Elon Musk: S’s, T’s & Xs
And how he’s impacting sailing
Elon Musk, entrepreneur billionaire and serial attention seeker is well known for businesses whose names start with S or T and perhaps even X; Space-X, Starlink, Tesla and X (the business formerly known as Twitter)
Space-X rockets regularly lift off from Cape Canaveral. On a number of occasions I’ve been sailing along Florida’s Space Coast to hear the Coast Guard broadcast the warning on VHF channel 16 of a scheduled launch and to observe the exclusion zone under the rocket flight path
It’s clearly good to be away from any falling debris in the event of an incident just after takeoff, but this invariably causes a course correction on the boat and adds to the Southbound journey
I heard of a cruise ship that DID NOT get out of the Cape Canaveral exclusion zone at the required time. This led to the launch being scrubbed and a multi-million dollar law suit against the cruise line. That was probably not a career enhancing event for the ship’s captain…
A large number of those launches have payloads of 30 or more satellites as Starlink builds a constellation of low orbit satellites that form the backbone of its global internet access system
(If you didn’t know, this is the communication system helping the Ukrainians maintain connectivity despite Russia’s attempt to destroy the country’s land-based telecommunication infrastructure)
It’s also enabling sailors to stay in touch
I wrote this on a long distance boat delivery more than 1,000nm from the nearest land. It was the first time I had used Starlink and it gives full internet connectivity at pretty good bandwidth. Starlink even has its own app that shows the current connectivity speed
As a sailor, its absolutely marvelous for getting up to date weather GRIBs and other passage information
I thought I might also be able to check my bank account balance BUT the IP address that showed up was in Ecuador (that trip was across the Pacific) and my bank blocked access, probably thinking someone was tying to hack my account. No problem…just fire up the VPN that shows a US IP address and off you go!
Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 and subsequently renamed it X. In the last 10 years or so, X along with the likes of the Facebook, TicToc and Instagram, social media platforms have come to dominate our culture
In 2016 when I joined a boat on the Miami to Nassau race, I was shocked that the predominantly younger (25 - 40 years old) crew didn’t seem to be able to survive without social media connections through their smart phones. They were posting pictures and swiping through their news feeds ALL the time, it seemed. One girl seemed positively distraught when we lost cell phone coverage about 15 miles offshore…but then she came back to life when a Bahamas Telecom signal was picked up when we got across the Gulf Stream
Facebook, Twitter, it’s all the same meaningless nonsense to me and sadly, fertile ground for gossip, half truths rumors and conspiracy theories
I always loved getting away from the media when I went sailing offshore, but not any more - at least when we have cell phone coverage
On the upside, ocean cruisers who used to keep in touch with daily SSB radio nets now have FaceBook groups
In March 2023, Raindancer, a 44ft monohull en route from the Galápagos Islands to the Marquesas in French Polynesia, was sunk after being hit by a whale
4 people in a life raft sent a text message, a contact posted to their cruiser FaceBook group and then someone ashore co-ordinated the rescue efforts. They were picked up after 10 hours by another cruiser on the same passage who was also a member of the same social media group
The growth of electric vehicles, of which Tesla had first mover advantage has also impacted sailing. Lithium Ion batteries are integral to e-cars and a few years ago Musk built the largest battery factory in the world to meet Tesla’s demand. The Chinese have started mass-producing Li-ion battery systems and of course economics 101 tells us that prices will fall when supply is increased
Gone are the days when the electrical power on a sailboat was a few deep cycle lead acid batteries. We now have a bank of high efficiency Lithium batteries and increasingly some form of solar recharging capability and a compact generator
So conservation of electricity becomes much less of an issue on board. I’ve recently worked on boats with no propane gas - induction cooktops, microwave and convection ovens are now replacing the gimbaled 2-burner stove
So, we’re now in a new connected world powered by electricity when we go out there on the ocean, and Elon Musk has been a major contributor