so rocket boy, genius extraordinaire, Saviour of our society doesn't understand why jets don't fly straight lines from point A to point B?? this is who is going to reform the FAA? seriously? Musk's Attempt to Overhaul FAA Reveals Shocking Lack of Air Travel Knowledge That might reassure some people impressed by videos of SpaceX's rockets, but on Tuesday afternoon, Musk, who did qualify for a private pilot certificate in 2002, seemed baffled by some of the basics of air travel. In a post on X - the misinformation-heavy social media site Musk shaped from the remains of Twitter, after buying the platform for $44 billion in 2022 - supply chain company CEO Ryan Petersen shared a screenshot of the projected flight path of a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Houston, which hewed close to the southern U.S. border with Mexico. "Why is this plane not flying in a straight line?" Petersen wondered. Musk replied, "It should be." While both men appeared to suggest there was something irregular or suspicious about the flight plan, this was not the case. Planes may take certain less direct routes due to weather, air traffic, or any number of factors. Indeed, Musk's own private jet has flown on curved trajectories, as captured in screenshots of flight records shared on X by Jack Sweeney, a software engineer who has worked for American Airlines and the aviation consultant UberJets, and famously aroused Musk's ire by tracking the movements of his private jet with ElonJet, a network of social accounts. (Sweeney has also monitored the flight activity of Taylor Swift, Russian oligarchs, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and his company Ground Control aims to provide "unrestricted air traffic data" to all.) Sweeney posted the flight path that Trump's plane took from Southern Florida to Texas in November ahead of a SpaceX launch, which for a while hugged the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico instead of tracing a straight line over the body of water. "There are countless reasons why a flight might not follow a straight path - weather, [Extended-range Twin-engine Operations Performance Standards] regulations, or optimizing fuel efficiency by following favorable winds," Sweeney stated on X. Sweeney tells Rolling Stone that Petersen and Musk appeared to be "jumping to conclusions" to "push a point that our system is outdated, which, there's definitely things that can be updated." But, he adds, it's a complex system currently in place, and "there are reasons things were designed the way they were," including with established routes in the sky that function as aerial highways. "It takes time for things to get updated properly," he adds, which it seems that Musk's DOGE has not taken into account as it seeks to slash away at vital federal agencies, including the FAA. "That predicted line that is on that picture," Sweeney says, referring to Petersen's screenshot, "is usually [navigational] points picked by the dispatchers or the pilot." He found further flight data that shows the flight route was initially straight but apparently adjusted to avoid turbulence. A longtime engineer at the aeronautical data company ForeFlight, meanwhile, posted several possible optimized route recommendations from San Francisco to Houston that included the southern path shown in the screenshot that Petersen and Musk found so unusual. Scott Manley, a science educator, physicist, and licensed private pilot, offered another potential reason for the curved route between the two cities, which he said adds "about 50 miles, or 12 minutes" to the trip. "The U.S. military has a huge chunk of airspace it randomly closes to let their pilots train or to test new weapons," he wrote in a post on X, sharing a map screenshot with a circle drawn around an area west of Bakersfield, California.
Anyone with basic understanding of navigation How did he ever deal with the physics of getting a rocket into orbit, which is far less intuitive than great-circle navigation?
He's either an ignorant a-hole who has the good sense to hire competent engineers or he is intentionally trolling the ignorant members of the MAGA cult most likely the latter.
he didn't. he hired people smarter than him to make it happen. one can be analytical, intuitive, and forceful and be wildly succesful without being real technically smart. One can be genius level technical and can't balance a checkbook. like others have said, technical brilliance isn't his strength. sometimes the biggest problem is identifying the critical question and finding the right group of resources to resolve that so others can proceed and he seems best at that
I lean towards the latter as well. I read a lot of first hand accounts of him during the early spacex days. Engineers held him in very high esteem. Hard to BS engineers on engineering stuff.
inflation, income disparity, unemployment, war, terrorism, pandemics, food contamination, lack of vaccines, emerging diseases. You and yours insulted from all that? color me impressed.
just guessing but he's probably retired or close and "got his" so now he is laughing as they cut all the services and functions that supported a stable job market which he benefited from as his generation ran up deficits. The final middle finger from the most selfish generation in american history.
like me, got three kids I think Wife and I can pick up and move to Portugal or Panama or ?? if I wanted, my kids not so much. guess some believe all this upheaval, uncertainty, security protocol bypasses, and attempted consolidation of power is going to make things better somehow. either that or Putin is going to save us, not sure what the cult think is these days.
I think they just think it will either: 1) Personally benefit them 2) Harm the people they don’t like. Not one MAGA goon I have ever talked to knows anything about policy details or specifics. Just generic talking points or Russian propaganda is all you usually get. That or conspiracy theories about moon landing, flat earth or whatever aired on Rogan’s latest episode. I would love to hear how the budget just passed which increases the deficit by literal trillions to give tax cuts to the wealthy is a good idea. They have no clue what is going on. They will mention Baghdad Sesame Street though.
