181–190 of 259 posts
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Those are all ways to squander the Earth's limited resources while sounding forward thinking. Colonizing Mars will likely never happen, there is simply no upside: huge challenges, with no interesting resources. The Earth has plenty of space, we're limited by resources, and there are no interesting resources on Mars. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that we'll have a colony outside the solar system before a colony…
> The Earth has plenty of space, we're limited by resources, and there are no interesting resources on Mars There are new discoveries on Earth even today, after hundreds of thousands year of mankind history. What make you think we have known all we need to know about Mars? > I wouldn't be surprised to find out that we'll have a colony outside the solar system before a colony on Mars. Mars is a 8 month journey. Alpha…
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They might have said it if the Americas had even worse living conditions than Antarctica. We're not colonizing that either.
> We're not colonizing that either. That might largely be explained by the fact that doing so would be illegal as per international law to begin with.
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> We're not colonizing that either. That might largely be explained by the fact that doing so would be illegal as per international law to begin with.
It isn't like anybody is going to really stop you from living there. There are multiple land disputes over Antarctica and nobody has given a shit about those. Plus all the research stations which provide permanent habitat if someone wanted to keep shipping in supplies. You expect if you built a greenhouse or power generation source for indoor gardening that some government would spend the effort to send in troops or…
...are you sure about that? Have you tried violating the international treaties?
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They're no more egomaniacs than, say, whoever wins a gold medal at the Olympics. You've got to be an egomaniac to think one deserves to be the fastest runner in the world, a completely pointless honor, but we celebrate them anyway. Pointless as in I, an old man and an uncoordinated complete failure at athletics, can ride my bike faster than any of them can run.
Perhaps, but at least athletes put in the work themselves, rather than exploiting and taking the credit for the work of others.
Employing
> credit
Credit always goes to the leader. Without Bezos, none of Blue Origin would have happened. Olympic athletes rely on uncredited trainers and usually a dedicated family to financially support them.
I know this is completely random, but I just love how HN posters rarely communicate with each other past one or two comments.
If there is an "on topic" discussion, the back-and-forth can actually be very engaging and worthwhile. Some of these exchanges are really golden and is why I keep coming back to HN. However, these high value interactions tend to be rare.
Unfortunately, many discussions here tend to be fairly low value. Especially those topics that are prone to draw emotional responses from people that are arguably no more qualified to comment other than they feel strongly about the topic (and, yes, guilty as charged). In these cases, back and forth between the already committed serves little purpose and just adds stress to life. I think by simply stating your position and maybe why you think it, anyone really interested will know by that single expression that 1) there are contrary points of view, and 2) it might inspire the undecided to look into matters and draw their own conclusions... and do so with better information than is available from comments here.
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> silly little PR stunt The media has been grossly unfair to Bezos. What Bezos actually did was risk his own neck in the first manned flight of a totally new rocket design. It was a massive display of faith in his engineering team. Musk didn't do that. Branson didn't do that - and earlier test pilots of his craft died. As for the BO rocket being totally automated, that was the original intent of the Mercury missions,…
> The media has been grossly unfair to Bezos. I honestly think you have it backwards: the media has been very kind to both Bezos and Branson, particularly the latter. This isn't surprising because the media doesn't really get orbital dynamics any more than they get most technical topics. Nevertheless a lot of them act as if Branson's and Bezos' flight were some big technical achievements or progress forward, as if th…
A whole 5 times. The space shuttle flew many times before the Challenger.
> You think Musk wasn't puckered
It's a whole lot different when your own ass is the one that will die.
> Branson is a daredevil
And yet he still didn't dare to take the first manned flight.
> it's also not a special achievement
It's untried and very complex software. We know how that often goes.
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What advancements have its current flagship program (SLS) produced? Maybe they do produce some but congress clearly wants them to produce jobs not anything else.
You know congress funds a lot more for space than SLS, right?
On reddit, what usually happens is that SLS defenders try to misrepresent attacks on SLS as an attack on all of NASA, parenthood, and apple pie. And so the world turns.
It's really a shame what has happened to Blue Origin. They've gone from a promising space startup to yet another purveyor of perpetual vaporware. Where is the BE-4 engine? Delayed, again and again. New Glenn, the rocket that could actually go into orbit? Same. So far their only functioning hardware (New Shephard) is, in effect, a glorified amusement park ride. Considering that SpaceX has actually made it to orbit mul…
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Hell no. Space exploration and expansion should absolutely NOT be in the hands of corporations but an government funded entity that contracts out work as we have now. If every government program should be profitable.
I'd vote for NASA + private enterprise combo similar to DARPA programs. Leadership in the gov, execution in the private industry.