enough trajectory that the kill vehicles' boost stages could match them). Low mass decoys could be detected by designing the kill vehicles to impact their target and measure the recoil from the impact before deciding whether to detonate, and if they decide it's a decoy but they have enough dV to reach another warhead, to switch targets. As an alternate implementaiton, rather than exploding, kill vehicles could fire "bullets" into their targets (a potential way to allow a single kill vehicle to target multiple warheads, assuming again that the dV requirement for maneuvering between warheads is within its capabilities)

What I like about the approach is that it helps you counter some asymmetry. Nuclear warheads have to be large (the primary ballistic missile warhead in the US arsenal, the W87, is 200-270kg). Kill vehicles do not. The smaller you can make your kill vehicle, the more of an advantage you can get (offset by the fact that the boost stages must be significantly more massive than the kill vehicles themselves).
ummm, yeah - exactly what I was thinking.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.