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NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

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Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#251

Post by SoftTalker »

zrail wrote: post #195
macintux wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long thought universal healthcare (& UBI) would enable more people to take entrepreneurial risks, but I hadn't considered that passion jobs like NASA could also be beneficiaries.

UBI and universal healthcare would enable _so_ many people to take risks that they can't today. We would see an explosion in the arts, in fundamental science, in passion projects like this. It would be absolutely incredible. Except according to half of the people in charge it would mean The Wrong People would get money and all they would do is buy drugs. And that's why we can't have nice things.

This is a tangental subject but I disagree. I think this is one of the many excuses used by people who feel pressure to be entreprenurial but in their hearts are not risk-takers. And that's OK -- the world needs a lot of people who work for others.

If you are a risk taker, especially a young one, lack of UBI or health insurance is not going to stop you. It never has in the past, when those things didn't exist.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#252

Post by skulk »

brigadier132 wrote: post #241
slingnow wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to be blown away when you discover people have been reliably passing down information to future generations for many many centuries.

"Reliably" passing down information for future generations is a recent phenomenon. Just go and look at the history of mathematics and there were multiple periods where information was lost and rediscovered.

The mastery of reliably passing down information is likely older than anything you've read.

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

> The Vedas have been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BCE with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques.

That's at least 4000 years of lossless transmission.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#253

Post by jwells89 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #251
zrail wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI and universal healthcare would enable _so_ many people to take risks that they can't today. We would see an explosion in the arts, in fundamental science, in passion projects like this. It would be absolutely incredible. Except according to half of the people in charge it would mean The Wrong People would get money and all they would do is buy drugs. And that's why we can't have nice things.

This is a tangental subject but I disagree. I think this is one of the many excuses used by people who feel pressure to be entreprenurial but in their hearts are not risk-takers. And that's OK -- the world needs a lot of people who work for others. If you are a risk taker, especially a young one, lack of UBI or health insurance is not going to stop you. It never has in the past, when those things didn't exist.

I think there’s a substantial number of people who aren’t averse to calculated entrepreneurial risk specifically, where negative outcomes are more predictable/bounded.

These are your types who currently bootstrap themselves and grow slowly rather than seek explosive growth by way of external funding, and I think you’d see both see this group grow and become more bold if basics like housing weren’t something that was ever in question.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#254

Post by Yizahi »

huytersd wrote: post #5

I don’t understand why we are not sending these off in every direction constantly. The price can’t possibly be that prohibitive considering what we can accomplish with 40 year old technology.

The probes are handcrafted from the unobtanium by the very expensive engineers, and designed individually due to this.

We need a heavy lift platform flying for a few years before we could start making much more crude larger probes, with cheaper or even massmarket components. Then it may work.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#255

Post by brigadier132 »

skulk wrote: post #252
brigadier132 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Reliably" passing down information for future generations is a recent phenomenon. Just go and look at the history of mathematics and there were multiple periods where information was lost and rediscovered.

The mastery of reliably passing down information is likely older than anything you've read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedas > The Vedas have been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BCE with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques. That's at least 4000 years of lossless transmission.

We are talking past each other, I would not consider a few religions being able to pass down information about that specific religion to future generations as humanity as a whole being able to pass down information reliably. Especially given that the "Vedas" is wholly useless information while things like the Pythagorean theorem were discovered, lost, then rediscovered. We've only recently rediscovered how Romans created concrete?

Also given humanity has existed for many years longer than 4000 years and 4000 years really only represents 160 generations of humans I don't consider that impressive.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#256

Post by godshatter »

fuzzythinker wrote: post #47

To put the 12B miles in an easier grasp, Pluto's average distance is 3.7B miles. So Voyager 2 is a hair under 3.3 Plutos away, and Voyager 1 at 15B miles is slightly over 4 Plutos away. Another point of reference is the heliosphere, at 100AU. 1AU (earth to Sun) is 93M miles, so the heliosphere is around 2.5 Plutos away.

Voyager 2 is over 50,000 average Earth/Moon distances away, Voyager 1 is coming up on 63,000.

I don't know if that makes it any easier to grasp, but I have a hard enough time relating to Pluto's distance, let alone the Voyagers.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#257

Post by gizajob »

zrail wrote: post #195
macintux wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long thought universal healthcare (& UBI) would enable more people to take entrepreneurial risks, but I hadn't considered that passion jobs like NASA could also be beneficiaries.

UBI and universal healthcare would enable _so_ many people to take risks that they can't today. We would see an explosion in the arts, in fundamental science, in passion projects like this. It would be absolutely incredible. Except according to half of the people in charge it would mean The Wrong People would get money and all they would do is buy drugs. And that's why we can't have nice things.

But at the same time, rents and prices would go up so we’d soon be back where we started unless we made changes to capitalism alongside.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#258

Post by gizajob »

larperdoodle wrote: post #210
rrdharan wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this about the US specifically? There are many countries with universal healthcare and a decent social safety net (Scandinavia comes to mind). Why haven’t we seen this explosion coming out of them?

Nowhere in the world has UBI. The Scandinavian social safety net is excellent and I think the positive effects of that are apparent. People can take larger risks than they can in the US, but still nowhere near as large as they could with UBI

Also very high taxes to pay for it. Very productive granted, but also taxed at a commensurate rate. Plus Norway now has a bottomless pit of oil money keeping it afloat for the foreseeable future.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#259

Post by gizajob »

gosub100 wrote: post #227
aklemm wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go there and look at how they live; that takes inspiration. The benefits of their social welfare are apparent in their lifestyle compared to US daily life. And the flip: Shouldn't Scandinavia be overrun with drug-addled do-nothings if social welfare is so bad?

And reverse your flip: how do Scandinavians perform when they immigrate to other countries (vs the local population) ?

They spend a lot of money on education, and almost everyone is multilingual – Finns generally speak both Finnish and Swedish natively given they’re the state languages, and many I’ve met have very fluent English and German alongside. So I imagine they do pretty well. Look at Linus Torvalds, for example…

Oh btw, “Scandinavians” only includes countries in the Swedish axis of influence, so to include Finns alongside one has to say “Nordics”. Finland is Nordic without being Scandinavian (technically)

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#260

Post by kylecordes »

somenameforme wrote: post #225
hef19898 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not have any reliable financials from SpaceX, just advertized launch costs and PR releases. SLS on the other hand has, as does e.g. Ariane-6, public budgets and a lot more bureaucracy. For Starship to make things like SLS obsolete, it has to be available first. Until then, it is just pure speculation. Is SLS more expensive than Starship development wise? Yes. But it is not the goal of a government to be profita…

Starship's a red herring. The SLS is already so far behind the game (before even being finished) that it lacks any rational argument even against the Falcon Heavy, which has been in service for years. And nobody's being handed monopolies. Government space contracts have a competitive bidding process. If Boeing/Lockheed, Blue Origin, or any of the other less known aerospace startups can come up with something that can…

Assuming Starship succeeds, hopefully at that point other players will adopt the basic design, iterate and improve, then forcefully compete. I'm still surprised that, all these years after Falcon 9 obviously works, there isn't a "clone" on the market. (I am aware there are couple of small "new space" companies working on something similar.)
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