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SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

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Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#91

Post by ordu »

thenoblesunfish wrote: post #11
mattlondon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point here is, this is the first "private" space mission that wasn't using government/military hardware or staff. It is a rocket designed by a commercial company, flying people who just made a few calls and then paid to do it. It is pretty wild when you think about it - not so long ago (10 years maybe?) this sort of thing would have been unthinkable . Say what you will about Elon Musk, but you've got to g…

When we're drooling over these accomplishments, we should direct more of our praise to the thousands of really, really good engineers who did the work, built on the accumulated experience of millions, over decades. People seem to be very eager to ascribe success to heroic individuals, and while leadership is certainly something remarkable, I think that there is a severe imbalance in who we're thanking for these achie…

Popular history is being written in a way allowing it to be easily consumed. So no, it shouldn't contain a list of thousands of engineers. I'm not arguing that it is good or bad, just stating how it is.

In a way it is a progress. Wars had thousands or even millions of causalities, but history says mostly about generals. No one interested enough in a fate of a private John Smith. Now education came to a point when privates of army of brilliant engineers is not interesting enough, because there are too many of them for a cognitive abilities of a regular consumer of a history.

Maybe some day in a future, we'll come to a history ignoring individuals from an army of Elons, and focusing instead on some superhuman who led them.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#92

Post by babesh »

areoform wrote: post #45

We have crossed the rubicon. Hayley Arceneaux will become the first individual with a prosthesis to go to space. In the 60 year history of crewed spaceflight, we have never put a human with titanium bones in orbit. Nor, have we sent anyone up who has met any of the requirements to be otherwise classified as "disabled". Until now. It is the indicator of a profound tipping point. The very first astronauts were required…

Give me a break.

In 1998, John Glenn went to space when he was 77 years old. Don't tell me that he was physically fit.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn

There is also a big difference between commercial flights and the ISS where astronauts have to perform spacewalks.

EDIT: NASA may have been messed up but the Soviet Union sent a woman into space way before in 1963.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Tereshkova

EDIT2: There is also a history of space tourism that preceded this era by about 20 years. There was a woman in there as well.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#93

Post by charles_f »

perlgeek wrote: post #37

Tying it to a donation of USD 100mm to charity is a very good PR move. It's much harder to be upset about private space being a billionaire's club when society stands to gain from the ride.

I'm not sure about that.

> a three-day journey around the Earth that will benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

I might be too cynical but I actually get turned down by the tentative of diversion. When I read that, I struggled to see how the St Jude hospital is in fact benefiting from that flight. They benefit from the donation that is artificially coupled to. I read this as - that person is trying to divert the impact on his image away from burning Ms of $ in fossile fuel.

The one redeeming factor I see from that claim are these 12M raised from sweepstake, but even then I don't think it covers the costs of launch.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#94

Post by ashtonkem »

immmmmm wrote: post #46
inawarminister wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard that the methane/oxygen (methalox?) used in Starship engines can be made carbon-neutral by concentrating the fuel from the atmosphere... And that the same process can be done on Mars too to refuel the rockets. Hopefully that's workable.

you need energy for this to happen

To be fair, carbon capture for night time energy usage is a plausible path for us to solve the mismatch between when we use energy and when solar produces it. If we go that route as a society, turning a tiny percentage of that into rocket fuel is NBD, and probably better than burning kerosene which we currently cannot make via carbon capture.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#95

Post by panick21 »

ordu wrote: post #91
thenoblesunfish wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we're drooling over these accomplishments, we should direct more of our praise to the thousands of really, really good engineers who did the work, built on the accumulated experience of millions, over decades. People seem to be very eager to ascribe success to heroic individuals, and while leadership is certainly something remarkable, I think that there is a severe imbalance in who we're thanking for these achie…

Popular history is being written in a way allowing it to be easily consumed. So no, it shouldn't contain a list of thousands of engineers. I'm not arguing that it is good or bad, just stating how it is. In a way it is a progress. Wars had thousands or even millions of causalities, but history says mostly about generals. No one interested enough in a fate of a private John Smith. Now education came to a point when pri…

In fact there is quite a bit of research on 'John Smith' just as people are interested in the engineers at SpaceX (multiple books, podcasts, talks and so on).

What is bothersome is that some people that do not like Musk have come out of the woodwork with the 'but he is not responsible' argument. Its is such a tiered line of argument by now.

Everybody knows a company is not one person but equally everybody knows that Musk is most responsible for SpaceX by literally any definition. I hope at some point we can evolve past this endlessly repeating line of argument.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#96

Post by hwc »

tellersid wrote: post #52
mkl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is pretty wild when you think about it - not so long ago (10 years maybe?) this sort of thing would have been unthinkable . 10 years ago many people thought it would happen well before 2021. The "first operational Dragon spacecraft was launched in December 2010" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX ) and commercial flights to the ISS were right around the corner (cargo first happened May 2012).

I remember going to Disney Epcot Center as a kid and it showed how we would be living on the ocean floor by the year 2000. That is what I consider wild. If you told me as a kid that I will go my whole life without owning a robot and that the main difference is we will replace a rotary phone with a hand held phone I would want my money back. I guess poor Christa McAuliffe has been totally forgot about also.

I have two robots in my house that sweep & mop the floor.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#97

Post by Teever »

charles_f wrote: post #93
perlgeek wrote: post #37

Tying it to a donation of USD 100mm to charity is a very good PR move. It's much harder to be upset about private space being a billionaire's club when society stands to gain from the ride.

I'm not sure about that. > a three-day journey around the Earth that will benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. I might be too cynical but I actually get turned down by the tentative of diversion. When I read that, I struggled to see how the St Jude hospital is in fact benefiting from that flight. They benefit from the donation that is artificially coupled to. I read this as - that person is trying to divert…

> When I read that, I struggled to see how the St Jude hospital is in fact benefiting from that flight. They benefit from the donation that is artificially coupled to.

St Jude Hospital is benefiting from the flight because they are receiving a $100 million donation that they otherwise would not have received if the flight was not scheduled to take place.

Does this make sense to you?

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#98

Post by tpmx »

regnerba wrote: post #17
thenoblesunfish wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we're drooling over these accomplishments, we should direct more of our praise to the thousands of really, really good engineers who did the work, built on the accumulated experience of millions, over decades. People seem to be very eager to ascribe success to heroic individuals, and while leadership is certainly something remarkable, I think that there is a severe imbalance in who we're thanking for these achie…

Totally agree! I have been avoiding Twitter the last few years but was recently going through Elon’s tweets. Something I noticed is that he is often giving credit to the teams at SpaceX and Tesla. There are a number of times where he responds to a tweet and point out how it was the teams at X company, and sometimes calling out people by name for their work. It was also something during his presentation during the Mod…

This is a pretty new development. The cynic in me thinks he's finally listened to some PR people on how to get people to like him. It sort of coincided with the SNL appearance, too.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#99

Post by xoa »

leoedin wrote: post #68
xoa wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of which has anything whatsoever to do with the issue of AGW though. For the purposes of warming the planet, direct energy usage and emission by humanity is irrelevant (utterly swamped by solar insolation for starters). What's driving it is our changing the net levels of greenhouse gases and in turn the amount of energy retained vs radiated into space. So what matters for dealing with climate disruption is makin…

Generating rocket fuels with renewables will only be carbon neutral when we have an excess of renewable energy. Until then, either the solar panels would be better used to replace fossil fuel generation on the grid, or the synthesised methane would be better used to replace a more necessary use of fossil methane. It's hard to argue that a method of transport so incredibly energy inefficient will be a good thing until…

>Generating rocket fuels with renewables will only be carbon neutral when we have an excess of renewable energy

Absolutely wrong. It is not a zero sum game. In terms of raw money and capability, we could have gone carbon neutral in the developed world at least decades ago. We could be aiming for that universally right now, the US alone has dumped trillions and trillions into war and pandemic response over just the last 10 years. It hasn't happened because "we" collectively have not chosen to make it happen. SpaceX, or anyone else, making themselves carbon neutral when they are under no external compulsion too is pure gain. They don't need to solve all the problems on the fucking planet first. That has always been one of the most irritating fallacies in the whole AGW discussion.

>It's hard to argue that a method of transport so incredibly energy inefficient will be a good thing until we're swimming in so much excess energy that we've got nothing better to do with it.

No, it isn't. It's trivial to argue: if it's greenhouse neutral and all the externalities are built-in then if anyone wants to pay for it by definition it is a good thing. In fact at that point it'd be a BETTER thing than traditional "more efficient" methods of transport which aren't greenhouse neutral!

You're coming up with this silly subjective morality things when the only morality involved is externalized harm. If that is eliminated and people still consider the service worth it when they can see the true price then that's all that matters.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#100

Post by sneak »

inawarminister wrote: post #41
sneak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, someone over there at SpaceX should really address the issue of transportation fossil fuel use on a large scale. To only build orbital rockets while ignoring the climate crisis here on Earth would be irresponsible.

I've heard that the methane/oxygen (methalox?) used in Starship engines can be made carbon-neutral by concentrating the fuel from the atmosphere... And that the same process can be done on Mars too to refuel the rockets. Hopefully that's workable.

It was a joke about Tesla. Atmospheric carbon is fungible. You don't need to neutralize methalox emissions if you are doing anything statistically significant about automobile emissions, as the latter will be much, much larger.
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