961–970 of 1001 posts
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> so much of society Much of society agrees with his points on crime
I don't think that matters. There's still roughly half of society that doesn't. Meanwhile NASA has something like a 90% approval rating.
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I mean.. Werner von Braun wasn't just "sort of a Nazi if you squint real hard", but an ACTUAL Nazi. At some point you need to focus on getting the job done, and not on purity tests and struggle sessions. THAT is why the US once got to the moon, while China starved 40 million of its own people, and the Soviet Union collapsed.
There is a difference between being an engineer, and being useful despite your shit views, versus being what Musk is currently.
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Considering their contract just went back up for grabs I’m not sure how true that statement is. > you need to keep two things in your mind at the same time This was unnecessary and patronizing.
> Considering their contract just went back up for grabs I’m not sure how true that statement is. SpaceX is far and away the most credible contractor. And it's not even close. > This was unnecessary and patronizing And yet, you said something that was uninformed AGAIN just after I pointed out how uninformed that take was. Doubling down on the mistake is even MORE reason for me to keep reminding you to keep the two th…
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That's what they said about the "Mass Deportations Now" signs at the RNC 2024 campaign events.
No, they pretty openly campaigned on that. Trump was shot while the slide showing the illegal border crossing chart under the Biden admin and talking about how much work it was going to be to send everyone back.
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Lamenting it why though? 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.
No I couldn't care less about the people involved. And while it is sad that other space companies are not at the same level as SpaceX right now, even that wasn't my point. I'm sorry for the confusion. My issue is purely with the US government's acquisitions process that seems to encourage a lack of competition and actually seems to actively hinder good research and development. This monopsony needs an alternative.
The "monopoly" you are complaining about IS the competition. SpaceX literally cut US government spending on launch by billions over the years. AND it meant the US didn't have to go begging Putin for astronaut seats to the ISS.
Again: you can dislike Musk, and any sane person does, but from going from a dislike of a person to contorting the factually inaccurate stuff you just said just to satisfy your dislike of a person is crazy. You must see that.
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> humanity’s future beyond Earth. Yes but why? It's cool that we can learn about what's around us, but in practice we're light years away from being interplanetary, we just can't afford it and our energy sources are laughable. Realistically speaking, how far are we really from "moon travel" that is both remotely affordable and worth the trip?
"Yes, but why?" If humans had never ventured beyond perceived limits, like crossing oceans or building planes, where would we be today? "We’re light-years away from being interplanetary; it’s too costly and our energy is laughable." If people doubted the Wright brothers or mocked the idea of landing on the Moon, should we have stopped trying? "How far are we from affordable Moon travel that’s worth it?" Humanity thri…
The biggest problem of the moon mission isn't SLS, it's that the moon is a big dry ball of rock with nothing of any value or use there. There's literally no reason to go.
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…
If the second launch vehicle performs similarly, I might have to start watching them. We could use a decent alternative.
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Well in the drawing analogy, they picked stainless steel while they were still trying to draw a sparrow. Stainless steel was specifically chosen so that starship wouldn't need a heat shield and would survive re-entry with transpiration cooling. This would save substantial weight and make rapid reusability easy. The problem is that after designing starship around the stainless steel construction, they found that the t…
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That's revisionist history.
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-elon-musk-nixes-starship-sw...
Starship was switched to stainless steel in 2018. It was originally supposed to have an all-metallic heat shield. Ceramic heat shields for critical areas were added months later in march 2019, only in July of 2019 did the windward ceramic heat shield get added, which was after the starhopper prototype had flown and several more prototypes were already being built, and transpiration was still in active development at the time. Transpiration cooling was not dropped until 2020. The heat shield has been steadily growing since then, with the addition of more tiles to cover a larger area and an ablative underlayment to provide more protection to the underlying steel.
> It is not. In 2019, carbon fiber was $135/kg with 35% scrap (so effective cost was $200/kg) vs. $3/kg for stainless steel. That's a two orders of magnitude difference in raw materials.
And what did aluminum cost at the time? Yes stainless is cheap compared to the most expensive alternative, that does not make it cheap.
> 300-series stainless (301/304L) is widely used precisely because it is formable (301 work-hardens to high strength) and readily weldable (304L).
Work hardening is bad for formability.
> it's still much easier to work with than aerospace aluminum-lithium, which requires specialized friction-stir welding and tight process control.
Lithium aluminum is an exotic aluminum alloy. You would use an alloy like 7005 which is weldable.
> There's no evidence that Starship has reduced safety features to compensate for stainless steel + heat shield weight.
That is what reduced margin means. Every rocket has less safety features than it would if weight were not an issue. The more weight increases, the more everything has to give to still remain capable of completing the mission. IFT 9's failure was due to Starship relying on autogenous supercharging to save weight. No one can say how much better starship would be if it had more margin, but it undoubtedly would be better.
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…
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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…
The first thing Steve Jobs did when he arrived back at Apple is he got rid of the little “Apple museum” they had in the building. A bunch of old machines. I believe he thought Apple shouldn’t live off its past.
For the same reason, Apple doesn't celebrate anniversaries.