From a Star Trek universe perspective it hit way too many lows, though. This is just my opinion, of course. I found it hard to sit through some episodes. The actors are generally great, but there is too much cheap dialogue (listen to some of the Season 2 and 3 “Picard” dialogue in comparison!), underdeveloped characters, statements like the above that were written without even considering how they might age… well, this was discussed ad nauseam in many places, so I’ll stop the rant before it starts.
Thank you Discovery for showing us what doesn’t work. Other shows learned from you.
For all nutrek attempts to pose as the most progressive Trek ever, DS9 was lightyears ahead of it politically. Discovery and Picard feel so oddly “yass queen” conservative.
The Wright brothers were patent trolls and Cochrane was a drunken slob who stole all the credit from his assistant. Also don’t forget records from the early 21st century are spotty, so they might not actually have a good picture of what an incompetent boob little Lonnie is.
It kinda annoys me to see people say “Elon revolutionized electric cars and space travel”
No. No he didn’t.
Tesla took full advantage of economies of scale. If you mass produce an item, you can sell it for cheaper and still make a profit. Elon did not create Tesla, he bought it. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc. So it’s fair to argue that Tesla’s idea was likely not Elon’s idea. He just bankrolled it
SpaceX created a reusable rocket. However that’s not the first time they were created, en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reusable_launch_vehicle#:…. So spaceX took an idea that had been proven as a proof of concept, productized it and… Took advantage of economies of scale, again.
Elon isn’t a genius. He just has enough money and the right people who manage him to successfully pull off other people’s ideas and take advantage of economies of scale.
VW has money, but they have established themselves in the market. They sell cars and don’t have all that much reason to switch over to EVs because they are a relatively successful company.
Telsa is a new comer on the block, with any new business your first challenge is determining what you’ll be focusing your business on. What exactly will be your advantage over your competition.
Telsa decided to focus on EVs which were few and far between. To do this, they produced a large number of vehicles (almost definitely at a loss) combined that with a solid marketing strategy and would later reap the profits. To afford that strategy takes money and is not a position an established company will take only a new company.
Having worked in a startup I can guarantee you, that was the original owners thought and do it well enough they either break even and go for the IPO or get bought out. I would suggest working in a startup but startups suck and will rove years off your life from stress so maybe don’t go work for one.
This is a bit of a spoiler, but the guy who mentions Musk is actually from the evil mirror universe. So the second guy from the mainline universe is confused as to why Musk is on that list. He was probably a bigger figure in the mirror universe.
Ummm … you’re maybe underestimating Lorca here. His mission was to fit in and he was clearly capable and motivated to do so. He most likely would not have made references that weren’t accurate for his new mirror universe. Just a little bit of reading and cultural awareness would have enabled this.
Plus, I don’t recall what the actual reaction to this was, but if it was anything other than confusion, the reference made sense in-universe.
Eh. There are a bunch of other references to him even after Lorca returns to his universe. For example Tilly was on musk high school iirc.
I don’t think I was ever more ashamed and disappointed of trek than when they whipped out those lines, billionaire worship in a show about a socialist utopia. A fucking embarrassment
I’m with you on this. I actually think it speaks to something Disco kinda didn’t do well on … being a bit to mindful of its real life present.
Like the Stacey Abrams thing. I’m sure some loved it but I think many are very fair in asking Trek to not be so directly connected to the real world like that. If she wanted to be on the show … cool … I think the Voyager style cameos were done well where they weren’t really central to the scene but were just there and you’d be forgiven to not notice … more of an easter egg than something central (even if for only a moment).
I’d forgotten all about these Musk references but boy have they unnecessarily aged and tarnished the show in retrospect, and, honestly, made the writers look a bit too much like influencers trying to get engagement with their writing than focusing on the core philosophies, values and story telling.
Keep in mind that in the Star Trek canon, Joe Piscopo is regarded as the greatest comedian of the 20th century. It’s already an extremely weird alt timeline.
SpaceX pretty much kept US Spaceflight alive between the time of the Space Shuttle, and… whatever comes out next. Tesla corporation has proven to the rest of the car manufacturers, and other startups, that the way of the future is not via burning fossil fuels.
Elon showed the world what a shitheel he was after that.
So, I’m pretty sure that this dialogue was written before Elon became the obvious shitheel that he is now. And, as many point out, mirror universe Elon Musk might’ve been even more instrumental to their world, than ours.
It was really disappointing and cringy. I thought the show came out after the Thailand cave incident where he said people who were helping rescue trapped children were only in the country because they were pedophiles, but I just looked up the dates and the first season of Discovery came out a year before that incident. I waited a while to get Paramount+ because I didn't want yet another streaming service on top of Netflix and Hulu.
The Musk references aged very quickly. It's not great to name off living people as future historic figures when they are still alive and able to wreck their legacies.
The cave thing was worse than you remember: he got in an argument on twitter with a guy telling him how dumb the submarine idea was, so the smart reply was to call the guy a sex tourist… and it was obviously the cave expert called in to supervise the entire rescue.
Nevermind how that was an ad hominem to begin with lol.
Also on Discovery, Tilly mentioned attending Musk Junior High School, so yeah, apparently. Both of these mentions would have been before he bought Twitter, I’m not sure if the writers would be so quick to name drop him today.
His craft will implode. But seriously he isn’t going to Mars, he was always all talk and acting like he’s Tony Stark, when in reality it was always other people doing the inventing, while he was being a rich kid jackass
True about all products. And yet, people write books about Steve Jobs and talk about all those company founders that developed nothing themselves except the very first version. Management is a crucial part of success.
Good point, he hasn't. However he has beaten every other company and government timeline. Plus changed orbital launches from a government focused business to a commercial one
Just for clarification, why is him pocketing the American public funds supposed to go to nasa an accomplishment? he took something that every American shared in, even the whole world shared in during the space race, and made it his private plaything he can exploit for profit in the future m.
Because NASA, with nearly 30 billion in funding and using technology designed half a century ago, took 11 years to build a Shuttle cosplaying as a Saturn V. They were legally mandated to. That's not a dig at NASA, it's a dig at the morons who hold their purse strings.
In roughly the same timeframe, SpaceX developed two brand new engines, both of which have amazing performance in their weight class. They developed a reusable medium lift rocket that's now one of the most reliable launch vehicles ever. Now they're working on a fully reusable super heavy launcher that's capable of interplanetary missions. And they did all that without NASA's budget.
Private launch companies, of which SpaceX is only one, allow for faster development, faster innovation and cheaper launches. They're actually saving taxpayers money. And the amounts that NASA does pay them don't just vanish into the CEOs' pockets the moment the payment clears. It goes to engineers, maintenance workers, construction workers, caterers, everyone employed by these companies and their suppliers.
SpaceX did that, Musk just claims credit. He was at his best when he just got good people;e and got out of the way, don’t know WTF is up now. Saw syphilitic dementia recently, as good an explanation as any…
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