61–70 of 269 posts
In short, we are now using billionaires instead of dogs to test spaceships. I would argue that's progress.
I didn't get why the orange or red light is scary. Because it could mean landing in the desert when you are a glider?
Was that the case here? Maybe, maybe not. But the flight plan was built with safety in mind, and the pilots should have aborted.
Such a shame. You can bet that this will come back to bite Virgin, and should a serious accident happen and they get sued, Stucky could be a prime witness.
Don't burn bridges.
Brilliant well written article. Not without bias, but you can see through the words on the page and into the immense pressure that team at Virgin Galactic must have been under to get their boss into space and to beat Bezos, all for the inflated ego of one man. Branson did put his life on the line to achieve that accolade though, which was a gutsy move.
So much energy invested in a dick measuring contest. I hope humanity reaches a point in which the incentive structure would stimulate a more meaningful investment of human labor. Not to say I'm not part of the problem...
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You would need the inheritee and the engineer to both be willing to commit murder and run the calculus that the money is more valuable than the risk of them going to jail and losing their inheritance forever, which is probably a really bad bet given one of them is a spacex engineer or something and the other is, what, an heir to the bezos fortune? Silly
And reality isn't a heist movie. Most heirs are not going to attempt to murder for the money. They normally are already enjoying that wealth. And if the money maker stays alive it just grows even more. Now even if they have a motive. How are they going to connect to the right engineer? They likely don't have the skills to even identify an employee that could deliberately sabotage the system. And you likely couldn't d…
Brilliant well written article. Not without bias, but you can see through the words on the page and into the immense pressure that team at Virgin Galactic must have been under to get their boss into space and to beat Bezos, all for the inflated ego of one man. Branson did put his life on the line to achieve that accolade though, which was a gutsy move.
People remember Yuri Gagarin, not these people.
If the rules say to abort, the software aborts. Humans get to say "I think we'll be fine", and put lives on the line.
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I would unpack "gutsy" with its overtones of grudging admiration, into a lot harsher terms related to toxic narcissism and what amounts to a pissing contest between competitive men. I suspect there is a natural evolutionary curb on the somewhat sociopathic qualities at work, whereby bravado is kept in some check by self-culling being commonplace.
If something has positive side-effects, can it be called toxic?
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Oh dang, for real? That's super weak if true! Also, no wonder they have hundreds of episodes... I'd be curious if you have any links/etc. on the subject to share!
It still amazes me that anyone still believes that the pictures they see on TV are in any way real. 100% of content on TV is fake. I used to say except the news, but now I'm not even able to trust that. If it's a commercial, definitely fake. If it's a TV show, 100% fake. Games shows shoot 5 episodes in a day, so when they say "last week's winner" it was last hour's.
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There are other flaws too. Like pretending to bike to the spaceport on the day of, but it was actually filmed the week before and when called out, they said, oops, you're right, sorry! It's like when Guy Fiery in his hot rod. He pretends he rolls up to the place in his 70s hot rod, but actually it's just rolled out of the truck that lugs it around from location to location and he opens the door, sits, gets filmed get…
OK. That's it! I draw the line at Guy Fieri slander! That's not fakery. That's every classic car owner's dream. You get to show off the hot rod and not put miles on it. I am sure he does plenty of joyriding in that thing. Guy is anything but phony. He is actually one of thee more wholesome dudes on television ATM. We need more Guy Fieri's.