teachrdan

Full title: The strange death and afterlife of the tech world’s most embarrassing scooter

> The question to ask is of the net harm on society would be higher if cops were hesitating at every move.

We have to draw the line somewhere. How about, "Cops shouldn't harass people once charges against them have been dropped"?

> The stories against the police are incredibly damning, but the statistics are pretty tame.

Every minute wasted harassing an innocent person is a minute better spent pursuing actual criminals. There are numerous cases (like the Central Park 5) where the police prematurely focused on suspects of convenience while the real criminals walked free and killed again. Stronger rules would protect us.

My objections have nothing to do with Musk; they would be exactly the same in substance and intensity no matter who the US government was paying to do it.

My objection is that this is a pointless waste of hundreds of billions of dollars of capital, money that can and should be used for more useful pursuits, including those which will make Mars research more cost-effective in the future.

Humans going to Mars would be limited to staying in a tiny portion of the planet; robots could be deployed anywhere. Humans have to be protected from all threats, including, yes, centuries worth of radiation, getting poisoned by perchlorates, and committing suicide -- as well as the same Mars particulate matter that threatens the current generation of robotics.

We would be foolish not to spend the money that would go into sending literally hundreds of tons of life support to Mars into robotics and adjacent technology instead.

Because, who gives a shit if China gets there first? Having more effective robots capable of more human tasks in more (and more hostile) environments is far more worthwhile than racing another country in what amounts to an international dick measuring contest.

Yes, let's explore Mars. Let's explore more of it with robots, far more, and more thoroughly, than we could conceivably do with humans, and for a fraction of the cost.

> Robots are an interesting topic because people don't seem to understand how limited they are

You've hit the nail on the head here. Investing in robots is an infinitely smarter -- and more cost-effective -- play than just sending humans to Mars and hoping for the best, centuries worth of radiation be damned.

If robots really are too fragile to do so much as dig holes in the Martian surface, then lets improve the robots. This has the added benefit of having actual, immediate utility here on Earth!

You're saying that robots are too fragile to rely on for Mars exploration. You know what else is fragile? A human being. And it's far easier to make a robot more durable.

This conversation has helped me understand what I personally believe to be a fallacy behind almost all arguments for the human exploration (much less settlement) of Mars: the fallacy of urgency. There is absolutely no reason why we must drastically increase our exploration of the surface of Mars right now. (or in 10+ years or whenever we would hypothetically land humans there)

If it takes longer than those "10 years" to design more competent and durable robots, who cares? There's exactly zero rush to send humans to Mars -- except that, you know, it would be kinda cool if we did. The money spent on robot research would more than pay for itself in utility on Earth in a way that money spent on shielding humans and sending the cargo necessary to keep them alive in a distant, hostile environment never will.

> Your link is about radiation in space around Mars, not on the surface.

Your own source disagrees with you. According to the paper, you cited:

"Combining our measurements with those obtained during the cruise phase (22), we estimate a total mission dose equivalent of ~1.01 Sv for a round trip Mars surface mission with 180 days (each way) cruise, and 500 days on the martian surface for this current solar cycle (Table 2)."

As a reminder, 1.01 Sv is about 275 YEARS of radiation. Not good!

And the fact that a single astronaut is bullish about astronaut stuff should not determine out space exploration policy. Who cares if he wants to go back to space again?

> Well, let's just say I think they'll find a few ways to keep themselves busy - turns out there's quite a lot to do when starting a civilization.

There's no doubt our hypothetical Mars explorers (settlers, now?) will be busy. There will be tons of measurements to take, repairs to make, construction, maintenance, etc. But it will doubtless be tedious to be so far from the slightest bit of nature as we know it on Earth, or synchronous communication with anyone but each other, stuck in low gravity and inside the same small habitats (or space suits). And that will be their reward after 180 days of space travel!

I did some light research into the perchlorate-in-water issue, and you're correct that there exist industrial processes on Earth to filter them out. But at this point we're not just shipping pilots and engineers and scientists to Mars, but also perchlorate removal specialists to operate these machines.

What's the point? If it's to explore Mars, then we're wasting untold hundreds of billions of dollars to send humans to do a job infinitely better suited to robots. If it's to explore Mars (2), then why are we setting up industrial machines to extract water from its surface and do permanent harm to the place we're supposedly interesting in learning about?

The only credible answer left is, "We should explore Mars because the idea is cool." That's fine if Elon Musk wants to pay for it. But that money is infinitely better spent on Earth -- even if, or especially if, we invest it in building robots to do that exploration for us.

I read their comment as meaning, "If you really care about design that doesn't look like anything else, you should be wary of the Cybertruck, as its commercial failure actually discourages future innovation in automobile design."

I was under the impression there were teleoperators for their taxi fleet: https://electrek.co/2025/05/16/tesla-robotaxi-fleet-powered-...

> The ambient radiation level on Mars is less than what astronauts on the ISS experience.

False, at least according to Wikipedia:

"JPL reported that MARIE-measured radiation levels were two to three times greater than that at the International Space Station (which is 100–200 mSv/a).[3] The levels at the Martian surface might be closer to the level at the ISS due to atmospheric shielding – ignoring the effect of thermal neutrons induced by GCR."

So a "typical" 18-22 month mission on Mars will still add up to 60 to 92 YEARS of radiation exposure on Earth -- assuming 100% perfect shielding to and from Mars, which seems exceedingly unlikely.

The longest stay aboard the ISS was 437 days. The round trip to Mars alone would be between 360 and 540 days. Between the trip and the stay, astronauts will be exposed to conditions that, to the extent that they have been explored, are incredibly harmful to the human body: low/no gravity, elevated levels of CO2, etc. And they'll spend the bulk of that time on a planet that is months, at best, away from any support on Earth.

They're also going to be exhausted due to the rigors and harsh environment of space, while also bored due to the absence of anything to do for fun besides consuming media; after all, there'll be no humans to talk to synchronously besides the same, small number of fellow crew members. (It's my pet theory that they'll all have LLMs and get way deep into AI psychosis.)

If you see the lives of astronauts as being essentially disposable, then these are not concerns of yours. But when you consider that sending humans to Mars to do research is the least cost effective approach imaginable, even a bit of concern for their safety should give you pause.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Radiation_Environment_Exp...

https://www.sidc.be/article/radiation-space

Soft disagree: Billy watches science videos at 2x speed and considers himself an expert on topics where he's a novice at best.

Some of us are the intended subjects.

I've got to strongly disagree with Mars being "level 2" anything. Just the 6-9 month trip to Mars would expose humans to a lifetime of radiation; a "standard" mission to Mars -- voyage plus 1.5 years on-planet and back -- would expose astronauts to a total of hundreds of years radiation. When calculating total exposure per astronaut, you'd obviously have to include their (normal) exposure on Earth as well. Not great!

Having said that, there would also be the cumulative effects of low/no gravity on astronauts. Even a year on the ISS has profound negative effects on the human body. And humans have cumulatively spent less than a month total on the moon. We have no idea how astronauts would fare on Mars for 18 months, but it would likely be very bad. And then they'd have to successfully get home.

You also have abundant toxic chemicals in the Mars regolith. Whatever technology we'd use to extract drinking water from it would have to filter out perchlorates, which are extremely toxic to both mammal and plant life. AFAIK we've never done this at all on Mars, and now we're talking about having to do it successfully for 18 months (even with water recycling). Not easy!

To be fair, a lot of proponents of human Mars exploration -- particularly here on HN -- see astronauts as essentially disposable. "Who cares if they risk dying of cancer / poisoning / suicide? It's worth it!" But if you prioritize astronauts surviving both the mission to Mars and the return home there are many, many, many unanswered questions, questions which may indeed have no good answers at all.

Before you accuse me of being a hater: I fully support exploration of Mars, and the rest of the solar system. And the best way to do so, by cost and every other conceivable metric, is with robots. Lets spend way more on space exploration, do it with probes of all varieties, and learn more in our lifetime than in all previous human lifetimes put together!

This may be unfair, but it's very easy for me to imagine this synopsis coming out of a debate around statutory rape laws. That would explain why the topic itself has been completely obscured. And getting to have sex with young girls (not women) is also something the (largely male) libertarian crowd seems obsessed with.

Reminds me of a quote attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright: "If the roof doesn't leak, the architect hasn't been creative enough." (and he allegedly said to a client unhappy with the leaks in his roof, "That’s how you can tell it’s a roof.")

I would hazard that they'll buy their way into the local market: partner with a Big 3 manufacturer, build a plant somewhere in the South, and then sell a car 50% more expensive than what they sell in Mexico.

> Basically nobody else is recommending colonoscopies to the entire population with no cheaper tests

I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying. Kaiser Permanente sends me a take-at-home colonoscopy test every year, and some light googling suggests the cost is $20-$89. I've never done an in-person colonoscopy, but the home version must be cheaper, right?

Please, show some respect and call it by its full name, "X, the everything app".

Your own source disagrees with you.

If you actually read the article, you'll see that the argument is that, since the year 2000, it has (as of 2024) broadly become easier to vote. But:

"The South, with its history of slavery and Jim Crow laws, has long lagged behind when it comes to voting access. The CEIR data shows that, although some states have slowly started expanding options for voters, generally it is still the most difficult region for voters to cast a ballot."

And it's only gotten worse since. I strongly suggest you do some cursory research in the future before making comments like this.

(Also from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2024/03/05/1235521824/voter-turnout-race... )

It has been speculated many times that the US would not have been able to respond to a nuclear attack on purpose, but was likely to start one by accident.

> How about hanging solar panel vertically

The best explanation I've heard is from a PV installer. He said, "Every try to get a suntan standing up?" Seems you lose too much sun exposure to make it worthwhile.

They were barred for life for having screenshots the current administration considers anti-American.

I'm going to keep this conversation going because it's interesting to me, if no one else here.

As to reaching 800+ Celsius: This is a solved problem on Earth because we have an effectively unlimited supply of oxygen and fuel. Neither of these conditions is true on Mars, unless you count the (very toxic to humans!) perchlorate in the soil. Extracting potable water from Martian soil would be a non-trivial task just in terms of energy needs, much less the task of making the water safe to drink.

The radiation issue is a bigger deal than you let on. I did not know about Ramsar. It's interesting! But this is a town of only 2000 with people who may have adapted to its higher levels of background radiation over generations. Our hypothetical Mars colonists will not have that luxury. And Ramsar has, on average, "only" 10x more radiation than we have on Earth -- still only 1/5th what we'd have on the surface of Mars.

I'd also point out that you seem pretty blase about the long-term risks of radiation. If we're talking about real colonization, we have to consider the risks of literal, multiple lifetimes of radiation -- not just how it might affect an average person over the course of a few years or decades.

> The idea of trying to just work out everything at home, and then have everything go perfectly is what I would call the meme

I apologize if it seems like I'm saying we need everything worked out. That is a miscommunication on my part. But we need some working prototype of what could work -- which we don't. We've never even succeeded in building a self-sustaining closed system on Earth! Where it should be easy! Because it's actually really really hard! And the craziest part is, literally no one is even trying!

If we can't make a self-sustaining closed system work here there is no reason to believe we could do it on another planet. I know SpaceX is everyone's favorite model of "go fast and break stuff", but there's many reasons why that does not apply to space colonization. The obvious first reason is that blowing up a rocket is not as serious as accidentally killing a space colony.

Another is the (imo mistaken) belief that rocked design is analogous to space colonization. I'd hazard that space colonization is maybe 1000x more difficult than designing a real big rocket -- which is admittedly very hard! But there are a bunch of extremely important and difficult questions that advocates for space travel -- maybe even you -- seem totally uninterested in solving and hand-wave away.

Resources will be scarce on a space colony, at least for the foreseeable future. What if a baby is born with a pathology that makes their care too expensive? Will they be left to die? Or will they have a right to live indefinitely? Will their parents be forced to get sterilized -- or have future fetuses aborted -- if they are at risk of producing more children with the same pathology? Who decides who gets sent home? It's simple if someone has an extreme psychic break with reality. But what if it's someone with severe depression? Or borderline personality disorder? Will the colony get to vote people off the island like the ancient Greeks sent people into exile? And what if a trip home might kill the person in question -- a particular risk for people who are born on Mars and never experienced gravity on Earth? Do future colonists have the right to give people an effective death sentence for being mentally ill?

These are obviously problems that exists here on Earth! But the consequences are entirely less dire here. A person with severe schizophrenia can live on the streets here in the US and pretty much no one gives a shit. But if this happens on Mars, and that person is using resources that are already in short supply (think of a world where there's only enough water to shower for a few minutes a week, or to subsist on only a bare minimum number of calories), people are going to care a lot. What happens next?

According to [0], there's about 2% water by volume in Martian soil, and you need to heat it up to 800 degrees Celsius to extract it -- which means you need a power source capable of generating those temperatures on an ongoing basis, which is unlikely without massive solar arrays that would be constant covered with (and damaged by) Martian regolith. Oh, and Mars receives less than half the sunlight Earth does due to its greater distance from the sun, and dust storms could obscure them for weeks on end.

Or you could use hypothetical a nuclear power power plant that would be incredibly expensive to build, ship, run and maintain on a foreign planet.

You were right about the radiation! Kind of. There's "only" 50x more radiation on Mars' surface than on Earth's. You said this was less than what astronauts on the ISS are exposed to. How is that a meaningful comparison? You're talking about people living their entire lives in this environment, and presumably making babies who grow into adolescents and adults, all the while threatened by an amount of radiation we have no idea if a human child could live through.

The atmosphere on Mars is so thin that exposure to it will kill you. The level of radiation is so high that exposure to it will kill you, unless you lived essentially your entire life underground or in a bunker. The cold temperatures will kill you. The soil has perchlorate in concentrations that will kill you. There's basically nothing to do there -- no walks outside without a space suit, no nature to look at, no living beings (except perhaps soil microbes that would be instantly destroyed in the process of extracting water) -- nothing more available there than here on Earth except looking at the stars and dying. [1]

Every argument I've seen people make for colonizing Mars in the near term has been emotional. The arguments are all the more emotional for insisting that they are rational. We have no idea if we could grow food in a closed system indefinitely, or reproduce in space or on another planet, and the amount of research going into these literally existential questions is close to zero. Nor do the billionaires who claim to be obsessed with getting us to be a multi-planet civilization seem to give a shit about them. Colonizing Mars isn't a plan; it's a meme.

Finally, there's no thought given to how to deal with inevitable social problems that will arise if there are large (1000+) populations away from Earth: what to do with people who have psychological breakdowns? how do you prioritize if more people need to be sent home than there's space for on a return rocket? what are your responsibilities toward colonists who need expensive permanent care? what if they can't survive Earth's gravity due to physiological changes from growing up off-planet? What if an entire space colony will never be self-sustaining and they need to be supported with expensive shipments of food and supplies from Earth forever -- who will pay? Or will we?

Look, if you want to colonize Mars or other planets because you think it's a cool thing to do, at least that's an honest, personal opinion. But if you think putting a ton of resources into going to Mars anytime soon is a good investment -- when we aren't even mitigating an ongoing climate disaster here on Earth, the one environment to which we are exquisitely adapted and which is non-existent literally anywhere else in the known universe -- then you are fooling yourself.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/26/nasa-curiosi...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars

> we could already viably have multiple parallel civilizations scattered throughout the solar system

This is nonsense. A trip to Mars would take a minimum of 6 months and could only be resupplied every 2 years. Mars has a tiny amount of water, virtually no atmosphere, and receives 700x more radiation than Earth. Mars colonists would be forced to spend virtually all their time underground working hard to keep themselves alive, being bored senseless because there's nothing to do for fun (besides electronic entertainment, I suppose), or both.

Keep in mind that the Apollo program only gave us about two weeks of human time spent on the moon's surface total. In no way were we prepared to go to Mars after Apollo. We couldn't have managed a round trip around Mars, much less landing there and creating a permanent colony.

The idea that we would have "parallel civilizations" not just on Mars, the easiest other planet to inhabit, but "throughout the solar system" is delusional. Are we talking about also colonizing Venus, a planet where the surface temperature is hot enough to melt lead, the wind travels at hundreds of miles per hour, and the atmosphere is composed of sulfuric acid?

The sad (?) reality is that humans evolved to live on Earth and if we ever permanently live outside Earth, it will in all likelihood be in a form no longer recognizable as human, whether it's due to our physical bodies being engineered to withstand the rigors of life on a foreign planet or because our consciousnesses have been somehow uploaded to machines.

I cannot enough recommend the book A City on Mars. It's written by two giant space nerds who are nonetheless clear eyed on the many, many, many challenges to creating permanent space settlements of any kind.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/125084292-a-city-on-m...

https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/18xmkp0/a_city_on_ma...

> they just have to be good enough on a narrow set of tasks to be worth the trouble

Depends on the context. If they are to work around human beings, particularly in the home, then they must be safe... to work around humans.

If a humanoid robot hits a human being, knocks one over, or even falls down on top of one -- especially a child, who is more fragile and whose movements are unpredictable -- then the industry as a whole faces a huge setback. Just look at what happened when a "self-driving" Uber ran over and killed a pedestrian in Arizona.

> What can I as an individual actually do to stop this?

Short of becoming the Luigi of the environmental movement, there is nothing an individual can do. You have to take part in some kind of ongoing collective action. This can include joining a campaign against the oil and gas industry, going door to door for candidates who will reverse climate change, or engaging in direct action against environmentally destructive projects -- or even all three at the same time.

Trying to go it alone is pointless. At best, you'll go down a rabbit hole of becoming the most virtuous consumer alive. At worst, you'll be spend all your time mad-posting on social media.

This is a false dichotomy.

I personally believe that strategic tariffs should be used to protect our national interests, including providing meaningful employment.

This administration has no interest in strategic tariffs. Instead, they are made overbroad (50% on everything from Canada vs, say, cheap imported steel) and they are made and removed capriciously (tariffs on English whisky dropped after King Charles' visit to the White House).

If Trump really wanted to bring your dad's factory job back, he'd specifically target whatever industry he was working in AND ideally spend the tariff money boosting that industry. This is precisely the strategy countries like Japan used to reach first world status.

Instead Trump uses tariffs like a cudgel -- much closer to what the XKCD comic depicts. There is no chance his tariffs will lead to your father's factory ever being reopened, as that would require, at the bare minimum, a tariff that investors know will stay in place for years, as opposed to one that could be lifted with the visit of a charismatic member of nobility.

When the threat of winning in court is reduced, you get weaker settlements. These two factors are directly related to one another.

> He was involved in DOGE, which did nothing but catch fraud and cut worthless spending.

Elon wasn't just involved with DOGE, he was responsible for it. And Elon said he would cut $2 TRILLION in federal spending before ultimately claiming just $110 billion in savings -- which the GAO found he lied about. Considering out budget deficit is about $2 trillion, even his inflated claims are a rounding error.

(To say nothing of the fact that a lot of it was NOT useless spending. For example, Elon ended a program to fund countries in Central America to stop the spread of screw worms. Now screw worms are projected to cost $1.8 billion in damage to Texas alone.)

> while Elon encourages reporting on X

Elon has a track record of banning journalists on Twitter / X, the everything app, when they criticize him. Literally the opposite of encouraging reporting on X.

> We need more "Elons", people like him are actually helping dig us out of this mess.

I would encourage you to start reading independent news sources and forming your own opinions, rather than uncritically believing everything people in power feed to you. Otherwise you end up saying things online that are trivially disprovable.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/09/gao-repor...

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/flesh-eating-scr...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2024/01/09/elon-mus...

I signed up for one of these years ago and ultimately replaced my whole roof and got PV cells on the roof before they were ever available to me in the East Bay. Any HNers have experience with honest to god Tesla solar roof tiles?

I wonder if he's accounting for "shrinkflation" and other ways we get less for our money in addition to prices going up in absolute dollars.