171–180 of 287 posts
I wonder what the greenhouse gas emissions will be like for the Earth-to-Earth trips. Ironic that the display showed a snow-capped mountain after the E2E animation.
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> It is very easy to forget that high-tech engineer is a species that only thrives in politically stable countries. I disagree, a lot of nations became stable because of engineering solutions in the first place and also more scientifically literate. There is a ton of examples of this. The first telescope, as an example, thanks to Hans Lippershey and Galileo Galilei showed that the earth wasn't flat and removed some p…
> Scientific discoveries and technological innovation is the only thing that push a society forward. No, man, that's simply not true. That's an incredibly technocratic view of the world. Using the U.S. as an example, the (belated) end of slavery in the U.S. didn't come about from a scientific discovery or a technological innovation. Technics played a part in the exacerbation of the issues, but it was politics, cultur…
As an example, consider reformation: many attempts have been made at reforming the church, but the first successful one happened only after the printing press got widespread enough that the reformational thesis could spread around the Europe very quickly.
Or you could reasonably argue that the end of feudalism happened because of gunpowder and accessible firearms. Where previously a person had to train half of their life to be able to fight with an armoured knight, suddenly with firearms, anyone could become effective in the field in pretty much no time. This shifted power away from the local lords in a significant way.
There are plenty of similar examples you can find in all of history. You can probably shoot plenty of holes through them, too, but still, this for me sounds like a most plausible theory of social changes of the ones I heard.
This plan sounds much more sensible than most of what I've heard from Musk before. Especially the intercontinental transport part. That is a real business use-case, potentially very lucrative. I also suspect that could get quite a few more billionaires excited (after all they spend a lot of time in private jets and I'm sure they'd like to cut that time off) which could help raising more investment. I don't believe th…
If they can get that infrastructure heavily subsidised, then perhaps it's a different story. That said, I can't see many cities that would be willing to invest in this, except perhaps the ultra-rich ones, like Dubai.
Imagine getting this built for New York or London. I can't.
Edit: I don't mean to sound so negative; I actually think the rest of the talk was super positive in that it feels realistic - it's just the inter-continental travel bit that gave me pause.
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Because the goal of government action is not to efficiently achieve a goal, but rather build a political coalition capable of capturing and defending budget requests. The SLS specifically was designed to build a coalition between NASA centers who were involved with the SpaceShuttle, a group of large influential companies who produce the core components for the Shuttle and the SLS and a group of senators who are well…
Look, you can't complain about government inefficiency like you can complain about corporate inefficiency because you are granted real power over the government by way of the constitution. If you don't want the space agency to be controlled by corporations not owned by Musk you can do something about it via the many channels that exist for that explicit purpose.
With a corporation I can just not use their product, they don't get my money and beyond that I don't really care what goals they have in space.
> If you don't want the space agency to be controlled by corporations not owned by Musk you can do something about it via the many channels that exist for that explicit purpose.
Like what channels? Writing a congressmen?
You vote every couple of years on a small group of people and those people are responsible for lots of things, not just space. So when you vote space is a small priority and most people care more about other issues.
NASA needs to given more independence and change the process of NASA budgeting. ESA does a lot better in many ways because they have a longer planning cycles. NASA should use more competitive contracting like they did for Commercial Crew and Commercial Cargo.
These changes require evolutionary and sometimes revolutionary change and this is happening a little in NASA now. The Shuttle group has already lost out, the SLS is defensive effort.
The best thing we can do is point out how bad the current system is and oppose the pork projects. Moral outrage compared with workable efficient solutions that save money have the ability to potentially form alternative coalition.
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We may always face existential risks. We now know of some concerning the next 50-100 years, but in 100 years we may know of different ones. Planetary redundancy conceivably aids our chances with those risks as well, so is a project best begun now, whatever the lead time. I don't want us always just solving the present crisis. We should think about the distant future too.
Maybe you're right, but I'm thinking more along the lines of "autonomous life outside of earth is impossible in the foreseeable future, so optimizing for existential crises that threaten life on earth is pointless". The only thing we can avoid is that we ourselves destroy earth. Basically, if an asteroid hits us or something it's over anyway.
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I don't get the sense that Elon values rehearsal time, but someone should convince him that it's really important.
I'd rather he put his time into building and designing than rehearsing speeches.
Giving speeches is more appropriate for his actual job.
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With increased technology comes more liberties for all. With your kind of thinking we would still live in caves because why work on anything unless we solve all our social issues first? Progress is not made by politicians, it is made by engineers. If you want clean water for all humans, you should be supportive of discovering new stuff. For example, for humans to survive in hostile environments on other planets we ne…
You make two very, very large claims that require a deep dive to support. >With increased technology comes more liberties for all. ...uhm. What? How? Examples? a line of thought? Gimme something here. >Progress is not made by politicians, it is made by engineers. Again, what? That's an overwhelmingly naive and narrow view of the world. JFK helped expedite aerospace research, as well as the NASA administrators who did…
As for questioning the kind of technological advancement and the reactions to it, I think the defensive comments come from a combination of the following:
1. Questioning spending on space exploration in the topic about space exploration is like questioning the existence of football on a football match. You're talking to an audience who loves it and telling them that it takes resources away from More Important Things. Except that space is at the same time much more underfunded and much more important than football, baseball, basketball, movies, concerts, celebrity gossip and all the other stuff people like[1]. So it kind of feels unfair to single it out here.
2. Basic research is increasingly becoming underfunded. The funny thing about solving the world problems with technology is that, more often than not, what enables those technologies is pie-in-the-sky research with no expected immediate results. This doesn't fly well with the markets, and as countries increasingly treat science in the same way market economy does, the funding for long-term research is in ever greater jeopardy. Attacking space exploration through arguments of other more immediate problems is in a big way attacking basic research.
3. People need to dream about better future. Space exploration is somewhat unique that it captures and nourishes the imagination and hope for a better world.
4. We have enough resources to solve the more important problems like clean water and food for all. And yet they are not solved. Taking the meagre few $B from space research will most likely not help in solving those problems, but it will shut down space research.
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[0] - Note that in that they're not unique - theoretically, a private institution with large amounts of resources can do the same thing too. Still, to date, it's usually governments that are willing to spend money on actual research.
[1] - Also, there's plenty of money in wasted military spending that could be taken first, even without reducing the actual military capabilities of a country.
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I would be really excited about a future where everyone had access to clean water. Going to space is fun and exciting. The future of space travel is going to be interesting, but it essential that when we imagine the future that we do so while recognizing the glaring problems of today.
Going to space doesn't take resources away from getting everyone access to clean water. These are not related activities.
Honestly, Elon's presentations are some of the most impressive, inspiring I've ever seen. And the way he just stumbles out words and sentences that are completely revolutionary... casually dropping these absurd, incredible statements. I find it incredible. If anyone else was saying this, was showing these graphics, you'd think it was just wish fulfillment; a fantasy. And I'm sure their timeline is a bit aggressive. B…
This is how I've always felt about presentations, not just by Musk but anyone who presents candidly. Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Bill Gates also present more or less similar characteristics. They don't prepare/rehearse for the talk. They are thinking on the fly, but they are still confident. This natural behavior is what makes listening and watching to these people so gratifying.
How do you know that?
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The same who that believed their timeline for when they would have a human certified rocket?
I suspect the ambitious timelines are political. Musk has repeatedly stated that others would need to work on a lot of the Mars colony infrastructure. SpaceX only appear to be working on the supporting infrastructure for flights (e.g. propellant plant). By telling the world that they'll be ready to fly in five years, they're making a statement that other organisations/companies that want to get involved with this eff…
And the trick is, the more people he can convince of that, the better chances we have the Mars colony will happen.