[HN Gopher] Starship will attempt a launch this Friday
___________________________________________________________________
Starship will attempt a launch this Friday
Author : LorenDB
Score : 665 points
Date : 2023-11-14 01:32 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fly.faa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fly.faa.gov)
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Edit: Starship launch is: SPACE X STARSHIP SUPER
| HEAVY FLT 2 BOCA CHICA, TX PRIMARY: 11/17/23 1300Z-1720Z
| BACKUP: 11/18/23 1300Z-1720Z 11/19/23 1300Z-1720Z
|
| That's 8:00 AM Eastern, 5AM pacific.
|
| Previous: am I missing something? This says 11/14/2023, aka
| tomorrow. Starting 11:30Z (6:30AM Eastern, 3:30AM Pacific)...
| like, 9 hours from now? And it seems to be landing somewhere in
| SFO area? There's a bunch of checks for SFO... [ed: there are
| also Starlink launches listed: 6-28 and 7-7 (whatever that
| means)].
| 9cb14c1ec0 wrote:
| Relevant lines are: SPACE X STARSHIP SUPER
| HEAVY FLT 2 BOCA CHICA, TX PRIMARY: 11/17/23 1300Z-1720Z
| BACKUP: 11/18/23 1300Z-1720Z 11/19/23 1300Z-1720Z
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Is that UTC or local?
| 9cb14c1ec0 wrote:
| UTC
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| Z = Zulu, meaning +0 or UTC.
| jayknight wrote:
| The Z is Zulu, which is UTC.
|
| https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/timezone/zulu
| two_handfuls wrote:
| So it's Friday, not the weekend !
| shawnlower2 wrote:
| As I understand it, they can't do launches over the
| weekend, as that requires closing the beach, which they
| don't have permission to do.
|
| ... Which makes the two backup dates very confusing. A very
| quick Google didn't turn up the actual rules on Starbase
| launches over the weekend, though, so I might be crazy.
| LorenDB wrote:
| SpaceX has five weekend closures allocated per year in
| Boca Chica: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/202
| 2/06/13/spacex-... (last paragraph)
| LorenDB wrote:
| ...Friday is pretty much the weekend, right?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| @dang can we update the title to say "Friday" instead of
| "weekend"?
| cylinder714 wrote:
| Shoot an email to hn@ycombinator.com
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Yaaay we did it thanks.
| dang wrote:
| Ok!
| MontagFTB wrote:
| Starship is listed towards the bottom of the notice with a
| primary date of Nov 17.
| foobarian wrote:
| I mean, still not exactly a weekend but close enough I guess.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Looks like I'll be setting my alarm early this Friday
| morning... can't wait.
| gatvol wrote:
| Most impressive; 3 x launches by SpaceX scheduled on a single
| day.
| 9cb14c1ec0 wrote:
| Is 3 launches in a single day by the same entity a record?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Last year north korea launched 23 in one day.
| UnlockedSecrets wrote:
| If we are talking simple missiles.... It'd be hard to
| really quantify anything against world war 2...
| zie wrote:
| Since October, Israel has launched at least 7,400 into
| Gaza.
|
| Between June 1944 and March 1945 the Germans hurled
| 10,500 V-1s at Great Britain. Most of the missiles never
| reached their targets.
|
| I couldn't easily find the # of rockets from the allies,
| though I'd guess it's a much smaller number, since they
| were delayed compared to Germany.
|
| I couldn't find an easy # for the Ukrainian and Russian
| war.
|
| So unless this latest disaster in Gaza ends soon, I'm
| betting they will handily beat the V-1 rockets.
|
| Note: I'm not trying to side either way in this comment
| between any of the countries involved, All of the
| conflicts are a mess and I'm definitely not qualified to
| have an informed opinion.
| nine_k wrote:
| A rocket that flies 50 km, or even 500 km, while reaching
| 2-3M and carrying 200 kg of payload, is a much, much
| simpler machine than a rocket that makes it to LEO and
| reaches about 26M while carrying several tons of payload.
| (And then deorbits and lands!)
| MikusR wrote:
| You have your directions mixed up. It's 7,400 from Gaza
| into Israel.
| calderknight wrote:
| Also, they're "missiles" in the same sense that your
| fireworks are missiles. Death count is zero.
| philwelch wrote:
| The V-1 was not a rocket; it was a "flying bomb" powered
| by a jet engine, what we would today call a "cruise
| missile", except cruise missiles tend to have guidance
| systems. The V-2 was the rocket.
|
| If you're going to count the rockets in the Gaza conflict
| (which are predominantly fired by Hamas and PIJ against
| Israel) or the rockets being used in Ukraine, those
| aren't nearly as sophisticated as even the V-2. Those
| systems are more analogous to the Soviet "Katyusha".
| There were different Katyusha variants, but one of the
| most common was the BM-13, which could fire a salvo of 24
| rockets from a truck before being reloaded. Thousands of
| Katyushas were produced, so I'm pretty sure they account
| for hundreds of thousands of rockets overall. Very
| similar to the Katyusha rocket (in fact, basically the
| exact same rocket for the Soviets at the time) are the
| rockets fired by airplanes and later helicopters at
| ground targets, so you could add those in as well.
|
| And if you want to get downright pedantic and count every
| type of rocket, there are also various shoulder launched
| rocket launchers like the RPG which are extremely common.
| Guided missiles are also technically rockets. So the
| actual numbers are much, much, much higher than you
| think.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| And one day at an amateur high powered rocketry launch
| and you'll get 100(s?) of launch(es).
| fastball wrote:
| I don't think those were orbital class rockets?
| jacquesm wrote:
| For major rocketry, other than SpaceX, by a considerable
| margin, yes.
| phreeza wrote:
| Not really a huge margin, Roskosmos launched 2 on February
| 14, 1989, from the same launch site.
|
| Edit: Also just read that on the same day, the first GPS
| satellites were also launched from the US.
| Someone wrote:
| Depends on what you call "major". https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/V-2_rocket#Operational_history:
|
| _"From a field near the village of Serooskerke, five V-2s
| were launched on 15 and 16 September, with one more
| successful and one failed launch on the 18th"_
|
| That must mean they launched at least 3 on either the 15th
| or the 16th.
|
| That page also says _"Beginning in September 1944, more
| than 3,000 V-2s were launched"_ and _"The final two rockets
| exploded on 27 March 1945"_ , so that's over 3,000 in at
| most 208 days, so there must have been days there were at
| least 14 _"launches in a single day by the same entity"_. I
| suspect the actual top number is a lot higher.
|
| If you think that's borderline "a single entity", there's
| _"After the US Army captured the Ludendorff Bridge during
| the Battle of Remagen on 7 March 1945, the Germans were
| desperate to destroy it. On 17 March 1945, they fired
| eleven V-2 missiles at the bridge"_
| hoseja wrote:
| Presumably they meant orbital launches.
| Someone wrote:
| If I understand things correctly, this launch won't (try
| to) complete an orbit, either. It will make a water
| landing after less than one time around the earth.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| To be pedantic, this launch will have orbital velocity;
| if it was circular it would be orbital. IOW, it's an
| orbit that intersects the Earth. So it is orbital by some
| definitions but not by others.
| Diederich wrote:
| Right, I believe they will be a few tens of meters per
| second short of orbital velocity.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Why spend so much time on purposefully misunderstanding
| the original question?
| m463 wrote:
| maybe you should have said "not in anger" :)
| overconfident59 wrote:
| orbital, definitely
| ugh123 wrote:
| Absolutely insane amount of coordination and individual mission
| operations for each one simultaneously. I don't think enough
| gets said about SpaceX's launch integration systems.
| oittaa wrote:
| We're finally living in the future!
| strangesmells06 wrote:
| Has Starship ever launched successfully yet?
|
| i.e. if it makes it will this be the first? i.e. a really big
| deal?
| two_handfuls wrote:
| Launched, yes. Successfully? Debatable. It did clear the tower
| at least.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| It was a success according to the expectations set before the
| launch
| cma wrote:
| The biggest failure was the delay in the flight termination
| system working. If it had sailed towards the town they
| might not have been able to terminate it in time.
| foobarian wrote:
| I would probably add the damage to the launch pad to the
| list. That seemed to add unnecessary delay to the next
| launch though I don't know if it was the long pole or
| not.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That was part of it, but the engine failures that
| immediately caused a loss of trajectory (it was visibly
| off even before it cleared the pad) were most likely the
| worst problem.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| If the FTS would have triggered at a lower altitude it
| would have worked. The FTS was sufficient to protect the
| town.
| nine_k wrote:
| Not entirely. It reached about 70 km where the booster had
| to detach, and it failed to detach. Also, there were
| several apparent engine failures which did not crash the
| booster, but very certainly were not nominal operation.
| hoseja wrote:
| >according to the expectations set before the launch
|
| None of those were set expectations for a successful
| test. Why are people this resistant to understanding it
| was the very first test of a completely new and
| revolutionary rocket.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No, it failed almost immediately off the launch pad when
| the engines started malfunctioning and it started out on
| a wrong trajectory even off the launch pad. The
| detachment was never attempted, and the decision not to
| attempt detaching was taken as soon as the safe
| trajectory was missed.
|
| Additionally, the self-destruct mechanism also failed,
| though thankfully it produced enough damage to allow the
| rocket to naturally explode later.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| The advertised metric for success was that it needed to
| not blow up the launch tower:
|
| https://spaceflightnow.com/2023/04/19/elon-musks-success-
| cri...
|
| > Also, there were several apparent engine failures
|
| It's pretty clear they were expecting this, as the status
| graphic had the capability to show on telemetry which of
| the engines had flamed out in real time.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Well we can say clearly it has not reached orbit, if we want
| a clear criteria to talk about. Obviously the first launch
| had many successes, but orbit was not one of them.
| cryptoz wrote:
| Starship without Booster has had many successful suborbital
| tests, but with Booster only 1 attempt. Much of that attempt
| was successful but it did have critical issues and they had to
| remotely blow it up, which also initially failed.
|
| If this gets to orbit or close enough, that will be considered
| the first successful real launch.
| throwuwu wrote:
| Having the test achieve its goals would be good but this is
| still a prototype and just one in a series that will be tested
| to destruction. The big deal is that the process of developing
| this launch system is moving again.
| Laremere wrote:
| No.
|
| This is the second integrated flight test. Even if this flight
| fully meets all of its goals, it won't /really/ be a successful
| launch by standard measures.
|
| Starship (the top part) has successfully completed several
| suborbital hops, including a "bellyflop". So in that sense,
| yes.
|
| This upcoming test involves launches with both Starship and the
| Super Heavy Booster. Succeeding the current mission goals would
| be the booster soft(ish) landing in the ocean near the launch
| site, and the Starship obtaining a parabolic arc before
| surviving reentry to crash into the ocean near Hawaii.
|
| To really have a "success" by standard measures under their
| belt, SpaceX will need to target having Starship actually
| orbiting with a test payload (probably Starlinks). After that
| "success", they're likely to still have secondary mission
| failures with landing the booster, and deorbiting and landing
| Starship.
| strangesmells06 wrote:
| Gotcha! So this test criteria this weekend may not be to
| reach orbit, but just test out heavy booster and getting
| starship correct trajectory.
|
| If they crash into the ocean do you know if they are supposed
| to be recoverable or will they sink?
| randallsquared wrote:
| It is not supposed to be recoverable for reuse.
| jws wrote:
| Best case, they get to test the new sound dampening,
| armored pad, armored pad cooling, igniting all the engines
| on the pad, booster launch, staging, booster fly back,
| booster descent, booster landing (though not on anything
| solid). If that works they have a booster floating in the
| Gulf of Mexico they need to clean up.
|
| For Starship they get to test staging, engine in vacuum,
| bellyflop control from very high altitude to sea level.
| Apparently all the way to sea level. They do not appear to
| be planning the reignition and flip. They may set the
| record for "most powerful bellyflop".
|
| All the excitement is in the first 9 minutes of the flight.
| A little over an hour later the Starship's "orbit" will
| intersect too much atmosphere and will re-enter for about
| 12 minutes.
|
| As for why not to try landing the Starship on water, I
| think they'll play with all their available fuel mass in
| vacuum. Those engines haven't operated there yet.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| I'd be surprised if they haven't tested at least one
| engine in vacuum. You can build a test apparatus for
| that. Only learned how when I saw this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrLyzpTV7GU
| rst wrote:
| The planned nominal trajectory for the first flight (and, I
| presume, this one as well) set Starship up for re-entry
| _without_ a deorbit burn, so they 're not planning to
| properly enter orbit at all. This is to avoid the prospect
| of an uncontrolled re-entry after orbital decay if
| something went wrong while it was in orbit, or worse if it
| got up there and the tanks exploded. Elon doesn't
| ordinarily choose to be cautious like this, so it probably
| wasn't entirely his choice.
|
| (They'll be putting out enough energy to demonstrate that
| it _could_ enter orbit, but the trajectory that they 'll be
| putting it into is an "orbit" that intersects the
| atmosphere.)
| brandonagr2 wrote:
| Starship will crash into the ocean at terminal velocity off
| Hawaii (with no belly flop maneuver to stop descent right
| above the ocean), there may be some floating bits but not
| recoverable in any significant sense. The booster will do a
| landing burn, they will most likely sink it in the gulf and
| not attempt to tow it back to port.
|
| https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship
| -...
| _glass wrote:
| I just did a short search for the SLS test launches, but
| couldn't find anything. Is this SpaceX fail fast approach to
| test incrementally, and SLS was just launched the first time
| with payload, or did I just miss the test launches of that
| system?
| nicky0 wrote:
| It's a different development approach.
|
| NASA with SLS spent a much longer time and much more money
| to build ONE rocket, which HAD to succeed. It uses well-
| established technology and pushes few boundaries.
|
| SpaceX philosophy is to build fast, launch, and iterate on
| unproven, innovative ideas.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Also SpaceX is building a rocket mass production pipeline
| rather than a one off mostly custom unit.
| cubefox wrote:
| The Artemis 1 launch was the first (and only) test launch
| of the SLS. It was successful, and yes, they launched it
| with expensive payload, the Orion capsule, which was also
| tested successfully. On the other hand, the SLS development
| was and is probably a lot more expensive than for Starship,
| while being much less technologically advanced.
| cryptonector wrote:
| The new era of dirt cheap space launch costs starts when
| SpaceX successfully launches 100 tons to LEO on a previously
| used booster and starship, then lands them again. Given how
| few flights are scheduled from Boca Chica it's fair to assume
| it will be at least a year before that, possibly longer.
|
| However, in so far as the raptor engines have flown, the
| belly flop maneuver has been validated, and the full stack
| has flown, once they're landing the booster and starship
| following successful payload deliver we could say that the
| new era started when raptor first flew.
| jtriangle wrote:
| Generally it kept the pointy end pointed toward space long
| enough to not kill anyone. Pad was fubar'd, which was a source
| of much drama.
|
| It's hard to answer the whole success question though. SpaceX
| has a very bend it and send it approach to R&D, they've had a
| hard time with starship and the powers that be, mostly because
| of the scale of the whole operation.
|
| They got some useful data, but, they didn't get to do all the
| things they wanted/planned to do, so, failure, but, a useful
| one. If you remember, they smashed a few falcon 9's into the
| ground before they landed one. That model might not be tenable
| with something the size of starship, but, only because the
| powers that be would much rather you not blow up moon capable
| rockets as a habit.
|
| Are they right, are they wrong, not really an important
| question for regual saps like us to be concerned with. All the
| spaceX fans in the world have no chance of moving the needle
| there any more than the spaceX haters do. I think at least most
| can agree, however, rockets are cool, and, watching them fly or
| not in 4k on youtube for free is a good thing.
| throwuwu wrote:
| Finally, I can't wait until they start loading these with
| starlink satellites and launching once a month. I'd love to make
| the trip to see one in person once the timing is more
| predictable. Seeing the progress on Starship is one of the few
| things that gives me hope for the future.
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| First SpaceX Starship Flight Test Video (~53 Minutes):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI
|
| T-minus 30 seconds from launch:
|
| https://youtu.be/-1wcilQ58hI?t=2674
|
| Highlights of First SpaceX Starship Flight Test Video (~2
| Minutes):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_krgcofiM6M
| gangstead wrote:
| I'm planning on making a very long drive to see this. Is there a
| viewing area? I realize it's a Big Falcon Rocket and will be
| probably be heard from anywhere but is there a designated spot?
| How close can we get?
| stevep98 wrote:
| Everyday astronaut has a video discussing the layout of the
| area and which parts are closed during launch.
|
| https://youtu.be/aWvHrih-Juk?si=rXff0jL4ln3CY14_
| LorenDB wrote:
| Good luck and have fun! I would love to be in Texas for this :D
| chasd00 wrote:
| I was planning on making the trip but the earliest I can be
| there is Sunday. Nasaspaceflight's youtube channel mentions
| this as the best hotel to watch the launch and where they hang
| out.
|
| https://www.margaritavilleresorts.com/margaritaville-beach-r...
|
| I stayed in Port Isabell a few years ago visiting some of my
| wife's family in the valley. There's a big freaking bridge
| there that you can see the pad from. I bet that bridge would be
| a good place to watch as well.
| holler wrote:
| I watched the first launch from the southern tip of Isla Blanca
| Park on South Padre Island and recommend that (I stood on the
| jetty). I also had recently watched 2 falcon launches in
| Florida and Starship is incredibly more powerful and awe-
| inspiring to witness.
|
| Plan to get to the park entrance at least 30 mins early because
| it takes time to walk through to the southern end, and there
| will likely be a large crowd.
|
| Stayed at Isla Grand Hotel and there were a bunch of other
| people hanging out the night before, have fun!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1snFbRby7Ew
| gangstead wrote:
| How loud is it from Isla Blanca? I'm bringing elementary aged
| kids. Should I bring headphones? Anything else I should
| bring?
| holler wrote:
| Very loud, bring ear protection! The crackling of the
| engines will make your entire body shake. Other than that
| just comfy clothes you can walk on the sand in. It's a real
| unique experience, you're in for a treat!
| qwertox wrote:
| > The crackling of the engines will make your entire body
| shake.
|
| I've never heard it IRL but I absolutely love this sound,
| also from back then when the Space Shuttle launched. IDK
| why, but it is just such a perfect sound to me. As if it
| were the best indicator of the tremendous amount of
| energy being released there.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Scott Manley explaining the crackle:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdCizNwLaHA
| smhg wrote:
| Making a video about a specific sound, talking through
| the whole (first?, hopefully) example.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| The video showing the distortions from the shockwave off
| the jet are pretty amazing
| jcims wrote:
| There's an entire portion of this that's missing in the
| audio tracks from any launch I've watched on tv, YouTube,
| etc.
|
| The deep bass notes go soo low and have this wild elastic
| ringing tonal quality to them. Like someone is playing a
| huge kit of koto drums or something. You can really start
| to hear acoustic dispersion effects as well.
|
| https://youtu.be/KbmOcT5sX7I?si=aYfzx3CScYnQYiqK
| jvm___ wrote:
| The crackle of the air moving back and forth during a
| shuttle launch would be so fast and intense that the
| friction of the air (near the launch pad) would set the
| grass on fire.
| admash wrote:
| That was such a delightful fact that I had to source it.
| Tragically, it is not true.
|
| Gee, K. L., Mathews, L. T., Anderson, M. C., & Hart, G.
| W. (2022). Saturn-V sound levels: A letter to the
| Redditor. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of
| America, 152(2), 1068-1073.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220831190741id_/https://asa
| .sc...
|
| "While this peak level represents acoustic amplitudes
| that would propagate nonlinearly to rapidly form shocks
| and result in perception of jet "crackle" (e.g., see Gee
| et al., 2016), will it melt concrete or set grass or
| one's hair on fire? It will definitely not."
| mrchucklepants wrote:
| The lead author of this paper is a friend of mine and an
| expert in non-linear acoustics, particularly jet and
| rocket noise.
| philwelch wrote:
| Maybe for the kids, but I didn't use ear protection and I
| don't remember noticing anyone around me who did. It's not
| dangerously or uncomfortably loud from the park in my
| experience.
|
| Bring binoculars. You don't need them to see the rocket on
| the pad but it flies away pretty fast once it's going, and
| they're useful for watching propellant load and noticing
| other details. I also bring camping chairs, sunscreen, bug
| spray, and a bottle of water.
| euroderf wrote:
| What's the advice to the public about not wondering off
| the beaten track ? I ask because there's special forces
| in the swamps, looking for troublemakers/saboteurs.
| philwelch wrote:
| The island is across the water from the launch site, and
| SpaceX has its own fences and security for the facilities
| on their side. There's also an employees only viewing
| area on the island. There's also a protected wetlands but
| that's unrelated.
| philwelch wrote:
| Did you just walk into the park? 30 minutes before launch is
| cutting it really close if you want to drive in and park. If
| you're doing that, try and be there by like 4-5 AM if you
| can.
| jccooper wrote:
| You won't be able to park at the park anytime near the
| launch; it will be full. But you can just walk down the
| beach to the jetty from anywhere else on the island.
| philwelch wrote:
| That's why I try to arrive around 4 AM, yes. The only
| time I tried to get a hotel it was a 60 minute hike to
| the park from the hotel so I find it a lot simpler to
| just drive overnight and park at the park.
| holler wrote:
| Yeah I walked in, honestly a split second decision not to
| go to Starbucks across the bridge in Port Isabell saved me.
| I veered to make a u-turn after deciding it would be too
| close and saw a parking spot right there. Walked from the
| bridge to southern tip and had minutes to spare until it
| launched.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| What about air qualify in the surrounding area? Pm2.5
| levels..
| pantalaimon wrote:
| It's powered by methane, not coal
| Faaak wrote:
| methane combustion _does_ release PM2.5
| bell-cot wrote:
| If you are close enough to experience a PM2.5 spike from
| the actual exhaust, then you probably have far worse
| health issues.
| chmod600 wrote:
| What particles? Why?
| Faaak wrote:
| basically soot, as combustion is rarely a perfect CO2 +
| H2O
| yourusername wrote:
| Is that really a concern? It may not be super healthy but
| it's not like you are going to a rocket launch every day.
| Airports are very unhealthy with the PM 0.1 levels but i
| haven't heard of anyone not flying because of that.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Air quality is something I've started paying attention to
| recently. I've flown a lot in the past but have never
| thought of it.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| A proper N95 solves it (unfortunately many that flooded
| the market post Covid are n95 'in name only' and don't
| have stable electret charged fibers).
| bell-cot wrote:
| https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/south-padre-
| island/78597/a...
|
| If it's a concern, I'd check again on Thursday & early
| Friday. At least around me, this summer, their multi-day
| forecasts were often pretty inaccurate.
| jccooper wrote:
| I would be shocked if it were measurable. The launch is 5
| miles away and the breeze blows inland.
| sixothree wrote:
| I don't feel connected to this like I did to NASA ventures. To
| me it's like going to watch the launch of a billionaire's mega
| yacht. Why would I want to see that?
|
| This isn't about exploration. It's about profit. And there's
| not an easy way to shine that.
| noizejoy wrote:
| Just curious: Have you ever visited a castle or a gothic
| cathedral or the pyramids or a Frank Lloyd Wright building?
| philwelch wrote:
| To be fair, castles and the pyramids were also government
| projects.
| jjallen wrote:
| How is launching a rocket with the hopes that we can go to
| Mars not exploration?
|
| If he doesn't do it who is going to do that?
|
| Surely NASA has has fifty years to do something like this
| (excepting the ISS which is).
|
| > "billionaire's mega yacht"
|
| Billionaire hatred is a real thing. He will not be riding on
| this thing and likely never will be, so I'm not sure this is
| a great analogy.
| falcor84 wrote:
| >He will not be riding on this thing and likely never will
| be
|
| What makes you say that? Musk has made it known he has a
| dream to "... die on Mars. Hopefully not at the point of
| impact."
| dsco wrote:
| To me it's the opposite, one mans dream to initiate and
| achieve space travel is much more romantic than a government
| space programs which is more about nation building.
| marmakoide wrote:
| That's not one man dream, it's a team of engineers and
| managers funded by a rich guy who likes what they can do.
| Some serious backing from the US government is part of it
| with research work, contracts and grants. The dream is
| collective
| mcv wrote:
| He loves to pretend it's one man's dream, though.
| xedeon wrote:
| Video and audio evidence says otherwise. Unless you can
| produce sources where Elon claims sole credit for SpaceX
| milestones.
|
| I've been following SpaceX's progress since 2005 on
| Kimbal's blogspot (yes that blogspot) updates [1]. Elon
| has always credited his team of engineers, ops and
| support staff.
|
| [1] https://kwajrockets.blogspot.com
| mcv wrote:
| But also himself. He suggests he taught himself rocket
| science and that he's personally involved in designing
| these rockets and cars. I have some doubts about that,
| although his influence on Starship and the Cybertruck
| seems to be larger than on previous models.
| xedeon wrote:
| > He suggests he taught himself rocket science and that
| he's personally involved in designing these rockets and
| cars. I have some doubts about that.
|
| You can doubt all you want. This is easily verified.
|
| 1. https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929
|
| 2.https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1099411086711746560
|
| 3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mueller
|
| 4. https://youtu.be/aGOV5R7M1Js?t=1748
|
| As expected, you can't produce sources to support your
| claims.
| mcv wrote:
| A tweet without any context doesn't exactly prove much.
| No idea who is wrong about what there.
|
| I also never claimed any sources, I'm just giving my
| impression of him, which is that he's a bullshitter. But
| I can list a couple of things we do know about him:
|
| At Tesla, despite not being a founder of the company, he
| contractually established that he was allowed to call
| himself a founder. And then pushed the actual founders
| out.
|
| Online, we see him pick stupid internet fights, and post
| irresponsible tweets that got him slapped for stock
| manipulation.
|
| At Twitter, we've all seen his bizarre mismanagement,
| despite his original background in software development.
|
| We've recently heard that the Cybertruck was a bad
| decision that he personally pushed through at Tesla.
|
| So given all of that, of course it's still possible that
| his rocket engineering creds at SpaceX are real, but you
| really can't blame people for having some doubts about
| that.
|
| I don't expect anyone employed at SpaceX to spill the
| beans, but there's plenty of anonymous rumours on the
| internet about his actual role:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/27rnwj/is_elon_p
| ers...
|
| > Elon is indeed very involved in the design. The way
| they explained it is they give him a list of options to
| choose from and he picks the one he likes. Usually, it's
| the one the lead engineer wants, but sometimes it isn't,
| and Elon gets what he wants.
|
| That's reasonable enough for a CEO in a flat
| organisation, but it doesn't sound like he's doing the
| actual engineering, just picking from the options the
| engineers give him.
|
| I've also seen a (claimed, not verified) SpaceX employee
| say that SpaceX has people who's job it is to keep Elon
| happy and feel involved, because a happy Elon gives them
| the freedom to make the right decisions.
|
| He got this Tony Stark image in the media, and I think
| he's been leaning a bit too hard into it, and started to
| believe the image that he could do everything. And the
| history of Tesla shows that he's not above overstating
| his own role.
|
| Don't get me wrong: I love much of what he's done at
| Tesla and SpaceX; EVs wouldn't be where they are now
| without him, and rocketry in the US might well be dead
| without SpaceX. But he certainly has his share of
| character flaws as well.
| xedeon wrote:
| > A tweet without any context doesn't exactly prove much.
| No idea who is wrong about what there.
|
| The tweet was a response to the same claims you're
| making, the parent tweet is clearly there. It seems that
| you don't even know who Tom Mueller is. I linked Tom's
| Wikipedia bio for context, maybe you should take the time
| to read it.
|
| "Thomas John Mueller is an American aerospace engineer
| and rocket engine designer. He * _was*_ a * _founding*_
| employee of SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer
| and space transportation services company headquartered
| in Hawthorne, California, and the founder and CEO of
| Impulse Space "
|
| > I don't expect anyone employed at SpaceX to spill the
| beans, but there's plenty of anonymous rumours on the
| internet about his actual role:
|
| Tom was already retired when he posted those tweets. So
| again, your claims are just patently false. Let's
| see...Your source is from an "anonymous rumour" and is
| more credible than a former/founding SpaceX employee? I
| have no words...
|
| > At Tesla, despite not being a founder of the company,
| he contractually established that he was allowed to call
| himself a founder. And then pushed the actual founders
| out.
|
| The Tesla Board of Directors did that, not Elon. But you
| knew that right? It's dishonest to attribute the success
| of the Tesla Roadster, Model S/X, and Model 3 ramp-up, as
| well as Tesla's current achievements, to Eberhard and
| Tarpenning.
|
| > But he certainly has his share of character flaws as
| well.
|
| Don't we all? Not a single person on this planet is
| flawless, and it's sanctimonious to think otherwise.
| mcv wrote:
| > the parent tweet is clearly there
|
| It is not clear how to navigate to the parent tweet. Take
| it up with the owner of the site, I guess.
|
| I know who Tom Mueller is, and I've addressed why that
| doesn't make him impartial.
|
| > Tom was already retired when he posted those tweets.
|
| According to your Wikipedia link "he retired from SpaceX
| on November 30, 2020". One of those tweets is from 2019,
| so your claims are patently false.
|
| > The Tesla Board of Directors did that, not Elon.
|
| And who was the chairman of that board of directors?
| Please.
|
| > It's dishonest to attribute the success of the Tesla
| Roadster, Model S/X, and Model 3 ramp-up, as well as
| Tesla's current achievements, to Eberhard and Tarpenning.
|
| And I did nothing of the sort. I gave Musk credit for
| that. I'm only pointing out he wanted to be credited for
| something he wasn't.
| xedeon wrote:
| https://x.com/jamesncantrell/status/1513580207390670853?s
| =20
| woooooo wrote:
| We need a term for "culture war adjacency bias".
| concordDance wrote:
| > He suggests he taught himself rocket science and that
| he's personally involved in designing these rockets and
| cars
|
| Every source I know of agrees this is true.
| agent327 wrote:
| Would any of it have happened without Elon Musk?
|
| Sure, there are many people who work in the organisation
| that he built that help him achieve his vision, but none
| of that would have existed without him challenging the
| world to an impossible dream ("live on Mars!"). Without
| Elon Musk, the space industry would still have been
| focused on SLS-style projects: slow to develop and
| impossibly expensive, the domain of only one or two
| governments, and always at the mercy of the next
| administrations' priorities. Instead, if he succeeds,
| humanity will be transformed, from a species that barely
| dips its toes into space, to one that can finally begin
| to truly explore the solar system. It's as much the start
| of a new age as was the voyage of Columbus.
|
| Giving Elon Musk credit for this is certainly not
| misplaced. Denying him that credit because you disagree
| with him politically (as another poster suggested)... I
| have no words for that, it's just so ridiculous. This is
| the pinnacle of human development right here, and you
| would deny it because the guy votes Republican? You know,
| like literally half the people in the country?
| defrost wrote:
| > You know, like literally half the people in the
| country?
|
| I have no opinion on Musk or the rest of your comment,
| but as a simple matter of factual data it's been two
| decades since US Republicans could claim a slight edge on
| US Democrats in the popular vote (percentage of entire
| voting population) and four decades since they had any
| significant support.
|
| For a good while Republican voters have been less than
| half the country and were it not for the uneven weighting
| of geographic areas and a domination of party controlled
| gerrymandering oportunities they would have even less
| political success than they have seen.
|
| That's just simple psephology fo you.
| philwelch wrote:
| In 2022, the nationwide popular vote for the House of
| Representatives was 54,506,136 for Republicans and
| 51,477,313 for Democrats. By percentage the Republicans
| won 50.6% of the vote and Democrats won 47.8%.
| defrost wrote:
| Leaving aside the non primary year figures you dug up;
|
| the US Census Bureau estimated that in 2020, 168.3
| million people were registered to vote in 2020 .. that 54
| million voting Republican falls well short of cracking
| half the _registered_ voters, let alone eligible voters.
| philwelch wrote:
| I'm addressing the standard you originally set in your
| comment:
|
| > it's been two decades since US Republicans could claim
| a slight edge on US Democrats in the popular vote
| (percentage of entire voting population)
|
| This is false; the "percentage of entire voting
| population" that voted for Republicans in the House of
| Representatives in 2022 was not only a "slight edge" over
| the percentage voting for Democrats, but an outright
| majority.
|
| The fact that Republicans won a majority of the popular
| vote for House seats also means that their control of the
| House is not, in fact, a product of "uneven weighting of
| geographic areas and a domination of party controlled
| gerrymandering oportunities" [sic] as you claim. If you
| apply the percentages of the popular vote to the number
| of seats in the House, you'd expect Republicans to
| control 220 seats and Democrats almost 208 seats. In
| actuality, the Republicans won 222 seats and the
| Democrats won 213, meaning both parties got "extra" seats
| (at the expense of independents and third parties) but
| the Democrats got more. Moreover, it's not accurate to
| say the Republicans are unique in benefitting from the
| gerrymander. In Illinois, Republicans won 43% of the
| popular vote but less than 18% of the seats thanks to a
| Democratic gerrymander. Meanwhile in New York, the courts
| actually threw out an attempted Democratic gerrymander
| and as a result, the GOP gained three seats and the Dems
| lost four.
| defrost wrote:
| The original comment that I addressed was (paraphrased)
| "Republican voters are half the country".
|
| I looked only at Presidental elections which have the
| greatest turnout, these have rarely seen a 50% Republican
| showing in total _active votes_ in recent decades.
|
| Including the mid term elections we see even lower voter
| engagement which helps the Republican showing in _active
| votes_ , sure.
|
| However of all the people that _could_ vote in the US
| (those eligable), or even of just those people that
| indicate they 'd probably vote (registered), it's still
| the case that well short of half the country votes
| Republican.
|
| That the same can be said of US Democrats (although they
| generally in recent decades have had the edge in total
| _active votes_ ) - but it still remains that well short
| of "hal the the country" supports the Republican platform
| - they don't have a popular mandate.
| rmak wrote:
| well if you have single-day voting and hand counts they
| could easily win almost all states and whatever you call
| the popular vote wins.
| defrost wrote:
| So, .. only if the system is gamed to favour the affluent
| that can take a day off and have well serviced voting
| areas then?
|
| FWiW I'm an outsider of the US election system, it's a
| hot mess with multiple shortcomings that restrict
| franchise .. and the US Republicans _appear_ to be more
| skilled at restricting access to democracy to particular
| demographics.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| That's genuinely a horrible argument and there is no
| redeeming quality about single day voting. And you're
| implying electronic machines are being hacked, a claim
| for which you have no evidence.
| adolph wrote:
| It is interesting to think about which systems are
| untrusted until verified truthful, and which systems are
| trusted until verified false.
|
| https://xkcd.com/2030/
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The only thing that makes me doubt electronic voting is
| the relative lack of distributed counting and thus audit-
| ability.
|
| That said, I rank conspiracy theories on how many people
| would be involved in carrying it out, and the idea of a
| malicious voting machine system capable of having votes
| altered would take too many knowing participants at
| various levels of the tool chain.
|
| I would welcome learning more or else implementing more
| "spot audits" of results in order to minimize the
| likelihood of any changing of votes.
| gwright wrote:
| This response seems to be spinning a narrative that
| Democrats have a significantly broader support in the US
| than Republicans, but I think that is somewhat
| misleading. Independents have stronger support than
| either of the major parties.
|
| Here is some data going back to at least 1988:
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/388781/political-party-
| preferen...
| marmakoide wrote:
| I believe it would have happened, with or without Musk.
| Credit where credit is due, SpaceX seems to be a very
| well managed operation. I don't believe in providential
| people, at all. I don't know why my political beliefs are
| mentioned, I am not even American, I am French living in
| France.
|
| Starship happens because of
|
| * the current state of manufacturing technology : we can
| automate a lot of operations that were done by hand in
| the 70's, we can iterate prototype much faster)
|
| * a lot of essential hardware is now much cheaper,
| reducing the initial investment cost. Say a servo motor
| mass produced now vs. a servo motor in 70's made in tiny
| batches
|
| * the market ie. there's a market to send many tons of
| hardware into orbit, money can flow into such projects
|
| * it's now possible to test some rocketry ideas in your
| garage, it's not a closely garden anymore. The pool of
| very experienced rocketry engineers is increasing
|
| That's not a very romantic point of view tho
| zpeti wrote:
| Like it happened with... Blue Origin? Ariane Space?
| Electron?
|
| NASA? China? India? Russian N1 rocket?
|
| No, it didn't happen, in multiple cases without Musk, and
| with more funding.
|
| You are delusional in your hate of Musk.
| marmakoide wrote:
| I say he is not a providential man, that it's a team
| effort, and that it's in line with current industrial
| needs and capacity. That is not an expression of hate, I
| think.
| chpatrick wrote:
| I'm no Musk fanboy but I think even if you have the
| technological capability and demand you still need
| someone to actually do it. I think if it wasn't Musk it
| would be someone similarly crazy.
| signatoremo wrote:
| > I believe it would have happened, with or without Musk.
|
| This is a meaningless statement. It would happen, but
| when? about now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now?
| You keep saying team effort. Do you think Blue Origin or
| Arianne Group have less talent than SpaceX? Why do they
| achieve much less?
|
| > I don't believe in providential people, at all.
|
| SpaceX almost went bankrupt in 2008. Without Musk
| gambling with his finance to rescue the company, SpaceX
| would have been a footnote in the space history. It
| wouldn't have survived long enough to have the NASA's
| money. The team that they'd built would have been spread
| to who knows what kind of companies.
|
| > the current state of manufacturing technology : we can
| automate a lot of operations that were done by hand in
| the 70's, we can iterate prototype much faster)
|
| So why did SLS take that long? Arianne 6? New Glenn? What
| about a plethora of small launchers that are still not
| yet widely available?
|
| > a lot of essential hardware is now much cheaper,
| reducing the initial investment cost
|
| Essential hardware is only a small part of a rocket
| program. Arianne 6 was supposed to be Europe's answer to
| Falcon 9, 50% cheaper than Arianne 5. Supposed to debut
| in 2020, it still has yet to launch. So it costs Europe
| tax payers est. 5b euros for a rocket that is
| technologically inferior to Falcon 9, lower cadence, yet
| more expensive to build and operate. - [1]
|
| > the market ie. there's a market to send many tons of
| hardware into orbit, money can flow into such projects
|
| That market didn't exist. Looks at the chart in this
| article about the number of objects (satellites) sent to
| space - [0]:
|
| The number skyrocketed after 2016, once Falcon 9 has
| become established. SpaceX has enabled the market, not
| the other way around. SpaceX just launched 1,000 tonnes
| of payload in 2023, four times larger than the second
| place (China the country).
|
| > it's now possible to test some rocketry ideas in your
| garage, it's not a closely garden anymore. The pool of
| very experienced rocketry engineers is increasing
|
| SpaceX was built 20 years ago with nothing but a vision
| of Mars colony. There was no pool of experienced
| engineers readily available back then. They are now a
| powerhouse and they can hire whoever they want. The
| question is, why there hasn't been another Starship?
|
| [0] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-
| of-objects-...
|
| [1] - https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/oops-it-
| looks-like-the...
| Reubachi wrote:
| Why bring politics into this? You're pushing your own
| prejudices and opinions on a topic that doesn't need it
| to make "sides", at your own detriment.
|
| Well established fact that Musk is a figure head, and
| like any other other figurehead, they matter
| significantly less to the end result than the giant teams
| of engineers and supply chain managers do. Of course he
| is an intelligent, financially sound business man.
|
| But it's very much a fact that the bit's you're
| romantically idealizing would exist without Elon Musk.
| Apple was not steve jobs. Ford was not Henry Ford. Toyota
| was not a single Toyoda.
| agent327 wrote:
| Did you, by any chance, miss all the political anti-Musk
| rhetoric in this thread? Why are you singling me out, and
| not telling all those other people to leave politics out
| of it?
|
| As for your "facts": without Musk, there would be no
| SpaceX, no giant teams of engineers, and no supply chain
| managers. Same as without Steve Jobs (do you hate him so
| much that you can't even capitalize his name?): without
| him there would be no Apple, no Mac, no iPhone. You seem
| to believe that companies and products spring fully
| formed from the ground, that nobody has to take the
| initiative to create them. Giant teams of engineers and
| supply chain managers don't just decide to come together
| to spend years and millions (if not billions) of their
| own time and money to build a car, or a computer, or a
| rocket. Can you point to even a single example where such
| a thing happened?
|
| How would the 'bits' have come to exist without Elon
| Musk? Who would have taken the initiative, who would have
| paid for it? If you're right, why is SpaceX the only game
| in town? Surely there are plenty of other engineers and
| supply chain managers that would be up for building the
| worlds largest reusable launcher in their own time, with
| their own money?
| kcb wrote:
| > Well established fact that Musk is a figure head
|
| Except there's many testimonies from engineers at his
| companies that attest the exact opposite.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Musk's title is chief engineer, he has stated many times
| in interviews, and has been corroborated by other spacex
| engineers, that all engineering decisions go through him.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Nations are the societies we live in, so collective action
| is pretty neat in my book.
| upwardbound wrote:
| Making space-based human habitation profitable is the only
| way we will ever reach the scale of millions of people living
| & working in space. It's ludicrous to imagine that we would
| ever send more than a few explorers to space if each person's
| time there is _unprofitable_ , meaning literally losing
| money.
| upwardbound wrote:
| If you're interested in exciting hard sci-fi about mining
| the asteroids and the moon, check out Daniel Suarez's
| compelling novel _Delta-V_ and its recent sequel _Critical
| Mass_.
|
| Another profitable industry besides mining could be setting
| up nursing homes on the moon, where wealthy elderly folks
| could live fuller lives due to the reduced gravity. Yes,
| the idea of this only being available to the super-rich (at
| first) is nauseating to me too, but if it provides the
| source of funding to establish sustainable moon bases, that
| would be incredible, and other industries could follow
| afterwards, including e.g. new sports leagues such as low-
| gravity basketball and soccer.
|
| Eventually, enough people would be living on the moon as
| helpers for the wealthy folks and athletes that eventually
| there would be so many working-class people on the moon
| that secondary and tertiary industries would spring up to
| provide products and services for the working-class people.
| Soon enough it would become profitable to farm crops on the
| moon (for lunar consumption), build products on the moon
| (for lunar consumption), and more.
|
| We'd eventually get to the point where a lunar nation could
| have positive GDP and be economically self-sustaining. It
| would be a trade partner with the terrestrial nations, and
| be the first new nation to step beyond Earth. Generations
| of people will get married and be born there, and humanity
| would be a step closer to settling the cosmos.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I don't think people realize the scale of what Starship
| stands to achieve here. This is not an incremental leap
| forward, this is revolutionary. Sending a 16oz bottle of
| water up to space on the Space Shuttle cost around
| $25,000. [1] Falcon Heavy brought that down to $700.
| Starship stands to bring that price down to as low as $5!
|
| That's what makes this all so stupefyingly difficult to
| even begin to try to predict what will happen. We're not
| going through the usual window of exclusivity. We're
| going from [nobody can afford this, except governments -
| and even then only for toy missions] to ['everybody' can
| afford this for anything], instantly. So there's no
| reason that e.g. a nursing home, or anything else, on the
| Moon would be restricted to the super wealthy, besides
| demand. Obviously these industries will be being built
| from the ground up, and demand will likely dramatically
| outpace supply for the foreseeable future. But that cost
| imbalance would not be because of fundamental costs.
|
| Also you left out the most fun. Who isn't going to want
| to go have sex in space? Either with a partner or
| catching some Moon Poon at a brothel? That's going to be
| an industry that'll have people coming by the millions,
| and shouldn't really require that much to get the initial
| infrastructure erected.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_c
| ompetitio...
| upwardbound wrote:
| > Sending a 16oz bottle of water up to space on the Space
| Shuttle cost around $25,000. [1] Falcon Heavy brought
| that down to $700. Starship stands to bring that price
| down to as low as $5!
|
| Wow, that's insane; as you said, I didn't even realize
| this leap is this vast! $5 for delivery of a bottle of
| water is barely more expensive than DoorDash or Postmates
| on Earth!!
| philwelch wrote:
| > catching some Moon Poon at a brothel [is] going to be
| an industry that'll have people coming by the millions
|
| I don't know what laws apply on the Moon, but thanks to
| ITAR, Starship probably won't be able to launch from
| outside the United States, which means any actual moon
| travel is going to be governed by US and Florida and/or
| Texas law. Neither of those states have legal
| prostitution, and while I'm not a legal expert, I suspect
| knowingly ferrying prostitutes to the moon might be
| considered a form of human trafficking. They shut down
| Backpage for less.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Would it not be reasonable under ITAR to launch from
| other ITAR regulated countries, such as Japan (JAXA) or
| France (French Guiana/ESA)?
| philwelch wrote:
| France and Japan also have laws against prostitution and
| sex trafficking. Japan seems to have more loopholes than
| France but probably not enough to fly prostitutes to the
| moon.
| aa-jv wrote:
| Once we are able to send a Starship to Psyche 16, and
| start building new Starships, humanity is in for a huge
| leap. And this isn't even unrealistic - it could be that
| in 5 - 10 years the next major rush for humanity is to
| establish a permanent industrial presence on Psyche 16
| and start making things...
| imtringued wrote:
| Why would that be your first idea? Why not something
| simpler like building a moon orbiter with an aluminium
| and liquid oxygen hybrid engine? The goal is to find the
| hydrogen on the moon, which is far more valuable than
| some asteroid.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| A launch costing (150 tons have roughly 300000 bottles)
| 1.5 million USD is insanely cheap and that obviously
| includes some profit ...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The fuel alone for the rocket costs $1M. $1.5M does not
| include profit.
| frankreyes wrote:
| > Another profitable industry besides mining could be
| setting up nursing homes on the moon, where wealthy
| elderly folks could live fuller lives due to the reduced
| gravity.
|
| That's what SR Hadden did in Contact ;) as always, Carl
| Sagan is still teaching us to this day
| lupusreal wrote:
| Old folks living "fuller lives" on the Moon, hundreds of
| thousands of miles away from their grandkids and
| everybody else they know? Have you ever been to an old
| folks home? Wishing people visited them more often is
| most of what most of them talk about.
|
| A sad few with no remaining attachments to the rest of
| Earth might benefit from a reduced risk of hip fracture,
| but that hardly seems like a good economic basis for a
| Moon base.
| Dig1t wrote:
| This is the most advanced rocket ever built, far superior to
| anything any government has ever created. It's a
| technological marvel and represents progress for the entire
| species.
|
| You're depriving yourself of the opportunity to appreciate a
| once in a lifetime event because some news outlet told you
| you should dislike the guy who built it.
| camillomiller wrote:
| No, because I profoundly dislike this species-thinking
| anthropic suprematism in a world that we take as ours
| without any critical thinking. And now this goes beyond the
| world. It's a long-termist wet dream that requires one very
| simple assumption: that Musk's billions are better spent on
| gigantic male energy space penises than in making this
| actual earth a better place. And if you're disassociating
| this venture from the violent narcissistic and inadequate
| man who's founding it, well it says a lot about your values
| too.
| peyton wrote:
| Isn't SpaceX where a lot of his billions came from?
| concordDance wrote:
| "Violent"?
| johnthewise wrote:
| Tesla is making the world a better place by pushing EV
| adoption around the world. Have you done anything better
| for the world today, yet alone for its future? Starlink
| is pretty neat as well, he could fail going to Mars and
| all that and he still would be remembered for what he has
| done for the world today.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| You forgot Dogecoin.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| This statement reflects a worldview that sounds deeply
| unpleasant. You might consider therapy, logging off, the
| gym etc.
| somenameforme wrote:
| If SpaceX wanted profit, all they need to do is team up with
| Lockheed/Boeing, jack their prices up 100x fold and start
| waiting for that sweet taxpayer dollar to come rolling in.
| Getting prices as low as Starship is going to achieve is not
| a straight forward path to profit. It's like taking an
| industry dominated by Geo Metros being sold for high end
| sportscar prices, and then introducing a car that runs like a
| high end sports car and selling it for Geo Metro prices.
|
| The only way they start making meaningful profit from what
| they're doing is basically if the exact opposite scenario of
| what you're implying comes to pass - that space becomes so
| completely accessible and utilized that they win by scale.
| And that's the exact opposite of 'mega yachts.' This is
| explicitly about exploration, colonization, mining, and more.
| This is about actually opening space to the human race,
| beyond relying on multi billion dollar toy expeditions, for
| the first time ever.
| Dig1t wrote:
| lol I don't know if anyone knows what a Geo Metro is
| anymore, but I agree with your analogy :)
|
| Maybe a Corolla would be more relatable nowadays.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Hat tip to Geo Metro! A real pile of junk from the 1990s.
|
| My auntie drove a Renault Le Car in the late 1980s. I
| remember riding in it as a kid thinking it was a "fun
| junker".
| ishjoh wrote:
| Geo Metro was my first car, I still have fond memories of
| the freedom it afforded me.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Perhaps because this is the creation from the hard work of
| thousands of gifted and committed people. When SpaceX started
| I can assure you there was no billionaire involved. Just a
| guy with a few million he was willing to invest to make space
| travel a reality for many more people.
|
| Secondly, if you don't think NASA was about profit, you don't
| understand NASA. Who do you think built all the Apollo
| rockets? Private contractors working for profit.
|
| Besides, what is wrong with profit? Profit is what makes
| things sustainable and allows reinvestment to continually
| improve.
|
| The tech here is way beyond what governments have been able
| to do so far. It promises to be quite a show. Might blow up
| again, but they'll learn and build another one.
|
| For the record, I find Musk to be a menace, but the team he
| put together at SpaceX is phenomenal.
| jimrandomh wrote:
| Starship is funded by NASA and built by a for-profit
| corporation, like SLS is and like the Space Shuttle was. The
| difference between SpaceX and the contractors that built the
| Shuttle and SLS is that those contractors kept their CEOs'
| names out of the news, and gouged like crazy.
| bbojan wrote:
| That's not true. Starship was funded and started
| independently of NASA. NASA is just the first customer that
| is paying to develop a Moon-landing version of Starship
| that will be used for its Moon landing mission.
| ETH_start wrote:
| This is not comparable to a mega yacht, because it will offer
| space cargo services to the public.
| camillomiller wrote:
| The only comment giving a reasonable take instead of kool aid
| drinking and Musk simping, and it gets downvoted. What
| happened to critical thinking?
| jaapbadlands wrote:
| We are thinking critically, about how asinine that comment
| is.
| hoseja wrote:
| This is much more about exploration than whatever
| technologically obsolete moribund project NASA is able to
| push through porkbarrelling process at the expense of a dozen
| more worthy ones.
| xedeon wrote:
| Incumbents like Lockheed, Boeing, and ULA often face problems
| such as fraud, waste, and fund misappropriation.
| Additionally, NASA's progress is hindered by bureaucracy and
| red tape.
|
| Given these circumstances, depending solely on NASA for space
| advancement or asteroid deflection may not be the most
| effective strategy. Those acquainted with federal programs
| can confirm these issues. Thus, your comment appears
| uninformed and overlooks the wider impact on American
| taxpayers.
|
| It's hard to believe you're being objective if you think the
| SLS, costing over $2 billion per launch, is superior and not
| profit-driven, compared to Starship's estimated $40 million
| launch cost.
| jowea wrote:
| I appreciate the cynicism but I feel that ultimately this is
| how a capitalist civilization does most things.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| Going to Mars isn't exploration enough for you huh? What kind
| of stupid take is this.
| spikels wrote:
| Just go to the south end of South Padre Island and watch from
| shoreline. You will be about 5 miles from the launch pad.
| Binoculars are nice to have.
|
| This video gives you an idea of what it was like watching from
| there on the first flight:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jxWJvV6OxU
| i_am_a_peasant wrote:
| Being able to do things like this is one of the things that
| makes me want to emigrate to the US. Healthcare is a huge
| showstopper though. But if it turns out that private costs more
| or less what I pay in taxes in Europe then maybe I'll
| reconsider.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| Another PITA is that even if you have insurance you have to
| go to in network providers. I'm insured and went to the local
| CVS to get a flu and COVID shot but they said I was out of
| network, so insurance wouldn't cover it. Out of pocket was
| $63 for Flu and $198 for COVID. I still haven't got my shots.
| peyton wrote:
| Maybe don't believe everything you read on the internet haha.
| i_am_a_peasant wrote:
| No idea what you're referring to here. I've visited the US
| several times and have lived in Europe most of my life.
| I've needed to be hospitalized a few times in my life and I
| didn't need to pay anything, _anything_.
| kortilla wrote:
| In the US you pay an annual deductible of like $2k for a
| good health insurance plan. Just take that off of your
| salary that is $50k greater than your European counter
| part and you're good to go.
|
| Like GP said, the Internet is very misleading about this.
| Healthcare is OK for the middle class and that's why
| there isn't enough pressure to change it.
| yakz wrote:
| This is not even remotely correct. In the US, you usually
| pay a monthly premium which is only a portion of the
| actual cost, and the remainder is paid by your employer.
| On top of that, yes, you pay your deductible. A $2,000
| deductible could be considered a low deductible--it could
| be double that or more with lower premiums.
|
| After that, you have the "out-of-pocket" maximum. You pay
| 20% of costs until you hit the "out-of-pocket" maximum,
| which is typically thousands of dollars per year.
|
| Beyond that, there are actually two different deductibles
| and two different out-of-pocket maximums. One for in-
| network services, and one for out-of-network services.
| You can go to an in-network facility and see out-of-
| network providers without notice.
|
| And even beyond that, while it has been curbed with some
| recent legislation, if your insurance provider decides to
| pay less than the provider believes they are owed, the
| provider can bill you independently for the remainder.
|
| So NO, it is definitely not $2k per year for a good
| health insurance plan in the US. FAR from it.
| mciancia wrote:
| So, if not $2k then how much more?
|
| How much is this monthly premium? We are talking about
| 50USD, 500USD, more?
|
| You say out of pocket is in thousands per year - so I
| assume <10k?
|
| I wonder what is upper bound of yearly cost for having
| same or better level of healthcare as in Europe.
|
| If that's like 15k a year, than I would assume, at least
| for SWEs, it still makes a lot of sense to go to US - pay
| difference is huge. I would not be surprised that even
| you you would count 50k a year for medical it could still
| make a lot of sense to move to US if you are good - I
| don't hear that much about 300k, 400k or more TC per year
| in EU
| MRtecno98 wrote:
| It's not only insurance, rent and cost of living in
| general is (on average) higher in the US, partly because
| of the higher wages
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's plan dependent. Lots of people will have an out of
| pocket maximum that is less than $10,000.
|
| The premiums will also vary, but probably a few hundred
| for most employer plans.
| tiahura wrote:
| _How much is this monthly premium? We are talking about
| 50USD, 500USD, more?_
|
| If you don't know how much monthly insurance premiums
| are, you probably shouldn't be arguing about the topic?
| Reubachi wrote:
| That person you're replying to isn't the original
| commenter who implied that it's cheaper to get healthcare
| in US due to salarys.
| Reubachi wrote:
| Untrue. There are maximum amounts for everything, co
| pays, and premiums. Did you forget all those?
|
| I have had to redo my teeth due to a medical issue. My
| insurance paid for the medical issue. My teeth though?
| This year alone I've spent 13k out of pocket after maxing
| out my dental insurance. Next year will be the same. and
| the year after. And I'm paying for insurance while paying
| all of this.
| kcb wrote:
| "Oh no, I've got the flu, guess I have to declare
| bankruptcy again." -How Europeans think US healthcare works
| primax wrote:
| Agreed. And honestly, not having to worry that my kids will
| be shot in school is a big psychological comfort
| thegrim33 wrote:
| In the last 53 years, there have been 2,057 shooting
| fatalities in K-12 schools in the US [0]. That's an average
| of 38 per year. As of 2020, there were 56,282,248 K-12
| enrolled students [1]. So there's a .000067% chance that
| any given one of those students will be shot and killed in
| any given year.
|
| That's what you're worried about? A .000067% chance? You
| must live a life of crippling fear then, the number of
| things more deadly to your kids than .000067% is
| staggering. I assume you never let them enter a vehicle of
| any kind, for example.
|
| By the way, of that 38 per year number, less than 10%
| happens inside a classroom [0]. The most likely location is
| outside in the school parking lot, a violent dispute
| between students, and not a "mass shooting" scenario. So if
| you were mostly concerned about "mass shootings", the odds
| of death are over 10 times less than .000067%.
|
| [0]
| https://www.campussafetymagazine.com/safety/k-12-school-
| shoo... [1] https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-
| society/education/k-...
| jaapbadlands wrote:
| Weird flex
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| This is a sadly all too-common approach to analysing risk
| and reflecting back the "absurdity" of people's fears
| (and TBH, I used to do it myself).
|
| Psychological experience of risk (fear) has a large
| component related to the degree to which a person has
| control over their exposure, combined with the worst
| possible (rather than typical) outcome.
|
| So for example, statistically speaking very few black
| Americans will ever be assaulted by the police but no
| black American can feel remotely in control of whether or
| not this may happen to them. And the outcome may include
| death as a possibility.
|
| Statistically speaking, very few women will be assaulted
| walking down the street (even at night) but essentially
| no women can feel that they have any control over whether
| this happens or not. And the outcome may include death as
| a possibility.
|
| And so it is with school shootings: yes, statistically
| speaking it is a vanishingly small chance. But neither
| parents nor students (nor teachers) have any level of
| control over whether such an incident will take place in
| their school, and the worst case scenario is death.
|
| When people feel they lack the agency to control whether
| or not a bad outcome is more or less likely in their
| lives, the actual statistics of the outcome tend to fade
| into dramatically lower significance.
| midasuni wrote:
| If you're earning 5 times median wages it might work out -
| America looks after it's rich.
|
| If you're on less then not likely
|
| But remember it's not just your bank balance. Do you really
| want to live in a society where your neighbour can't afford
| treatment for cancer? Or where your nephew gets weekly
| "active shooter" drills? Where you get two weeks a year
| holiday if you're lucky?
| i_am_a_peasant wrote:
| > Do you really want to live in a society where your
| neighbour can't afford treatment for cancer?
|
| Maybe? I would like to live in a society where there's no
| hard ceiling on what you can achieve if you have the
| competency and some luck. Do you think it's easier to
| become a millionaire in the EU or the US? It feels like
| there's very little social mobility in Europe compared to
| the US.
| kgabis wrote:
| Social mobility is much higher in the EU than in the US
| [0]. Being a millionaire in the US still doesn't
| guarantee that you won't go bankrupt due to a cancer
| treatment.
|
| [0] https://www.economist.com/graphic-
| detail/2018/02/14/american...
| zpeti wrote:
| This is not an equivalent comparison.
|
| In Europe many cancer treatments are simply not paid for
| by social health care, because it's too expensive or
| experimental.
|
| Rich people still go to private health care providers for
| more niche treatments, or simply for shorter waiting
| lists.
|
| What you have in Europe is - long wait lists, for
| everyone, and fewer numbers of actual treatments (plus
| many things not covered by social health care, e.g.
| dentists)
|
| What you have in US is - no wait lists, healthcare that's
| probably 2-3x as expensive, but you actually can get the
| best of the best treatment if you pay for it
|
| Clearly for poorer layers of society the US system is
| bad. But for society as a whole I would question which
| system is actually better. They both have bad and good
| parts.
|
| To be honest if the US actually implemented a real market
| system for health care, and prices would drop a bit (with
| the kind of stuff Mark Cuban is building), the US health
| system would be FAR superior than Europe, even if its not
| free.
| kgabis wrote:
| It's quite obvious which system is better if you look at
| life expectancy and infant mortality.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| > Rich people still go to private health care providers
| for more niche treatments, or simply for shorter waiting
| lists.
|
| You say rich, but private healthcare is a pretty normal
| benefit for people working in professional jobs. I'm on
| my third tech job and I've never not had some level of
| private insurance benefit.
| zpeti wrote:
| So, this actually reinforces my point, many many people
| in Europe have private health insurance despite having
| free healthcare supposedely.
|
| If european healthcare was so amazing AND free, why would
| people do this? It makes no sense. Of course it does when
| you realise the cost of free healthcare, which is that it
| just isn't that great in terms of quality, or you have
| insane waiting lists, even if it is free.
| kgabis wrote:
| You're missing the cost of people not seeing a
| professional until it's very late into their illness and
| have to either undergo expensive procedures, end up
| disabled or die. Which is exactly what is happening in
| the US and is reflected by life expectancy. Private
| healthcare is just too expensive to the society as a
| whole. And you keep saying insane waiting lists, but
| critical procedures are prioritised accordingly and you
| don't have to wait long if you have a heart disease or
| cancer. Just to be clear, all healthcare systems have
| their own problems and not one is perfect, but the one in
| US is absurdly bad.
| zpeti wrote:
| Blaming short life expectancy on the US healthcare system
| is pointing to a tree in a forest.
|
| There are A LOT of reasons for this. For example fentanyl
| probably took quite a bit off it, considering over
| 200,000 people are dead at this point from it.
|
| So does the obesity crisis.
|
| Now - I think we are probably more in agreement than not,
| I think there are huge issues with the US healthcare
| system, the entire fentanyl crises WAS created by the
| healthcare system, but still - I don't think the root
| issue, or problem to be solved is private vs public.
| Switching to public would just mean another set of
| problems.
|
| For the record, I'm not from the US, and I mostly use
| private healthcare, despite there being so called free
| healthcare available in my country. It's just terrible.
| So it's almost the same as the US - rich people get
| healthcare, poor don't.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| If you don't stratify life expectancy by demographics, it
| means nothing.
|
| Asians in the US live to be 10 years older than Blacks.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_health_in_the_Un
| ite...
|
| Clearly lifespan is not solely determined by where you
| live.
| kgabis wrote:
| At least in Poland private healthcare is great when it
| comes to simple procedures, but as soon as you have
| serious health issues you end up in a public hospital.
| katbyte wrote:
| The us healthcare system is also insanely expensive,
| highest spend per person on the planet by a large margin
| midasuni wrote:
| If the US took all the money it spent on Medicaid alone
| it could afford to fund U.K. level healthcare for
| everyone.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| People in the us visit healthcare providers about just as
| much, maybe a little less, it's just that they pay 5x per
| visit compared to other countries in Europe due to
| massive regulatory capture and the behemoth of
| bureaucracy.
| mythhabit wrote:
| In Denmark, the law clearly states that there cannot be
| longer than 2 weeks from suspicion to initial
| examination, and if you indeed to have cancer, at most 2
| weeks more for treatment. If the public healthcare cannot
| honor those deadlines you will have the equivalent
| examination/treatment at a private, and public healthcare
| pays. This includes some very advanced treatments for
| advanced cancers.
| kcb wrote:
| Yes it does...what bizarre takes. Lack of health
| insurance affects a gap of people that don't qualify for
| public programs and can't afford private insurance. Many
| people with way less than a million dollars buy private
| health insurance.
| mft_ wrote:
| There's a lot more to social mobility than an
| individual's ability to become a millionaire.
|
| You'd have to decide whether you agree with the
| methodology, but European nations feature highest in the
| 'Global Social Mobility Index' [0] while the US is 27th.
|
| [0] https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_
| Report....
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Merely saying the US is 27th doesn't actually mean much
| without knowing more about the distribution. There's
| still a shortest NBA player, after all.
|
| And I did look at the table. There's a difference of ~15
| index points between 1st (85) and 27th (70). That still
| doesn't actually say much without knowing how they're
| calculated.
| midasuni wrote:
| OP said " It feels like there's very little social
| mobility in Europe compared to the US."
|
| But didn't define it.
|
| GP pointed to a definition which shows that OP was wrong.
| matsemann wrote:
| > _I would like to live in a society where there 's no
| hard ceiling on what you can achieve if you have the
| competency and some luck_
|
| Then EU > US. In the EU most people have a shot at this,
| with free education and possibilities. In the US your
| chances are mostly tied to your parents' status.
|
| > _It feels like there 's very little social mobility in
| Europe compared to the US_
|
| Maybe from middle class -> very rich. But from poor ->
| middle class Europe is absolutely better.
| kortilla wrote:
| Based on what? The middle class in Europe is worse off
| than the middle class in the US. So mobility from poor to
| middle class in Europe is a low bar.
| katbyte wrote:
| Define "worse" - in the eu they work less, have more
| vacation, better social safety net, great food transit,
| less crime less rape less murder, better healrhcare
| outcomes, and I think rank higher on happiness
|
| In the us they might have more money (to then spend on
| healrhcare etc)
|
| Which is "better"?
| robben1234 wrote:
| >Then EU > US. In the EU most people have a shot at this,
| with free education and possibilities.
|
| This comparison only works at birth, or maybe up to
| teens. We are, most likely, working professionals here.
| With a degree and fairly established position. Becoming a
| millionaire is still a monumental task. However at this
| baseline US is much easier.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Do an NPV calculation on the value of a solid pension at
| current interest rates. It'll be worth over a million.
| midasuni wrote:
| Pretty easy really. But what does being a millionaire
| actually mean in terms of what you can do with your life?
|
| Is your goal really "become a millionaire"? Not "have the
| ability to see the world" or "live in a nice house with
| kids an a dog", just "have 7 figure on a spreadsheet of
| what I have managed to accumulate"
| robben1234 wrote:
| >just "have 7 figure on a spreadsheet of what I have
| managed to accumulate"
|
| 7 figure on a spreadsheet enables a lot.
|
| An unregistered savings account in one of Canadian banks
| (just a point of reference, not sure if US has better)
| currently offers 4% yearly. That's 40k a year off the
| million. Enough to retire with kids in a LCOL country or
| travel year round as a nomad with a base in LCOL country.
|
| Build a little bit more wealth and all those LCOL options
| turn into MCOL. E.g. northern Italy.
|
| All while just being a working professional. It'd be
| unheard of in Europe to have this kind of options after
| just a couple years of work.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The mobility is still high for children from stable
| families.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| > It feels like there's very little social mobility in
| Europe compared to the US.
|
| What told you that? The median American is significantly
| less wealthy than the median Brit, despite similar
| homeowning rates and Americans having way more income.
| Most of Europe (plus the Anglo offshoots) have higher
| social mobility.
| katbyte wrote:
| When your friends, family, kids, are sick and unable to
| afford treatment or go bankrupt because of medical bills
| you may be singing a different tune unless you are either
| so totally selfish to ignore their plight or rich beyond
| millions to pay
| dotancohen wrote:
| It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live
| there.
| rkangel wrote:
| Even if you just look at healthcare, consider that in the US
| even the well insured can only afford to be ill _once_. After
| that, your insurance becomes expensive, and you 're usually
| not covered for a whole set of potentially related things.
| maxerickson wrote:
| That isn't how job related insurance or ACA market
| insurance works.
|
| For ACA plans, the premiums can factor in age and smoking
| status. That's it. Job related insurance is generally take
| it or leave it at a fixed price.
| kcb wrote:
| That's not how that works.
| ArlenBales wrote:
| It's odd to me when people generalize the whole of Europe
| when it comes to healthcare. The quality of
| welfare/healthcare in Eastern Europe for example is very
| different than what Nordic countries like Sweden and Norway
| offer (they are typically considered the highest quality of
| living in Europe), or Spain or France.
|
| Likewise, the same can be said of the United States. Quality
| of private healthcare is going to depend greatly where you
| are. Remote areas and smaller towns and cities are not going
| to have access to top-quality physicians like larger cities
| will have. But, top-quality physicians will have very long
| waiting lists. I'm currently on the waiting list for a top-
| national orthopedic surgeon in the Bay Area and my total
| appointment wait is 5 months.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| If you have a good job in the US healthcare is fine.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I went to see a launch, it was incredible. But beware, they
| were scheduled for a Monday but cancelled twice due to weather
| before ultimately launching on a Friday. Luckily I was in town
| (LA, pretty close to Vandenberg) all week.
| tonylemesmer wrote:
| One of the everyday astronaut's videos explains places to watch
| launches from and travel to/from those places.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/aWvHrih-Juk
| verdverm wrote:
| NasaSpaceflight (YT channel) put out a guide last launch
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPazqKRf9NM
|
| The biggest scheduling point is that you probably need to get
| there super early, like at least 8 hours beforehand. Not sure
| how that's going to work out with the small children you
| mention in a later comment.
| mulmen wrote:
| Do we know the plan and goals for this flight? Orbit for Starship
| and RTLS for booster? Is an ocean "landing" for booster (or both)
| planned?
| onethought wrote:
| Ocean landing for booster.
|
| Unconfirmed whether starship will attempt and ocean landing or
| bellyflop... would be odd if they didn't try the landing
| maneuver.
| spikels wrote:
| Rumor is Starship will do the belly flop but not the last
| minute vertical flip. Not sure why.
|
| This graphic capture my understanding of what people outside
| SpaceX are expecting for this test. We may learn more in the
| coming days.
|
| https://twitter.com/InfographicTony/status/17243188773694546.
| ..
| jakemoshenko wrote:
| I believe it has to do with not wanting to have to recover
| the ship. By belly-flopping it into the ocean they can
| assume it disintegrated.
| chasd00 wrote:
| as far as i can tell the launch license hasn't been issued. Is
| 11/17 only the current NET date? It's moved a couple times now. I
| saw this story and thought the launch license has been issued but
| I don't believe it has.
| sebsebmc wrote:
| SpaceX themselves[1] seem to corroborate what you're saying.
| "The second flight test of a fully integrated Starship could
| launch as early as Friday, November 17, pending final
| regulatory approval." and the FAA page[2] for the approval
| still doesn't have any updates.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_star...
| Natsu wrote:
| Did they ever satisfy the regulators asking them about the
| probability of hitting a shark with the rocket?
| i67vw3 wrote:
| This a not a launch license according to this post. A launch
| license has not been actually granted.
|
| https://twitter.com/Alexphysics13/status/1724225785139986648...
| modeless wrote:
| "Was just informed that approval to launch should happen in
| time for a Friday launch" --
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1724271004044644800
| i67vw3 wrote:
| https://www.faa.gov/data_research/commercial_space_data.
| There is nothing here. Check "Additional Commerical Space
| Data" -> Location: Boca Chica.
|
| Official Launch license has still been not granted. But it
| will likely launch on Friday.
| Lariscus wrote:
| Why should I believe anything that musk says? He could have
| just made that up like the solar roof tiles or the robo
| taxis.
| MarCylinder wrote:
| Solar roof tiles are a real product though?
| pipe01 wrote:
| This is so wrong it's not even funny
| Lariscus wrote:
| Is it? The solar roof tiles where unveiled in 2016 as a
| finished product and Tesla took 1000$ deposits, 2 years
| later they where still figuring out if the tiles they had
| where durable enough as roof tile. In 2019 he claimed
| that autonomous robo taxis would be ready 'next year'
| they are still working on that.
| badwolf wrote:
| or his previous 4/20 launch license...
| mrmuagi wrote:
| I saw Marques Brownlee's video on solar roof tiles and it
| seems to solar roof tiles are a real thing -- though not
| sure about the SolarCity relation.
|
| I think it wouldn't hurt to view Elon as a parroter of
| information in this case, there's absolutely no incentive
| to lie and launches get canceled all the time due to
| weather, your expectations should already be tempered.
| inasio wrote:
| Launch license secured!
| 7e wrote:
| The chaos monkey school of rocket development continues. They
| will be finding problems in this thing until the day it's taken
| out of service.
| Diederich wrote:
| > They will be finding problems in this thing until the day
| it's taken out of service.
|
| Is this similar to how they developed the Falcon 9 platform?
| gpm wrote:
| No. The falcon 9 succeeded on it's first launch. It has only*
| failed once, on its nineteenth flight.
|
| * It did suffer engine failures on flights 4, 83, and 108,
| but compensated flawlessly with the other 8 as designed. They
| also blew one up on the test stand (which would have been
| flight 29). Additionally the satellite on flight 47 was
| supposedly lost due to an issue with the payload adapter (not
| built by SpaceX), but pretty much all information about the
| launch is classified.
| kortilla wrote:
| Merlin had many flight proofs before Falcon 9 though so
| it's not a great comparison to starship.
| justinclift wrote:
| Wasn't the Falcon 9 developed through a long process
| including earlier models, which _did_ fail (a lot) in the
| early development phase?
| gpm wrote:
| The falcon 1 immediately preceded the falcon 9 and was
| the only prior orbital spacex rocket, it had 3 failures
| and then 2 successes...
|
| The falcon 1 was much smaller than the falcon 9
| (literally 1/9th the engines on the first stage), and
| they intended the very first falcon 1 launch to work. I'm
| not sure that those failures really support the claim
| that falcon 9 had a similar development model to starship
| where they are intentionally blowing up starships to
| develop starship (edit:) and they have already blown up
| more than 3 starship prototypes.
| justrealist wrote:
| The landings failed repeatedly before they perfected that
| process.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| F9 was a much more conventional rocket. It's first party
| trick, the Merlin engine was iterated on heavily and
| destructively independent of the rocket. It's second and
| main party trick, the landing and reuse of a booster was
| definitely iterated on destructively many times before they
| got consistent performance out of it.
|
| They're plan is to mass produce Starship and work towards
| operating them continuously like a 737 to space. Blowing up
| the first few generates great data for identifying problems
| and helps get that production line rolling.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| And yet, problems were constantly found and fixed and
| improved.
|
| No two falcons were ever built exactly the same until Block
| 5 or so (and honestly, I'd be surprised if there weren't
| changes between rockets coming off the line now, but the
| changes are much smaller and more iterative, I would
| guess).
|
| It's basically the software development process, just with
| hardware. Falcon 9 is a mature product at this point, so
| most of what's happening are maintenance changes.
| brandonagr2 wrote:
| The question is how many thousands of tons it will lift into
| orbit before being taken out of service.
| yinser wrote:
| The scoreboard of successful tons in orbit per year says the
| chaos monkey is doing just fine.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| "Sure they're winning, but they're not winning _properly!"_
| nurettin wrote:
| I'm not a rocket scientist, but it just feels like they are
| throwing money into something that will never work at that
| scale because they have to spend investor and government
| money to ensure funding continues next year. It's just a musk
| thing to do.
| panick21_ wrote:
| That just total nonsense.
|
| If you are clearly not a rocket scientist and seemingly not
| really interested in the topic how do you know it 'will
| never work'. Literally based on what are you making this
| claim.
|
| SpaceX is by far the most advanced rocket company in the
| world, its not even close. They 100% believe this vehicle
| can work.
|
| They have presented this to NASA, and NASA selected it and
| in their evaluation gave it the highest technical readiness
| level. NASA is involved and is monitoring and nobody from
| NASA has come out and said that anything they do is
| impossible.
|
| Also you don't seem to understand how government funding
| works for this vehicle. These are FIXED PRICE CONTRACTS
| BASED ON MILESTONES. SpaceX will receive NO MONEY unless
| they ACTUALLY COMPETE MILESTONES. So the idea that they
| just do theater to get more government money just doesn't
| make sense, its not how it works at all.
|
| There is just no to way about it, arguable the two most
| experienced space organization on the planet believe this
| can work but somehow you know better?
| nurettin wrote:
| You make it sound like a successful launch of spaceship
| is the initial government contract milestone that SpaceX
| will get paid for, and they get nothing on failure during
| launch. Is this the case?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Well since they are throwing less money than pretty much
| any space agency before them, what's the problem? They
| surely aren't wasting or just burning the money considering
| that they basically have some of the most capable and one
| of the most reliable launch systems in history. If you
| actually compare spending and budgets, you'll see how
| efficient they are.
|
| And what's the issue with government funds? If the
| government wants to put satellites in space, why wouldn't
| SpaceX get paid for it? It's a massive advantage for the US
| government/military to have SpaceX too.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I always love how people who have never built anything 1/1000s
| as complex want to tell SpaceX, the most advanced aerospace
| company in the world of how to do their job.
| erickhill wrote:
| I love the 486dx-ness of the site data presented.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| I think most FAA things are like that. They need to be pretty
| terse/simple to be read on pretty old systems.
| qwertox wrote:
| Won't this also be presented to pilots on their small info
| screen, the one which prints them out weather and flight
| info? (ACARS [0]) Here's another example [1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS
|
| [1] https://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_spt_prev.jsp
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'm just waiting for someone to post a picture of this message
| showing on a glowing green display somewhere.
|
| edit: https://i.imgur.com/Avn6Cnm.png; that's just the output
| of curl, there's a bit of html above and below the message but
| it's a really straightforward page.
| ge96 wrote:
| let's gooooo babyyyyyy
|
| I hope it's fully successful
| AustinDev wrote:
| I'm just glad they're not going to hit any sharks.
| Natsu wrote:
| Not sure we know that, last I heard they were still trying to
| get the data from the people who wanted them to calculate the
| odds of that.
| rapsey wrote:
| Lets not forget about the babymaking seals.
| nurettin wrote:
| Put a headphone on that.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| I wish SpaceX all the luck in getting it up and away. As a kid
| the launch photos of the Saturn V inspired me to take the
| sciences route at school.
| Animats wrote:
| Where is it going, if it works? Low earth orbit? Or is this a
| suborbital test?
| m_mueller wrote:
| suborbital but I think barely so? if things go right, afaik the
| 2nd stage should reenter somewhere in the pacific. that's
| almost orbital velocity.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| Yes, the reentry corridor is near Hawaii.
|
| I wouldn't expect it to survive the re-entry regime, as there
| are a lot of tiles missing, but honestly, if it makes it to
| atmospheric entry on target, it'll be a wild success.
| m_mueller wrote:
| I wonder why, after all this time having to sit around and
| wait, they wouldn't attempt a reentry and water landing
| with 2nd stage.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| The nominal reentry and water landing is targeting the
| area off of Hawaii.
|
| I believe it has to do with risk analysis of not re-
| entering over populated areas. The open ocean around
| Hawaii doesn't have people, so if it re-enters and breaks
| apart, there's no risk. Also, I suspect there are good
| military radar installations on the islands that might be
| able to provide additional information.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Once they get this working, the quantity of cargo they can put in
| space will be ridiculous. We could actually plausibly begin
| planning for an offworld base.
| swarnie wrote:
| I do wonder with the cost reduction, weight limit increase and
| turnaround time reduction if we could now skip a lot of
| "planning".
|
| Can we get to a point where every kg doesn't need to be
| maliciously thought about and optimised, maybe we could just
| yeet any potentially useful thing in to orbit and sort it out
| later.
| kqr wrote:
| I don't know what sort of orbits Starship is capable of but
| Kessler syndrome!
| hoseja wrote:
| All of the orbits. I would rather have a Kessler syndrome
| around Mars than not.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| In the lower orbits, everything will burn up in the
| atmosphere within five years or so. Orbital decay is very
| strong under some 400 km.
|
| Also, space is pretty big. Even with a million destroyed
| satellites out there, the total density of debris would be
| very low. Imagine spreading debris of a million destroyed
| cars all over the planet - including the oceans - then
| walking around and trying to spot a piece. How often would
| you even _see_ one, much less happen to walk directly over
| it (=equivalent of a collision)?
| danw1979 wrote:
| The thing is, in orbit you don't really need to walk
| around to see the pieces of debris because they come
| blasting at you from all directions at 7km/s.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Nevertheless, they are still in one place at one time. If
| anything, my comparison overstates the danger, because
| Earth's surface is 2D and in space, many of those pieces
| will fly over or under you.
| imchillyb wrote:
| Your seemingly flippant attitude toward a catastrophic
| end does not mirror that of the world's space agencies
| and leading minds.
|
| They are quite concerned about that particular outcome,
| Kessler wasn't just warning us, but predicting an
| outcome.
|
| NASA sent China a nasty letter the last time China shot
| down one of its own satellites.
|
| The why is simple. There are launch windows. The more
| debris in orbit the smaller the windows and shorter their
| availability.
|
| I believe you overestimate how much orbital debris it
| would take to ground earthlings for centuries.
| Symmetry wrote:
| I'd actually hope that it leads to fewer, larger satellites
| that it's practical to go up and repair. At least with a
| bit of regulatory oversight and some international treaties
| once this model suddenly becomes feasible with Starship.
| karamanolev wrote:
| > maliciously
|
| You probably mean meticulously...
| librasteve wrote:
| I prefer the original
| swarnie wrote:
| Either/or works i think.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Like we "yeeted" pollutants for the better part of two
| centuries and are currently trying to "sort it out" right now
| ?
| ctoth wrote:
| I think maybe it would do you some good to sit down for a
| moment and think about just how mindbogglingly big space
| is.
|
| I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the
| chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
| mlsu wrote:
| _" A sufficiently large difference in quantity is a difference
| in kind"_
| jiggawatts wrote:
| _" Quantity has a quality all its own."_ -- Joseph Stalin
| samanator wrote:
| Apparently a misattribution.
|
| According to this
|
| https://klangable.com/blog/quantity-has-a-quality-all-its-
| ow...
|
| It was not Stalin who said that
| ralusek wrote:
| Although the whole "tragedy vs statistic" thing is an
| applied version of that thought.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And Stalin was so right about that.
| samanator wrote:
| Where is this from? I've been looking for a term for this...
| lopis wrote:
| Right. First thing will be bright billboards in space
| illuminating our night sky.
| steve1977 wrote:
| Will you stop giving them ideas please?
| bell-cot wrote:
| Sorry, but that idea has been kicking around SF since at
| least the 1950's.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Red Dwarf called the next step: "Coke Adds Life" written in
| supernovae.
| amelius wrote:
| If advertisers could turn the Moon into a giant Pepsi logo,
| they would definitely do it.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Imagine a Pepsi-sponsored replacement of the Kardashev
| scale: how big is the biggest Pepsi logo? Size of a
| person / building / city /continent / planet / galaxy /
| universe. Has consumerism truly run its course until a
| Pepsi logo has been carved into the CMBR?
| spyder wrote:
| A small prototype was already built in Las Vegas, they
| can even change the "logos" on it :)
| tambourine_man wrote:
| That's a scary thought
| oblio wrote:
| Until we have enough space debris that we make leaving our
| planet impossible. A sort of Great Space Garbage Patch, if
| you will.
| omegadynamics wrote:
| Kids love to surf!
| v413 wrote:
| This is the second "law" of the dialectical materialism by
| Engels:
|
| "The law of the passage of quantitative changes into
| qualitative changes"
|
| According to Wikipedia it has its roots from ancient Greece
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism
| mejutoco wrote:
| It is also a quote from Stalin.
| linuskendall wrote:
| Engels pre-dates Stalin by a considerable period of time
| and we can assume Stalin has read Engels. Safe to say its
| Stalin just paraphrasing Engels.
| runarberg wrote:
| Not safe to say at all, no. It is such an obvious thing
| to say, and such an easy observation, many people have
| said something of this nature for a very long time
| independent of each other. The is basically another
| phrasing of the question: "how many grains of sand makes
| a pile?"
|
| I'm not impressed by a cheap observation like this, even
| when phrased in a clever sounding way. I am impressed
| when people make new observations when this applies, such
| as when they are able to model a specific macro system
| that behaves very differently when the number of inputs
| is increased by a lot, and show how that is useful for
| our understanding of nature (including human nature).
| cdot2 wrote:
| I suspect that Stalin read that from Engels. I think that
| is a reasonable suspicion.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Hmm, maybe you could write to Engels to tell him just how
| unimpressed you are?
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| And, further, Engels is just paraphrasing Hegel.
| omegadynamics wrote:
| Kant etc.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| As I understand it, Stalin said, "Quantity is its own
| kind of quality." But I don't have the original Russian
| (someone here no doubt does) where he was referring to
| the USSR's ability to produce arms faster than their
| opponents even though the quality was lower.
| varjag wrote:
| This is a quote by Thomas A. Callaghan Jr, but is often
| mis-atrributed to Stalin.
|
| https://klangable.com/blog/quantity-has-a-quality-all-
| its-ow...
| sssilver wrote:
| in this[1] work titled "On Dialectic and Historic
| Materialism", Stalin references the idea and properly
| attributes it to Engels.
|
| 1 https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/stalin/t14/t14_55.htm
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| And people ask why I still come to this site :-). That is
| a great link.
| varjag wrote:
| Certainly that dialectic principle is broadly known. But
| it's specifically (mis)attributed to Stalin with the
| reference to wartime production/conscription and you
| won't find that in his works, recorded speeches or
| memoirs of contemporaries.
|
| This goes in fact for most of his grand quotes. Whatever
| deep sounding passage _are_ attributed to him and can 't
| be traced back to Marxism tenets, are typically
| adaptations from the Bible, reflecting his education as a
| priest.
| mejutoco wrote:
| I misread Engels as Hegel. Of course it makes more sense
| now.
| ljosifov wrote:
| There is a spin on the same idea when working with data
| (maths/stats/comp/ML) and having to skirt around the curse
| of dimensionality. Suppose I have a 5-dimensional
| observation and I'm wondering if it's really only 4
| dimensions there. One way I check is - do a PCA, then look
| at the size of the remaining variance along the axis that
| is the _smallest_ component (the one at the tail end, when
| sorting the PCA components by size). If the remaining
| variance is 0 - that 's easy, I can say: well, it was only
| ever a 4-dimensional observation that I had after all.
| However, in the real world it's never going to be exactly
| 0. What if it is 1e-10? 1e-1? 0.1? At what size does the
| variance along that smallest PCA axis count as an
| additional dimension in my data? The thresholds are domain
| dependent - I can for sure say that enough quantity in the
| extra dimension gives a rise to that new dimension, adds a
| new quality. Obversely - diminishing the (variance)
| quantity in the extra dimension removes that dimension
| eventually (and with total certainty at the limit of 0). I
| can extend the logic from this simplest case of linear
| dependency (where PCA suffices) all the way to to the most
| general case where I have a general program (instead of
| PCA) and the criterion is predicting the values in the
| extra dimension (with the associated error having the role
| of the variance in the PCA case). At some error quantity >0
| I have to admit I have a new dimension (quality).
| calderknight wrote:
| If they get it working the USA might beat China to putting a
| woman on the Moon.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| You mean to tell me that USA lost it's technology for putting
| people on thr Moon?
|
| I thought NASA already had those rockets. What's preventing
| them from sending astronauts and cargo now?
| notpushkin wrote:
| NASA still can make those rockets, but I believe those were
| pretty inefficient. While it was "justified" during the
| Space Race, nowadays they would be deemed too costly IMO.
| literalAardvark wrote:
| The fact that they're 50 years old? It's really hard to
| keep stuff maintained, and manufacturing methods have
| completely changed. The last people who could build that
| particular lander are retired or dead.
|
| And they haven't made a new one.
|
| So no, NASA hasn't had a human rated lunar lander for a
| very long time.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| The fact that those rockets are 50 years old makes no
| difference. It worked then, why wouldn't it work now?
|
| You don't see 50 years old weapon systems stop working.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > You don't see 50 years old weapon systems stop working.
|
| You mean simple firearms, that were carefully cleaned,
| prep'ed, and packed for long-term storage? Or something
| at least _vaguely_ comparable to a moon rocket in size
| and complexity, like a B-52?
|
| Talk to an old Air Force guy, who knows the maintenance
| routines for the older warbirds, and how many issues they
| have with "manufacturer went out of business" spare
| parts, etc.
| mavhc wrote:
| The airforce is taking apart their older planes to create
| digital versions of them so they can make new parts
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| US Navi Ohio Nuclear submarine is almost 50 years old:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Ohio_(SSGN-726)
|
| If people can maintain underwater nuclear-powered coffins
| armed with nukes for 50 years, why can't they maintain a
| (then) functional space rocket?
|
| It's not like NASA is missing fuel, or that hull is
| damaged, or that engine is not working. At least, these
| things shouldn't happen if they put half effort into
| maintaining it.
| shkkmo wrote:
| You realize that submarine was only meant to last 20
| years and instead they spent 3 years rebuilding it to
| serve a different role? It is also closer to 40 years
| than 50 and is decades younger than the rockets in
| question. I'd also hazard that the lifetime maintenance
| costs of that submarine far dwarf it's initial
| construction costs.
|
| Part of the reason why the SLS took so long and cost so
| much is because they DID try to re-use all the old
| resources and technology rather than building from
| scratch.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Your "can maintain" for those old submarines amounts to
| "can maintain something which was originally designed to
| last for several decades, with a high-trained full-time
| crew, regular major maintenance, and a supply chain for
| spare parts...and all the billions of dollars which those
| non-trivial details cost".
|
| Vs. those old rockets were _designed_ to be one-shot
| expendable stuff. Plenty of them are on public display at
| museums - you could ask the museum staff about how many
| $$$ /year they have available in their budgets, to keep
| the rockets in operational condition. (Hint: $0.)
|
| Or, you might want to check out the YouTube channel for
| the USS New Jersey (historic WWII battleship, now a
| museum) -
|
| https://www.youtube.com/battleshipnewjersey
|
| - where their curator often talks in gritty detail about
| vast differences between "operational warship" and "keep
| afloat and open as a museum". Note that the something-
| million dollars which they are currently trying to
| fundraise - for some bare-minimum drydock maintenance -
| is small potatoes compared to the cost of a single new
| F-35 fighter.
| nicky0 wrote:
| They _chose_ not to maintain it, instead to focus on the
| Shuttle.
|
| I'm sure if the political will had been there to maintain
| the Saturn V/Apollo capability, they could have.
| krisoft wrote:
| > If people can maintain underwater nuclear-powered
| coffins armed with nukes for 50 years, why can't they
| maintain a (then) functional space rocket?
|
| Can? Sure you can. Absolutely.
|
| Did they? No. There was no mandate, no requirement, no
| project, no budget.
|
| Put that Ohio submarine into a dry dock, send everyone
| home. Tell them to find something new to do because the
| project has ended. Do you think you will be able to re-
| launch submarine in a year later if you changed your
| mind? How about ten years later? How about 51 years
| later? I wouldn't hold my breath.
|
| The best way to maintain a capability is by regularly
| exercising it. The Ohio did that every year constantly,
| the Apollo program did not.
| gary_0 wrote:
| NASA would have to pull out the Saturn V blueprints and
| rebuild the manufacturing process from scratch. They
| would have to start hiring from 0 and reacquire all the
| institutional knowledge they lost over the past 50 years.
| They would have a real problem with supply chains: those
| are all gone, the tooling scrapped, the workers retired,
| and the business sectors offshored. They would have to
| redo all the testing so the process could reliably
| produce a working rocket from the designs. And the
| designs themselves are based on obsolete techniques,
| materials, and components.
|
| Even if it was possible, there would be no point: the
| blueprints weren't the hard part, and the world has
| changed since they were drawn up.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| The USA has lost the technology for putting people on the
| moon.
|
| Records were not kept, knowledge died with the engineers
| who built it. Materials are no longer available, some of
| the technology has not been built in 50 years. In the end,
| redeveloping the stack is much cheaper than using the old
| rockets. Which is exactly what they are doing - and with
| every new development comes the risk you are chasing the
| wrong rabbit and won't, in the end, end up at your target.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| Sorry, but it is hard for me to accept that explanation.
| You don't simply "lose" such technology or don't make a
| plan B in case it fails to work for some strange reason.
|
| More plausable explanation, however, is that it simply
| did not exist at all and they faked everything.
| Unroasted6154 wrote:
| You lose people, expertise and organizational structure.
| Those are more important than the "plans of the rocket".
| Not to mention, would nowadays engineers be able to work
| from the methods of back then? A lot of stuff would be
| faster to redesign from scratch (all the software and
| electronics for sure).
|
| NASA a radically changed it's focus an functions since
| the space race. Suppliers have changed too.
|
| They could do it again with enough funds and time, but it
| will take many years.
| theonlybutlet wrote:
| Ofcourse we could make it in theory, but practically
| that's not the case. You don't just build a Saturn rocket
| and moonlander in your own factory (inhouse) one day.
| There is a massive supply chain. The development cost
| percentage points of US GDP. There were thousands of
| people involved. There also wasn't the internet. x
| factory responsibile for making component y, would call
| their supplier and buy an off the shelf component. Those
| suppliers no longer manufacture those components, why? No
| demand, probably obsolete etc. It's like trying to go buy
| a vacuum tube now when you could simply use a transistor.
| Imagine the cost of setting up a factory just to
| manufacturer vacuum tubes that have no other use. There's
| plenty suppliers that wouldn't have documented their
| manufacturing processes either, with the knowledge being
| handed down to whoever is doing the job.
|
| Orchestrating a plan to keep millions in the dark and
| ensuring thousands, upon thousands of people keep a
| secret to their deathbeds is a lot less plausible.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| "You don't just build a Saturn rocket and moonlander in
| your own factory (inhouse) one day. There is a massive
| supply chain"
|
| You miss the point. They used those rockets multiple
| times to go to the Moon, it's not like it was "do once
| and forget" situation.
|
| How could they simply forget things after doing it for so
| many times? You need extreme reliability and know-how to
| do those things consistantly over the span of a decade.
|
| There must have been a knowledge transfer for such an
| important feet of engineering. If not, then the whole
| thing is not really believable. Sorry.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Knowledge transfer requires practice. They haven't built
| one for 50 years, so there hasn't been knowledge
| transfer.
| LorenDB wrote:
| I'm sure that NASA has all the blueprints filed away
| somewhere, but the reason we don't have a Saturn V
| factory running today is not because NASA forgot how to
| make them. Instead, it's because of cost. Between the
| Apollo 13 disaster, the Vietnam War, and maybe some other
| factors, public interest and approval of continued Moon
| exploration wanted, and Congress revoked the planned
| funding for Apollo 18 through 20, opting instead to focus
| on programs like the Space Shuttle.
|
| Interestingly enough, the leftover Saturn V hardware was
| put to good use by launching Skylab missions and the
| Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, both of which turned out to be
| valuable steps in the US space program. So as much as it
| pains me to say, it may have been a good thing that the
| last three moon missions were canceled.
| theonlybutlet wrote:
| The last moon landing was 1972. That's 51 years ago. They
| were all part of the same Saturn programme, production
| actually ceased 4 years earlier in 1968. At the time it
| was the most complex machine ever built.
| yourusername wrote:
| >There must have been a knowledge transfer for such an
| important feet of engineering.
|
| You've never heard of the situation where no one knows
| how a business critical piece of software works? "Bob
| wrote it 20 years ago but he died last year". This kind
| of stuff happens all the time in the real world. If no
| one is paying for that knowledge and supply chain to be
| maintained it will atrophy and dissapear. That's why the
| US army is still buying tanks even though they have
| thousands in storage, they need a company to maintain the
| supply chain and institutional knowledge to build tanks.
| Are you imagining generations of engineers being tasked
| with knowing how to build a rocket with 1960's technology
| with parts from suppliers that no longer exist despite no
| one having any intention to ever buy such a rocket again
| and no one paying for the maintenance of that ability?
| panick21_ wrote:
| Because money. Why is this hard to understand?
|
| NASA didn't have the budget to continue to operate Saturn
| V and also build Shuttle.
|
| The president and NASA leadership wanted Shuttle. So the
| last Saturn V were put into storage.
|
| To claim they don't exist is stupid, you can go see them:
|
| https://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?max_w=800&id=NASM-
| A19...
|
| Yes, lots of those design top documents still exist. But
| not every supplier and sub-sub-sub supplier did the same
| thing. Most of those companies don't exist anymore or
| were bought and bought again.
|
| NASA never wanted to build a Saturn V again. So they
| archived all the plans.
|
| You seem to believe that they put some kind of plan in
| place to keep the Saturn V so they could bust them out
| again. This is simply not the case. As far as they were
| concern Saturn V was over and Shuttle was the future.
| Archiving everything was the only thing they did.
|
| Of course we could do a huge effort and recreate the
| Saturn V program. And the lots of documentation that
| exist would help. But anybody who has recreated old
| things, knows that plans are not perfect. Doing something
| like that would simply not be worth.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Kinda like America's WWII battleships didn't really exist
| - it was all faked - because the U.S. no longer has the
| industrial capacity to actually build battleships?
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| There are now destroyers, frigates and aircraft carries
| that do the same job more efficiently.
|
| I can't really say how we now have a better rocket that
| can send people to the Moon.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Neither destroyers, frigates or aircraft carriers do what
| a battleship did - delivering projectiles the size of a
| human some 15 kilometres away in a ballistic arch with
| some precision.
|
| We do have rocketry that is a lot more advanced than the
| Saturn V ever was - but it simply cannot, and does not do
| what the Saturn V did.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > ...that do the same job more efficiently.
|
| I could argue details - but notice that, after
| battleships were no longer so important, it _remained_ a
| critical priority for the U.S. Navy to be the "Reigning
| Superpower" on the world's oceans:
|
| https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-
| reading...
|
| Vs. how interested was the U.S. Gov't in retaining "can
| go to the moon" capabilities after Apollo 17 (in Dec'72)?
| Can you name any post-Apollo, pre-2000 manned-moon-
| mission NASA programs which received serious funding?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| It's a completely acceptable explanation. Much more so
| than "it didn't exist at all" which requires enemies with
| thousands of nukes pointed at each other to conspire for
| 50+ years.
|
| The issues are pretty straightforward, when the SaturnV
| and lunar lander were being built, almost all of the
| design was done by hand, all of the parts were made by
| hand and the engineers made all sorts of little
| undocumented adjustments to the designs in the process.
|
| On top of that, the flight computers of the era were
| extremely primitive, large and heavy, and the design was
| done with this in mind.
|
| Finally, NASA's safety standards were much more lax at
| the time. Saturn V would be considered way too dangerous
| to fly crew on nowadays.
|
| Modern engineering methods are just too different to just
| recreate a Saturn V without effectively redesigning it
| from scratch, at which point it might as well be a much
| more capable vehicle like Starship.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| "Modern engineering methods are just too different to
| just recreate a Saturn V without effectively redesigning
| it from scratch, at which point it might as well be a
| much more capable vehicle like Starship."
|
| I'm all for it, and root for SpaceX and Musk to make it
| happen.
|
| What I'm saying all this time on this thread is
| following:
|
| "Man never went to the Moon before. Artemis will
| hopefully be the first. If man has been to the Moon
| _multiple times using the same aging technology_ over 50
| years ago, then it shouldn 't be an issue to go there
| now. In fact, it should be much easier and cheaper, as
| the computers are 1000x more powerful nowadays, and we
| still have fuel/energy sources that were used then."
|
| Thank you for the discussion.
| MRtecno98 wrote:
| Astronomers today measure the distance between Earth and
| the Moon by shining a laser beam towards it and measuring
| the time it takes to come back.
|
| Now, guess why the beam actually comes back instead of
| getting absorbed by the lunar surface? Because Apollo 11
| left a mirror there half a century ago, it still works
|
| There are people alive, today, that can prove to you that
| we went to the moon just by shooting a laser beam in the
| sky, so yes, we did go to the moon.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| I used to think that if it were only slightly off, the
| return beam might end up intersecting the Earth at
| somewhere inconvenient, or even missing it entirely. Even
| more impressively, it took only five minutes to deploy,
| which is faster than most bathroom mirrors are installed
| :)
|
| The reason why this isn't a problem is that the device
| wasn't 'just' a mirror, but rather a retroreflector. This
| reflects any light back at its source, regardless of
| which direction the light came from.
|
| If you were really lost in deep space, perhaps you could
| flash a very bright light (not a laser) momentarily, then
| look for the return flash from the retroreflector moments
| later - or at least, hopefully that soon, otherwise you
| are very far away indeed! A few strategically-placed
| retroreflectors around the solar system could make an
| effective triangulation-based location tracker. I wonder
| if this already exists in some form.
| ordu wrote:
| Resorting to a conspiracy to explain facts you miss the
| opportunity to construct more precise mental model of
| engineering. And of economy of these big achievements.
|
| It works this way with any conspiracy. It is you mental
| model, it is your decision, but it is little sad to watch
| people choosing ignorance over knowledge.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Again, you've glossed over the fact that if the US had
| never gone to the Moon, the Soviets would've been making
| it very clear. They obviously had good reason to closely
| monitor the landings so they could catch the US in any
| lies and embarrass them. The landings being faked
| requires a conspiracy to have lasted all this time,
| without ever being written down, between countries that
| were one serious misunderstanding away from ending human
| civilization.
|
| As for cost and 'easier', the Artemis lander programs are
| cheaper than what Apollo cost, and they have far higher
| requirements than just being the bare minimum to keep 3
| carefully selected specimens of humanity alive for a few
| days. Hell, Starship is supposed to have an entire
| infirmary. That is to say that it would indeed be a lot
| easier if we were just aiming to land a few people in a
| can for a few days and were completely willing to risk
| their potential inability to return. We've made the
| requirements much harder, so the project is appropriately
| harder.
| panick21_ wrote:
| That such an ignornat thing to say.
|
| Do you think we could built an exact replica of the Model
| T and its manufacturing line? We could build something
| kind of like it, but it would require a lot of
| engineering.
|
| The type of plastic and cloth used is likely not
| manufactured anymore. The processes used and tools used
| don't exist anymore in the exact same way they did then.
| And the people trained to build those tools and operate
| them don't exist anymore.
|
| The idea that all technology once built can just be
| recreated without any issue is just complete nonsense.
|
| Do you not know anything about how technology works?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| If the USA lost the technology then it's seemingly not
| important to anyone outside of the flag bragging rights.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| Guess the Moon landing then was just a stunt for putting
| the damn flag there.
|
| Mission accomplished boys, let's pretend that Moon
| doesn't exist for 50+ years. /s
|
| For the record, I do want Artemis to succeed.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Yes, they lost the technology. The last Apollo mission was
| over 50 years ago, the people who achieved it are retired
| or dead, and engineering drawings alone are not enough to
| build a new Saturn V (or the landers, suits, etc). Not to
| mention all of that is outdated technology by now.
|
| NASA is now building the SLS, a modern(ish) heavy lift
| rocket meant for moon missions, among other things. But for
| a couple decades in between there was this obsession with
| the Space Shuttle as the primary launch platform, and the
| Space Shuttle wasn't of much use beyond low earth orbit.
| And with the Soviets focusing on space stations after the
| Apollo landings there wasn't any competitive aspect to
| going further either.
|
| There were obviously lots of unmanned missions to the moon
| and other places in the solar system, but manned activity
| was limited to low-earth orbit for the last 50 years, so
| the capability to go further withered.
| calderknight wrote:
| The main component missing for an American crewed lunar
| landing is a lunar lander, which is planned to be a
| version of the Starship
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS
| dotnet00 wrote:
| And spacesuits, NASA has been impressively ineffective at
| getting any kind of new spacesuit designs going, they're
| still just cycling between the leftovers from the
| shuttle.
| calderknight wrote:
| Apparently, they can't do their lunar spacesuits until
| they do their lander
|
| > What's more, delays to Starship have knock-on effects
| because the spacesuit contractor needs to know how the
| suits will interface with the spacecraft, and simulators
| need to be built for astronauts to learn its systems.
|
| From https://web.archive.org/web/20230809230628/https://w
| ww.chann...
| chpatrick wrote:
| According to that article the astronauts would go to
| orbit in an SLS then get into the Starship lander in
| orbit. Is that just for political reasons so there's some
| point to the SLS?
| yoz-y wrote:
| Afaik starship doesn't have and will not have an abort
| system. Lacking that, NASA will never put humans in it
| for takeoff from Earth.
| chpatrick wrote:
| SpaceX already takes people to the ISS though right?
| chriswarbo wrote:
| Yes, on Falcon 9/Dragon. That differs from Starship
| w.r.t. human-rating in a few ways:
|
| - Dragon can do an emergency abort, by (a) accelerating
| away from the booster and (b) parachuting down to a soft-
| landing. Starship's upper stage is so massive that such
| acceleration and soft-landing seem out of reach (ideally
| an emergency-fallback-everything-has-gone-wrong mode
| shouldn't rely on tricky maneuvers like their landing
| flip!). There may be ways around that, e.g. using an
| ejectable module, but it would all need designing,
| building, testing, validating, etc.
|
| - Falcon 9 needed to prove its reliability by performing
| many successful uncrewed missions. Starship will need to
| take the same approach, but hasn't managed any yet ;)
|
| - SpaceX had to stop making changes/improvements to
| Falcon 9, since NASA would reset the successful-mission-
| count back to zero after major changes. SpaceX was
| willing to do that, since they had another rocket to
| focus on (Starship). Also, it helped that Falcon 9 had
| already exceeded their expectations by the "Block 5"
| design (which is why Falcon Heavy hasn't seen much use;
| Falcon 9 is very capable on its own!). Even when Starship
| is reliably launching, it will likely undergo design
| changes for a while.
|
| - Getting Starship to the Moon will need in-orbit
| refuelling. That's untested, and more dangerous than
| docking and crew transfer (which is now routine), so it
| makes sense to launch the crew separately and transfer
| them to an already-refuelled Starship. This doesn't add
| much complexity, since refuelling requires multiple
| launches, orbital rendezvous and docking anyway. The
| choice of crew launcher is then arbitrary: SLS, Falcon 9,
| Soyuz, Starship, etc.
|
| (Earth) launch and landing will be the hardest parts to
| get crew-rated, if they ever are. Perhaps the only human-
| rated approaches will be smaller, safer systems like
| Soyuz (or some modern replacement on that scale), with
| immediate transfer to a Starship or space station once
| orbital. Given its cargo lifting capacity, and station-
| sized living space, that would still be a great
| improvement over today (although maybe not enough to pay
| back SpaceX's costs)
| chpatrick wrote:
| I mean why don't the astronauts go to Starship in orbit
| on a Falcon 9 instead of the very expensive SLS? Just
| because it's a sunk cost?
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Basically just because it's politically embarrassing that
| the SLS doesn't really make sense in the current launch
| environment.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Ironically, Starship has the same problem Shuttle has,
| basically limiting it on its own to LEO. The payload
| stage is too big and heavy.
|
| The solution to get Starship and Shuttle beyond LEO is
| the same: either use up the fuel required for landing and
| expending the vehicle or orbital refueling.
|
| The difference is that Starship is so cheap it makes both
| of those options feasible. Shuttle's reusability was
| supposed to make it cheap, but it ended up costing $1.5
| billion per flight.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Orbital refueling is a huge game changer. Interestingly,
| a formerly important politician (Senator Richard Shelby)
| allegedly hated the concept:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/rocket-scientist-
| say...
|
| There is another thing sets apart Starship from other
| launch systems: relatively wide
| availability/manufacturability of its fuel outside of
| Earth. You won't find kerosene or hypergols on Mars or
| Ganymedes, but methane can be produced fairly
| straightforwardly there.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Many other rockets work on hydrogen, which is far easier
| to synthesize than methane.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Not easier to handle, though. Keeping methane in a tank
| or moving it across some distance is fairly
| straightforward, as the problems regarding natural gas
| storage and transportation were solved a long time ago.
|
| Hydrogen is notoriously tricky to even keep in one place,
| much less pipe across some distance.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > The difference is that Starship is so cheap it makes
| both of those options feasible. Shuttle's reusability was
| supposed to make it cheap, but it ended up costing $1.5
| billion per flight.
|
| But that's exactly what people believed about the space
| shuttle before it launched as well. Let's wait to see
| Starship actually work before predicting it will be
| enormously cheap. As it stands, that cheapness is
| entirely predicated on a completely unrealistic level of
| reusability (multiple launches per day with the same
| rocket, when even Falcon 9 requires weeks or months
| between launches of the same rocket).
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| You don't have to take Elon's word to know that it'll be
| cheap. It's being built in the open air under dozens of
| cameras streaming 24/7 on Youtube. Calculating the time &
| materials cost for Starship is straightforward.
| gulikoza wrote:
| The problem is not the same...Shuttle's main engines were
| dead in orbit after jettisoning the main tank. Only OMS
| thrusters were working and it landed unpowered, gliding
| to the surface (more like a controlled crash). It would
| never make it to orbit with the main tank attached. There
| was no possible way to fuel it, no engines and OMS was
| not usable beyond LEO.
|
| You have full powered engines in orbit on Starship,
| "just" need to fuel them :)
| arcbyte wrote:
| It's more like we've lost the engineering. The technology
| is all still there but now greatly improved. From welding
| techniques to computer components the whole exercise in
| in manufacturing would be a huge undertaking to rebuild
| because we aren't manufacturing any of those old
| technologies anymore so that would be a problem. Or you
| have the problem of re-engineering the whole rocket with
| modern components and manufacturing techniques.
|
| We can build medieval castles all day long with concrete
| and steel, but if you want an actual stone medieval
| castle, we don't know how to do it.
| lupusreal wrote:
| The Saturn V rockets were very risky, NASA got extremely
| lucky with them the first time but no longer have the
| same tolerance for risk. Even if they still had Saturn V
| rockets ready to fly today in their inventory, it would
| not be an acceptable option today.
| riversflow wrote:
| I don't even think we've lost the engineering. We've lost
| the risk tolerance. Apollo was a risky program, people
| dying was considered acceptable. The US just doesn't work
| like that any more.
| naikrovek wrote:
| > The US just doesn't work like that any more.
|
| Oh yes we do.
| riversflow wrote:
| No, we don't. Let me introduce you to OSHA and their
| buddy worker's comp insurance.
|
| I ran an industrial facility that had been in operation
| since the 40's, safety used to not even be a concern. If
| it operated in 2000 the way it did in 1950's, or even in
| the early 80's, they'd be out of business.
| nycdotnet wrote:
| I have a hard time getting a React project from a few years
| ago to `npm install`.
| naikrovek wrote:
| technology and knowledge quickly deteriorate if they aren't
| actively kept alive. Remember, that this knowledge must be
| in human minds, and be in the forefront of those minds
| continually, for the technology to be up to speed enough
| for it to be collaborated on and to progress or to be
| employed.
|
| no group of people today, outside of a few enthusiast
| amateurs (very few), know much about how the Apollo program
| worked in enough detail to resurrect that technology and
| infrastructure.
|
| We can't return to the moon today. That's why we're
| building up a new moon program. We can't just pick up where
| we left off.
| gear54rus wrote:
| Why would China want to put a woman on the moon? am I missing
| something?
| panick21_ wrote:
| Same reason Russia launched the first woman. So they can
| say they did it before the US.
|
| China in general want to go to the moon.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Tereshkova was one of the first people in space in the
| time when nothing was clear about long-term effects on
| human body. The decision to send a female cosmonaut came
| from Vladimir Yazdovsky, the pioneer of biomedicine in
| spaceflight, not from the party cogs or someone else.
| calderknight wrote:
| Why not? The Chinese Moon exploration programme is called
| "Chang'e" after their Moon goddess (who flew to the Moon).
| And Mao said that "Women hold up half the sky". And Xi
| Jinping has been pushing for female independence and
| leadership in science.
|
| And the Chinese would get to beat the Americans at the
| American's own stated goal. America's programme is called
| the Artemis Program - Artemis being Apollo's sister - and
| the programme's first goal is to put a female and a person
| of colour on the Moon ASAP.
|
| It would be a clear-cut victory for China over the USA, all
| the while being perfectly in keeping with China's socialist
| beliefs and past activities.
|
| And China has several competent female astronauts (Wang
| Yaping and Liu Yang are experienced).
|
| So, am I missing something?
| gear54rus wrote:
| What you're missing is scientific reason for that. From
| scientific point of view we already sent the woman to
| space (just to test if there are any unexpected effects).
|
| Sending a woman (or a person of color for that matter) to
| the moon has no scientific benefits unless the mission is
| framed as building a long-term colony there (where both
| men and women could participate) for example.
|
| You enumerated several political reasons but no
| scientific ones as I understand. Hence my question.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Why don't you think the political reasons are enough?
| Political reasons were why the US did it originally
| right?
| gear54rus wrote:
| Maybe political is not the correct word. The US did it to
| prevent existential threat from Russians (this is my
| understanding) and I don't see one here.
| itishappy wrote:
| What existential threat was addressed by sending humans
| into space?
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Putting humans into space is a roundabout way of letting
| people know you can put anything you want into space.
| That is, it's a demonstration of superior technology,
| which usually means superior military capabilities. In
| the context of the Cold War, it is reasonable to assume
| that both the USA and USSR feared that the other might
| become overconfident, underestimate their potential
| enemy's defence and make a first strike.
|
| Therefore, the logic goes, each side needed to frequently
| show off their advanced technology whilst avoiding
| showing any secrets: ostensibly civilian space
| exploration serves that purpose rather well.
| p_j_w wrote:
| Putting people into space didn't stop the Russians from
| doing anything that was an existential threat to us,
| though, did it?
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Possibly it did: the Russians might have thought that
| they were sufficiently ahead of the USA to start a war
| and survive it. Perhaps, in a flare-up of nationalistic
| sentiment combined with a bit of political instability at
| home, the risk of mutually assured destruction wouldn't
| have seemed too high. In this hypothetical scenario,
| seeing pictures of American spacecraft landing on the
| moon, astronauts doing spacewalks before making safe re-
| entry at supersonic speeds might have made the notion of
| surviving a war seem untenable, and would have put the
| Russians off the idea of a first-strike.
|
| I've read a similar argument for spying - that countries
| begrudgingly want a certain amount of espionage to take
| place in peacetime. This is because it's better for
| everyone to know the extent of each other's military
| capabilities than to accidentally start an arms race out
| of a misplaced belief that their rivals are suddenly
| increasing development of weapons.
|
| I was born in the post-USSR world, and am also British
| rather than American, so perhaps take my perception of
| the Cold War with a pinch of salt. :)
| p_j_w wrote:
| The idea that seeing the effects of a nuclear weapon
| wouldn't be enough to deter a war but seeing a man
| walking on the moon would is absurd. Is there any
| evidence for it?
| itishappy wrote:
| So... politics?
| dahfizz wrote:
| The general US population considered Sputnik to be an
| existential threat. The original space race had all the
| impetus of a (cold) war effort.
|
| China putting a woman on the moon would be a little
| embarrassing to the US, but people would forget about it
| in a week or two. It wouldn't prove China's technological
| superiority, just some vague sense of moral superiority.
| And there are a lot cheaper ways to send that message.
| calderknight wrote:
| Why are you asking about a scientific reason?
| mlrtime wrote:
| I think the question may be:
|
| What significant difference does it make if we put a
| woman (or woman of color) on the moon first vs putting
| another white man on the moon. [with modern technology].
|
| I could think of a few positive reasons to do this, but
| it shouldn't be the main driving force of competition.
| nicky0 wrote:
| No scientific difference. It's political. A president can
| trumpet it as a great achievement for humanity. Helps
| with getting funding & public support, yada yada.
| nurple wrote:
| It feels like the value in political virtue signaling is
| quite past its peak, in fact I think there's something of
| a negative value to it in a lot of important circles.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The only scientific reason for sending humans to space is
| to develop better technology for life support on longer
| missions. At this point automated probes can accomplish
| most other scientific purposes better. So yes, you send
| people with different physiological characteristics to
| further that mission. If you're sending people for non-
| scientific reasons than you do it to be first.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Putting the first man or person on the moon was a
| technical achievement. Putting a person of another
| identity is not a technical achievement.
|
| If the goal is "but X can do Y too" then there are
| already women astronauts so goal achieved I guess.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| The moonshot was a technical achievement with a political
| goal. Putting a person on the moon in the next decade
| will also be a (different) technical achievement with a
| political goal.
|
| 70% of the US is either female, POC, or both. Enticing
| that mind bogglingly huge demographic into STEM has
| massive utility for this country. Evidence shows that
| people aspire more easily to be like people they
| resemble, and the moonshot that inspired "Whitey On The
| Moon" didn't do that job well.
|
| What would you pay to add 10 million more engineers and
| scientists to the trajectory of this nation over the next
| couple decades?
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Lots of vote thrash but no replies. I invite you to
| examine whether you are reacting to keywords or to
| concepts, and if the latter, to chime in with what you've
| found, I'm legitimately interested.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| An offworld base would need the financial backing of nation
| states. But from a purely business side of things, does this
| open up any new possibilities?
|
| I'm guessing Starlink will get less expensive to operate - but
| will it be to the point it'll displace cell towers?
|
| Earth observations satellites would be cheaper to put up... so
| maybe we'll get a few more than before. But are there any real
| game changers?
| vvillena wrote:
| The previous limiting factors for launching stuff off-world
| were weight and size. Such constraints were tackled by old
| innovations like assembling space stations using modules
| launched separately, or more recently, with inflatable
| modules like BEAM (sadly not in development anymore).
|
| With Starship, most of this goes away. It becomes possible to
| launch bigger, heavier (that is, cheaper) stuff to space.
| Still high-tech stuff, for sure, but engineers will be able
| to make more tradeoffs, because there won't be a need to
| optimize everything to be small and light.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| Okay, I get the margins get more cushy. But one could see
| it being something like space launch getting 10x cheaper
| and that maybe translates into 3x demand for satellites.
| The first earth observatory was worth an astronomical
| amount of money, but the hundredth or thousandth is far
| down the tail of diminishing returns.
|
| I just really wonder how much money can they make off of
| all of this even in the best case scenario. There isn't an
| infinite demand for putting things up into space.
|
| There are demand inflection points. If it's so cheap you
| can go up for your birthday, or can do transatlantic
| flights, then it's a bit different - but nobody is talking
| about it ever getting THAT cheap. If Starlinks starts
| making all telecom providers obsolete then that'd also
| present something radically different and a huge amount of
| revenue. But I don't think they're able to do that either
|
| I feel the primary reason people stopped caring about space
| after Apollo is because there are simply insufficient
| economic incentives.
|
| The list of things you can do is short.. Telecom,
| Telescopes looking down, tourism, space mining
|
| Everything else is on taxpayer dollar
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > If it's so cheap you can go up for your birthday, or
| can do transatlantic flights, then it's a bit different -
| but nobody is talking about it ever getting THAT cheap
|
| Actually, Shotwell has. She has speculated that they
| could eventually do a trans-Pacific hop for the price of
| a first class plane ticket.
| lupusreal wrote:
| That will never work. You'll spend more time traveling to
| and from the remote launch facilities than you would
| flying conventionally from a nearby international
| airport. Destinations would also be severely limited by
| technology export laws; maybe it could be arranged for a
| handful of friendly nations / strategies allies like
| Japan or Australia, but most of the world would be
| scratched off the list.
|
| When Shotwell and Musk talk about stuff like that or Mars
| colonies, they're hyping the company to attract more
| talent. If you loom at what they're actually building,
| it's all satellite launchers.
| imtringued wrote:
| Someone downvoted you because you have hit a nerve. Don't
| mind those people.
| chpatrick wrote:
| I don't know, Dallas to Sydney is a 17 hour flight now.
| If it takes 30 minutes on a rocket from Texas you have 16
| hours to do everything else and you'll still get there
| faster.
| antonvs wrote:
| If that was just intended to forecast costs, then it's a
| good analogy. But I thought SpaceX went further than
| that. This Adam Something video provides some amusing
| coverage of the idea:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQUiIdre-MI
| imtringued wrote:
| I don't know what to tell you but that is basically the
| equivalent of a kickstarter scam.
| andrepd wrote:
| This whole thread is wild.
| andrepd wrote:
| > Person who sells snake oil speculates that snake oil
| cures cancer.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > The list of things you can do is short.. Telecom,
| Telescopes looking down, tourism, space mining
|
| The first three have provided quite a bit of launch
| demand. Nation funded human space flight has been in
| decline since Apollo but commercial launch demand has
| been grown significantly.
|
| The last two have yet to be tapped but their combined
| potential have the ability to create unprecedentedly high
| levels of demand.
| detourdog wrote:
| I'm no expert but I think Rome was always growing but
| never achieved ultimate profitability. Yesterday I was
| considering how the Italian renaissance was fueled by the
| materials left over from Roman overbuilding. The price
| Rome originally paid in labor was an enormous savings to
| the renaissance builders.
|
| I don't see how space can be profitable but societies
| must grow.
| pmontra wrote:
| How do you define profitability for a entity like Rome or
| its current equivalents, let's say the USA, China and
| maybe Russia?
|
| As Italian, we're still profiting from what the Romans
| built and from their general hegemony.
| airstrike wrote:
| There's always an element of time to money, so your
| argument and the parent's don't contradict in that the
| romans might have not been profitable in the near term
| yet what they created was very profitable in the long
| term
| pixl97 wrote:
| > how space can be profitable
|
| Figuring out how to get large nearly pure metallic
| asteroids in earth orbit would go a long way in figuring
| out that profitability.
| api wrote:
| If you want to build spaceships to fly around the solar
| system, being light still matters a lot and inflatable
| modules are a great idea.
|
| That's because your constraint is delta-V which is
| expressed in terms of the mass you are moving around. More
| mass requires more propellant and energy... which means
| more mass requires more mass.
| godshatter wrote:
| If they use Starship to bootstrap mining, refining, and
| manufacturing in space, then this ceases to become a
| problem. At that point we're talking about how much cargo
| Starship can move, not how much infrastructure.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > Such constraints were tackled by old innovations like
| assembling space stations using modules launched
| separately, or more recently, with inflatable modules like
| BEAM (sadly not in development anymore).
|
| Another good example is JWST, which required an elaborate
| (and therefore risky) "unfolding" process. The costs of
| such approaches seem somewhat self-reinforcing: a failure
| would be very costly, so it's worth spending more on
| validation and testing; that extra expense would make a
| failure even more costly, justifying even more spending on
| testing! (In that sense it's similar to the tyranny of the
| rocket equation: having to carry more propellant in order
| to propel that extra propellant!)
| hajola wrote:
| There are manufacturing processes that benefit from
| microgravity (e.g. growing protein crystals for the pharma
| industry, producing semiconductors, etc).
|
| Beyond that it would be a significant boon for science.
| seper8 wrote:
| Semiconductors and microgravity, can you elaborate on what
| part of the production process would be improved?
| sushibowl wrote:
| There's a paper on the subject here:
| https://osf.io/d6ar4/
|
| Seems like the primary benefit comes to silicon wafer
| manufacturing. Growing pure silicon crystal is much
| easier to do in a microgravity, vacuum environment:
|
| > The study reported that for semiconductor crystals
| processed in LEO compared to terrestrial samples, more
| than 80 percent improved in either one or a combination
| of structure, uniformity, reduction of defects, and/or
| electrical and optical properties-and some by orders of
| magnitude
|
| For actual device manufacturing, there are potential
| benefits as well, but this is less well researched area
| (possibly as a result of the difficulty of getting
| advanced IC manufacturing equipment into earth orbit).
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| I do somewhat doubt that the economics would work out.
| Silicon wafers are expensive, but I'm not sure if the
| price is currently higher than that of launching a bunch
| of sand to low earth orbit.
| kiba wrote:
| You wouldn't launch sands to LEO, but the equipment used
| for bootstrapping a mining operation on the moon or
| asteroid.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I think the point is you'd be able to build products in
| space that you cannot build on Earth for any cost
| currently.
| Symmetry wrote:
| You can 3D print organs in space that you can't in Earth,
| there was just a successful trial of printing a knee
| meniscus.
|
| https://www.issnationallab.org/redwire-space-3d-prints-
| menis...
| jjoonathan wrote:
| What fraction of machine time is currently spent pumping
| wafers down to molecular-beam vacuum? What fraction of
| machine mass is dedicated to holding that vacuum?
| Vibration isolation would also be much easier. Not sure
| if these are enough to matter, let alone enough to
| justify a rocket, but maybe the math can be made to work.
| davedx wrote:
| > An offworld base would need the financial backing of nation
| states.
|
| It really depends on what we mean by "offworld base". There
| is extensive literature on how this might be done "on a
| shoestring budget". Start here:
| https://www.marssociety.org/concepts/mars-direct/
| tim333 wrote:
| You could cut costs a lot if you used robots rather than
| humans to build things. I'm not sure how the Tesla bot is
| coming along but you never know.
| loceng wrote:
| I believe an idea that circulated early on in the media in
| regards to SpaceX, whether rumour or real, is that Musk was
| planning to basically do a reality TV-like show - and be able
| to fund the colony on Mars through that; who on Earth
| wouldn't want to watch the first humans land on Mars, live on
| Mars - and what "influencers" might volunteer to be some of
| the first to "report on" the experience, as entertainment -
| for better or worse?
|
| He's also more recently said the revenues from Starlink,
| aiming to be at least $5+ billion monthly recurring revenue,
| will fund his Mars colony.
|
| The reality is though he's now tapped into accessing the full
| abundance of the universe, and he's at least 1-2 decades
| ahead of everyone else, in part due to the synergy of his
| various projects: Starlink, Boring Company, Tesla, etc - all
| are technology that he'll need for Mars - so he can funnel
| revenues/sales back into those companies]; and Musk
| understands exponentials of scaled paths, and so him being
| 1-2 decades ahead, with the synergy of the multiple companies
| he owns/controls, every year he has the chance to leapfrog
| ahead another decade of any other competition.
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| If we diverted 10% of the DoD budget, we could launch 800,000
| tons, about 5,300 starships, per year.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| What about the cost of the actual cargo? I don't think Moon
| base infrastructure is cheap.
| ryandvm wrote:
| Hard to fathom the damage to society that Elon could do if
| we funnel 10% of our defense budget through his companies.
| eagerpace wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
| brandonagr2 wrote:
| Accelerating the transition to sustainable energy and
| expanding access to space is damaging to society how
| exactly?
| Const-me wrote:
| Musk is collaborating with fascists. Here's an example:
| https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-speak-russian-
| conference-17...
| marcusverus wrote:
| Attending a conference in Russia is collaborating with
| fascists? This comment is hysterical in every sense of
| the word.
| Const-me wrote:
| > Attending a conference in Russia is collaborating with
| fascists?
|
| There's no private business in Russia, almost all economy
| is state owned in practice. That particular conference is
| organized by Sberbank.
|
| By speaking at the conference, Musk is directly
| collaborating with Russian government.
| ryandvm wrote:
| I don't want to be rude, but I'd say if you fall for that
| then you're a sucker.
|
| Tell me which of Elon's companies would exist today
| without heavy government subsidies or largesse?
|
| He is a modern day Ross Perot. No more, no less. Maybe he
| wants to make the world a better place - but only if he
| can get extravagantly wealthy on US taxpayer dollars
| doing it.
|
| He's obsessed with Mars because it represents the fattest
| international government contract that ever existed.
| jonplackett wrote:
| And it is basically just a space station alraady. Just put it
| in orbit and... Done
| justapassenger wrote:
| In a same way as a paddle boat is a war ship...
|
| Yeah, it's cool, but there's bazillion things needed for a
| space station. Just a metal tube in the orbit isn't
| sufficient.
| s08148692 wrote:
| Starship has a slightly larger internal volume than the
| ISS, so yeah, a single starship is directly comparable to
| the current largest space station we've got
| justapassenger wrote:
| Yeah, so big metal tube with a volume comparable to as a
| space station.
|
| That doesn't make it comparable to a space station any
| more than arguing here makes people rocket scientist.
| simonh wrote:
| Oh the whole tube is way bigger. Just the pressuriseable
| payload space is bigger than the internal volume of the
| space station. Here's a view of what Starship docked to
| the ISS would look like. Or is it the other way around?
|
| https://www.humanmars.net/2016/10/spacex-its-spaceship-
| docki...
|
| In fact Starship may make space stations obsolete, for
| the same reason we don't have anchored floating research
| stations out on the sea that we go back and forth to
| using little boats. We use research ships instead.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Plus if you wanted to, you could send up a slightly
| customized Starship to serve as the crew portion of the
| station and then send up a Starship-shaped "equipment
| pod" with redundant life support systems, fold-out solar
| panels, etc and dock it to the crew quarters. Just like
| that, you have a rough equivalent to the ISS in two
| launches.
|
| That process could be repeated N times to quickly build a
| station that'd dwarf the ISS.
| justapassenger wrote:
| If we're talking science fiction, then sure, you could do
| anything.
|
| You're talking about metal tube that never reached the
| orbit. You thing you just need "slight" customization to
| make it a space station?
|
| That thing doesn't fly yet, is not human rated, has no
| life support capabilities, has unknown lifetime in space,
| has no propulsion system that would keep it in orbit for
| long period of time and bazillions of other things.
|
| It's just a metal tube at this point. I know it's cool to
| fantasize what it could be, but so far its metal tube
| that doesn't even fly and is hugely behind schedule.
|
| And it's built by guy, who's known for overhyping.
| pixl97 wrote:
| You mean the company that's been launching one rocket
| every 3.5 days this year?
|
| I mean when you have a company that's shipped nothing and
| they are saying big things, that's one thing. But when
| you have a company that's actively launching and reusing
| more rockets than everyone else combined, that's another.
|
| All the things you've listed are previously solved
| problems that have existing solutions. SpaceX isn't even
| inventing anything new here.
|
| >That thing doesn't fly yet
|
| Starship has flown and landed in low altitude flights.
| It's the booster+starship that's in testing now.
| justapassenger wrote:
| How is it relevant that they're launching rockets? How is
| that relevant that competition is behind?
|
| None of that matters when you try to make an argument
| that it's basically a replacement for space station, with
| few simple tweaks.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Basically what I mean is - if it can do what it's meant
| to do - go to Mars - then it's also an easy space station
| replacement.
|
| You can argue if it will get to Mars of you want. But
| silly to argue that anything that can get to Mars with
| human occupants won't be able to also orbit the earth
| with human occupants
| jwells89 wrote:
| Starship and Superheavy have missed their aspirational
| timelines, but that's largely moot when there's nothing
| else with remotely similar capabilities in development.
| Even if it doesn't fly until 2030 (which I think is
| unlikely) it'd still be lightyears ahead of the
| competition thanks to the larger industry deciding it
| didn't particularly care to meaningfully advance past
| late 70s technology until very recently.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Yeah, they're ahead of competition.
|
| But that doesn't mean it's a viable replacement for space
| stations.
|
| Those are 2 totally different topics and it boggles my
| mind how people can write whole science fiction story
| around and argue that it's basically a fact.
| jwells89 wrote:
| It's just casual spitballing of possibilities with
| oversimplification for the sake of brevity. The main
| point is that any number of things can be set atop
| Superheavy as long as it has the general shape of
| Starship and some kind of attached propulsion, and
| there's a lot that can be done with that level of lift
| capacity paired with a volume that large.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I belive anything that can survive a 3 month trip to Mars
| for more people than even the biggest station we got so far
| is a hell of a lot more than a metal tube!
| imtringued wrote:
| Did you forget that you need four refueling launches and a
| depot launch and then the actual launch of the lunar vehicle
| (HLS I think) just to get to the moon? The SLS went to the moon
| in a single launch.
|
| That is a lot of launches for a rocket that doesn't work.
| loneboat wrote:
| You're not technically wrong, but that's like complaining
| about the bad gas mileage a semi truck gets when driving it
| to Starbucks for a coffee. Yes, the gas mileage would be
| better with your Prius. But no, that's not the _real_ use-
| case for this thing.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| First 3 Falcon launches failed. Now Falcon launches at an
| annualized rate of roughly 100 times per year and is the most
| reliable launch vehicle ever made in terms of numbers of
| consecutive successful launches. Let's see how Starship's 4th
| launch goes.
| twh270 wrote:
| This is quite the pessimistic take. If you could wave the old
| magic wand, what would you do? I feel like you'd start by
| shutting down the Starship program completely and putting the
| money/effort elsewhere.
| s08148692 wrote:
| A SLS launch costs about 2 billion dollars. A Starship launch
| is estimated to cost around 40 million. It'll probably end up
| costing more than that, but it would need to cost a whole lot
| more to make the SLS a better option
| tjpnz wrote:
| As a space geek I'm hopeful it will put a trip to space within
| reach of regular folk, not just astronauts, billionaires and
| influencers.
| QwertyPi wrote:
| Whitey On The Moon is just as relevant now as it was in the
| 60s
| nemo44x wrote:
| Why should a community limit their potential and ambition
| because another can't seem to figure it out? This is like
| the crabs in a bucket thing. There's no need to solve every
| social issue before progressing to high tech things.
|
| We would do well to ignore the cynical and misanthropic who
| contribute nothing but complaints about how the capable
| people should serve their personal interests first.
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| Well there is one argument that, in my opinion, is a
| reasonable one.
|
| We should try to improve and solve some of our cultural,
| philosophy, and systemic problems -before- we replicate
| them in isolated pockets of humanity. Otherwise we might
| suffer a replication crisis, where cultural and societal
| advancements are not shared by all.
|
| For example, many dystopian media in the past few decades
| has focused on images of what a hyper capitalistic
| society could look like in space. Where you may have to
| pay for every breath, pay for literally existing in a
| space. A society where every day of your life must be
| profitable and servicing the corporations you have sworn
| fealty, a world where the only purpose for the
| foreseeable future is growth and commerce.
|
| Perhaps having a society that is a bit more communally
| focused, and less self centered. One where the purpose of
| society is to nurture and spread life to where complex
| life does not exist. A society where the primary driver
| isn't growth for growth's sake.
|
| The argument is that if we ignore our cultural and
| philosophical short comings, we could replicate them. Why
| is replicating them bad? Because the stakes are so much
| higher when you have a space fairing race. Do you know
| what a small crew of technically literate people could do
| with the tech a society building a mar colony would
| require? Capture and redirect an asteroid, and if they
| were half intelligent they would know that the best way
| for it to go undetected would be to play the long game
| and give it a long trajectory out of the solar plane
| where most of the solar systems mass is. Or they could
| just as easily purposefully seed a planet's orbit with
| debris to create an intentional Kessler's syndrome. And
| you might say that these are outlandish, but any society
| that lives in space or on an non-terraformed would be a
| society where the base competency would be vastly higher
| due to survival pressures.
|
| So, yes we should keep advancing tech but I think it's an
| obvious deficiency with our silicon valley minded
| leaders. We don't put any time/money/energy into the
| fundamental problems of our society because these newage
| business men have been indoctrinated into the ideology
| that technology is the one and only savior. It's
| important, but you can't build a society or a building
| with only one pillar.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > We don't put any time/money/energy into the fundamental
| problems of our society
|
| We spend untold billions and trillions on these things.
| You will never solve every problem for every person.
| Utopia does not exist. You see, a lot of different people
| have a lot of different ideas on what the fundamental
| problems of our society are. Some people think it's
| because people have abandoned traditional values and
| religion. Other people think it's because of that. You
| can't solve all the problem for all the people. You can't
| care for everyone because you just end up caring for no
| one.
|
| > Perhaps having a society that is a bit more communally
| focused, and less self centered.
|
| Your vision, to my judgement, sounds self centered
| though. It's saying "take care of me first instead of
| fulfilling your ambitions". There can't be a single
| "community". It's just not possible or realistic. It will
| always be plural because to be quite frank, many groups
| of people do not like each other, will not change for
| each other, and don't want to waste their lives trying to
| be accepted by other groups. And that's OK.
|
| > We should try to improve and solve some of our
| cultural, philosophy, and systemic problems -before- we
| replicate them in isolated pockets of humanity.
|
| This is saying we should paralyze ourselves until an
| arbitrary group of people say everything is good now.
| Again, why would we do that?
| jwells89 wrote:
| Exactly. While I strongly support efforts to improve life
| for the masses and solve problems on Earth, I also think
| that there will always be problems. As such, if we wait
| for Earth's problems to be solved before venturing into
| space, we'll simply never venture into space, and
| eventually something will happen to cause humanity to
| forget how to build and launch rockets, potentially for
| the remainder of the species' existence.
|
| It's better to use the capability while we know we have
| it and have the chance to etch that knowledge into our
| very existence by way of living all throughout the solar
| system.
| bilekas wrote:
| I do have bigger concerns personally over the space debris
| issue that isn't resolved just yet.
|
| I would prefer some contingency plan so that were not stuck
| here because Elon decided to go fast and break things...
| tim333 wrote:
| I think most of Elon's stuff is low enough that it deorbits
| fairly rapidly due to air resistance.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I really wish people would stop making these claims with only
| a passing knowledge of the issue. SpaceX's Starlink in
| particular has done a good job of addressing these problems
| because they chose to deploy their constellation at very low
| altitudes (400-600km) where failures (or debris from
| collisions, to some extent) quickly deorbit due to
| atmospheric drag. Their original competitor OneWeb chose a
| higher orbit, 1000-1200km, to get by with fewer satellites.
| At those altitudes, the satellites stay in orbit for
| centuries unless actively deorbited.
|
| Kessler Syndrome is a real risk at higher orbits like 1000km
| and above. But not at the lower altitudes. Kessler Syndrome
| is an exponential effect, so if the losses (due to
| atmospheric drag) are higher than the gain (debris generation
| due to collisions), then you do not get the exponentially
| growing debris problem. It's not even possible.
|
| Although it should be pointed that even at higher orbits and
| even if you're technically in the exponentially growing
| regime, this growth would occur very slowly, not minutes or
| hours. Think months or years. And it'd take something like an
| active war with mass deployment of anti-satellite weaponry to
| trigger that kind of thing.
|
| In fact, most debris problems nowadays ARE caused by debris
| from anti satellite tests (as well as collisions with old
| Russian derelict satellites or explosions of upper stages not
| properly deorbited).
|
| But we also have demonstration missions for deorbiting
| derelict satellites to prevent the production of additional
| debris even at these higher orbits.
|
| But sorry to say, none of these problems are due to Elon
| Musk.
| bilekas wrote:
| Okay It sounds positive the, bit larger payloads and an
| orbiting base would need to be in those upper orbits? Or
| something more like the ISS?
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-space-junk-cleanup
| londons_explore wrote:
| The financing of an offworld base is still very much unknown.
|
| Even with a high volume and relatively low cost launch vehicle,
| the actual offworld base will be hugely expensive, and no
| commercial enterprise can realistically expect to make a return
| for their investors.
|
| A government needs to step up with the rationale that it will
| eventually form a tax-producing colony - but a huge investment
| will need to be put in till it gets there.
| brandonagr2 wrote:
| At first SpaceX will privately fund it using profits from
| Starlink
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| Is Starlink actually that profitable?
| londons_explore wrote:
| It was recently announced that it breaks even.
|
| I expect it will be profitable in the future as it scales
| up. But there is probably only about 2x more scaling at
| the current price point (launching new countries, selling
| to people who aren't yet aware of it).
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Besides just selling more normal Starlink subs, they also
| have revenue opportunities from selling their LTE cell
| phone product to carriers, as well as dedicated networks
| like the in-progress "StarShield" for the US DoD.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| > eventually form a tax-producing colony
|
| Money is just a medium for the exchange of goods or services.
| What would the colony export in order to generate the revenue
| required to produce said taxes?
| kosievdmerwe wrote:
| The only sensible thing that would produce Earth based
| revenues would be some kind of intellectual property, but I
| don't know what is both sustainable enough and valuable
| enough to fund a colony.
|
| EDIT: this is also made worse by the fact that the first
| few colonists should be farmers, mechanics and doctors (aka
| human mechanics), since all the intellectual work can be
| done on earth.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I expect that when we have a colony on Mars, exports will
| be found. Either mineral deposits which are rare on earth,
| or manufacturing processes which are easier with lower
| gravity.
|
| A human being able to lift 3x as much without machines
| already opens up possibilities for greater productivity.
|
| Stuff that must happen in the cold is cheaper to do too...
|
| Think of Vegas - no economic output at all, tourist
| destination alone. Mars could do the same.
|
| It only takes _one_ thing - there is no need for a mixed
| economy.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I'm skeptical of that. Mars may indeed have some small
| advantages over Earth in certain niches of mining or
| manufacturing, but it's hard to imagine how those
| advantages wouldn't be greatly outweighed by the added
| difficulty of doing... just about anything on an
| uninhabitable planet, and expense of shipping the final
| product back to earth.
| ben_w wrote:
| My skepticism comes from a different direction. Assume
| there's something that can be done at lowest cost on Mars
| -- is it cheaper to send humans to do it (with all the
| necessary life support, radiation protection, and the
| inevitable black swans because we've never done anything
| like this before), or to figure out how to fully automate
| it and send robots?
|
| If it takes 10,000 people to make $thing, then even at
| Musk's target price of $100k/person, the cost to develop
| and ship the automation[0] only has to come in less than
| a billion dollars to win.
|
| [0] I guess the TCO would be more complex to determine,
| as the human side includes not just paying the humans
| (and presumably shipping good from Earth), but also
| figuring out how to do low-gravity and zero-gravity
| healthcare and surgery (on this scale there _will_ be
| emergencies requiring surgery during transit), and
| planning for the colonists ' desire to start families and
| retire.
| tornato7 wrote:
| Didn't Mars One have the idea of making their offworld base
| into a reality TV show to bring in revenue?
| standardUser wrote:
| Plenty of far-flung destinations get by on tourism alone!
| bane wrote:
| 1. Unclaimed real estate.
|
| The amount of money that a sizable and well funded group of
| people spend to get away from literally every other human
| on the planet and away from the government would easily
| fill a few rockets.
|
| 2. Martian Water.
|
| Imagine all the disenfranchised homeopathics now have
| another woo-woo cure to turn to and will pay out the wazoo
| for. Make up a claim like "the purest water, untouched by
| human industry or nuclear tests, powered by billions of
| years of energy from sun, unfiltered by ozone and untouched
| by magnetism."
|
| 3. Tourism.
|
| Vegas is basically a Martian tourist destination with an
| entire city built to support it. There's no other reason
| for Vegas to exist. If the accommodations were nicer,
| people would go to Antarctica as well. Rich people want to
| take their selfies with Olympus Mons in the background.
|
| 4. Low-G sports
|
| Earth sports probably won't work the same, so entire new
| sports and leagues will form and provide entirely new
| season pass resell opportunities for streaming video
| providers. There's no way to simulate the low-gravity on
| Earth.
|
| Also rich people sports like golf might take on an entire
| new ultra elite form when your par-4 hole 8 is 4500m long
| and you need a satellite to spot your ball.
|
| 5. Low-G food products
|
| For similar reasons as the Martian water. Insert any
| combination of differences in nutrition/taste/look and
| it'll find it's way onto the plates of a three star
| Michelin restaurant or as supplements sold at a health
| store or something.
|
| That's off the top of my head and could easily be a
| multiple billions of dollars per year of sustained economic
| output from Mars, mostly built on simple vices, novelty,
| entertainment, and pure human gullibility.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| We've had an in-orbit base for over 20 years without any
| claim of future tax revenue or commercial viability. On
| Earth, we have a long history of establishing research bases
| in places where there is no potential for a viable colony
| (e.g. Antarctica).
|
| All we need is the political will and we can fund a Mars base
| as a purely government funded research program.
| voxic11 wrote:
| Sure a research base, but we probably wont see colonies on
| mars for the same reasons we don't see colonies in
| antarctica.
| CptFribble wrote:
| A self-sufficient colony outside Earth is a worthy goal
| in and of itself:
|
| 1. The indomitable human spirit and drive to explore and
| expand
|
| 2. It's cool
|
| 3. More room for humans
|
| There are also reasons that don't apply to Antarctica:
|
| 1. Hedging our bets against planet-ending catastrophes
| (global warming, giant asteroid/comet strike, ultra-
| pandemic)
|
| 2. Another stepping stone to exploring further
| interesting/important space goals, like gathering
| resources from the asteroid belt/moons of jupiter/etc,
| discovering life on Europa, and so on
| kiba wrote:
| Part of the reason we don't colonize Antarctica is that
| it isn't romanticized to the same degree as the
| colonization of Mars.
| wredue wrote:
| That was a time of reasonable faith in science and a
| political era where one could get large agendas done.
| 3seashells wrote:
| We could park religous fanatics and prisoners offworld? Or
| just drop self replecating machinery to create value. Which
| is the actual crux. Even for labor.. Remote or ai operated
| drones are cheaper.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| One way interstellar colonies could finance themselves,
| including no-faster-than-light financial systems is explored
| in Charles Stross' _Saturn 's Children_ books.
|
| Also it has space accountancy pirates.
| reset2023 wrote:
| While this would be great to start space exploration, there is
| no military incentive for this, and they're always the only
| ones with a blank check. Not sure that tourism is the option,
| maybe mining.
| lettergram wrote:
| A moon base would let any party who controls it have the high
| ground in any global conflict. Quite literally, they'll have
| the ability to control the globe.
| simonh wrote:
| The moon's too far away. It would take a missile a few days
| to get to Earth, and you need to waste energy getting off
| the moon in the first place. Plus putting it there. There's
| just no point.
| lettergram wrote:
| You can literally throw rocks to earth at 1/36 the cost
| to leave earth. The rocks would then naturally fall to
| earth.
|
| Missiles have to be launched and require much more
| acceleration to reach the moon and leave earths gravity.
|
| To put it into perspective, imagine the moon can catapult
| 5000 massive rocks at earth every day. Earth can't make
| that many missiles fast enough
| simonh wrote:
| As against launching the thousands of nukes you already
| have right here on Earth, and hitting your targets within
| minutes. I suppose if you want to wipe out your opponents
| 100x over veeeery slowly rather than just 10x over in
| lunch time.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| On the inverse though, it takes a few days for missiles
| to get to you and far more energy to do so. Which would
| make their launch far more noticeable.
|
| Hypothetically a battery of missiles on the moon could be
| launched without being noticed by anyone on earth. With
| modern radar absorbing/scattering designs their transit
| could also be unnoticed. By the time they arrived at
| Earth they would be moving far faster then any ICBM could
| ever hope to achieve. Which puts them well outside the
| envelope of any existing/soon to exist missile defense
| system. You would also not have nearly enough time to
| launch a meaningful counterattack, and any that you did
| launch would be much easier for our moon based overlords
| to spot and counter.
|
| Basically putting nukes on the moon breaks MAD pretty
| thoroughly for the foreseeable future.
|
| My hope would of course be that opening space up would
| provide humans with sufficient rocks that we would stop
| trying to blow ourselves up over this rock. I don't
| expect that will be the case, would be nice though.
|
| Small edit: Double checked the _published_ reentry speeds
| of some modern ICBMs, ~8 km /s, it's a lot closer to the
| moon to earth reentry speed of ~10 km/s then I thought.
| Should point out though that the first is a ceiling and
| the latter is the floor. So my point still stands, it
| just means that the moon nazis will have to push a little
| harder to kill us all.
| simonh wrote:
| >Hypothetically a battery of missiles on the moon could
| be launched without being noticed by anyone on earth.
|
| If your opponent puts missiles on the moon, put
| observation satellites in lunar orbit.
|
| Surely stealth nuke satellites in earth orbit would be
| better than fixed positions on the moon? But even nuke
| satellites are way worse than land based missiles.
|
| A co-ordinated satelite strike from ow orbit means all
| you satellites need to go over your target at the same
| time. In an emergency unless you happen to have a bunch
| of sates by chance over your target, on average it
| actually takes longer to wait until a given satelite is
| over a target before you can launch, compared to using
| ground based missiles. You can compensate by having about
| 20x as many missile sats as you actually need, so there's
| always enough over your targets. In theory that gives a
| small advantage over land based missiles, but that's
| hugely wasteful.
|
| Putting any of that on the moon just means your enemy has
| 3 days to figure out what you're doing, or means if you
| need an emergency response it will arrive in 3 days time.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I don't know that we can detect ICBMs on re-entry at all.
| Don't existing systems only see them in the boost phase?
| Your scheme still hides that, I think it might work.
|
| The only saving grace here is that if the US government
| contracted Elon Musk to secretly haul nukes to the moon,
| there'd be a smarmy tweet about it that same day.
| bad_alloc wrote:
| > there is no military incentive for this
|
| * Precision landing of large amount of troops, anywhere
|
| * Ability to lift 250 tons -> precision landing of tanks and
| artillery, anywhere
|
| * Deployment of kinetic impactors from space
| TOMDM wrote:
| Mass orbital surveilance, live detection of all rocket
| launches or other orbitally visible weapons. Military comms
| over Starlink, or a US Space Force equivelant.
|
| Countering the ability for competitors to launch the
| capability's both you and I mentioned.
| SaberTail wrote:
| > Precision landing of large amount of troops, anywhere
|
| > Ability to lift 250 tons -> precision landing of tanks
| and artillery, anywhere
|
| How does a foe distinguish one of these launches from an
| ICBM carrying nuclear warheads, so that they know not to
| launch their own in retaliation?
| Aicy wrote:
| If this is true why did the previous US government set up
| Space Operations as a new department of Defence?
| squidbeak wrote:
| The incentive is not to be beaten to it by powerful rivals.
| pacija wrote:
| A new life awaits us in the Off-World colonies. The chance to
| begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!
| wojciii wrote:
| Do androids dream of electric sheep?
|
| "First there was the dream, now there is reality. Here in the
| untainted cradle of the heavens will be created a new super
| race, a race of perfect physical specimens. You have been
| selected as its progenitors. Like gods, your offspring will
| return to Earth and shape it in their image. You have all
| served in public capacties in my terrestrial empire. Your
| seed, like yourselves, will pay deference to the ultimate
| dynasty which I alone have created. From their first day on
| Earth they will be able to look up and know that there is law
| and order in the heavens."
|
| :)
| pacija wrote:
| You know your movie quotes, my deepest respect, Sir :)
|
| Moonraker :)
| dangerwill wrote:
| I think it is much more likely that Musk is going to cause a
| kepler syndrome collapse with starlink well before spacex is
| actually going to consider creating a moon base.
| colordrops wrote:
| It's been said countless times that starlink will not cause
| Kepler syndrome. They are in too low an orbit and atmospheric
| drag would bring down any debris relatively quickly.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| _wincing_
|
| Kessler.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| It looks like SpaceX says 5 years for passive deorbit in
| their FCC filing. If a satellite were pulverized, I would
| expect the small pieces to have higher A/m and deorbit even
| faster.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/ekyibk/commen.
| ..
|
| It's not a good look to criticize an org for being careless
| when you haven't even put bare minimum effort into seeing if
| they were careful.
| robblbobbl wrote:
| R.I.P. Rocket
| darknavi wrote:
| It will be a glorious death. WITNESS!
| huytersd wrote:
| I'm so excited. I wish Elon would go back to being neutral on
| politics, it would make this so much easier to wholeheartedly
| support.
| hackernan9000 wrote:
| Support the 13k employees and associated supply chain that do
| the real work.
| IshKebab wrote:
| That _also_ do real work. I don 't think it's fair to say
| what Elon does isn't real work or isn't important. I don't
| think many people would say SpaceX would be where it is today
| without him.
|
| The real answer is to simply accept that real people are not
| one dimensional characters. They have good points and bad
| points. You are perfectly free to appreciate the good points
| while disapproving of the bad ones. Maybe there's a limit for
| really bad people (Hitler etc.) where you just don't want
| them involved in society at all, but that clearly doesn't
| apply to Musk. Nothing he has done is outright evil.
| hackernan9000 wrote:
| True, but that level of nuance likely isn't going to make
| contact with those that have staunch political views - it's
| worth the reminder that any company is not the CEO.
| trollied wrote:
| He might be the CEO, but Gwynne Shotwell runs the
| business & runs it well.
| calderknight wrote:
| Also worth the reminder that Elon is not just the CEO
| mft_ wrote:
| > that level of nuance likely isn't going to make contact
| with those that have staunch political views
|
| Interesting; you appear to suggest that an interest in
| politics makes someone more stupid - in that they become
| incapable of appreciating a nuanced view of a topic. Is
| this what you mean?
|
| On the broader topic, the "it's the workers that do the
| work not the CEO, man" point you made is often irrelevant
| to the argument it appears in, and amusingly (given it's
| often levelled against him) is weakest in Musk's case.
| When a CEO is just an interchangeable face at the top of
| an established company hierarchy, who has limited
| influence on the company for their tenure, it's well
| taken. But in the case of SpaceX (definitely) and Tesla
| (probably) those companies likely wouldn't exist at all
| (or wouldn't exist in their current form) without the
| direct hands-on work and direction from Musk himself.
| Yes, he doesn't construct or weld things himself, but
| that's already obvious to any rational observer of the
| world; he employs many thousands for those and other
| roles, because that's just how companies scale and
| operate.
| concordDance wrote:
| > Interesting; you appear to suggest that an interest in
| politics makes someone more stupid - in that they become
| incapable of appreciating a nuanced view of a topic. Is
| this what you mean?
|
| Not who you're replying to, but I think there's very
| strong selection effe ts in play where those more likely
| to speak up with passion in public places like this are
| more likely to lack nuance in their political views.
|
| So it's mostly not that those with an interest in
| politics (even a strong interest) are less nuanced
| (though they probably are somewhat, as being bad at
| nuance makes political radicalization more likely), but
| that those with an interest but nuanced views will have a
| harder time actually bashing out a comment on the subject
| and will think it less likely they will be able to
| convince anyone (because its not a simple matter).
| hackernan9000 wrote:
| Also worth noting that one can be strongly interested in
| politics (e.g. political scientist) and hold neutral
| policy views.
|
| So the comment was aimed at the poster with strong enough
| political views that they felt the need to post in this
| forum that their support for the launch was affected by
| it - where as most folks would not.
|
| In this case, it's less about interest and more about
| behavior.
| hugg wrote:
| Yeah I mean when you let him directly get involved with
| something, we get the Cybertruck, which I believe is
| going to be a huge failure (but we'll see).
|
| To me it seems like he's just hyping up things that are
| never going to happen while a lot of the engineers and
| designers actually focus on the things that make money.
|
| Can't say much about SpaceX though
| mft_ wrote:
| > the Cybertruck, which I believe is going to be a huge
| failure (but we'll see).
|
| I'd probably take that bet, although of course it depends
| how we define success vs. failure.
|
| I suspect short-to-medium term, it will be a big success,
| as there's a lot of pent-up desire for one: hardcore
| Tesla fans, Tesla fans who want a pickup, people that
| like to be first-movers, people that like how it looks,
| people that want a pickup and appreciate the benefits
| that Tesla still brings (efficiency, supercharger
| network, etc.), and so on. The billion-dollar question,
| of course, is how it will fare in the market once that
| initial demand has been satisfied.
|
| --
|
| Aside from this, the interesting thing about the
| Cybertruck is that originally, the odd looks and build
| style (i.e. the flat sheets of stainless steel) were
| meant to be _engineering-driven_ : the concept discussed
| on stage when it was first announced was that it was an
| exoskeleton, or a stressed-skin design, meaning that in
| theory it wouldn't need a traditional chassis, and would
| have weight-savings over a traditional pickup (or car)
| design. IIRC there was talk of a Model 2 (i.e. a smaller
| hatchback than the M3) being built using the same
| approach.
|
| Then, somewhere along the line, this was lost (too
| difficult? or always just a pipedream?) and it was
| ultimately built using a very similar approach to Tesla's
| other cars, without the benefits originally discussed.
| I'm interested whether we'll learn what happened with
| this, one day.
|
| (This is a reasonable precis:
| https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-went-
| fro...)
| hackernan9000 wrote:
| You're overthinking it. The comment was aimed at OP (and
| personas like it) suggesting difficulty supporting the
| launch due to Musks politics.
|
| And yes, folks leaning toward hard edges of a political
| spectrum reliably demonstrate lack of nuanced thinking in
| my experience because it involves compromise, something
| you see less of as you approach the aforementioned edges.
| joannanewsom wrote:
| Staunch means "steadfast in loyalty or principle".
| Someone who doesn't change their mind and has unwavering
| political opinions is kinda by definition less likely to
| appreciate nuanced viewpoints.
|
| I'm not sure how you made the leap to "interest in
| politics = more stupid".
| mpweiher wrote:
| Pretty much everybody knows that a company is not the
| CEO, and only people with staunch political views seem to
| think that everybody but themselves is so stupid as to
| not be capable of nuance and be in need of reminding.
|
| But people also know that CEOs tend to have a huge
| influence in the success or failure of a company, and
| founders have a not entirely negligible influence in the
| company existing in the first place.
| matsemann wrote:
| If only I were like you, clever enough to have nuanced
| views.
| cyclecount wrote:
| You can't be neutral on a moving train
| justinator wrote:
| Yes but can you be neutral on a train moving at the speed of
| light?!
| borissk wrote:
| A train can never move at the speed of light (as it has
| mass) ^_^
| TimJRobinson wrote:
| Yea his gift is assembling teams to solve technical problems -
| things that people already want but can't do yet.
|
| He sucks at solving social problems where it's unclear what
| people want.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > He sucks at solving social problems where it's unclear what
| people want.
|
| So do we all.
| butler14 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem
| justapassenger wrote:
| His main gift is amazing fundraising capabilities. And people
| will disagree if he'll do that by selling a compelling vision
| or lying.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| You take the good with the bad.
|
| The same brain that is so pig-headed as to believe whatever
| $Conspiracy today, is also the brain that was pig-headed enough
| to think he could fund an EV and a Rocket company at the same
| time, when he had experience of none, during a recession.
|
| If he was reasonable minded, he would have realised the whole
| EV and Rocket thing is a stupid risk not worth taking and he
| would have invested his paypal money into something safe like
| all his fellow paypal mafia members who started VCs, and today
| we would never had heard of him except in esoteric terms, and
| he would have been sipping mai tai or whatever it is that VCs
| do when they are lazing around in their 3rd yatch.
|
| Like acc to his bio (mentioned somewhere in his 1st bio by
| ashlee vance) the man literally had an intervention with fellow
| rich white buddies that he's gonna go bankrupt, that's how
| stupid the idea was.
|
| to speak in explicit 4chan terms, that autist brain of his what
| created/funded this, and his stupid tweets are frankly a cheap
| price to pay for it (at least for me, I'm not american ;p)
| mrpopo wrote:
| So, if at some point he starts funding military spaceships
| that can shoot illegal migrants from space, do we still take
| the good with the bad, or do we denounce his behaviour?
| zpeti wrote:
| Firstly, that would be illegal, and government(s) could
| step in.
|
| Secondly, there are quite a few steps between having enough
| of woke twitter and buying it, which I'm pretty sure
| 20-30%, maybe even 40% of the population agrees with, and
| shooting illegal immigrants.
|
| I know the media try their best to portray these two as
| equivalents, but they're just not. Also keep in mind the
| biggest loser from the twitter acquisition is probably the
| establishment journalists, so they do have an axe to grind.
| Their views are not going to be objective on musk.
| mrpopo wrote:
| Elon Musk isn't just "denouncing woke twitter". He is
| actively, politically involved in Mexico border crossing
| debates, meeting with politicians and border patrols,
| etc.
| nicky0 wrote:
| And somehow you extrapolate from "meeting with
| politicians and border patrols" to shooting migrants from
| space?
| mrpopo wrote:
| No. OP was suggesting we shouldn't denounce the bad
| things he's doing, because of the good things he's doing.
| My point is, should we wait for the bad to outweigh the
| good, and who will be the judge of that?
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| we can cross that hypothetical bridge, if it ever exists
| and gets crossed, no use in raising hypotheticals.
|
| right now it's just stupid tweets, I ignore them and live
| my life, after all, my life has never been in danger from
| any of his tweets, but it HAS been from actual american
| drones doing actual bombing. I survived that, I will
| survive his tweets.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| I'm sure that someone said something similar about the
| first public speeches of Hitler
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Elon Musk literally is Hitler! Like, what?!
| hef19898 wrote:
| In deed they did. After the elections in 1933, free and
| fair elections prior to the Nazis taking power in the
| staged elections later that year during which the Nazis
| used their party apparatus as a shafow administration and
| blunt and brutal force and violence, the conservative
| establishment picked Hitler and the NSDAP for exactly
| that rwason: The needed someone to lead a coalition
| government against the left, they choose Hitler because
| they didn't take him really serious and thought they
| could easily manipulate him. We all know well that turned
| out.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| I am not from your part of the world; application of
| Godwin's law in online discourse always amuses me, since
| I damn care about hitler or what he and his ilk did, my
| part of the world had other boogie men.
|
| Regardless, I standby my remark.
| thejackgoode wrote:
| Trying to have a balanced view as well, but I have a strong
| intuition it will get much worse with Elon
| concordDance wrote:
| As far as I can tell he hasn't personally done much worse
| than say things on twitter that at least a third of people
| agree with, broken SEC rules and run companies his way.
|
| As far as evil goes he isn't even going to be the evillest
| person in a room of 10 random people.
|
| That said, the echo chamber effects will continue to get
| worse as the media continues to pile on him.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Your statement hugely underestimates the influence
| someone like Elon has.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| I'd respect Elon critics more if they frequently noted
| that they grade Elon more harshly due to his high level
| of influence, but I rarely see them do that.
|
| Ultimately in a democracy, everyone is entitled to their
| opinion. There are lots of people who think the way Elon
| does, but most of them aren't as prominent about it as
| Elon is. Seems to me that in a healthy democracy, we
| shouldn't be particularly upset if an opinion that's
| common among the general population also has some
| representation among the elites. https://today.yougov.com
| /topics/economy/explore/public_figur...
|
| Indeed, if this _weren 't_ the case, and elites had
| wildly different opinions than common people (and also
| more influence), you could make the case that we were
| living in a plutocracy or an oligarchy, not a democracy.
| So Elon's willingness to say aloud what many common
| people think privately is pushing us away from that
| plutocracy/oligarchy failure mode.
|
| I think Elon has made major mistakes -- funding of OpenAI
| being the biggest, from the point of view of humanity's
| survival. But the hate he gets rarely seems well-
| justified or rational. Here's my theory for what's going
| on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38046411
| hef19898 wrote:
| No idea about the others, I do grade Elon as harsh as I'd
| grade everyone else who does the same things. I only know
| about his attics the other peoples because of his public
| profile.
|
| The danger I see, because already happened more than
| once, is that once certain opinions are publicly
| acceptable, those opinions risk becoming policy. And once
| those policies get enacted, as history showed, a lot of
| inncent people suffer.
|
| And with Musks outsized crowd of fanboys, he is even more
| dangerous than he would be simply controlling Twitter.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| >The danger I see, because already happened more than
| once, is that once certain opinions are publicly
| acceptable, those opinions risk becoming policy. And once
| those policies get enacted, as history showed, a lot of
| inncent people suffer.
|
| This sort of reasoning doesn't help us identify correct
| opinions or good policies. I could just as easily say:
| "If critics are silenced, the people silencing critics
| may be allowed to dictate policy. And once the people who
| silence critics get their policies enacted, as history
| showed, a lot of innocent people suffer."
|
| In a theocracy, the dictator can make arguing for atheism
| a crime, on the grounds that: "Arguing for atheism causes
| people to go to hell. A lot of innocent people will
| suffer. Therefore, we throw atheists in jail, in order to
| save innocents."
|
| My basic position is: If your ideas are strong, you
| should be competent to argue with those who disagree. If
| your ideas are weak, you should not bully others into
| submission so you can enforce weak ideas.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Insimply explained why I argue against right wing
| opinions everywhere I encounter them. And I am all for
| having those arguements. Not being American, I see the
| reasoning behind certain limits of free speech,
| advocating for hate and violence for example. It should
| be up to the courts to act on those limits, censorship of
| opinions has to be avoided. I have zero issue with
| opinions having consequences so.
|
| And yes, we have seen time and again that, as soon as
| othering people becomes policy, really bad things happen.
| That othering starts with words, and the political right
| are those using those words, and ideologies, far more
| often than the political left. And it is the right who
| does that othering on things like ethnicity, sexe,
| religion, skin color... The left tends to other based on
| opinion, which while still bad, is a far cry from
| actually argueing for interning said others in camps,
| excluding them from voting, access to health care...
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| >That othering starts with words, and the political right
| are those using those words, and ideologies, far more
| often than the political left.
|
| That's not obvious. Here is one US college professor
| (well-known open borders libertarian) on what he sees on
| campus: https://betonit.substack.com/p/orwellian-othering
|
| >The left tends to other based on opinion, which while
| still bad, is a far cry from actually argueing for
| interning said others in camps, excluding them from
| voting, access to health care...
|
| An editor for Huffington Post South Africa defended a
| post she published arguing that white men shouldn't be
| allowed to vote, saying: "[The] underlying analysis about
| the uneven distribution of wealth and power in the world
| is pretty standard for feminist theory".
| https://qz.com/africa/966763/huffington-post-south-
| africa-ed... What does that tell you about feminist
| theory?
|
| In any case, the most important point is: I've never seen
| Elon Musk argue for interning others in camps, excluding
| people from voting, or excluding people from access to
| health care. In my eyes, your argument makes about as
| much sense as me saying that you should be banned from
| Hacker News because you sound vaguely communist, and
| Joseph Stalin killed a lot of people.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I never argued for banning Musks opinion, and I wont.
| Regarding the radical feminist in South Africa, call.me
| again when she has a realistic shot at becoming President
| there Sure, Musk didn' propose camps as far as I can
| tell. He is, squarely by his own words, in the right
| leaning political camp in the US. Amd the current front
| runner for the presidencial candidacy of that camp called
| for all of those things, publicly, during a rally on
| Veterans Day.
|
| Also, one opinion piece regarding the rescriction of
| voting, which is just a nut job idea, is quite different
| from gerryandering, reducing poling places and planning
| to impeach judges wjo said they don'z like gerrymandering
| (which actually is a thing, multiple courts in the US
| threw out district maps because of it). Actions weigh
| heavier than words, always.
|
| Funny that you think I'm leaning communist, were I live
| my political opinion is somewhere left / social liberal
| of the center but a far cry from the left extreme of the
| political spectrum. No surprise so, it just shows the
| difference between the US and Europe.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| >He is, squarely by his own words, in the right leaning
| political camp in the US.
|
| I remember him tweeting a meme to the effect of: "My
| political opinions have stayed the same while the left
| has gotten more and more radical"
|
| >Amd the current front runner for the presidencial
| candidacy of that camp called for all of those things,
| publicly, during a rally on Veterans Day.
|
| Has Musk ever endorsed Trump?
|
| >Also, one opinion piece regarding the rescriction of
| voting, which is just a nut job idea, is quite different
| from gerryandering, reducing poling places and planning
| to impeach judges wjo said they don'z like gerrymandering
| (which actually is a thing, multiple courts in the US
| threw out district maps because of it). Actions weigh
| heavier than words, always.
|
| I'm against these illiberal ideas in the same way that
| I'm against illiberal ideas from the left. I haven't seen
| Elon Musk show any support for them either.
|
| >Funny that you think I'm leaning communist, were I live
| my political opinion is somewhere left / social liberal
| of the center but a far cry from the left extreme of the
| political spectrum. No surprise so, it just shows the
| difference between the US and Europe.
|
| I don't think you're a communist. From my perspective,
| the mistake you're making is akin to the mistake of
| blaming social democrats for the actions of communists. I
| was trying to explain that to you in a way that you'd
| understand.
|
| After all, squarely by your own words, "my political
| opinion is somewhere left / social liberal of the
| center". Need I say more? :-)
| concordDance wrote:
| I think it's worth noting how the right sees things:
|
| Many on the right would say the left others people based
| on ethnicity, orientation and sex (primarily against
| straight white men).
|
| They would also say that leftists have far higher levels
| of support for using violence in response to words
| ("punch a nazi").
|
| They also see a symmetry in banning support for "hate and
| violence" and banning support for abortion. "Surely
| saying "transwomen aren't women!" isn't worse than
| advocating for the murder of hundreds of millions of
| babies?!"
|
| -----
|
| In general it is extremely hard to come up with rules for
| what you can and can't say without already presupposing a
| particular political viewpoint is the right one. Which is
| putting the cart before the horse really.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Exclusively against white men would be more like it, one
| has to love the self-victimization of the most
| priviledged group of people in human history.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Historically speaking, it is common to argue that a group
| of people is super privileged in order to create the
| justification for atrocities. Just look at 20th century
| totalitarian leaders.
|
| I prefer the liberal-democratic approach of ensuring
| rights for all instead of making decisions based on who
| is most privileged. There's no way to calculate privilege
| objectively, and the idea is inevitably wielded for
| political purposes.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Fully agree on the liberal-democratic approach. Hell, if
| you extent, just to pick a really controversial topic,
| adoption and full marriage rights to gay couples, rights
| I have myself, you are not taking anything away from me.
|
| The important difference is so between _calling_ a group
| priviledged and a geoup _being_ priviledged. And men held
| power for most of human history, white men in particular
| since European colonialism became a thing. Women ' right
| to vote is a fairly recent thing, the 1970s in
| Switzerland for example. Or bot requiring the husbands
| approval to take a job in Germany. The list goes on and
| on. White men habe been, and still are but less so,
| priviledged. Some men have a problem with loosing some of
| those priviledges so, a sentiment easily abused by
| demagogoes and populists (I put Musk in the latter group,
| more of an industrial / capitalist populist but a
| populist none the less).
|
| In a sense the youngen falling into right wing extremism
| and islamistic extrimism have a lot in common, more than
| either of those groups like. But we digress, I think.
|
| Regarding Starship, good for them to launch again. Good
| on the FAA to insist on high standards. Now we'll see how
| the launch on Friday goes.
| concordDance wrote:
| > calling a group priviledged and a geoup being
| priviledged.
|
| Group based reasoning is ambiguous in English.
|
| When you say a group is privileged are you talking about
| the mean? The median? The peak? Every member?
|
| Because you could easily have a situation where every
| person in power is a member of X group while the median
| member of X group has less power than the population as a
| whole.
|
| There's also proportion of the total population to
| consider. If there were a group that only has 1% of the
| positions of power but every single member is in a
| position of power then is this group privileged or not?
| They can't control policy...
|
| And there's also to what extent people in power actually
| push for the interests of the groups they are supposedly
| members of as opposed to the interests of the subgroup
| they're part of.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Ah, yet another discussion nased on semantics! As I don't
| want to use neither a dictionary nor linguistics, you
| win.
| concordDance wrote:
| I'm not trying to "win", I'm trying to introduce readers
| to a useful tool to add to their toolkit for reasoning. A
| reminder that there's a class of potentially important
| ambiguities around groups in our language.
|
| If it matters, this tool is also pretty useful for
| dismantling racism.
| concordDance wrote:
| By most metrics Jews are more privileged (wealth, income,
| education, rate of murder, representation in positions in
| power) than white people in the West. And yet there is
| also genuine discrimination and hatred towards them.
|
| (Also, you are somewhat out of date, e.g. white British
| boys currently have worse educational outcomes than girls
| or immigrants)
|
| Anyway, you're very much missing the point by focusing on
| one example.
| hef19898 wrote:
| OP stated that many of the rigjt see discrimination,
| based in race and sexe, against white men. As I ahve yet
| to call those same people out discrimination against
| anyone else, I started with "Exclusively...".
| gary_0 wrote:
| Demagoguery and personality cultism never ends well.
| You'd think humanity would have learned by now.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Nobody is harmed by people thinking Einstein or Mother
| Teresa were great and not worthy people. Same for Gandi
| and MLK, if you choose which aspects to value and
| respect.
|
| It is useful to have examples of people who made a
| positive impact on the world.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Look I am from a 3rd world country, and I have been
| observing online discourse on primarily US-based websites
| for decades, and the amount of kittens Americans have for
| their 1# richest member is amazing. I remember the days
| when Bill Gates was the Borg, then it was Bezos, now Musk.
|
| If we were to plot a chart of misery caused in the average
| American's life, per million dollar of wealth, I doubt
| these three or other of their group would top the charts.
| They would be there definitely, but their wealth
| exaggerates their effect, imho.
|
| I think the average American faces more misery resulting
| from the collective action of the thousands of non-famous
| multi-millionaires and low-billionaires.
|
| These people have the wealth (usually inherited) and the
| capacity to cause a lot of misery while still flying below
| the public radar, and there are just so many of them in the
| US that it's impossible to collectively sum them up and
| point at.
|
| They are from all walks of life, all
| race/gender/ethnicities, and yet their wealth allow them to
| a lot of things, either directly, or by donating to
| political action, indirectly, that would go unnoticed
| because we wouldn't even know where to look.
|
| I am _not_ saying that you shouldn 't keep an eye out for
| Elon's wealth and spending, but to treat him as the spawn
| of satan is a bit much.
|
| Today it's his turn, in some time, some other nincumpoop
| will be 1#, it's OK, look at BillGates, he was a weirdo but
| he turned out.... well mostly OK I guess.
|
| We should use the pressure on the rich to bend them towards
| good causes, NOT to alienate them, all it does is give them
| a free leash to get into mischief. Keep the pressure on but
| keep them looped in.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| politicians cause more harm to people than rich aholes
| telling you about their political views. it's a shame
| that we are even talking about it on HN.
|
| you can admire the guy for what he accomplished. you
| don't need to worship him like he is a second coming of
| Jesus.
| runarberg wrote:
| I think you might be missing the conspiracy. Yes
| politicians are the ones causing the damage, yes they
| ultimately bear the responsibility. But you have to see
| how the interests of the rich are given a priority in any
| political system. Without the rich asserting their
| influence into politics, by persuading and demanding
| their interests in public policy, the politician is but a
| boring bureaucrat, neither making harm nor good. However
| with the rich conspiring with the politicians, the harm
| they do to the common people is ultimate.
|
| I will not admire anyone who's interests are looked
| after, compensated, subsidized, and payed for by our
| politicians. They are nothing but bastards, they deserve
| no praise for having been put in their place of privilege
| by circumstance and conspiracy.
| thejackgoode wrote:
| IMO in terms of achievement and impact Musk is an
| Einstein-caliber historical figure, and we have to treat
| what he says and does very carefully. That's why anyone
| who follows him must always remember that road to hell is
| paved with good intentions.
| danjc wrote:
| Plot twist: he actually is the bad guy in the end
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Plot twist, the story is still running, we are yet to see
| how the plot ends.
|
| after all, a few years ago every one was saying Bezos was
| the bad guy, there still time for some one else to pop up.
| Have faith, reality is weirder than fiction :)
| dukeyukey wrote:
| > a few years ago every one was saying Bezos was the bad
| guy
|
| Maybe I hang with a different crowd, but there's still a
| lot of anti-Bezos sentiment out there.
| danjc wrote:
| lol, downvoted for comedy or because it wasn't considered
| good comedy?
|
| Bonus downvote for observing downvotes.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Apologies, I always upvote every reply to a comment of
| mine, I like when people engage with me.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| "the man literally had an intervention with fellow rich white
| buddies that he's gonna go bankrupt"
|
| You lost me there. No need to racist, you know? It goes both
| ways.
| darkwater wrote:
| (will be downvoted to death, I don't care)
|
| Nope, it doesn't go both way. Racism and classism only go
| one way, which is towards the poorer or more vulnerable
| part. Pick on the weaker is a sign of cowardice. Do the
| same on the stronger is well-accepted, and rightfully so.
| Always punch upwards.
| sgu999 wrote:
| > Always punch upwards.
|
| A couple famous chilled dudes prescribed to not punch at
| all. The ones I'm thinking of were referring to Romans
| and British colonisers, but I suspect they'd have applied
| it to white rich buddies as well.
|
| (Please note that I didn't write what I think of it, I'm
| only fuelling the debate)
| darkwater wrote:
| Pacific resistance doesn't mean at all you are not
| punching/criticizing upwards! Also the imaginary guy from
| Nazareth had very harsh words for the merchants in the
| temple... (he even (+deg#deg)+( +-+)
| sgu999 wrote:
| I took your "punch" literally on purpose ;)
|
| Even though I mostly take a "white X" as a metaphor for a
| lack of diversity (of opinions and mindsets), I don't
| think most people do. These people aren't assholes
| because they are "white X", they are assholes because
| they are bourgeois stuck in their echo chamber.
| darkwater wrote:
| And they are bourgeois because they are white. Or put in
| another manner, with the same brain and willpower but
| another skin color (which usually means being of another
| economic class as well) it would have been much much much
| more complicated for them to be some snob bourgeois.
| sgu999 wrote:
| > (which usually means being of another economic class as
| well)
|
| Class seems to be the determining factor, really.
| Europeans had a couple environmental advantages early on
| [0] that allowed them to monopolise the world's
| resources, which were never fairly redistributed.
|
| The current bourgeois are bourgeois mostly because their
| parents were, much less because they had the advantage of
| being white when building their wealth. There are of
| course outliers and ethnicity does have an impact, but
| overall there is very little social mobility anyway.
|
| [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1842.Guns_Germs_a
| nd_Stee...
| darkwater wrote:
| Exactly, European (aka "the whites", but I don't want to
| enter into what's white in the US vs rest of the world)
| had some advantage, they used it, gained more power and
| as everybody with power does, hold on to it by all their
| means. And even if rich families or dynasties come and
| go, the accrued wealth tends to not move too much. And it
| moves through generations, as you pointed out.
| kortilla wrote:
| Racism does not only go one way. That's a recent
| redefinition to allow rampant discrimination based on
| race in a guilt free manner.
| darkwater wrote:
| Yeah, just like western industrialized countries polluted
| for a literal century, accumulating wealth from it, and
| now that things are getting really screwed, everybody
| must not pollute. I'm not saying it is "right" to fuck
| with the World pollution or to hate someone and beat them
| because their skin is white. But in a certain way, they
| "earned" that right.
| hackernan9000 wrote:
| As someone who has been assaulted by a stranger and
| called a "cracker" during the assault I'm going to
| strongly disagree.
| zpeti wrote:
| Can we please get some "vulnerable" people into the NBA?
| You know, the ones who aren't represented there?
| Definitely seems like the stronger people seem to
| dominate there, and it's really unfair to the weak.
| darkwater wrote:
| NBA like in the National Basketball Association? You mean
| like the many European players that rock the NBA that are
| totally not Afro-American? Maybe the issue is in how the
| selection is done in American colleges.
|
| But I'm pretty sure the Afro-American population would
| gladly swap 50% of black NBA players to have 50% of them
| in the middle-class.
| JCharante wrote:
| I didn't downvote you because if I did it would take away
| my ability to reply to you.
|
| P.S. I disagree with you
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is garbage when you couple it with collective racial
| or even class identity.
|
| Not all whites or blacks are the same. Hating someone you
| know nothing about due to race is racist, full stop.
|
| The rule of averages don't apply to individuals. You
| can't beat a poor X child and call it punching up,
| because they are part of Y race.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Apologies, I didn't mean to target any race, I was simply
| sharing an observation of mine. I have past the HN editing
| time limit or I would have removed the offending remark, no
| offense was meant.
| Angostura wrote:
| > The same brain that is so pig-headed as to believe whatever
| $Conspiracy today, is also the brain that was pig-headed
| enough to think he could fund an EV and a Rocket company at
| the same time, when he had experience of none, during a
| recession.
|
| A lot of the innovation that went into Tesla and SpaceX
| occurred _before_ he decided to transform himself into a
| complete tit.
|
| I'll take the good, please.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Before? or did we just not know it then?
|
| Because I believe he was always like this, we either didn't
| know or didn't care about it, or worse, just assumed that
| because he liked/disliked X, Y, Z, then must also
| like/dislike A, B, C.
|
| You can definitely pick and choose, mind you, you don't
| have to accept a personality whole, you can like some parts
| while disliking others, but you can't just eliminate parts
| of him, and his stupid tweets are a part of his mentality,
| whether we like it or not.
| huytersd wrote:
| He does seem like he's a little lost and coasting on what
| he built before now that I think about it.
| fsloth wrote:
| _You take the good with the bad._
|
| A thousand times this. All humans are fallible. If you
| presume someone isn't you just don't know them very well.
|
| Unforgivable offences should not be forgiven. Beyond that -
| celebrate wins, cherish humanity, embrace humility and
| tolerance. Don't have to _like_ anyone, but need to tolerate
| and respect.
| frob wrote:
| The dude plays footsie with white supremacists.
| https://www.mediaite.com/tech/elon-musk-skewered-for-
| posting.... One of his first act upon taking over Twitter
| was to reinstate white supremacists. I don't know if he is
| a full white supremacist, but he really seems to like them.
| And that type of person is getting none of my respect or
| money.
| fsloth wrote:
| Afaik the linked case of the melting of statue of Lee is
| more complicated than that.
|
| After US civil war north attempted to demolish and
| rebuild the institutions in the secenniost southern
| states
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era
|
| In a way the melting of the statue can be viewed as a
| continuation of the northern purges of southern
| institutions.
|
| Twitter/X is crap for nuanced discussion, but a facet of
| the US history is the tendency of the east coast to
| crusade over the sensibilities of the other states in a
| form perceived (rightly or not) as puritan zeal.
|
| And as I understand it, not all of the cases are hardly
| as obvious as the abolishment of slavery.
|
| I'm not from US so I might be completely off base though!
| I don't follow the white supremacist scene so this might
| very well be a dog whistle from all I know.
| lettergram wrote:
| +1 for it being nuanced, after moving to the south it
| really was not clear how much this is true. The statue
| was the embodiment of a heritage / culture. There were
| bad parts of that culture, but so is there in every
| culture. However, rarely do we support obliterating other
| cultures.
|
| I'm going to walk through the logic of the people I've
| met in the south (not necessarily my own opinions).
|
| The south was under military occupation for years after
| the civil war. The north sent teachers from the north to
| "re-educate" the south. Many of the farms were destroyed
| and unmaintainable due to the war, deaths, famines, and
| removal of slaves. Many southerners were not allowed to
| hold office until there was a pardon issued.
|
| They almost had a second civil war in 1877 due to a
| disputed election -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877
|
| Part of the compromise on the 1877 disputed election was
| that they removed "reconstruction".
|
| In many ways, the south felt a genocide was committed.
| Their culture, society, wealth, etc was taken from them.
| We can argue it was justice due to them holding slaves or
| rebelling, but they left the union peacefully in their
| minds and wanted to be left alone.
|
| Fast forward to today -- the US government has
| consistently regulated every primary export of the south
| (intentionally or otherwise). Cotton, alcohol, tobacco,
| coal, oil, etc have all been systematically regulated.
| I've witnessed first hand the large swaths of the south
| that had their communities destroyed by these regulations
| (most of them). Further, their state governments
| constantly derided for the last 150 years.
|
| Opioids and obesity are also much more impactful (imo
| unrelated to the government) in the south the opioid
| epidemic (which is still raging) completely decimated the
| communities. The dispensary rates are also WAY higher in
| former confederate states than anywhere else.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/rxrate-maps/index.html
|
| When you combine massive regulation, loss of jobs,
| obesity, etc it's clear why many southerners look to
| their heritage when they once had pride in their
| community, state, country, etc.
|
| At the end of the day, the people of the south have
| slowly seen their culture collapse over the decades and
| the melting of the statue was kind of the death of it.
| The burning of their institutions, melting of their
| statues, and erasure from the history books.
| techdmn wrote:
| It seems a little crass to say "it felt like a genocide"
| considering the horrors of slavery. Similar thoughts
| regarding erasure from history, given the amount of
| controversy around whether or not schools should be able
| to discuss the horrors of slavery.
| fsloth wrote:
| "Genocide" does not mean simply killing, the full
| definition is broader that.
|
| The definition includes
|
| "genocide means any of the following acts committed with
| intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
| ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: ... (c)
| Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
| calculated to bring about its physical destruction in
| whole or in part;"
|
| I.e. just eradicating a national identity from a group of
| people suffices. This is the main reason Ukraine can be
| considered a genocidal war, for example, to eradicate the
| Ukrainan state and identity.
|
| Similarly it's not implausible to view the reconstruction
| period as an attempt to do some culture- and state
| eradication in the slaver states.
|
| Nobody is defending the horrors of slavery. But, state
| institutions were demolished, a specific cultural
| identity was attempted to be eradicated. I've never
| visited US south of Colorado but just by reading about it
| the feeling of genocide comes strong.
|
| World is not black or white.
|
| Was eradicating the institution of slavery right? Hell
| yes. Was it right to attempt a bit of genocide on the
| side? I have personally no frigging clue. I do know it
| took to 1960's to complete the process of allowing full
| citizenship rights with civil rights movement so clearly
| some things had to settle for over a century.
|
| To maintain rule based order we must be committed to view
| events via the same objective interpretation.
|
| The same north-led US was pretty good in genociding the
| native american nations decades the civil war ended.
|
| Just achieving one good thing (ending slavery) does not
| give a state free pass on all the other things.
|
| We (as the western world) try to improve by admitting our
| failures and trying to do better. This requires first
| admitting fallibility, and naming things correctly.
|
| The current zeitgeist tries to view the world via the
| infantile manichean lens of victimhood (of pure goodness)
| and oppression (pure evil).
|
| This is a very narrow ethical model, and seldom
| applicable towars any beneficial goal.
|
| Things are _complicated_. The same state that fought and
| bled to end slavery also committed multiple genocides
| during the same historical period.
|
| Was reconstruction period _an actual_ genocide? Probably
| not. Did it use the same methods one would use to
| implement change that can be categorized as genocide? I'm
| pretty sure, yes.
|
| A point I would like to be argued: I guess it' fair to
| say that
|
| From point of eradicating culture, melting Lee's statue
| would be comparable to melting a statue of Sitting Bull.
| Both are representatives of hostile nations towards US,
| both of which were eradicated.
|
| But are there any arguments against this point of view?
|
| [0] https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/at
| rocity-...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting_Bull
| marcusverus wrote:
| Is there anything more constant in American history than
| the impulse to cloak American wrongdoing in the moral
| failures of their victims?
|
| > It seems a little crass to say "it felt like a
| genocide"
|
| It seems more than a little crass to nitpick whether or
| not the word "genocide" is appropriate in reference to an
| invasion that killed 25% of southern fighting age men.
| The Yankees burned homes and granaries as a matter of
| policy, for the express purpose of starving civilians,
| which is a war crime. Genocide is a fitting word.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| @lettergram, it's not that nuanced. The culture you speak
| of that you would love to protect literally revolves
| around the dehumanization of other races
| marcusverus wrote:
| The only reason the frame the war as a matter of Southern
| morality is to distract from its actual stated purpose
| and to shame a conquered people into silence via
| revisionist moral smokescreen.
|
| The North invaded the South to "preserve the union", and
| only emancipated the slaves as a "lever" toward that
| end.[0] The South fought back _because it was invaded by
| a foreign power_ --one which sought subjugate the South
| and force its inclusion in the American Empire, contrary
| to the will of the southern people. This is simply a
| matter of fact. The men who fought off the invader will
| always be Southern heroes, and rightfully so. The
| pretense that it is immoral to defend a revolution while
| also engaging in slavery is, coming from the land which
| claims Washington and Jefferson as its greatest heroes,
| so utterly hypocritical that it's hard to consider it to
| be a good faith argument. Because it's not. It's moral
| blackmail.
|
| [0]Abe admitted as much in a letter: "My enemies say I am
| now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of
| abolition. It is & will be carried on so long as I am
| President for the sole purpose of restoring the Union.
| But no human power can subdue this rebellion without
| using the Emancipation lever as I have done. Freedom has
| given us the control of 200,000 able bodied men, born &
| raised on southern soil. It will give us more yet... My
| enemies condemn my emancipation policy. Let them prove by
| the history of this war, that we can restore the Union
| without it."
| fsloth wrote:
| Regarding Abe's motivations - Abe was one super-canny
| player (lawyer who read Euclid _for fun and spiritual
| sustenance_ ). I would read anything he wrote as a piece
| intended to persuade an audience. My point is an audience
| reading a single quote from a letter from him should not
| take it at face value.
|
| I don't argue your points as such.
|
| In the moral calculus of history slavery needed to end.
| But there were other motives involved for sure.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Abe was definitely a crafty guy and had a tremendous gift
| for rhetoric, so it is certainly possible that he was
| playing a double-game. That leaves two possible readings
| of the quote, but IMO the "double-game" reading is only
| 'better', from a moral standpoint, for Lincoln himself.
| It doesn't provide any more moral cover for the Union as
| a whole.
|
| If we take Abe at face value, he is admitting that
| emancipation is, as declared in the Emancipation
| Proclamation, merely a war measure, i.e. a lever which
| aids his goal of sectional domination. This is neither a
| good look for Union nor for Lincoln, as it undermines any
| moral impetus for the war.
|
| The alternative is that we're reading Abe the moral
| operator, who is merely telling the people what they want
| to hear, so as to gain their support for his moral
| mission. While this is a better look for Abe, it is no
| better for the Union as a whole, as it still implies that
| the Union was broadly against emancipation (for most of
| the war, anyway), which forced him to defend it as a
| necessary war measure.
|
| So either A) the North invaded to subjugate the South,
| and only freed the slaves as a war aim, or B) the North
| invaded to subjugate the south, and _thought_ that they
| had to free the slaves as a war aim, when in actuality
| they were duped into doing so by the super-canny Abe
| Lincoln. In either case, _the nation as a whole_ is
| driven forward by imperialist motives, and the moral
| outcome of emancipation was, at best, incidental for all
| concerned, except perhaps for Abe Lincoln.
|
| This is a bit of a narrow point, but I think it's worth
| making, as it underpins my original point--The idea that
| the South was "unnuanced evil" is utter, a-historical
| nonsense, spread by goobers who don't read history. The
| Southerners were a people who suffered the most common
| moral failing of their time. When they were invaded (for
| the sin of believing that governments powers are derived
| from the consent of the governed, rather than military
| might) they were not immoral, let alone _evil_ , for
| fighting back. Their posterity is not immoral for
| celebrating their ancestors' valiant defense of their
| country.
| huytersd wrote:
| It's not complicated. If "culture" is glorifying slavers
| then that culture should be burned.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > brain that is so pig-headed as to believe whatever
| $Conspiracy today
|
| I see the risk that someone who has been consistently so
| stubborn and capable of making reality match his absurd
| aspirations, might even succeed in making $Conspiracy come
| true before he changes his mind :)
| Symmetry wrote:
| Progress depends on unreasonable people who refuse to adapt
| themselves to the world.
| huytersd wrote:
| Bad is fine. But supporting white supremacists bad is too far
| across the line for me.
| weberer wrote:
| Or people can stop acting crazy when seeing someone who
| disagrees with them. I'm glad he broke the Twitter echo
| chamber, so now people have to confront the fact that
| regardless of whatever direction you lean, around half the
| country leans the other way. Maybe the polarization problem
| that's been happening since ~2012 can finally go away.
| kanbara wrote:
| it's only been getting worse because half the country
| believes freedom and women's rights, and marriage equality
| shouldnt exist, and that we dont need fair elections, so i
| dont think twitter has really improved anything.
| concordDance wrote:
| That's a lot of heat and zero light you're contributing to
| this conversation.
|
| "But my political opponents are actually bad and believe
| bad things" is no novel insight, every single person here
| will have read something like it a hundred times before.
| mpweiher wrote:
| Thank you for illustrating weberer's point so perfectly in
| a direct response!
|
| (For reference: no, half the country doesn't believe these
| things)
| mavhc wrote:
| They're just fine voting for people who do believe those
| things
| mpweiher wrote:
| Even that turns out to not be accurate.
|
| Just as inaccurate as saying half the country thinks that
| massacring Jews is an "act of liberation", though there
| are obviously quite a few people who believe that and
| those are located on the left.
|
| Yes, there are people on the fringes that believe those
| things...and both of these fringes are very dangerous. I
| happen to share the belief that the fringes on the right
| are more dangerous, and certainly presented the more
| immediate threat when Trump was in power. However, I
| understand those who believe that the left fringes are
| more dangerous, and they do have a case. Both fringes
| present an existential threat to our liberal democracies,
| as they both have repudiated those values, so maybe those
| differences are not really meaningful.
|
| Left and right are not the problem. The fringes are. Both
| of them. And they feed off each other, so they can only
| be defeated together.
|
| If you want to defeat the right fringe, you must defeat
| the left fringe. If you want to defeat the left fringe,
| you must defeat the right fringe.
| mavhc wrote:
| It's not even a fringe though, a large group voted for
| Trump as a long term goal to ban abortion, and most of
| them believe the "election was stolen"
|
| The left fringe mostly seems to think gendered public
| toilets should be converted to single cubicles that
| anyone can use, similar to the toilet in your own home
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Even Trump himself doesn't believe in banning abortion;
| he's criticized DeSantis' 6-week limit (which is also not
| a ban) as being too restrictive:
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-labels-
| desantis-...
| concordDance wrote:
| Equating "wants to ban abortion" with "thinks women's
| rights shouldn't exist" is a pretty textbook example of
| one of the problems with political discourse. Noncentral
| fallacy, conflation between "all of" and "exists" and
| presupposing in the definitions used that their side of
| the political argument is the correct one.
| rmak wrote:
| and the other half believes babies' rights shouldn't exist,
| only criminals should own guns and only Russians can steal
| elections.
| hef19898 wrote:
| None of those statements are even remotely true so. Gun
| control advocates specifically want to get guns out of
| criminals (I see domestic violence as a crime, some
| people, sadly, don't). "They" are currently prosecuting
| the former president and his croneys for trying to steel
| the election in Washington _and_ Georgia (the latter
| already resulted in multiple guilzy pleads), and they
| advocate for better social security and health care which
| specifically benefits babies and mothers, especially in
| poorer families. Birth control, incl. abortions, are a
| central corner stone in that. And nobody is argueing for
| killing babies, there are term limits everywhere abortion
| is legal (as it should be, legal and, pun intended, well
| regulated).
|
| There is one side so that argues for arming the, mostly
| right wing, mob, using government to punish political
| opponents, build what basically amounts to concentration
| camps for yet to be specified people, deport millions...
| kortilla wrote:
| whoosh
| karlkatzke wrote:
| We believe that babies' lives should have rights after
| birth, too, and if you look at infant mortality rates in
| states that whose politicians are against abortion, you
| see that obviously a fetus's right to live ends at birth.
| concordDance wrote:
| Now you're just unproductively shouting at each other the
| exact same slogans that have been shouted for decades. It
| is not new or interesting to anyone.
| MallocVoidstar wrote:
| > Or people can stop acting crazy when seeing someone who
| disagrees with them.
|
| Musk is outright supporting people who are openly white
| supremacists, go look through his recent posts on X.
| concordDance wrote:
| That does not mean he himself is a white supremacist. For
| example, defence lawyers and civil rights orgs often find
| themselves defending or supporting some awful scoundrels.
|
| I might be friends with a communist and have supported him
| in the past without being a communist or agreeing with
| communism myself.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I don't care about his stance on politics or anything, but I do
| consider his twitter crap a waste of his time at the cost of
| humanity as a whole. If he would focus on spacex (I don't care
| too much about tesla) and its spin-offs, the world would get
| better, faster. Even better would be more people like him, then
| it doesn't matter; we just don't have many for some reason.
| rapsey wrote:
| Doubtful that they could move faster with him taking a more
| active role. Starship could have launched months before, but
| they have been waiting for FAA approval. It is not Elon's
| lack of attention holding them back.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Sure, but he could be doing more spin-offs like Starlink.
| During the waiting. Instead of what he is doing with
| Twitter.
| rapsey wrote:
| He seems to be focusing on AI moreso than Twitter.
| hef19898 wrote:
| One cannot be missing the latest hype train, right?
| rapsey wrote:
| Elon was literally a founder of OpenAI. Private space,
| EV, AI. Three major tech industries with him at the
| forefront from the beginning.
|
| Calling him a hype chaser is simply wrong.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Private space is basically SpaceX launches for
| governments and space agencies, the "private" stuff comes
| from in-house demand for Starlink. In case of EVs, he had
| to sue to get the title of founder at Tesla. And for
| OpenAI, wasn't he just an early investor? Or do we assume
| he wrote ChatGPT code himself now?
| rapsey wrote:
| Life is too short to seek a rational discussion with
| people who have no interest in one.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, we found common ground then.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| FAA approval took a long time because of how reckless he
| was with the first launch. He didn't want to bother with a
| flame suppression system but knew it was a risk.
| rapsey wrote:
| Bullcrap. They literally had to do shit like this to
| please them: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F
| %2Fpreview.redd....
| barbacoa wrote:
| Back story as explained by Elon in an interview with Lex
| Friedman:
|
| The government's environmental assessment was bonkers.
| They were required to do things like assess the risk of a
| booster landing on a shark or whale in the middle of the
| ocean. They were also required to assess if the sound of
| the rocket would harm the breeding behavior of the seal
| population. To do this they had to chase down a seal,
| strap it down to a board with headphones and study if the
| sound of rocket engine were emotionally distressing to
| the animal.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| If they had flame suppression its likely they would not
| have triggered the additional review.
| rapsey wrote:
| How much flame suppression is there in here:
| https://www.faa.gov/media/27236
| mavhc wrote:
| SpaceX has still been fixing Starship this week, it's
| unlikely they could have launched months before
| rapsey wrote:
| Or would have launched, learned something new and would
| have been working on a third iteration already.
| sgu999 wrote:
| > we just don't have many for some reason.
|
| If you're referring to futurists and visionaries, we do have
| many I'm sure, but most weren't lucky enough to stumble
| across a pile of cash they could convert into an infinite
| pile of cash.
|
| Musk still has a fairly problematic views on sustainability,
| I'd rather have more powerful people who are convinced that
| public transports, healthcare and education are essential to
| our prosperity.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| >If you're referring to futurists and visionaries
|
| We have theoretical people enough; I mean people who
| execute. It's not just a pile of cash, it's also going for
| it. There is plenty of cash around.
|
| > I'd rather have more powerful people who are convinced
| that public transports, healthcare and education
|
| Yes, we need that _too_. Improve current life, improve
| future life.
| harryvederci wrote:
| He's using Twitter / X to support his Grok AI.
|
| > A unique and fundamental advantage of Grok is that it has
| real-time knowledge of the world via the X platform.
|
| Source: https://x.ai
|
| So I guess Tesla will collect all kinds of information from
| the streets, Starlink will collect (earth and space)
| information using satellites, and X will collect real-time
| information about what people are currently talking about.
|
| I think OpenAI may not be the biggest player in AI soon.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| We need more players, but if you want and weird edgy lying
| polarised AI, then I suggest you train it on Twitter/X in
| realtime. I cannot see how it will not be completely
| unhinged like that. But let's see; we need more players to
| push boundaries and push prices down. Not sure if Musk is
| that, but who knows.
| zigman1 wrote:
| > and X will collect real-time information about what
| people are currently talking about
|
| I really well hope this won't happen. I don't want any
| observations or conclusions from the environment that is
| predominantly shitposting, thirst trapping and provoking.
| komali2 wrote:
| I hope he doesn't.
|
| People like Elon can carry the flag of what many of us have
| been warning about when we point out that our systems often
| have single points of failures: often one man with, for
| example, the ability to literally end the world, and no actual
| safeguards to prevent it. Or, one man with billions of dollars
| of assets at his disposal, money which could be making people's
| lives better but is instead being used by that man to do things
| like buy his favorite website and ruin it. Or, the fact that
| that website is one of three or four which represent the
| backbone of our species' communicative ability, and that man
| can control which of our species' communications are seen.
|
| Whether it's a good or bad person at the helm, this is not how
| our systems should be designed or function. The more horrible
| the person, the more obvious this is.
| concordDance wrote:
| > Or, the fact that that website is one of three or four
| which represent the backbone of our species' communicative
| ability, and that man can control which of our species'
| communications are seen.
|
| The problem here is the lack of properly open (and FOSS
| based!) popular communication channels. A committee or safety
| team can be even worse than one man.
| skrause wrote:
| A successful SpaceX gives me hope that Elon Musk will
| eventually move to Mars for good, so it's not hard to support
| it.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| it's stupid to wish a guy to be your ideal hero. hero is to be
| admired, not worshiped.
|
| you can admire what he accomplished. he ain't no God.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah. I used to be pretty excited about SpaceX stuff (remember
| those first re-usable booster landings?? amazing). But now it's
| impossible to separate that work from their CEO's bonkers
| conspiracy theory mongering and anti-trans, anti-democracy, and
| white supremacist views. So I mostly just ignore SpaceX news
| items now. It sucks.
|
| I hope SpaceX is able to dump him soon so they can get back to
| just being a cool company doing cool things.
| zigman1 wrote:
| yeah I find all of this pretty strange, because Musk was very
| much adored by the left leaning people before he started his
| cultural war. Around 2016-2017 he was still the cool guy even
| on Reddit. I find this whole political circus slightly
| unnecessary and I believe he got himself few doors closed by
| this.
| coldpie wrote:
| It's probably the single most high-profile example of the
| dangers of social media addiction in history. Guy fell in a
| deep social media hole around that time and in a few short
| years it's completely destroyed his reputation and seems to
| be affecting his personal mental health pretty massively.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| What exactly is anti-democracy? It sounds like to me you are
| actively trying to supress viewpoints you disagree with, and
| by extension decrease their voice and reach leading to
| suppressing their vote which is anti-democracy, no?
|
| I'm convinced this numb minded narrow viewed narrative is
| such a minority that it's proponents have a zeel to spew
| their misinformation every chance they can get.
| coldpie wrote:
| > What exactly is anti-democracy?
|
| He promotes and supports the US politicians who architected
| and supported the January 6th attempt to overthrow the 2020
| election, and who are continuing that work today to end
| democracy in the US.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| hahahaha, what a load of crap. You can't possibly believe
| that narrative with a straight face.
| coldpie wrote:
| I can and do. And as a result of him getting mixed up in
| this politics junk, we're having this stupid conversation
| instead of celebrating the cool stuff SpaceX is doing.
| Boo :(
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| Didn't he vote Hillary on record?
|
| From far left wikipedia:
|
| >>Within the context of American politics, Musk has said
| he supported George W. Bush in 2004, Barack Obama in 2008
| and 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020.
|
| So neocon, neolib, neolib, neolib - all warmongers, all
| boogie man Russia (lol), all proven beyond doubt to skim
| off the government. All crony capitalists, need I go on?
| All at one point against marriage for all - on record.
| Facts.
|
| These are the people you support? Better take a look in
| the mirror bud.
|
| Stop believing the narrative! Wake up folks!
|
| -I'm not the one with cognitive dissonance letting a
| little bs politics get in the way of forming an opinion
| about a company.
|
| How anyone can possibly not see the amount of undercover
| feds on the ground that day stirring the pot or the fact
| Speaker of the House didn't allow a major National police
| presence that was requested by the administration has
| serious blinders on and needs to check their view of
| reality.
|
| I'm mean grandma didn't even go outside of the velvet
| ropes. Seriously. Check yourself. Disgusting.
| concordDance wrote:
| > But now it's impossible to separate that work
|
| Why? Is it just negative associations and emotions preventing
| you from enjoying it?
|
| > bonkers conspiracy theory mongering and anti-trans, anti-
| democracy, and white supremacist views
|
| That's a supremely uncharitable description.
|
| Particularly the "white supremacist" bit. Just because I am
| friends with a communist and support/defend them and agree
| with some of their views (that aren't "communism is the best
| socioeconomic system") does not mean I am a communist.
| coldpie wrote:
| > Why? Is it just negative associations and emotions
| preventing you from enjoying it?
|
| Yes. I see SpaceX and think, "oh, the company owned by that
| jackass who wants to hurt my trans friends." It sucks.
| concordDance wrote:
| If it helps, he doesn't want to hurt your trans friends,
| it isn't a terminal value. If you could convince him that
| trans people and potentially-trans people will be better
| off with people respecting trans pronouns and teaching
| about transness in schools then he would change his
| behavior.
| badwolf wrote:
| (x) doubt.
| justinhj wrote:
| Why don't we hear the same about Bezos and his Wapo or the
| dozens of tech CEOs and Hollywood stars and influencers that
| share the same views? Because people don't want Elon to be
| neutral, they want him to be fully mainstream left or fully
| silent.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| its not him that's changed, its the medias portrayal of him
| ETH_start wrote:
| SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy have already revolutionized
| the space industry with their reusable first stage boosters and
| rocket engines. This advance in rocket design has resulted in the
| cost to launch one kilogram of payload to orbit from
| approximately $15,000 in the pre-SpaceX era, to around $1,400
| with the Falcon Heavy.
|
| This graph shows the incredible impact of SpaceX on the volume of
| rocket launches, with an exponential rise in recent years:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-...
|
| With Starship, SpaceX is striving to make rockets fully reusable,
| which will transform human civilization by making space vastly
| more accessible.
| happytiger wrote:
| Let's f*cking go. Hell yes!
|
| This is like watching the first container ship get built. It's
| going to change so much so quickly -- we couldn't be more stoked.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'm fairly sure you're allowed to use swear words / are not
| expected to self-censor; we're all adults here, we can use
| adult language.
| mdwhatcott wrote:
| Also not a bad thing to remain childlike in some ways.
| nextstep wrote:
| Is there any update on the lawsuit from all the environmental
| damage from their last launch?
|
| https://www.space.com/spacex-faa-seek-dismiss-starship-lawsu...
| 7373737373 wrote:
| How come we don't see other countries attempting launches at this
| scale yet?
| King-Aaron wrote:
| Not enough eccentric billionaires that own their own orbital
| launch companies, I guess.
| aa-jv wrote:
| China just did their own return-to-base rocket test, they're
| not that far behind SpaceX and are rapidly closing the gap.
| panick21_ wrote:
| That is just patent nonsense.
|
| There is a very, very, very big gap between a operational
| heavy and super heavy rocket that has proven re-usability up
| to 20 times.
|
| What 'China' ie iSpace did was build a tiny hopper, did a
| mini-hop and demonstrated landing. Those things are totally
| different dimensions.
|
| SpaceX has done test like that in 2012, and that was with far
| more advanced engine technology:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_prototypes
|
| China official reusable rocket are even further away.
|
| And in fact its not that China is closing the gap, its
| actually that SpaceX is INCREASING the gap. SpaceX is not
| standing still, going from landing to doing it 100+ times
| successful and 20+ times with a single rocket.
|
| And in addition SpaceX is already moving on to Raptor engines
| and Starship, further increasing the gap.
|
| So lets be clear about the fact, China is not closing the
| gap, they are falling further behind.
| cobbaut wrote:
| > So lets be clear about the fact, China is not closing the
| gap, they are falling further behind.
|
| SpaceX is rapidly increasing the gap with _all_
| (government) space agencies, even the US /NASA and EU/ESA;
| both SLS and Ariane 6 are decades behind.
| djaychela wrote:
| Small correction here - the leading Falcon 9 first stage
| has done 18 missions. Which is still the stuff of Sci-fi,
| but I checked when you said 20+ as I wasn't sure of that
| and it is actually 18. (B1058)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-
| stage...
| rapsey wrote:
| Because it takes deep pockets and willingness to take big
| risks. Something gov organizations can not do.
| komali2 wrote:
| > Something gov organizations can not do.
|
| From what I understand about space exploration, this is an
| opposite-world position. Can you expand on what you mean?
|
| Governments ("gov organizations") have been defining the term
| "space exploration" since 1944. First object in outer space,
| first object in orbit, first human in outer space, first
| space station, first interstellar space flight, first human
| on the moon, first man-made objects on mars, venus, all by
| "gov organizations."
|
| I'm super confused why you think the comparatively young
| private space industry, which has accomplished putting
| satellites and a car in low earth orbit, is somehow more
| capable?
| rapsey wrote:
| And they did most of it decades ago when the public
| supported grand endeavours. Now risk aversion is very high
| and budgets are very limited.
| komali2 wrote:
| So what? Governments are clearly capable of achieving
| these things, they've done it before. Private industry,
| remains to be seen. Worth nothing that it has to be
| profitable for it to work for private industry - possibly
| not what we actually _want_ for space exploration. Would
| private industry have kept the voyager probes going this
| long?
| rapsey wrote:
| I am speaking about willingness to take big risks not
| ability. You are arguing with me while talking about
| completely different things.
| soperj wrote:
| Apollo wasn't a risk?
| rocqua wrote:
| There are two parts to profitability. Revenue and costs.
| I don't want space exploration for unlocking massive new
| revenues, but reduced costs would be amazing. Not just
| for opportunities that get unlocked, but also for freeing
| up resources for other things.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > I'm super confused why you think the comparatively young
| private space industry, which has accomplished putting
| satellites and a car in low earth orbit, is somehow more
| capable?
|
| i would say the appetite for risk and prioritization in the
| private space industry makes them more capable. Don't
| forget the Apollo program and the space race was in
| response to a real existential threat. Once the threat
| lessoned the appetite for risk went down and other
| priorities took center stage.
|
| The private space industry has taken all that innovation,
| adding to it, and moving forward where the governments
| don't because they have other fish to fry. To mangle a
| quote, "If [private space industry] have seen further, it
| is by standing on the shoulders of giants [government
| science/engineering]". I think the private space industry
| is further validation the public investment in space is
| worth it.
| pixl97 wrote:
| > have been defining the term "space exploration"
|
| At insanely massive expense. Note that this isn't a bad
| thing, R&D is expensive and humanity has benefitted from
| this. The problem here is just the government doing it
| never leads to cost decreases. The lack of cheap orbital
| access has crippled the expansion of space industry.
|
| Industry tends to be exceptionally capable in producing
| assembly line style production. Up until this point rockets
| have been much more custom productions, use once and throw
| away. There was pretty much zero headway in the government
| achieving this scale of production. SpaceX in two decades
| has dramatically decreased the cost to orbit. And with
| their new rocket will drop costs by order of magnitude or
| more. This will lead to far more government R&D expenditure
| in space.
|
| >which has accomplished putting satellites and a car in low
| earth orbit
|
| And by that you mean "has accomplished in putting more
| satellites than all other governments/entities added
| together into space". I don't know, you tell me.
| rocqua wrote:
| A key advantage of the assembly line production of these
| things is fast iterative development. At first, in a
| 'move fast and break things' way, when doing tests. But
| just as significantly, by learning about non-fatal flaws
| in a working design so you can improve it.
|
| The 100th rocket you build and attempt to fly will be
| much more optimized than the 5th. So by ramping
| production you can develop much quicker.
|
| Another related point is tolerance of failure. A failed
| test for a government program will immediately see
| pressure to cancel the program by it's political
| opponents. Any detractors for a company will have a much
| harder time exerting influence.
| rdedev wrote:
| I mean ISRO is a government organization and it's been
| provided pretty cheap services. I don't know enough about
| rockets to comment further. Just wanted to say that govt
| does not always mean expensive
| chasd00 wrote:
| I thing the talent is there, I mean the incredible scientific
| and engineering accomplishments made by government research
| bodies make that point clear. The problem is governments are
| filled to the brim with committees and competing priorities.
| Frankly, to most people and therefore governments,
| Starship/Superheavy just isn't that important or at the very
| least, there's a thousand other things of equal importance
| competing for talent/money/attention.
|
| Also, the risk of failure is so high. Musk was literally
| laughed out of the room when he proposed re-usable orbital
| boosters. I'm sure he was laughed at again when he proposed a
| full-flow staged combustion engine (Raptor). And again when
| he said they were going to put 33 engines beneath a stainless
| steel water tower.
|
| Governments can't weather the ire of public opinion the way a
| private company can.
|
| edit: after all that typing i just realized i'm basically
| saying "i agree" to your comment hah. The risk of failure is
| just too high for governments to stomach.
| soperj wrote:
| Last I checked, they put someone on the moon.
| panick21_ wrote:
| SpaceX is by far the best organization in terms of rocket
| engine design, rocket design and rocket operations. Nobody else
| in the world comes even remotely close.
|
| Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are already better by a long distance
| then any other rocket in the world. All other organizations
| world wide are trying to catch up to that.
|
| You only really need huge rockets like this if you are
| launching some truly massive amount of stuff. This just wasn't
| a thing until today. The biggest ever was during the moon race,
| US Saturn V and Soviets N1. However the Saturn V was expensive
| and NASA wanted to have a reusable Shuttle instead, so they
| dropped it. The Soviets did the N1 but when they lost the moon
| race (and a few failures) they didn't want to pay for it
| anymore.
|
| So really since the moon race, rockets of this scale just were
| not necessary. If you can't reuse the rocket, a rocket of this
| scale is just to expensive to be practical.
|
| It took SpaceX making re-usability real and mega constellations
| to make it worth considering a rocket like Starship.
|
| Just for reference, this thing is far more powerful then the
| Saturn V or N1. It has almost double the liftoff thrust. So
| really humanity has never operated this scale of rocket before.
| chasd00 wrote:
| the Raptor engine series is an extremely high barrier to entry.
| I would bet 30% of Spacex's innovation lies in that one engine.
| Its combination of thrust, efficiency, and small size are
| beyond anything else. The size blows me away, if you took the
| nozzle off it's about the size of a car engine.
|
| Without the engineering breakthroughs to produce something like
| the Raptor engine launches at this scale just aren't possible.
| There's other engines with thrust to match Raptor but not the
| efficiency nor size. For example, there's just no way you can
| put 33 RS25s under an airframe.
|
| from the link below
|
| "The SpaceX Raptor 3 was recently test fired and reached 18%
| more thrust than a Raptor 2. The Raptor 2 had 25% more thrust
| than the Raptor 1 and it was 20% lighter."
|
| it's just crazy what that propulsion team is doing...simply
| crazy
|
| https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/05/spacex-raptor-3-engine...
| cryptonector wrote:
| > I would bet 30% of Spacex's innovation lies in that one
| engine.
|
| Musk often points out that the stage 0 work is harder (and I
| suspect more innovative) than the rocket (and engine) design.
| He also often mentions that fabrication is even harder. I.e.,
| all the processes, tools, machines, etc. used to build all
| those engines and rockets is harder still than stage 0 -- one
| might even call it stage -1. It's possible that Raptor is not
| even closed to "30% of Spacex's innovation" :)
| bluntcandour wrote:
| What would be the payload(even if it's sample one)?
|
| Wikipedia entry talks about its max capacity{150 t (330,000 lb)
| of payload in a fully reusable configuration}
| kattagarian wrote:
| No payload, it's a test
| unixhero wrote:
| I am really very excited about this
| stn_za wrote:
| Most of these comments are completely red-pilled and spaceship
| man bad mentality.
|
| Get off hacker news, and back to reddit pls
| raccolta wrote:
| What's meant by "new york mets" / "NYMETS" here? Is that some ATC
| name for combined New York area airports?
| dharmab wrote:
| The Mets are a baseball team. Whoever wrote this weather report
| injected a little humour into it.
| czbond wrote:
| Metropolitan areas
| sidcool wrote:
| I am reading Elon Musk's recent biography, and the sense of
| urgency he brings to all endeavors is pretty amazing.
| sidcool wrote:
| Despite all the things HN dislikes about Elon (FSD, Twitter
| etc.), SpaceX has always been a darling. And it will remain so. I
| like how HN does a healthy compartmentalisation of concerns.
| maxdo wrote:
| FSD is amazing for road trips . It got much better in recent
| months. I spent 10h plus recently on FSD , extremely good :)
| adolph wrote:
| There are a lot of comments skeptical of space exploration,
| future colonization goals and such. A podcast you might
| appreciate is Econtalk's "Zach Weinersmith on Space Settlement
| and A City on Mars."
|
| _Loss of taste for most foods, vision problems, loss of muscle
| mass and bone density. In light of these and the many unpleasant
| our outright dangerous effects of space travel on human
| physiology, science writer and cartoonist Zach Weinersmith
| wonders: When it comes to the dream of space expansion, what
| exactly do we hope to gain? Listen as he and EconTalk 's Russ
| Roberts discuss his new book (co-authored with Kelly Weinersmith)
| A City on Mars, which offers a hard-nosed yet humorous look at
| the sobering and lesser-discussed challenges involved in building
| space settlements. Topics include the particular problems posed
| by the moon and Mars's atmospheres; the potential difficulty of
| reproducing in zero gravity; and the dangerous tendency to
| overlook a key factor in whether space settlement is a good idea:
| the fact that people are people, wherever they may be._
|
| https://www.econtalk.org/zach-weinersmith-on-space-settlemen...
| jksmith wrote:
| Did I read that right? Three launches in one day? That is
| breathtaking execution.
| EwanG wrote:
| As another data point (possibly useful), we were at the La Quinta
| that is midway up the island but located on the beach. There's a
| pier just down from there that has a decent view (through
| binoculars or a small telescope).
|
| Even there, when it went up, the door to the beach (which we had
| open to see if we could hear it) was rattling, as well as the
| windows in the room.
|
| Obviously there is something to be said for being at the park,
| but I suspect there is something to be said for being a bit
| further north - particularly if you want to avoid the worst of
| the crowds leaving afterwards.
|
| Do plan to spend some time on the island afterwards - as the main
| route back is a longish two lane bridge that will back up
| significantly for a couple hours as the early birds try to rush
| out.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Access Denied
|
| You don't have permission to access
| "http://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_spt.jsp" on this server.
|
| Reference #18.94fe1202.1699997741.a52fc3c
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