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You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

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Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#51

Post by netsharc »

brulard wrote: post #41
learc83 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook (and other web advertising companies) isn't leading most of the advances in computing power. Moore's law is much older than Facebook. And they certainly aren't developing the software that space agencies and companies are using. If anything they're likely diverting talent away from more beneficial work towards selling ads. There are maybe 2 projects on this list that could possibly be beneficial for space ex…

Haven't you heard of react.js or GraphQL? Not sure about space agencies, but companies for sure use them.

Hah, react.. I'm sure that fancy GUI framework will solve climate change and make us an interplanetary species. /s

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#52

Post by p_l »

trixie_ wrote: post #39

NASA hasn’t been actively trying to drive down the cost of space. If the had it would of unlocked space for all of us decades ago. It took SpaceX investing their own profits into building a reusable booster. And now they’re doing the same for the entire vehicle with Starship. NASA does pay SpaceX for flights to the IIS, but most of that money goes into building Dragons and the rockets to support them. What if NASA ac…

NASA projects are endangered by politicians. The difference is that SpaceX funded reusability on their own, instead of depending on fickle funding from Congress that killed the original STS (leaving us with the one that flew and costed as much as Apollo per launch).

And sometimes it wasn't Congress zit was president - like Nixon deciding to kill nuclear space propulsion for no known reason.

The cutthroat politics of inter-OKB competition in Soviet Union Post Korolev's death sometimes appear milder than the indecision left after Kennedy in actually funding NASA.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#53

Post by headmelted »

trixie_ wrote: post #39

NASA hasn’t been actively trying to drive down the cost of space. If the had it would of unlocked space for all of us decades ago. It took SpaceX investing their own profits into building a reusable booster. And now they’re doing the same for the entire vehicle with Starship. NASA does pay SpaceX for flights to the IIS, but most of that money goes into building Dragons and the rockets to support them. What if NASA ac…

How on Earth (see what I did?) would NASA drive down the cost of space?

“I don’t care if it’s not real science - Go there and do that, you burden on the taxpayer” - Every administration official in charge of NASA’s budget ever, probably.

I love me some NASA but I don’t envy the people asking for funding one iota.

Also, For All Mankind is terrific.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#54

Post by learc83 »

brulard wrote: post #41
learc83 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook (and other web advertising companies) isn't leading most of the advances in computing power. Moore's law is much older than Facebook. And they certainly aren't developing the software that space agencies and companies are using. If anything they're likely diverting talent away from more beneficial work towards selling ads. There are maybe 2 projects on this list that could possibly be beneficial for space ex…

Haven't you heard of react.js or GraphQL? Not sure about space agencies, but companies for sure use them.

No one is using either of those directly in aerospace applications. And I can guarantee you that an aerospace company using React instead of Rails or a desktop app for a marketing page or internal app isn't significantly driving down the cost of space travel.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#55

Post by ringshall »

aguyfromnb wrote: post #19
eanzenberg wrote: post #12

It sounds like people are forgetting the world before Facebook. Isolated, repressed locations, limited flow of information from tiny amounts of sources. The Connected-Information Age seems to have brought on some great advances and has been self-sustaining from a profitable perspective. Sure, the worlds' governments could have spent billions / trillions building bases on Mars or even terraforming it. But for what pur…

> It sounds like people are forgetting the world before Facebook. Isolated, repressed locations, limited flow of information from tiny amounts of sources. Facebook is not the internet. This problem was solved long before 2005.

And the world was connected long before the internet. Instant intercontinental comms have been around since intercontinental telegraph cables were laid in the late 19th century.

The advent of radio, television, and telephone added more modes of instant very long distance comms. The internet was just the next layer of that.

In the future, cheap satellite internet will further reduce geographic isolation.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#56

Post by buboard »

bitL wrote: post #16

"You get what you measure" - talk to VCs that could finance your idea and then weep when you see what ideas do they actually select. Quick boring ROI + veiled scams are the way to go these days if you want to get external funding.

I think the bigger lie is that you absolutely need VCs to finance your idea.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#57

Post by balt_s »

scythe wrote: post #25

Why is it always space? Space technology requires lots of energy and our society is currently in the middle of realizing that our current way of getting energy is going to kill us. Of course we're not making large-scale investments in energy-intensive exploration. I wish EDS maglev, fusion power or quantum computing generated so much excitement, to say nothing of grid batteries, magnetocaloric heat pumps, or electric…

> Why is it always space?

Two words: Star Trek

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#58

Post by photonios »

molteanu wrote: post #23

I've told myself countless times lately, that it is simply not possible for young graduates to come to work knowing basically nothing, surfing fb and youtube all day long and then go buy cars and going to Greece as their very first vacation. Something, somewhere, just stinks badly. I've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always…

I always wondered whether this phenomenon was something local or whether it holds true outside eastern Europe as well.

I saw that you're from eastern Europe and I checked out your website. You're in the exact same city I am in. I moved here a couple of years ago from western Europe. What a small world.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#59

Post by DataWorker »

chrisseaton wrote: post #46
molteanu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reference to all the money being invested in questionable places.

I think we’re missing some part of your train of thought here. But fundamentally tech graduates make a lot because the work they do makes a lot. You can’t argue the projects are both over staffed and pay too much at the same time! If there’s enough money coming into the company to pay that many people that much money then good for them? Looks like it is possible. Where should the money go instead? To the investors? T…

You are missing the point, which is that incentives can change society, for better or worse. If we have problems assigning appropriate value to things as a society we go astray. If we place greater value on ad sales than we do in real scientific progress in the long run we all lose.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#60

Post by option »

learc83 wrote: post #45
Aloha wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no Elon fan, and it's a really really big if , but - you're absolutely correct about that if he succeeds completely he'll go down in the same category as Edison or Napoleon.

Napoleon in most of the English speaking world is much more infamous/loathed than admired.

yes, I’m Russian and, IMHO, napaleon isn’t that far from hitler. Both were mass murderers who valued a lot of silly things above human life
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