Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Starbase, LA

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 641 posts

Re: Starbase, LA

#421

Post by m463 »

jubilanti wrote: post #199
thegrim33 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've wondered about that.

Recently I have read fiction where someone discovers a spaceship/artifact/portal/alien/mcguffin/etc and then they... get the mcguffin, get more stuff, get the girl, win. The plot is just a straight line.

they're boring.

Although not a straight line, any superhero movie. they're predictable and therefore, boring.

So I found the stuff that used to fill me with wonder, I shy away from. I don't want to watch another marvel hero.

I kind of wonder if non-utopia scifi, with reality and struggles and character development... is that the good stuff? doesn't have to all be dark forest or enshittification++ though.

I liked district 9 for instance.

Re: Starbase, LA

#422

Post by mcmcmc »

maxlin wrote: post #317
mcmcmc wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget the corruption and low income locals who won’t be able to provide any meaningful pushback

Pushback? Anyone wishes they lived there now. SpaceX bought out stragglers off Boca Chica for multiple times the value of their homes

Yes, it’s much easier to buy people off and legally “persuade” them out of their homes when the local economy is depressed and they can’t afford a lawyer.

Re: Starbase, LA

#423

Post by SoftTalker »

notesinthefield wrote: post #166
chasd00 wrote: post #2

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.

I live around a lot of those people in SW Ohio who find themselves traveling to states like Louisiana for welding, electrical and general contracting work because the expertise isnt there. I have to imagine much of the same will happen and if anything they might reap rewards following construction. Regardless I would assume little to no relevant expertise exists there at the moment.

One thing about construction trades is that they will hire apprentices. Someone needs to do the grunt work, and they learn on the job (or in class if they are union) and eventually become productive or wash out.

Re: Starbase, LA

#424

Post by Brybry »

jackhalford wrote: post #418

> In Vermilion Parish, the shoreline is eroding between 3.3 and 23 feet per year What does this mean, how can a shoreline erode

Grade school level Louisiana info (probably somewhat wrong): It's generally brackish marsh/swamp land. Basically think silt/dirt with a bunch of plants evolved for this specific environment.

Then you take a bunch of humans and you cut down all the really old cypress trees for lumber. To facilitate that process you cut channels through all the plants that are in the way so you can ship that lumber via new unobstructed waterways. You also do it for oil/gas exploitation.

So now you have a lot of infiltration of saltier or fresher water and less protection during storm surge and such. Lots of plants die and these plants were holding the dirt/soil in place (and the storm surge helps wash that away).

Also you re-engineer the original waterways that deposited silt/dirt and helped build these areas up so that they deposit silt/dirt in other places (also you harvest the silt/dirt for use in farming so it never even gets that far down the waterways in the first place).

Re: Starbase, LA

#425

Post by unknownfuture »

api wrote: post #201
thegrim33 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s just a microcosm of everything. The culture war ate the entire public discourse to the exclusion of practical concerns and even coherent ideas. It’s all vibes and tribalism and bashing the other tribes, while the tribes themselves become increasingly incoherent in terms of what (if anything) they really mean or stand for. I just turned it all off, though it makes me fear for the future. Feels like the early st…

Yeah you're right. Sci-fi has never included social commentary. Purely a modern "culture war" phenomenon...

Re: Starbase, LA

#426

Post by UltraSane »

DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #47
MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #22

> 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…

SpaceX is the most successful Musk company because it is the one he has the LEAST direct involvement with. Compare SpaceX to how Musk is causing Tesla to crash and burn.

Gwynne Shotwell is the actual reason SpaceX is as successful as it it.

Re: Starbase, LA

#427

Post by swozey »

chasd00 wrote: post #2

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.

These guys have been popping up on my instagram bragging about how much money they're making building DCs and any argument they get between their "Im making $350k/week, what're you getting, lib?!" is defended with "Well all your instagram comments are stored in datacenters, and you didn't cry then!"

They have no idea what they're actually building, of course. I just love the comparison of a webhost/telco pop to Manhattan sized gigadcs that require nuclear power plants or blasting gas furnaces.

Re: Starbase, LA

#428

Post by zzrrt »

modeless wrote: post #366
zzrrt wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/888053175155949572 "Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins." (July 2017, years after saying he wouldn't build it himself.) Technically it's not a commitment to build, but any other leader in the market would be considered to have failed if they made such a statement and then quietly abandoned it.

Yeah under that post he also says "If you want this to happen fast, please let your local & federal elected representatives know" and "Still a lot of work needed to receive formal approval, but am optimistic that will occur rapidly". Not just "technically" not a commitment to build. Clearly dependent on other factors. Go ahead and count it as "abandoned" if you want. He did talk about building a Hyperloop and is not…

Feels a bit like saying I can provide lots of free electricity, if someone just gives me some perpetual motion machines. Political viability is as important to building something like this as the laws of physics are.

TBC's continued existence isn't very relevant; the point was they/he have yet to build a lasting, full-scale hyperloop, despite his statement they would try. He stopped trying, and I'm fairly sure government approval is far from the only significant obstacle to making a functional and profitable hyperloop anyway.

I might even let go of the hyperloop concept, if they built something else of DC-NYC scale that beats the alternatives in a few measurements.

Re: Starbase, LA

#429

Post by dmitriy_ko »

bdamm wrote: post #412
nodesocket wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimus ins’t gonna be a master welder, electrician, HVAC technician, general contractor anytime soon.

Debatable. Optimus will be programmed by watching thousands of YouTube videos and by indexing the entire NEC. It is entirely possible that a single Optimus can be a master welder, electrician, and HVAC technician. What Optimus can't do is take responsibility for the completion of the work as being done to code. Nor is it clear how much Optimus will cost to buy or operate. Underestimating humanoid capabilities is a mi…

Latest LLMs that have good visual understanding (Gemini and GPT) are able to tell if construction work is up to code. You can give it a picture of electrical wiring, plumbing, framing and it will tell you if it's up to code with very good accuracy.

Re: Starbase, LA

#430

Post by wyre »

WalterBright wrote: post #271
sockaddr wrote: post #74

Elon-types won't "dig us out" of our mess. Removing parasitic elements in government spending and policy will. This starts with politics. We first need a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population. All else follows. These are all things Elon actively works against. You aren't part of his future.

> We first need a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population. All else follows. The requirement is economic freedom, from which everything follows.

In what way? There is nothing inherent about economic freedom that leads to a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population, in the same way there is nothing inherent about a healthy, smart, and safe population that leads to economic freedom.

The US is one of the most economically free places in the world, and always has been, yet obesity is at all time highs, gen Z is the first generation to score less on standardized tests than the generation before them, and civilians killed by law enforcement is at an all time high.

Economic freedom is a very important pillar to a healthy and thriving society, but acting like it is a panacea is wrong. Economic freedom at it's extreme will only lead to a weakening of the middle class and consolidation of wealth among those holding the most wealth.

Post reply on HN