121–130 of 351 posts
The word "Starship" means specifically that the ship is capable of traveling between stars. At a minimum, it should travel from it's home star to the nearest neighboring star.
What we're talking about here are "Spaceships". -- The only way I can lighten up and enjoy the name Starship in this context is to assume it's being used ironically... like someone who's named their cat "Dog".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rocket equation [0] disagrees: "In what has been called 'the tyranny of the rocket equation', there is a limit to the amount of payload that the rocket can carry, as higher amounts of propellant increment the overall weight, and thus also increase the fuel consumption" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation
I'm having a mental blockage on this, as you can always launch 10 rockets at the same time and get 10 times the payload. Having those 10 rockets strapped together should not change the payload of them flying independently. What am I missing here -- I'm sure I'm overlooking something.
What is the benefit of settling on Mars? Until we explain that in some kind of sane way that doesn’t just involve the earth being a crutch for raw materials, it all seems rather stupid to me. Settling an earth-like planet? Sure! Seems logical. Mars? Not really.
Ability to survive nuclear war. He doesn't just want to settle, he wants to settle with a self-sustaining colony. It's a contingency plan. We've almost plunged the world into nuclear holocaust a couple times before. India and Pakistan are at each other's throats, and rising ethnonationalist populism and climate change are threatening to strain these tensions further. This is a real risk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Purpose is so hard to come by now because we all don't know what we want. When we do know, we're constantly unsure about it. This statement resonates deeply with me. Whenever I meet someone new or that I might be interested in dating I ask "What are you doing with your life?" or "What are you striving for?" and I find the extreme majority of people don't have an answer beyond "I just go to a job I don't really like…
Why do they have to? I have that drive, but my wife is perfectly happy with a calm, comfortable, stress-free life. And in fact it helps to bring me back down to Earth sometimes also. There's nothing wrong with wanting a life that free. In fact it's oftentimes admirable. Especially at times when I'm wound so tight I feel like I could pop. If you're choosing a partner based solely on whether they want to be the next El…
Not speaking about (or judging!) anyone individually, but because if none of us did, we'd still be living in caves. Or, more likely, be extinct.
The reason all of us are having this conversation now is because many people before us had purpose and built something
Excerpt: "Just iterate, baby" "I’ve spoken with plenty of the earliest engineers who worked at SpaceX, and almost all of them have noted that Musk tackles the hardest engineering problems first. For Mars, there will be so many logistical things to make it all work, from power on the surface to scratching out a living to adapting to its extreme climate. But Musk believes that the initial, hardest step is building a re…
I respect the clarity of the vision and the drivenness to make the vision a reality. I disagree with the vision. The best analogy I can think of right now is high school kids renting a hotel for a party and trashing it and then doing the same thing next week. That’s humanity right now. There is no Planet B until we build a mutualistic relationship with the one that created us. And yes when I say “there is no Planet B…
It also opens up huge amounts of clean energy resources.
The pace of innovation here is absolutely ludicrous. They designed and built a custom welding machine _and_ a custom x-ray machine for building tank domes in four weeks ? They've gone from a production rate of one prototype in 8 months to one prototype every 2 weeks in less than a year. They doubled the size of their workforce in less than 48 hours. I'm gonna have to agree with the article author here: this is absolu…
Meanwhile I'm working at an advertising company.
I respect the clarity of the vision and the drivenness to make the vision a reality. I disagree with the vision. The best analogy I can think of right now is high school kids renting a hotel for a party and trashing it and then doing the same thing next week. That’s humanity right now. There is no Planet B until we build a mutualistic relationship with the one that created us. And yes when I say “there is no Planet B…
The pursuit of sustainable living and the pursuit of a multi-planetary existence are parallel endeavours, not serial ones. Perhaps the view from Mars will instil a renewed perspective on our dependence on Earth, and teach us lessons on ecological management via terraforming.
I agree that they’re parallel because the reality is that they’re both happening right now. I’m pointing out that there’s a huge risk in not figuring out A before B, which is that we’ll just be transporting our problems to a new planet (and if they succeed, then whoever controls Mars will be able to use their monopoly to exacerbate problems on Earth). Granted, the rocket sure is shiny, though... funny how that trick never fails ;)
> Perhaps the view from Mars will instil a renewed perspective on our dependence on Earth, and teach us lessons on ecological management via terraforming.
Or perhaps you’re in the equivalent of an “early internet” optimism phase around Mars exploration.
We have all the resources we need here. The research around mutualistic living (renewables, land use, food waste, etc) is making that clear. If we’re glorifying hard problems, then the real hard problem is figuring out how to get humanity to share our already abundant resources equitably and peacefully.
Once we solve that problem we will be ready for Mars.
And to be clear I share the dream of exploring the stars. But I can’t in good faith support that dream until we shift from a parasitic to a mutualistic relationship.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Low gravity is one thing. But the radiation outside the Earth's magnetic field is quite another. People colonizing Mars will need to shield themselves from several types of harmful radiation. Wich means in practice: living underground.
Could be living underground. Water is also an effective radiation shield. Combined with predictive modeling, we might have a chance. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/spaceweather/ind...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the promise of getting all our problems solved Where has that been promised? He's working on a rather small set of big problems, which is a far cry from 'all our problems', don't you think?
And where did I say he was working on all problems? I was talking about the general psyche of tolerating abusive assholes ( ie. Steve Jobs ) and eccentric renaissance man who we "know" will crash and burn but we rationalize it like "we'll get some indirect benefits, just like the whole NASA thing" or "at least the trains run on time". There are justified reasons behind this, but also a lot of excuses. The whole Elon…
Ok I understand, thanks.