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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

#121

Post by DennisP »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #64
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…

Well then there would be less money for things like PACE, ICE-SAT, ICE Bridge. They've been building earth satellites to improve fisheries management and inform earth conservation efforts. PACE will be particularly helpful for me as an oceanographer because of they've got those neato optical plankton sensors onboard. Also, NASA allocates funding based on decadal surveys of the scientific community, so they have reall…

Or, there would be less money for SLS. NASA has been spending $2 billion annually for SLS development for a while now, and all they'll get is a disposable rocket the size of Starship that costs at least a billion dollars per launch, or $10,000/kg payload.

Meanwhile SpaceX is spending less than one billion dollars total for Starship/Super Heavy, and at scale it'll launch payload for $20/kg. How much more money would NASA have for observation satellites with $20/kg launch?

Probably even more than you'd think because when launch is cheap, you can also afford to make your satellite cheaper. If it fails, it's not so expensive to launch another one.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#122

Post by DennisP »

buboard wrote: post #63
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…

why would NASA want to drive down the cost of space? I mean, they would want to drive it down in order to go farther in space, but their mission is to explore space, not be the uber for space the criticism of their research budget is valid though, they need to be more ambitious and driven

Then NASA should completely give up being the uber for space, instead of spending gobs of money on SLS. But if you are going to get into the launch business, then do it right.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#123

Post by widowlark »

shkkmo wrote: post #74
Barrin92 wrote: post #6

I think it's great that there's a renewed discussion about the nature of productivity and growth and that people are starting to become aware that economic profit or consumer demand are not the same as progress on long term fundamental science and manufacturing. For way too long now we have all operated on the mainstream economic view that productivity growth is somehow like manna from the heavens and that we only ne…

What we need is progressively stricter tariffs paired with looser immigration laws. We need to force companies that want to efficiently compete for our consumer demand to in-source process knowledge and manufacturing.

This is a novel take that I have not heard before. Thanks.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#124

Post by ACow_Adonis »

headmelted wrote: post #44
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've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always endless meetings and poorly trained people that nevertheless earn well above the median wage so the incentive to improve onself is almost zero” This was actually painful to read because of how much truth there is in it.

I can say I worked on one.

But because it was well managed, small team, everyone listened to each other's areas of respective expertise and authority, we wrapped it up in a year on a 6 digit budget.

Meanwhile, a previous project elsewhere i have experience with, had a team of approx 30 cycle through, 10 to 20 external consultants (some flown in and put up in hotels, but who had no actual experience in the things they were consulting on) , had been running for several years, estimated 8 digit budget, and by the time i left had been running for several years with no discernable output compared to the status quo except reports and presentations taking about how good things would be one day in the indeterminate future.

I'm convinced the later is the norm, and it's even harder to go back to once you've worked on a project that 'just works', but I'm sure several people used the later one to land themselves high paying jobs by putting it on their resume using management speak to make it sound impressive, so I guess success depends on whose point of view you're looking from...

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#125

Post by OnlineGladiator »

goatlover wrote: post #119
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think is a better way to fund a manned mission to Mars? It's hard to argue with the progress that SpaceX has made - and that wouldn't exist without VC funding. Meanwhile NASA continues to operate at the whims of Congress. It's doing fine, but it's not looking for any moonshots like it was 50 years ago.

The goal of NASA is scientific exploration, not human colonization. Robots and satellites are much cheaper and safer than trying to make Mars a viable place to live, and you can explore many more places.

I agree, but the title of the article we are commenting on is "You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I got Facebook"

I didn't mean to say NASA is failing (although they are a political entity and have a lot of ups and downs as a result), but literally to say "how else could you possibly fund this if NASA isn't going to do it?"

If NASA is meant for exploration and we don't need VC funding (the point of the original comment I responded to), what do you consider the best way to fund a Mars colony?

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#126

Post by innagadadavida »

There has been no progress on the quality of life front expected from technology advances either.

Advent of dish washers, washing machines etc, made our life simpler. But even now, these are not “end-to-end” solutions - someone has to load and unload these machines and maintain them. These problems are not as complex as the ones mentioned in the article. However, nothing has changed for the last 50-60 years. Solving these do not involve any political changes or other forms of complex coordination. We’ve talked about personal robots, but nothing exists that can solve these problems.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#127

Post by widowlark »

randomsearch wrote: post #76
sabujp wrote: post #73

Forget mars colonies, i just want robots that can do household chores that don't cost more than a vacuum cleaner (and i think roombas are overpriced), where's Rosie?! That's hard, let's build the 10000th chat app instead, e.g. why did this cost $120 million https://qz.com/1194939/the-us-government-just-gave-someone-a... ? Can't we do better now with 3d printing? I dunno, i think we're getting there : https://www.yout…

Thought: is the migration of manufacturing away from western countries part of the problem? Lots of innovation in software in the US or UK, but less in manufacturing - perhaps because the skills aren’t there?

Probably some of the issue, yes. I will say this is chiefly a company-side problem. Lot's of companies still have manufacturing jobs in the US, but they are typically high-skill manufacturing, like Boeing or Tesla.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#128

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

joe_the_user wrote: post #120
numair wrote: post #86

All of these articles and ways of thinking always miss the bigger, more fundamental shift in human society — we now know there is literally no place we can access in any meaningful amount of time where the “grass is greener” than the places we’ve already been. This is profound, semi-depressing, and enlightening at the same time. Rather than seeking something new somewhere else, our new obsession is in improving what…

Just as much, if you consider what it would be like, who would want to be stuck on a martian mining colony ... without any social networking . Social networking might have it's downsides but it's rather a boon to people stuck in areas of extreme boredom and isolation. The thing one can regret about the aesthetics of modern life, including social networking, is that it's made the uniqueness of places less (a social ne…

I'd love to hang out on the martian web. Sounds cool as hell, and a lot healthier than earth web.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#129

Post by ethbro »

headmelted wrote: post #44
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've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always endless meetings and poorly trained people that nevertheless earn well above the median wage so the incentive to improve onself is almost zero” This was actually painful to read because of how much truth there is in it.

The irony is: how does a company that conducts itself thusly manage to retain people?

To which the answer is: pay well above median wage

The mind boggles.

One of my founding tenants for any company would be "Never assume work done in service of profit is inherently profitable work."

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#130

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

numair wrote: post #86

All of these articles and ways of thinking always miss the bigger, more fundamental shift in human society — we now know there is literally no place we can access in any meaningful amount of time where the “grass is greener” than the places we’ve already been. This is profound, semi-depressing, and enlightening at the same time. Rather than seeking something new somewhere else, our new obsession is in improving what…

>The final argument someone’s inevitably going to make is, survival of the race. Yeah, okay. You might want to self-reflect on our existence as deeply terrestrial beings that are intrinsically connected to the Earth. Even if you spend all of your day hidden in a bedroom, you can’t escape your bond with this planet. Instead of trying to find a mistress in the form of another moon/planet, we need to spend more time working on the marriage.

There's plenty of ways for life to end on this planet that don't require any human interaction.[1] Many have occurred in the past, it's naive to think it won't happen again. There's no reason why anyone has to choose between the stars and not killing ourselves on this planet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

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