321–330 of 641 posts
It’s easy to be pessimistic about Musk timelines/ big tech but I am thrilled that ambitious, real world, hard projects are happening in the US again.
I love that people see a website about one of musk’s ideas and go “wow this is real and happening” in the year of our lord 2026
It seems things are getting done.
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Totally this is reasonable, but, I flew in AK (and a couple thousand hours in the lower 48 too) professionally for over a decade, there are other advantages up here? Not nearly as many thunderstorms up here. Icing might be a problem? I would expect there to be basically no reasonable icing accretion possible well before max q? But I'm not sure because that's not my field. Regardless, if we're going to be building dat…
Icing? Watch slow-mo video of any cryogenic liquid-fuelled rocket taking off; you see a shower of ice shards falling off when the engines start. Liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellants are loaded at cryogenic temperatures -- boiling point is -183C for O2, -161C for CH4; SpaceX does some amount of subcooling so the propellants may be even cooler than that. Ice accumulation while just sitting on the pad is a given…
That would largely be my only concern up here, and turbulence? I don’t know how well large rockets do in rough air? That said, cape chiniak is on Kodiak and some of the absolute worst “turn you nearly every way but loose turbulence” I’ve ever seen has been down wind of terrain around ADQ? But going up that seems like less of a problem, or only a problem for a few dozen thousand feet?
I’ve accumulation on the forward end of the rocket and associated drag was what I was thinking.
Regardless, I’d really like to see more space industry stuff up here.
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…
Do people actually use that name when Trump can't force them to on pain of job loss? I'm pretty sure nobody outside the US does, at the very least.
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You could just say “no” - it would save a lot of space, be about as polite, and way less annoying. 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.
Talking about "science stuff" without even mentioning the political and human implications is pointlessly incomplete. It's like trying to talk about a programming language without mentioning variables. Everything is human and everything is political. To pretend that it is not is, in itself, a political stance.
1. Everything is political
2. Talking about something without mentioning political and human implications is "pointlessly incomplete"
Topic: "Anyone wanna go swimming?"
Normal people: "Sure."
You, apparently: "Are you aware of how water is unequally distributed throughout the world? How can we possibly discuss swimming if we aren't willing to discuss the political fallout? This is pointlessly incomplete."
Next panel, you're just researching local water table rights while everyone else is swimming and having fun
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When nobody lets you build a land data center they're going to make a lot of sense.
The cost of getting them there will be absurd and even if someone was willing to fund it, where do you put the heat they will generate?
“I can do it in this challenging environment or I can not do it at all” is kind of a false choice if you think AGI is imminent. Personally, I think we’re already there for KVM stuff, it’s just the goal posts are accelerating at an exponential rate the same with the capabilities.
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…
> Gulf of America Do people actually use that name when Trump can't force them to on pain of job loss? I'm pretty sure nobody outside the US does, at the very least.
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Both things are true. Musk's companies have done quite a few remarkable things people didn't think were possible, and Musk overpromises to an absurd degree and has left a trail of abandoned projects in his wake.
People often cite Hyperloop but he explicitly said he wasn't going to build it himself. They often cite FSD but it is far from abandoned and is driving my car today. What other projects are you thinking of which are actually abandoned? The Tesla solar roof is the biggest one I can think of, I think it's fair to count it as abandoned. I guess the project to make building bricks out of Boring tunnel dirt didn't pan out…