> SLS is the elephant in the room and is a complete disaster SLS isn't great but it does.. you know.. work.
SLS doesn't serve any actual NASA needs. It's fake make-work. Case in point: Congress expressly ordered NASA to launch Europa Clipper on SLS, to make it appear that SLS was indispensable to core NASA science missions. But, due to design flaws, SLS turned out to be technically incapable of launching Clipper at all. So they backtracked and allowed free-market competition to compete for the Clipper launch. Which it did:…
How many orbital refuels would Starship need for a lunar landing and return mission? Something like 20?
I honestly wonder why we didn't just stick with the Saturn V. 13 launches and only one (non-catastrophic) failure. If it aint broke don't fix it.
> Nobody knows. But the only things guaranteed are: Ironic that you jump from “nobody knows” to statements where you’re absolutely sure that it’s worse. Your “guarantees” aren’t even consistent with the language of the authorization. They aren’t giving these services carte blanche to define their own laws and processes. They’re just allowing someone else to execute part of the process. It’s hard to have these convers…
Cost of FedEx from NYC to LA: Cheapest price for 1 lb letter is $60.37 before taxes https://www.fedex.com/en-us/online/rating.html Cheapest price on USPS for 1 lb letter is $9.70 after taxes. https://postcalc.usps.com/Calculator/MailServices?country=0&... That is 7x for a standard 1 lb envelope. The claims are not as egregious as you think. You are not the only one shipping goods around. There is a market that USPS s…
I understand wanting to make the organization more efficient, but i don't think this is what's happening here. I think this is the classic republican strat of gutting federal agencies, pointing to the inefficiencies caused by the loss of institutional knowledge, and using that as an excuse to privatize to their friends. The fact that Elon's DOGE suggested these cuts lines up
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They've been doing this for generations. In a nutshell that's why the US South is so poor. They build infrastructure for political/economic exclusion, and they tear down anything that even hints at inclusiveness. So the rich get richer, and everyone else suffers.
Trump won the popular vote. I think the reasonable people need to open their eyes and learn that Republicans won't ever change.
That particular playbook long predates Trump: campaign on the ineffectiveness and incompetence of government and, once elected, prove it—with ineffectiveness and incompetence. Repeat ad infinium.
CA has been a one party state minus a couple governors my entire life. You'd think the Democrats would have this place running like a well oiled machine by now.
Is the privatized NC DMV any better than the public one? I was just at the Delaware DMV getting my 2 vehicles inspected and registration renewed, and while not an entirely horrible experience, it did seem like there were a lot of inefficiencies and complacentcy. I've also noticed the difference in the US post offices around me and the FedEx stores and wonder why the post offices aren't nicer customer experiences.
I’ve dealt with DMVs across multiple living locations and the differences are incredible. The worst ones were a nightmare to deal with that virtually required taking a half day off work. One time I had to line up outside in the sun (I hadn’t brought sunscreen) because they decided that the line needed to be outside the building instead of inside, despite having space for it. My only guess is that they were being meas…
> The bad DMVs oddly had bigger offices, they just had people who moved at a snail’s pace and didn’t care about anything other than running the clock out until they could go home.
Well, all of the people?
You are certainly looking at the consequence of something that you don't fully understand. All of the people in a place don't start acting the same way for no reason.
> Trump came with a "believable" story If they believed Trump, they deserve everything they get. Sadly those who didn't believe didn't vote enough.
> If they believed Trump, they deserve everything they get. Is it a matter of "belief," or could it possibly be an optimal strategy to secure potentially two more Supreme Court nominations?
Voting away democracy in order to install a theocracy - we laugh at Turkey in how they can either have democracy or they can have freedom, but not both. It seems America has gone the same way.
Is the privatized NC DMV any better than the public one? I was just at the Delaware DMV getting my 2 vehicles inspected and registration renewed, and while not an entirely horrible experience, it did seem like there were a lot of inefficiencies and complacentcy. I've also noticed the difference in the US post offices around me and the FedEx stores and wonder why the post offices aren't nicer customer experiences.
I’ve dealt with DMVs across multiple living locations and the differences are incredible. The worst ones were a nightmare to deal with that virtually required taking a half day off work. One time I had to line up outside in the sun (I hadn’t brought sunscreen) because they decided that the line needed to be outside the building instead of inside, despite having space for it. My only guess is that they were being meas…
My local DMV got a lot better when they created "ready to go" and "not ready to go" lines. If you know what you are doing and already have the paperwork all completed, you can go in the "ready to go" line and somebody just very quickly looks over your stuff to make sure it's good, and gives you a number. If you don't know exactly what your doing, or have questions, you go in the "not ready to go" line which leads to a few windows where people will help you get everything figured out and if you don't have everything you need, you aren't waiting an extended time to then find that out from a grumpy employee. Either way, by the time your number gets called for one of the main windows, you're already sorted and so the transaction is quick and things keep moving along for everybody.
The entire tech industry is roughly a dozen billionaires and then a bunch of nobodies.
Even if you limit yourself to billionaires, I don't see how you can possibly blame Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Jensen Huang, and Tim Cook for the current administration's decisions to cut funding to science and basic research (among other bad decisions). The worst thing you can say about them is that some of them, after the election, essentially paid bribes to the protection racket that is the current administratio…
If the richest and most powerful people in the world who stand to gain the most from a self-coup are the victims... you and I have a very different definition of "victim".