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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
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Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#872Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. So let’s do something useful and new. We know how to go to the moon - it’s just a matter of money (and political will). If there’s something else to do on the moon, let’s be clear that is the objective.
I would like to point out it is not a sure thing, rockets explode all the time. It is fantastically dangerous. The matter of factness of the shuttle shows how good the program was, but we still had two explode completely.
Sure, I didn't mean to imply space is easy. It's absolutely not. I just want to get a return on investment. And up-staging India and China for the sake of it probably doesn't give much return.
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#873Earlier quoted context omitted.
This gets back to why there is a "we need to start making things in America again" sentiment. We made a national policy decision and underwent an economic transformation based on financialization and globalization. Kept the design and services aspects of our greatest companies in the US but the nuts and bolts of manufacturing and assembly went overseas, relying on patents and IP law to control production from afar. T…
100% Agree and it would never happen if not for some major changes. People want their cheap stuff made somewhere else.
It's OK for people to want cheap stuff. But to me when I see the insistence that to get it cheap it has to be made somewhere else, I think that belief comes from cynicism and from ignorance of history.
Like, the whole story of the Industrial Revolution is that we invested continually in technology, training, process and plant, and the cost of producing things as measured by both dollars and labor decreased by orders of magnitude. It never stopped. It kept on working right up until we stopped trying and shipped production overseas. In fact even though they have cheaper labor and don't care as much in some of these overseas locations, usually it STILL happens. Technology, training, process, machinery, all get better, per unit cost of production just keeps on falling. Bring it back to America and focus on these four things and it will happen in America again too.
The failure to see this comes from putting the bean counters in charge. A bean counter can't model innovation. They don't know if and when a 10x cost reduction is going to happen somewhere in the industry and then spread. It's not their job to know, and they don't care. They see they can slash a cost by 20% right now by sending those jobs and factories offshore so that's what they do.
In most industries in America today the cost of production is still getting cheaper, but what's ballooning is management and administrative costs. They've grown so much that consumer prices are actually going up even as the cost of the essential process of producing the thing has gone down. That's the bean counters replicating.
It's all smoke and mirrors and lies. The forces that drove industrialization never stopped working. End the IP regimes, actually make stuff again, fire the bean counters, create competition for the consumer dollar in places where it was all acquired and consolidated into oblivion. The innovators will step in, deploy the next generation of plant, train the next generation of workers, stuff will get cheaper, and wages will actually be decent to boot because new and better processes create demand for new and scarcer skills.
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#874Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Most "firsts" are terrible at what they do, especially compared to the follow ups. >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 Cen…
Tough to cover eight light years in less than a year, though depends whose frame of reference you are measuring in here?
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#875Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. So let’s do something useful and new. We know how to go to the moon - it’s just a matter of money (and political will). If there’s something else to do on the moon, let’s be clear that is the objective.
I actually think getting the political will, money, and execution together would be the part that would be a noteworthy show of force (and I'd argue being unable to get it done would be equally noteworthy in the other direction).
But a show of force for who? We're not in the middle of a Cold War. Are we trying to upstage India or China? And could we get the same political ends via something more useful/with better returns?
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#876Earlier quoted context omitted.
To the extent that the government runs on debt, that's something of a given.
Debt just shifts resources around in the present, but can't magic new resources into existence. (Unless you borrow from foreigners, which taps resources from outside the country that later have to be paid back. But I'm not sure the Apollo programme was financed with foreign loans?)
Interest and repayment of the debt happens in the future. Though the government does sell bonds to individuals and organizations, much of the financing comes from the federal reserve.
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#877Earlier quoted context omitted.
Planes are incredible. And people die every day flying them. The public seems to have found that out this year
They do? How many deadly aviation accidents are there in a year? Seems to me it happens a lot less than every day
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#878There 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…
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…
Isn't the point we've been - and we've learned there really isn't much there and it's not worth the effort?
Even at the time people suspected that - but at least there was a chance of finding something unexpected.
As to the knowledge is has been done, and therefore could be done again - sure that's valuable, but that knowledge belongs to the whole world not just to America.
And in terms of national prestige or uniting goal - wouldn't it be better to have a goal to create a long term sustainable energy economy for example. I think that has more strategic value than putting a man back ( or women for the first time ) on the moon.
Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission
#879Earlier 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…
>Today’s America scores zero points for its accomplishments of the past. By the same logic, also no moral burden for its transgressions? (Not making a claim one way or the other, just noting an asymmetry.)
For the transgressions that the current generation had no influence in and can't meaningfully change, yeah, I think they mostly get a pass.
Though "zero points" is also probably a bit too harsh. I think Americans should be proud of their peoples' past accomplishments, but should recognize that they're distinct from their own accomplishments and kind of irrelevant to the current race.
The current space race is really just about the US trying to show that it isn't in decline, that it's still more capable than a rising China. So, "my grandfather was alive when America set foot on the Moon, so we've already won!" is kind of a sad statement.