511–520 of 1001 posts
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Why are you homeless?
Because I have schizo affective disorder, OCD and a partial immune deficiency. And because people treat houses like investments so now I can’t afford to live anywhere anymore, except in a 20 six-year-old Van. And also because people don’t care. mentally ill people are garbage.
It is very disconcerting to see so many completely disregarding incredible technological innovation because other problems exist, especially on HN. If we were not allowed to progress technology until everybody is 100% free of suffering, we'd never be able to create technological that may potentially lead to the alleviation of suffering. It all feels very crabs in a bucket - "I don't feel happy so nobody else should,…
There is no technological innovation in the Artemis stack. Three of the main engines are refurbished Shuttle engines. The fourth is a clone that cost more than the entire SpaceX Starship stack. The boosters are derived from the Shuttle SRBs. It's a late-60s technology rocket stack with a 2000s-era flight computer. It's such a travesty.
No, it's not the most modern Rocket Lab or SpaceX project but they have immense drag on their process that those companies don't have and they still got the dang thing up and headed toward the moon.
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It is one of the things I regret not ever getting to see a shuttle launch. The closest I ever got was when I flew over Florida while a shuttle was on the pad.
I got super, super lucky and managed to get VIP tix for the last one. IIRC I took these pics on my iPhone 5 https://imgur.com/a/Mlyxk9u
It is very disconcerting to see so many completely disregarding incredible technological innovation because other problems exist, especially on HN. If we were not allowed to progress technology until everybody is 100% free of suffering, we'd never be able to create technological that may potentially lead to the alleviation of suffering. It all feels very crabs in a bucket - "I don't feel happy so nobody else should,…
There is no technological innovation in the Artemis stack. Three of the main engines are refurbished Shuttle engines. The fourth is a clone that cost more than the entire SpaceX Starship stack. The boosters are derived from the Shuttle SRBs. It's a late-60s technology rocket stack with a 2000s-era flight computer. It's such a travesty.
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Not surprising if you know that. Pretty surprising to me who didn’t.
Maybe you’ll like this too: The Earth’s speed around the sun is around 67,000 mph. So it moves significantly faster than the rocket, though not orders of magnitude. The solar system itself moves at 43,000 mph relative to its local neighborhood. But speed is always just relative to some frame of reference. Acceleration, on the other hand, is absolute, and so might be the more interesting thing to look at here.
If I fall, I might accelerate at G meters per second, relative to the earth, but I don't absolutely accelerate. If the earth decelerates at the same time, I'm now both accelerating an decelerating. It's relative.
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SpaceX manages it for their launches
They also launch every 2-3 days. They’ve just had so much opportunity to perfect that.
https://www.spacevoyaging.com/news/2024/02/08/now-we-know-ho...
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> this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement. How do you figure? The previous Moon missions certainly didn't accomplish that.
You don't solve these problems in a single step, but notice how space imagery and analogies pop up every time people try to talk about peace, global problems, mutual empathy, understanding, etc. The Pale Blue Dot, images of Earth from orbit or the Moon, etc. Those are anchors in public consciousness, competing in memetic space with usual divisive, dystopian, hope-draining pictures and soundbites - we need more of the…
But, alas, I agree with you. There's no way out but through I guess.
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My personal take for a long time has been that the primary driver of most war today is boredom. War today is undertaken for entertainment. It's a special kind of entertainment that taps into deep brain stem circuits and provides a false but deeply resonating sense of purpose and meaning. When you hear that "people don't have a sense of meaning," it means their brain stem is not feeling the tribal loyalty emotions con…
Wildly disagree with that. I think the overwhelming majority of people want simple, peaceful existence, and that the 'lack of meaning' can be solved through deeper shared community goals and aspirations. More prominent figures like Trump, Putin or al-Assad don't wage war out of boredom, but out of ego, or visions of a glorious future that only they can impart (which I guess is still ego). I also think that the variou…
When one communities deeply shared goals and aspirations conflict with another's (or subgroups) is when you get war and violence. The eras of relative peace is when you have one empire imposing its will.
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Truly. I'm not sure why anyone needs to be on the rocket at all, let alone our best and brightest.
Because human beings are remarkably capable, especially the best and the brightest. There's a great paper called the "dispelling the myth of robotic efficiency." https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article-abstract/53/2/2.22... // https://lasp.colorado.edu/mop/files/2019/08/RobotMyth.pdf Yes, a robot car that drives on its own will be a better driver than most humans who text and drive, or have 400ms reaction times. Bu…
Waiting to see what happens to the heat shield on reentry... https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly.... https://theconversation.com/heat-shield-safety-concerns-rais...
> the agency said it was confident that a change to the re-entry trajectory would be more than adequate to offset any spalling issues. Somewhat confusingly, they also announced their intention to switch to a new heat shield design, starting with Artemis III. It's fine to be concerned, but this kind of take is why public agencies are damned no matter what they do. In the private sector, operating with the suboptimal r…