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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

cnn.com

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Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#931

Post by nancyminusone »

renewiltord wrote: post #925
roody15 wrote: post #848

This makes me think of Intels decline over the last decade or so. It feels to me like a canary in a coal mine. Perhaps of a failing in the US system as a whole. It is possible we are not quite the world leader we once were, despite bailouts, despite legislation like the CHIPS act, despite a CEO dedicated to a roadmap to regain technical superiority … maybe we cannot win this race. Have we reached a point where managi…

Wealth equality is not a desirable goal. Optimizing absolute standards of living is a much better target and inevitably allows for some people to have better lives than others. This obsession with other people's things has always been known to be a societal detriment. Exodus 20:17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox…

Neither shalt thou steal. Very difficult to believe that those handful of people with almost all the clams didn't get them by not robbing you.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#932

Post by latexr »

rayiner wrote: post #587
Waterluvian wrote: post #442

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…

Presumably that also works as a sort of “these are the standards we want to meet, to continue striving for this kind of work/impact/ethics/whatever”. In that sense the past is being used as reference and inspiration for the future. It’s done in a sense of (as your parent comment put it) “we’ve done it before, we can do it again”. Which is fine if you’re truly achieving that goal.

The trouble arises when it’s 2025 and the last great achievement you can point to was 150 years ago. Then you have a problem and referencing the past becomes a misguided attempt to rest on old laurels. Like (to use popular American movie tropes) a popular high school captain of the team, boyfriend to the head cheerleader, who has been out of high school for 30 years and still talks about a goal in a game as the best moment of his life. That’s the “we already won!” attitude.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#933

Post by renewiltord »

Buttons840 wrote: post #906
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is a very good speech, very courageous Really? It’s eye opening. But Destin seems to miss the point. We’re not trying to go back to the Moon, one and done. That was Apollo. We’re trying to build a system that reduces the repeat cost of Moon access, with medium-term plans for permanent settlement. (Like in Antarctica. Not The Expanse .) His criticism of Artemis is on point. But his anchoring to Apollo is bewildering…

They laugh at his jokes, and then sit deadly silent when asked "we're going, right?" Does anyone expect were going to launch Artemis rockets over and over for decades? Aren't they extremely expensive?

Lol this is a rhetorical trick. A joke is expected in the middle of a speech. Audience responses to a question generally aren't. If you were speaking to all the mathematicians in the world and decided halfway through to say "What's the integral of e^x dx?" you'd likely get silence in response. "OMG most mathematicians don't know how to integrate e^x holy shit humanity is doomed".

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#934

Post by ricardobeat »

mortarion wrote: post #837
qwerpy wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the company gets things done but the CEO is unpopular with certain crowds. Seems better than Boeing, which is bad at getting things done. At least their CEO is inoffensive, and that’s what is important?

They haven't gotten anything done in regards to HLS. They can build their HLS and even launch it into orbit next year but then what? HLS requires on-orbit refueling. Anything from 10 to 20 refueling launches will be required. Did you think it required one refueling launch? The SH+SS stack will never be reusable or reliable enough to accomplish the refueling operation in time and on budget. This means one moon mission…

> HLS requires on-orbit refueling. Anything from 10 to 20 refueling launches will be required. Did you think it required one refueling launch? The SH+SS stack will never be reusable or reliable enough to accomplish the refueling operation in time and on budget.

>This means one moon mission will require the use of 10 launch pads

The refueling ships are to be launched weeks/months in advance, one at a time. If you look at the rate of Falcon launches this is nothing out of the ordinary.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#935

Post by renewiltord »

nancyminusone wrote: post #931
renewiltord wrote: post #925

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth equality is not a desirable goal. Optimizing absolute standards of living is a much better target and inevitably allows for some people to have better lives than others. This obsession with other people's things has always been known to be a societal detriment. Exodus 20:17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox…

Neither shalt thou steal. Very difficult to believe that those handful of people with almost all the clams didn't get them by not robbing you.

That's the mistake, isn't it? Like many hard to believe things, it is nonetheless true. Stephen King wrote books a lot of people like, and a lot of people were willing to give him money for that. He didn't rob them for it. He just happened to write a book a lot of people like. Steph Curry is far wealthier than the median American, let alone the 10th percentile. Who did he rob by landing 3 pointers better than anyone else?

Perhaps Taylor Swift is the thief for singing in a way a lot of people like. Must be an Eleventh Commandment or something.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#936

Post by ninetyninenine »

harrall wrote: post #715
Yeul wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also ignores the fact that empires can decline. (Although I think the moon landing is ridiculous there is no scientific reason for it).

The space race was not a scientific endeavor either. It was driven by a political need. It was to prove that your economic system could muster the correct machinery to get to the moon. Once we got to the moon, nothing significantly changed scientifically, but politically it was a bombshell. The act of getting the moon now is, once again, not a scientific endeavor. It is once again a holistic test of whether the count…

We can do it. Elon landing that gigantic rocket is proof enough.

Whether we can do it faster than China is the question. A question many people are in denial about because of patriotism. Many people can’t handle it if the answer in actuality was that China will be better.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#937

Post by ricardobeat »

dotnet00 wrote: post #582
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m still wanting a great explanation why we could do it in the 60s, but China can’t do it until 2030s. The reason I’m told we don’t do it today, is that we don’t want to. OK, China does, so what is the hold up that applies now?

2030 is just a little over 4 years away. They have a lot of hardware to develop and test. It takes time to develop good hardware, as the US is also realizing (again). It was about 7 years between the first flight test of any Apollo related vehicle and Apollo 11.

Who's to say they haven't been working on this for years already? They basically spun up an entire silicon fab industry in the past 5-6 years.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#938

Post by SergeAx »

allenrb wrote: post #373

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…

Americans have only the Orange Clown to blame. He wants "back to the Moon in 3 years", e.g., before the end of his term.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#939

Post by [deleted] »

dotnet00 wrote: post #893
exasperaited wrote: post #836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also 5. The owner of SpaceX threatens to cancel projects when he gets into social media spats with the president he thought he'd bought, or his NASA chief I don't understand why anyone tolerates a man like Musk having material control over state projects.

Kind of overlooks the fact that the guys he's threatening are also the same, having threatened to cancel SpaceX's contracts because Musk dared disagree with them (and we have all seen how rarely he does that).

[deleted]

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#940

Post by harimau777 »

eru wrote: post #612
harimau777 wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think it matters whether its achieved by a private company versus by society. That's especially the case when the private company is so closely tied to someone who hates and alienates so much of society. I don't think that I could view a win for Musk as a win for anything that looks like my chunk of the US. There's also the fact that part of NASA's mission is to share their knowledge with the public.

> Personally, I think it matters whether its achieved by a private company versus by society. People appreciate German cars just fine, and no one seems to be particularly bothered that they are produced by workers in private sector companies instead of 'by society'. Whatever that even means.

I'm not sure that I understand how a consumer product like a car is similar to something done for inherent value like space exploration.

When I say "by society" I mean a non-private organization like NASA.

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