Is a fine-tune to strongman arguments, around some narrow topic, currently plausible?
Reading through today's discussion, I wondered if one might be of assistance.
Crew-9 Returns to Earth
641–650 of 712 posts
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#642Earlier quoted context omitted.
NASA in practice isn't what most people think it is. A lot of stuff they're doing is just a mixture of a terrible idea (SLS) and will never go anywhere (Artemis), amongst others. People in-the-know in space are fully aware of this, including NASA officials. But they keep cheerleading it all and pretending that everything will just be awesome. The reason is that NASA is basically forced to be political (at least their…
Blaming NASA for SLS is something I keep seeing but isn't it entirely congressional pork barrel politics that makes the SLS what it is? What degree of control does NASA itself have to force a project of that scale not to devolve into such a mess despite congressional corruption?
It's a mutual affair. Congress dictates the programs and NASA carries them out with substantial discretion. But I think the thing that really makes NASA deserve the blame is that they cheerlead for it all endlessly, and compel their astronauts to do similarly. More or less literally every single interview NASA carries out or does with their astronauts, they'll make sure SLS/Artemis are brought up, and pretend it's all just amazing.
This results a very misled electorate, which are the exact people that could (at least in theory) put pressure on their representatives in Congress to stop wasting tens of billions of dollars that could have easily had us on the Moon, if not Mars, long ago. But even more in general - people are forced into doing stupid things all the time. That's part of life. But the second that you begin praising those things, you are now a part of the problem.
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#643Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Show that the money was spent in a way different than proscribed by law When people find loopholes in the law to obtain grants, do you defend their actions because technically it didn't break the law? DOGE is apparently exposing a system of dubious and questionable spending at scale. If "wasteful" is an understatement, don't be surprised when taxpayers use "fraud" to describe the decisions made to blow their money.…
> When people find loopholes in the law to obtain grants, do you defend their actions because technically it didn't break the law? I don't defend their actions as moral. I think the loophole should be closed. I also think that they didn't commit fraud, as a loophole is by definition legal. As for all your nonsense about money being spent different than you would like: I get it, you're very upset. As I covered before:…
I'm not an American and I'm not expressing my likes or dislikes in this matter. I'm interested in seeing a healthy America. I'm interested in the details, drama, action, science and politics which trickles down or across to the rest of us in the world.
You mention morality, but then say my "likes" are nonsense. You've even pushed me into the "rant" and "hate" zone! I'm trying to have a civil discussion about curious things. Insinuating I'm ranting and hating doesn't help.
Maybe we differ on the morality point. In my mind, anything immoral is a problem worth solving.
The law sometimes trails behind what the community needs. In my country Australia, the law sometimes doesn't protect the community from harm (bail laws, police strip-search powers, weak foreign investment review boards, lack of industry oversight allowing criminal gangs to infiltrate construction industry including major government contracts - yes these are real and recent examples.) We don't want the law to fail. We like "the law", and because we like it, when it does fail we need to face it, name it, and deal with it.
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#644Earlier quoted context omitted.
The unskilled labor would be the parents, but I can tell the metaphor is lost. Not sure why I bother explaining that.
I perfectly understand the metaphor but machine already replace human in factory on earth, why do you think human can work in the 10x times worse condition in space??? also if you born poor in earth, many people would take a chance to do space industry at all in the future despite the risk
The machine is great at doing one specific, repetitive task.
Humans are currently much, much better at doing varied, unexpected tasks. We will at some point likely get more universal robotics, but right now I think there's a very good chance we'll get humans to Mars before we get the robots to work.
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#645Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read the article I linked above, also written by Eric Berger! Butch confirmed Elon's claim that he made an offer to bring them home last year was accurate. So we know that that offer was made, and must have been rejected. What we don't know is why. But the real thing here is that Eric Berger has written extensively about the political games NASA plays or (depending on one's perspective) is compelled to play. They sup…
This is the main quote from the Willmore interview you linked, that seems most relevant: "I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual. We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went. That's information that we simply don't have. So I believe him. I don't know all those details, and I don't think any of us r…
I think the most likely scenario is that a message made its way up the grapevine to him along the lines of 'We're working with Elon to look at getting you guys brought back home on a Dragon.', nothing more, nothing less. NASA awarded a ~$270k contract to SpaceX on July 14th called "Special Study for Emergency Response." NASA claimed that study had nothing to do with Starliner, but that was probably a typical administrative lie of the sort Eric Berger has regularly pointed out (until this article...):
"NASA said this study was not directly related to Starliner's problems, but two sources told Ars it really was. Although the study entailed work on flying more than four crew members home on Crew Dragon—a scenario related to Frank Rubio and the Soyuz MS-22 leaks—it also allowed SpaceX to study flying Dragon home with six passengers, a regular crew complement in addition to Wilmore and Williams."
Nobody knows the details of exactly what was offered, or why it was rejected, besides Elon and whoever he was talking to in the previous administration. But at this point I think one cannot reasonable argue that no offer was made. And we know because of what happened that it was rejected. So the only question remaining is why.
[1] - https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/yes-nasa-really-could-...
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#646Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#647Is a fine-tune to strongman arguments, around some narrow topic, currently plausible? Reading through today's discussion, I wondered if one might be of assistance.
s/strongman/steelman/
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#648Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#649Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exploiting and lying about the monumental efforts of a pioneering industry for cheap political points certainly feels like a line to me.
Let's not forget that right now it seems that only SpaceX is putting in the "monumental efforts" to advance the "pioneeribg industry", being responsible for the vast majority of launches, the only safe crewed spacecraft, as well as pushing the frontier of space travel with ambitious new projects such as Starship.
This is simply not true. SpaceX is today one of many space companies pushing the boundaries.
There is also Rocket Lab, Stoke Space and Blue Origin.
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#650Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I look at the power dynamics between employee [on a spaceship] and an employer, pay isn't the utmost concern. Not even the trendy replacement, scrip. Nay, performance reviews and how it might relate to oxygen availability. I don't see a collaborative trip through the cosmos, I see a very unhealthy relationship with danger to boot This may be all the more reason for robots, but again: humans take no engineering.…
its more easier to setup 1 billions self replicating robot in space than setups 1 billions human living conditions infrastructure because back to square one turns out water and plant is more rare than metal in space also human is fragile, weak, costly, too long to make it productive. it takes 15+ year for human to be any useful at all (and not counting experience) do you think these space corp would just sit 15+ year…
At the scale of billions, likely yes.
But right now, we don't have working practical self replicating robots, but we do have humans. The cost of the 15+ years is externalized, you can just lure a desperate already-grown human with shiny promises, give them some training, and ship them off.
Yes, you have to ship them oxygen and food, which is expensive, but it's a solution that exists and works with todays technology (minus some well-defined engineering), while the robots aren't ready yet.