231–240 of 641 posts
So this is official after months of speculation. Local realtors called this back in May https://x.com/SERobinsonJr/status/2051440979878559829 , and Ars Technica covered these rumors earlier this month https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/08/spacex-is-set-to-acqui... . The Louisiana location has two major benefits: Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO) Access : Launches into SSO have a launch angle of ~98° relative to the equator…
> Starbase, Louisiana will be built to support thousands of Starship flights a year. This self-sustaining spaceport will have propellant production, power generation, deep-water shipping capabilities, vehicle processing facilities, and an airport. Sounds really neat, but "incredibly ambitious announcement" from an Elon Musk company is starting to wear thin. Is this real, or will it join the graveyard of other incredi…
I can count plenty of incredibly ambitious announcements from them that have turned out amazing! In fact, they are an outlier in how many they have challenges they have taken on and succeeded in. [x] Partially reusable rocket that dropped cost to orbit by an order of magnitude. And no, the space shuttle (while an amazing piece of engineering), doesn't really count. It cost a billion+ to refurbish and did nothing to m…
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What are the chances they'll employ cheap labor they can just use as election fodder for stealing hard-working american jobs? Either that or pay decent wages for American workers that'll drive up construction prices and worsen the inflation which is already crazy due to these criminal tariffs.
So no matter what they do, you blame them? If they pay not enough, they are bad, if they pay enough, they are also bad. Ok.
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I don't know, government waste and most policy sucks. But there's no reason we can't do stuff or even try. For instance, take Tesla. It wasn't anything revolutionary. Any auto manufacturer could have invested in battery technology and building a compelling EV, but they didn't. Same with manufacturing in America. Every manufacturer took as given that they have to outsource manufacturing to oversees and components to t…
It's easy to forget that Tesla was made possible almost exclusively through government incentives. This is something that most people seem to have forgotten: Tesla exists because the government created incentive programs that paid in cold hard cash. Musk took advantage of those programs, and Tesla absolutely would not have been nearly as successful (and likely not existed) without it.
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He often promises incredibly ambitious things that don't happen. But, with a fairly reasonable frequency, he promises incredibly ambitious that do happen. For example, SpaceX is responsible for a massive spike in orbital launches [1]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-...
SpaceX and Tesla are both successful companies doing really impressive things, but the more ambitious claims are almost always silently discarded. Including robotaxis, tesla semi-trucks, hyperloop, optimus, roadster 2.0, cheap whole home batteries, true FSD, Mars landing, nueralink, and more I'm sure. It is difficult for me to get excited about a decades long, ambitious project when the follow through rate is <10%.
Man if this actually starts to happen it's a good time to be a welder, concrete worker, or any general contractor or tradesman in Louisiana. Coastal Louisiana is some of the poorest areas in the US even more so than the valley in Texas where Starbase Texas is located. Probably 10-20 years worth of solid work building out that site.
Hmmm is it though? Quite a few articles like https://futurism.com/future-society/elon-musk-stiffing-contr... make me think they better ask to be paid upfront.
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did we read the same article? The link above says nothing about pay period but does list hundreds of millions unpaid.
hundreds of millions unpaid and zero investigative journalism to try to get at the truth, besides "liens filed therefore Elon Musk is a cheapskate".
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It's so interesting to me that the whole "futurism" concept got co-opted into some sort of political propaganda machine. All the articles are negative hit pieces, they're all reductive, they're almost all political in nature. I used to go on the futurism subreddit years ago and it's all the same there. You'd think "futurism" would be about .. promoting new technology, ushering in the future, you know .. futurism. Not…
Futurism is a focus on the future. The future may be good or bad. Your desire to focus only on the upsides (for you) and not want to hear about the consequences, externalities, or dangers is one of the most "political" positions a technologist can have. Do you hate reading most science fiction? Because the ratio of dystopic to utopic scifi is pretty unbalanced.
Sometimes people want to talk about science stuff without talking about human fallout and political implications. It’s perfectly fine to want an occasional break from those types of discussions.
So this is official after months of speculation. Local realtors called this back in May https://x.com/SERobinsonJr/status/2051440979878559829 , and Ars Technica covered these rumors earlier this month https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/08/spacex-is-set-to-acqui... . The Louisiana location has two major benefits: Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO) Access : Launches into SSO have a launch angle of ~98° relative to the equator…