811–820 of 1001 posts
"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term" - Sean Duffy NASA administrator. A scary way to set a schedule on a complex project with lives at stake. They don't care though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
America cannot possibly win the space race again, because it has already been won. The first to get there has already happened. The idea that we need to land on the moon once a generation just to say that we are as good at landing on the moon as our parents is absurd.
It's like the Olympics, you have to win the basketball gold medal every 4 years or accept that somebody else is better than you at that game. Every medal can be the last one forever. Sports are sports, not being good at other matters can have substantial consequences. Maybe landing on the moon is not one of them but the degree of technology and organization that it requires is certainly a proxy of the general standin…
Want to impress the world? End poverty. Advance cancer treatment. Build a viable nuclear fusion power plant. Make an HIV vaccine and sell it affordably across the world. We could be done with the Cold War-era rocket-waving.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re: 1. I think the America of Theseus mindset is a bit troubling. A lot of people like to identify with achievements that they played no role in. Based on zero expertise whatsoever, I have a sense that this is a bit self defeating. To be born a winner, to be taught you’re a winner… how can that be healthy? Today’s America scores zero points for its accomplishments of the past. But I think one way it can be a good thi…
My first job out of law school was at a 176 year old law firm. New lawyers were socialized to identify with the past achievements of the firm, like helping J.P. Morgan build the railroads. There was a good reason for that: it socializes people to adhere to a culture and practices that have proven to be effective. You’re right that, if overdone, it can lead to complacency. But if you treat every generation as a blank…
Is this realistic? Doesn't the development timelines for a new large rocket stretch into more than a decade? Unless someone else had one under development... Could this just be a pressure tactic on SpaceX?
> Could this just be a pressure tactic on SpaceX? Yes! I'm disappointed I had to scroll down so far to see this. The CNN headline isn't even accurate. The actual NASA statement is: > "I’m going to open up the contract. I’m going to let other space companies compete with SpaceX." SpaceX is behind schedule, but still years ahead of its competitors. No one is even in the same ballpark on the main metric that ultimately…
There is just so much wrong with this from start to finish. Here are a few things, by no means inclusive: 1. We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting. 2. Nothing based around SLS is remotely serious. The cost and timeline of doing anything with it are unreasonable. It is an absolute dead-end. The SpaceX Super Heavy has been more capable arguably as early as the secon…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Small sample, but in New Orleans, the US isn't even capable of maintenance. I'm a tourist at the moment and everything looks like it is falling apart. The existing roading infrastructure is crumbling (apparently there's an Instagram about the worst examples). Everywhere I've driven, the roads are worse than earthquake hit Christchurch. Yet there is so much amazing old infrastructure that reeks of massive past investm…
Everywhere. The US has an infrastructure problem. Whenever I return to visit I can’t believe my eyes.
Everything is so car oriented and spread out, that there isn't enough value to tax to pay for the maintenance on all the spread out infrastructure. So states and cities are always on the brink of default, scrambling to maintain all this stuff.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re: 1. I think the America of Theseus mindset is a bit troubling. A lot of people like to identify with achievements that they played no role in. Based on zero expertise whatsoever, I have a sense that this is a bit self defeating. To be born a winner, to be taught you’re a winner… how can that be healthy? Today’s America scores zero points for its accomplishments of the past. But I think one way it can be a good thi…
America cannot possibly win the space race again, because it has already been won. The first to get there has already happened. The idea that we need to land on the moon once a generation just to say that we are as good at landing on the moon as our parents is absurd.
How so? Because you decided that reaching the Moon equals winning? Why not Mars?
Same way we can say that USSR won the race because they were the first ones to put man into space and bring him back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy_H2BeE_Nk Neil deGrasse Tyson on topic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re: 1. I think the America of Theseus mindset is a bit troubling. A lot of people like to identify with achievements that they played no role in. Based on zero expertise whatsoever, I have a sense that this is a bit self defeating. To be born a winner, to be taught you’re a winner… how can that be healthy? Today’s America scores zero points for its accomplishments of the past. But I think one way it can be a good thi…
> To be born a winner, to be taught you’re a winner… how can that be healthy? The entire mindset of separating the world into "winners" and "losers" in the first place seems unhealthy to me.
because they has so much resource they can spend an multi billions effort on intangible things like this
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apollo was funded at a much higher fraction of the national budget, and I believe in inflation-adjusted dollars the cost is comparable but generally higher depending on how you measure it. Funding makes it happen. Fund it, it will happen. Don't fund it, it won't happen. American space exploration has been chronically underfunded relative to its ambitions, which is why all we have to show for our manned exploration pr…
> Apollo was funded at a much higher fraction of the national budget, and I believe in inflation-adjusted dollars the cost is comparable but generally higher depending on how you measure it. The Apollo mission had to invent technology from scratch that did not exist in the 60s. We have all of that knowledge today and then some, plus computers that are millions of times more powerful. There is no reason to believe tha…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not even clear the USA "won" the space race. America was first (and last) to land men on the moon, but arguably the USSR had far more space-related "firsts" than the US. Landing on the moon only become the end-all-be-all when the US achieved it and the USSR could not (for various reasons).
the reds did space much, much worse. first satellite? all sputnik could do was beep, and it ran out of batteries in three weeks. first animal? laika died. first station? there were two attempts to crew it -- the first failed to dock and everyone on the second mission fucking died. the soyuz 11 crew remain the only human deaths in space. first *naut? yuri gagarin didn't even have manual controls. the n1 was catastroph…
>first animal? laika died.
Yes, but Belka and Strelka lived. They were the first to go to orbit and back. USSR too.
>first *naut? yuri gagarin didn't even have manual controls.
And Alan Shepard didn't even had a bath. I say this one doesn't count too.
In fact - nothing counts until your nation\program can't deliver a human to Alpha Centauri and black alive and well. Ideally in less than a year.