881–890 of 1001 posts
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Elon's predictions are usually very late, but they do happen. Falcon 9 landings, self driving vehicles, etc... Later than predicted, but they happened.
What about hyperloop, martian colonization, or rocket replacing airplanes? Here's a list; https://elonmusk.today/
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Elon's predictions are usually very late, but they do happen. Falcon 9 landings, self driving vehicles, etc... Later than predicted, but they happened.
What about hyperloop, martian colonization, or rocket replacing airplanes? Here's a list; https://elonmusk.today/
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JFK proposed we go to the Moon in 1962. We did it in 1969, 7 years later.
Crucially, not during his term (or his life, but that's irrelevant).
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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…
I live in New Orleans (happy to meet for a coffee!) one thing to keep in mind is that the roads cost $7 million a mile to pave because of the subsurface.
Happy to meet anyone else too.
Background: I'm a geeky type open to everybody; I don't like being judgemental. Travelling because I retired as soon as I had the minimum necessary to have a basic house plus a small retirement fund (as soon as the SaaS company I helped found could meet that goal). I picked LA to travel to because I liked the sarcasm and honesty I received here previously. To avoid disappointment: I have an awesome girlfriend so I'm not fishing for a date.
Cheers
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> We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting Of course, but there a few things to consider. 1. This is a new race. The olympics happen every four years to see which nation is the current best. It seems it’s time to find out again. 2. The last time the US was dominant was 56 years ago. That’s three generations. Based on SLS and the comments here, it seems extremely unli…
>Based on SLS and the comments here, it seems extremely unlikely the US is still dominant. Literally every other nation is trying to catch up to Space-X and is nowhere close. An American company, based in American, primarily staffed by American engineers. I don't know by what measure you'd say that the US isn's still far, far ahead but I don't know of any other country currently re-using rockets dozens of times. What…
It's rich seeing all this unearned bluster about having the lead due to SpaceX, when SpaceX had to drag America kicking and screaming into that position.
Lots of people complaining that we have already won the "moon race" and that this makes no sense. This is a completely wrong reading of the situation. Let's say we forgot how to do heart transplants. Once we did them a few times perfectly, got all surgical techniques right, but patients died shortly after the surgery due to rejection. We quit the whole transplants stuff for years, the techniques and the equipments we…
Your example does not support your argument. Unlike heart surgery, there hasn't been a major shift in what we could do if we went back, and more exploration probably won't change the commercial or military prospects of the moon.
Of course, there is a giant shift in what we could do. We can build far more reliable rockets. We have incredible progresses in materials science, in our understanding of the moon's geology. Likewise, we established the presence of water.
We have more advanced solar panels, better batteries, we have a lot of recent research on modular, safe nuclear reactors that could probably lead more easily to moon-ready reactors. We have better batteries. Not only that, but we have better high power semiconductor gear that could lead to high orbit solar power stations over the poles feeding a polar base via microwaves.
We have decades of accumulated knowledge of human physiology under zero gravity.
We are way more prepared to have a permanent presence on the moon today that we could possibly have in the 70s because of those advancements.
Yes, taking Space-X out of it is stupid. SLS is a joke. Boeing idem. On this part of the problem people have my complete agreement. But the moon is a worthwhile goal because we cannot turn our backs to space.
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The point is to avoid "China can do this feat but US is no longer capable"
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…
For what it's worth, it's not quite so bad everywhere. In New England infrastructure decays faster due to the weather, so most of our infrastructure is more frequently maintained or replaced. There's definitely some blighted areas, but the image of quaint New England towns with covered bridges is not a lie, and gentrification has caused local governments in our richer cities to invest more in infrastructure. This leads to a dramatic difference in appearance between e.g. New Orleans and Boston.
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Catching of a booster which everyone else thought was the stupidest craziest thing ever and they did it on first try.
If people can constantly attack Steve Jobs for “just being an idea guy” while Wozniak did all the work, I think we can all agree that Elon Musk deserves (at most) limited credit for the amazing engineering achievement one of his several companies/projects accomplished. Especially given the overlap with his several-months-long stint being a Trump groupie and proudly taking a chainsaw to the US government. Yes his visi…
Again: you must be able to keep two things in your head at once. I understand that Elon is an absolute ass, but also that he has made several incredible (literally!) things happen. Give credit where credit is due, and give blame where blame is do. Don't confuse the two.
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…
Refueling the HLS in orbit, before it sets off to the moon requires at least 10 launches, but likely closer to 20, and neither Super Heavy or any future Starship tanker will be rapidly reusable that much is clear by now. For this system to work, SpaceX will need to build many more launch pads and the refueling sequence alone will take months due to boil off. It's a dumb system invented due to the whims of a madman wh…
The only reason NASA hadn't already been investigating the relevant technologies is that politicians threatened to outright cancel space science funding if NASA so much as mentioned depots (the word was actually censored in documents from NASA about HLS until the relevant senator finally retired).
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I'm confused. Who are you talking about here? SpaceX has consistently been on the wrong end of what you write about, with ULA/Boeing/whatever pulling that kind of stunt again and again. Just look at the SLS budget.
I'm assuming SpaceX will win this, and lamenting that. However I'm also being more general because you are absolutely on the same page as me that this is a decades-old problem. I don't hate the player, I hate the game.
Because it's sad that other space companies are shit? Yea ok. I can get behind it.
Because you dislike Elon and would rather see the US space program turn to shit than allow Elon to get a symbolic win? Then I'm not onboard anymore.