Over the past two weeks, I have witnessed two amazing engineering achievements. One of them, I watched on TV. The other, I experienced firsthand.
Catching Skyscrapers
For the second time (in 3 tries), SpaceX caught the Starship booster stage:
The Starship booster is as tall as a 33 story building. During descent, it hits speeds more than twice as fast as a bullet fired from at AR-15 assault rifle. And SpaceX catches it within centimeters of accuracy. The booster has landing nubs (dunno what the correct term is) and articulating arms catch it:
This. Is. Impressive. I shed tears when SpaceX did this for the first time.
Driving In The Worst Conditions
I woke up a couple of weeks ago and peeked out the window to see our neighborhood covered in a blanket of snow. Yay! I love snow including shoveling it. Anyway, one of my first thoughts was this:
I want to see it the Tesla can drive in the snow.
#nerdery!
And by drive, I meant that I wanted to see how the Tesla’s self-driving capabilities (FSD) would handle the situation.
In October of 2023 when I purchased the car, FSD wasn’t great. Its movements were clunky and the car sometimes behaved dangerously (“No car, running over humans (or any sentient beings) is UNACCEPTABLE!”). Attempting to engage FSD in the snow a year ago would result in an error message. Something like:
Hell no. I’m not even going to attempt to drive in this sh*t. It’s on you human.
This morning, the road was completely buried in snow. Plus, snow was still coming down. These are the very difficult conditions to drive in and I didn’t think the Tesla would do well. But to my amazement, FSD drove perfectly. It stayed where it should have been in the lane. It accelerated and stopped with caution. It was completely amazing. Six months ago, FSD drove clunky in my neighborhood in ideal, summer conditions. In the most awful conditions, FSD drove much better. And I have the video to prove it:
Caveats…
As good as FSD did in the snow, if you watch the video to the end, it tapped out when the car started to slide. To be clear, conditions were incredibly bad. Despite the car having snow tires (the most important component to safe winter driving) and driving with an abundance of caution, the car still lost traction. Tesla will eventually have to learn to deal with these situations.
Note: It’s been cold and slippery in Colorado. The car has lost traction a couple of times since I recorded the video and it has not disengaged again.
Almost perfect, but… As good as FSD is, it still needs to get a lot better to be able to operate without a human standing guard. I’ve driven about 1,000 miles with the new software and had to intervene once. But to be ready for unmonitored autonomy, I’d guess that Tesla needs to be at least 10x as good. Will Tesla be able to get there with its camera/end-to-end neural net (NN) approach? Tesla is close. Very close. But those remaining, tail-end problems, are the really, really difficult ones to solve. It’s easy to train a NN what it’s supposed to do at a stop sign. It’s many magnitudes more difficult to train it what to do in a complex situation that may only surface once every 5 years.
I don’t think my car will ever be able to operate driverless: The Cybertruck, Cybercab and new Model Y now have front bumper cameras. I wonder if this will be necessary for driverless autonomy? Also, my car has version 4 of the FSD processor/camera suite. Version 5 is will be out at the end of this year. I wonder if version 5 will be required for driverless autonomy? If so, will I be able to upgrade my car? If I had to guess (and this is purely a guess), I don’t think my car in its current form will ever be able to operate without a driver. I hope that I’m wrong.
And then there are camera issues. FSD uses cameras to see the world. Cameras get dirty. FSD doesn’t like dirty cameras. Tesla will have to solve this.
We Live In Amazing Times
Autonomous cars will be an incredible advancement for society.
- They’ll be waaaaay safer.
- They’ll allow those who cannot drive to get around easier.
- Owning a car sucks. They’re expensive to buy. And then you have to pay to insure, fuel, and maintain them.
I look forward to a future when I can just pull up an app, specify where I want to go, and a robot car shows up 2 minutes later to take me to buy bananas. In some very small parts of the world where Waymo is, you can do this now. I hope I’m able to do this in my town this decade.
I know I won’t be able to teleport Star Trek style in my life. However, I probably will be able to go to Mars. Note that this sounds awful! No thanks! But it will be cool to see someone else go.
More 1500 Days!!!
You can also find me (and the dinosaurs) at:
- BiggerPockets: Hey look, I’m on a podcast again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DOFfBN7cxg
- YouTube: My channel is mostly devoted to home improvement, but I have some other material coming up soon too.
- Instagram: Pretty pictures of dinosaurs, sunsets, and nail guns!
- Twitter: Spontaneous, often insane, ramblings
- Coworking space: On the surface, MMM HQ is a coworking space. Look a little deeper and you’ll see that we’re really building community. The members of MMM HQ are some of the finest people I know
- Buying a Tesla? Use my referral code to get some perks!
Sad the guy in charge of these companies is a Nazi.
It’s been sad to seem go from Nerd Hero to an increasingly unhinged person. I’m not sure if it’s drugs, megalomania, extreme narcissism, or something else. His actions don’t help Tesla’s mission, getting the world off of fossil fuels.
With all of his distractions, he’s probably less important to the success of SpaceX and Tesla. I wonder if he steps down or gets removed soon?
I’m trying to not let all of this get to me too much and I enjoy your blog so Thank you! I have a young family like you and working my way to FI. I just wanted to point out that “Living In A Star Trek World” maybe your world right now watching these amazing things from these companies but as a fan of Star Trek, we are not living in it. Watching these tech leaders, that I have money invested in, jump at the chance to be fascist is both disheartening and signaling the end of good times. You’re a good person Carl, so keep being you. I’m going to try to continue to live my life without worrying too much about the world and spend time with my kids trying to raise them right. Raise them correctly. I mean raise them to be compassionate.
If we could just all engage each other from a point of empathy and compassion instead of starting with judgment and hate, we’d all be a lot better off. The worst things to happen to society are cable news and social networks. Unfortunately, both have an agenda and are very skillful at manipulation.
Star Trek! Yeah, that’s why I put the word almost in the title. Maybe that’s even a stretch, but I’m amazed at how much better the world of today is from the one I grew up in. I’m probably a little biased here because I did very well in life.
Best of luck on your way to FI! Life is pretty great over here on the other side. When you make it to Colorado, look me up.
Let’s hope he is removed soon, not anxious to be labeled for driving a Nazi staff car. Or to be associated with his views at all. We’ve had our Teslas for a long time and are considering ditching them for this reason. Shame, but hard to stomach his actions.
Owning an EV is tough business! I’ve been regularly accosted by well-meaning relatives who hear ridiculous news stories and then feel like they have to “educate” me. Greatest hits include:
“They’re bad for the environment!”
“They don’t work in the cold, so you may get stranded and freeze to death!”
“They catch on fire pretty frequently, so you may burn to death!”
Dunno which is worse, freezing or burning to death?
And then there was the high-school kid who confronted me in a parking lot, telling me how he did a presentation about why EVs are terrible.
What I don’t get is this: If you really love internal combustion vehicles, you should want others to buy EVs. Every EV on the road means less demand for gas making it cheaper for you!
I haven’t heard from an anti-Musk person yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.
It seems that a few of your followers suffer from TDS.
Ah, yet another un-nuanced, delusional take. Did you actually watch the full video or are you just parroting what you’ve seen online.
Did you not notice how he clasped his heart prior to each “salute”? He then goes on to say “my heart goes out to you!”
Do not attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity. If you also watch other videos of him sitting in the audience, he looks be drugged up to hell.
Which is higher probability:
– The richest man in the world is an avowed Nazi and waited to be on one of the most substantial platforms in the world to overtly express that view.
– He’s a drugged-up, semi-autist who made a stupid gesture in the heat of the moment that was misinterpreted.
I’ll put my money on the latter.
Agreed. The ADL assessment is that it was “an awkward gesture”.
Seeing as the ADL is made up of people (as well as the relatives and descendants) who have experienced first-hand the brutality of Nazism, and given that they have a really vested interested in preventing Nazism from ever becoming a thing again, I’ll take their assessment over that of the political talking heads who are very obviously pandering to get their anti-Trump message out.
As far as Carl’s actual article, it really is amazing that we are -> <- this close to living in a Star Trek world (at least from a technology perspective). Our world will never actually be Start Trek because Star Trek is fictional and one of the key elements of that fictional world is that human nature is not a thing.
I think that it is entirely possible that my grandchildren may never actually operate a motor vehicle of any kind, unless they get into "antiques", which for them will be some of the gas powered cars rolling of the lots today. And that is actually a super cool thought to me.
I second Kevin 1.0’s comment.
The company’s mission is critical. We would not be where we are in the transition away from fossil fuels for transportation and electricity generation (renewables + utility scale battery storage) without Tesla. I’ll make no excuses for Elon, but Tesla has over 100,000 employees that are working to help save the planet and life as we know it. My dislike for Elon comes a distant second to securing a livable future for my children on this planet. No other North American care manufacturer currently makes EVs at sufficient scale to do it profitably. Most would abandon their EV efforts and go back to making only hybrids and ICE vehicles if they could. Tesla has proven that compelling EVs can be made profitably and is dragging the rest of the industry (outside of China and South Korea) along kicking and screaming.
Does someone have to act like him to do these great things? At what cost socially is it acceptable for him act like he does?
Agree on all of it. Especially this: “My dislike for Elon comes a distant second to securing a livable future for my children on this planet.”
EVs would have happened (BYD has been working on them for a long time too), but Tesla moved them forward.
And yeah, I know many employees at Tesla. My impression is that they don’t agree with much of Elon’s stuff, but the mission is too important, so they stay.
And SpaceX is really important to America. Consider that America was still using Russian rocket technology just a couple of years ago:
ULA effectively stopped using Russian rocket engines, specifically the RD-180, when they began phasing out the Atlas V rocket and transitioned to the new Vulcan Centaur launch vehicle, which uses American-made engines, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, leading to sanctions that halted the supply of Russian rocket engines to the US; the first Vulcan Centaur flight took place in January 2024 marking the end of their reliance on Russian engines.
Glad I’m not the only one who is nearly brought to tears when they catch the Starship booster. Absolutely incredible. I clap and hoot and holler like a crazy person when I watch it live on my computer screen. Not many other things outside the bedroom bring so much emotion haha.
As for Elon… For someone that I used to think was god like, I certainly don’t love his behavior recently. I sincerely hope he’s just making the binary decision to support the political side which he thinks will get us to Mars quicker, so he threw all his weight behind that team. I keep hoping that’s all it is and he still has a ‘normal’ side to him that he hasn’t shown in public recently. Or… the stress and pressure of running a bunch of huge companies is finally getting to him and he’s cracked, that could be it too lol.
Elon Musk:
[] A Nazi who wants to reduce size and scope of government
[] The only Nazi to spend $40 billion to create a free speech platform
[] The racist Nazi who hires tens of thousands of Germans, Americans and Chinese who come from all religions and ethnicities
[] The ‘national socialist’ that is international and is hugely enthusiastic about the free market system
Most Elon critics are not knowledgeable and unable to articulate their derangement.
As an American, I appreciate how he is singlehandedly reforming the American defense system. And the American economic system. Reusable spacecraft, 2 orders of magnitude reduction in launch cost so far, mass satellite constellations for communications and other needs, manufacturing improvements that will / are revolutionizing manufacturing including robots and mega casting, electric grid management, electric supply, neural link brain to computer control, tunneling, ….
Home much does a single person have to do before we can step back and give him some running room based on his sustained and proven performance.
I genuinely believe that sometime in the next 25 years, this country will discover that Musk was key to America’s recovery from terminal decline and massive geopolitical losses that would have put this country at risk.
I find the assaults on Musk unreasoned and terrifying.
Spot on Bob! Great write-up Karl.
I never want to have an app to summon a robot taxi for me. I hope I can always have a car that I personally own and drive. Why? Because I lived in NYC and have no wish to ever be in a disgusting cab ever again. I can’t even imagine the filth that would be left in robo cabs by the general populace. Hard pass.
Hard pass? Interesting that you’re so galvanized against it before knowing much about the implementation. I was at the Robotaxi event and the cars have cameras in them to monitor the interior condition of the car. One of the things Tesla emphasized was an automated cleaning system. So, the car returns to base and if people trash it, Tesla has a robotic cleaning system that takes care of everything.
I suspect Tesla will also have a way to report a car. So if it pulls up and someone has smeared crap on the seats (or you see some other safety issue), I’d bet that you would be able to report the car and then get a different one.
Finally, because you hail the car with an app, Tesla knows who is riding in it. If someone does something disgusting in the car, I suspect Tesla would quickly ban the person from the service.
It’s not as interesting as you seem to think. Just based on my personal experience living in NYC and abroad, along with the extensive knowledge regarding public transport thus acquired. I have also learned to be deeply skeptical of adverts, especially from the technology sector.
I understand your optimism, in an Upton Sinclair manner. I wonder if your thoughts will change as you unwind your TSLA position.
Damn, harsh words. You think I’m only interested in this because my money is tied to it?!?
I’m interested in autonomous tech because 40,000 people in our country die every year in auto accidents and millions more are injured. Over 90% of these are caused by human error.. My grandmother and two friends died in accidents and I’m confident that if they had this technology, the accidents would not have happened.
I don’t really care who solves it. I took another ride in a Waymo last week in Los Angeles and it was great. I’d be perfectly fine with Alphabet beating Tesla (in many ways, they already are). More robots driving mean less distracted humans driving.
Mr. 1500 Days recently posted…Living In A Star Trek World (almost)
I’m not sure if your trying to convince me or yourselves with these comments but when no apology came out him, and his party is trying feel the waters for an INVASION OF GREENLAND AND PANAMA AND CANADA AND MEXICO then i can safely say that they are Nazis and people defending them are ALSO FUCKING NAZIS. I dont care what hes done or doing for the world. There are right ways to move the world forward and wrong ways to do it. This is the wrong way!
I cried showing my kids the video of Falcon Heavy’s booters landing. He doesnt have to be like the way he is to do good in the world. You dont have to follow him down this dark path. We’ve been here before, it’s not good for humanity.
Dear Carl –
I have been following you quietly for a long time, since you started blogging. I write to say hi and also to let you know that I don’t always agree with you (below I will describe some of this), but I truly believe you are a good man, and you are smart, and you post valuable things. I just want you to get some insight on the mind of want of your readers, just for you to have a sample on how folks can have different opinions and ideas and can still like each other 😊
We both reached FIRE about the same time. I am about three years younger than you. I started this journey just like many others, with Mr. Money Mustache.
I do understand your fascination for technology, I am an engineer and have been in big tech (network engineering/software engineering/service engineering/cloud architecture) for a while. I do like tech but have to admit not as much as you, however, I do get it.
What I do not understand is the adoration for Elon Musk. No, he is not and has never been a “nerd hero”, he bought most of the companies he owns. He is not a self-made billionaire like MAGA and nerdy boyfans think. His formula is similar to Trump’s. The heroes are all the engineers and designers that are overworked by him. On top of that, he has not been CEO of these companies for a while, he just shows up to piss off his workers whenever he wants to take credit for a big achievement. They have a contention team in Tesla that handles Musk whenever he shows up and just tell him yes to anything he says, that way they avoid their bright people quitting on the spot. I suggest you don’t refer to Elon anymore in your posts given that the man is completely out of his mind and with the latest developments is not getting any better, do give credit to the anonymous people that deserve it in his company. Same goes for that Space company. I (and this is personally) don’t care about space at all, given how messed up this world is; we should not be investing any money in space, we have so many problems to solve in humanity on this very earth, it’s simply ludicrous. I limit my space fantasies to movies and TV shows. We do have another space company run by another tyrant villain here in the Seattle area that we also choose to ignore. The point is, you are WAY much smarter than Musk and these people that pretend to be something they are not. You simply don’t have the money they have, that, and your superior intelligence are the main differences, you don’t have to vow to any of these terrible people just because they run companies you care about. I was interested in electric cars but it’s still what I call a “scam” since these batteries are extremely bad for the environment, and you are still charging them from the grid. The battery dies? Prepare to spend a load of money to replace it. When electric cars have more eco-friendly batteries and the charge comes directly from solar or wind (which is all we really need, the world provides all the electricity we need for free). By the meantime I will keep going around with my BMW M4, I find it fun to drive, but a bit dangerous to be perfectly honest.
I also want to give you some advice about your new gym/fitness hobby. On my 20s I want through my weightlifting period, got brainwashed several times by this so called “personal trainers” they have at the gym selling you protein crap you don’t need (no, the regular food we eat has enough protein to sustain typical gym workouts. Heck, even vegan bodybuilder champions will tell you the excess of protein will hurt your health badly, especially your kidneys). I see personal trainers just like I see non-fiduciary financial planners, we are not their main interest, money is more important to them than our interest. Long story short, I ended up with two rotator cuff tears and two herniated discs on my lumbar spine, taking years of therapy to feel like myself again. Now, in my mid-40s, I feel like brisk walking (do not run or jog, it will require you knee replacement at some point). Brisk walking has proven to have the same healthy effects of running without the negative effect on your knees. And then I do stretch all main joints and back every day, that and transitioning to plant-based diet keeps me feeling the best I have in decades. I just don’t want you to get hurt, the older we get the harder it is to recover from these types of injuries. I do not do any resistance exercises anymore; I leave that to athletes competing in the Olympics and people younger than me 😊
Please note that I will never stop reading you, I usually skip any Tesla or space items you posts. I wish you the very best to you and your family, hoping the market helps your stache a lot this year and can’t wait to follow the adventures you are going to get yourself involved this year. Cheers..
Adoration is a strong word. I admired him for what he’s built. For example, autonomous driving technology has the potential to save many ives. 40,000 people die every year in auto accidents with over 90% of them being caused by human error. I know he hasn’t done most of the work himself, but it wouldn’t be here without his leadership. I know people at Tesla though and he IS NOT an easy person to work for! (Understatement of the year) I don’t like this new version of him.
Tesla: He didn’t start Tesla, but it wouldn’t be what it is today without him. I believe that the original founders had no desire to take the company beyond a simple prototype.
The best car is no car, but EVs are clearly better for the world than internal combustion. Almost all parts of the battery can be recycled (see Redwood Materials) and as the grid gets greener, the cars become better to run. In my case, I installed a load of solar panels on my roof that produce about 120% of my annual usage. Here’s a good article: https://www.motortrend.com/features/truth-about-electric-cars-ad-why-you-are-being-lied-to/
SpaceX: He did found this. But I agree with you on your other points; the Mars thing seems silly when we should be solving problems here on earth.
Your take on protein goes against most of the advice I’ve read lately including Dr. Peter Attia who I have a lot of respect for: https://peterattiamd.com/category/nutritional-biochemistry/protein/ Pete has addressed the kidney issue on his podcast, saying that it’s a non-issue unless you had certain kidney problems. But I’d love to hear what you’ve discovered on the topic. Please pass along links!
Thanks for reading and here’s to a better world for everyone! You may think slightly differently from me, but we both have the same goals and desires for the world! Happy New Year!
Great example of the improvements made on self-driving in snowy conditions.
I would like to see progress made on fusion reactors making free and clean energy. Next step replicators to solve all world hunger and resource needs. I think that is how Star Trek describes how society evolved beyond money, because of technology advances making it a post-scarcity world.
I would really like to see the world advance on working together for exploration, science advancement and peaceful co-existence. Count me in on the Star trek world, although I would like to skip all the bad stuff like Romulans, Klingons wars, the borg and time travel paradoxes!
I would like to see progress made on fusion reactors making free and clean energy.
I hope we figure out fusion before 2050. That would be incredible.
I’d skip the bork and klingons too!