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Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

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Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#471

The sooner Europe cuts itself off from the US crazy billionaires, the better - on all levels (software and manufacture processes are the two biggest issues). Today we already could see the US surrender team crawling up to dictator Putin. Enough is enough - agent Krasnov needs to be isolated.

I don’t think America is so far gone. We have issues sure, but I for one still believe that we can be better. Trump be damned, Europe and America are stronger when they work together.

I am an American. Born here 56 years ago. I think we are alarmingly "far gone".

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#472
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I really hate this revisionism of Elon as an extremely wealthy apartheid emerald mine heir who was a dumb guy who happened to get lucky at paypal and then stole all his money from the government while operating a car and rocket company. There is plenty to criticize about him, but SpaceX dramatically decreased cost to orbit which had reliance on Russian technology at the time.

> extremely wealthy apartheid emerald mine heir who was a dumb guy who happened to get lucky at paypal and then stole all his money from the government while operating a car and rocket company. > SpaceX dramatically decreased cost to orbit which had reliance on Russian technology at the time. Both can be (and are) true at the same time. Elon hired/partnered the right people and didn't have capacity to mess all the co…

I think I’ll take the word of the world’s foremost rocket engine expert over son random Internet commentator.

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#473
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd honestly rather like to use this opportunity to talk about that this is a success than returning to our regularly scheduled doomer loop. A rocket launched into orbit from Norway. That's insane progress and worth celebrating.

> That's insane progress and worth celebrating. A non-reusable launcher that can put small payloads into a Polar orbits only, due to launch site latitude and lack of an orbital bus. It's fairly 1960s stuff.

Did Europe have those capabilities in the 1960s?

Or is this insane progress for Europe?

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#474
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any unfamiliar with the history, Russia was a mass murdering machine in this era, vaporizing tens of millions of people, including Russians, in very short spans of time without even a second thought. We all know Germans was. And some people would fling fecal allegations that “so was the US!”. No. German and Russian actions were categorically different than wartime casualties (even brutal, possibly criminal, warti…

You're right, America didn't intentionally engineer the death of millions until after the war, when it became the undisputed global superpower. ...If you choose to intentionally ignore slavery in the American South, Convict Leasing, and Jim Crow. see also what the CIA got up to in Indonesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_19... And in your living memory: Vietnam, Korea, the vile shit we did…

How many poor people are you responsible for dying because you aren’t giving enough to support them?

Cutting off aid is terrible, but you don’t get to blame the US for their dying - without blaming the rest of the world as well. That isn’t a US issue.

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#475
post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost nothing starts from 0, its not a very smart idea to ignore generations of experience and wrong decisions. Tesla also started with musk joining already well working EV startup, didn't it.

Nothing was "started" by him joining. Name was the same and they were already producing car(s). He did bring his skills for fraud and puffery though.

Name a car they were producing before when Elon became the company’s chairman. With their three employees.

Revisionist history because of your feelings is still wrong.

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airbus did not come into existence out of nowhere. It is the result of merging some companies that had some ancestry going back to the time of aviation pioneers.

Almost nothing starts from 0, its not a very smart idea to ignore generations of experience and wrong decisions. Tesla also started with musk joining already well working EV startup, didn't it.

Tesla was not a well working startup - they had no funds and he was the fourth employee. They had some ideas about making an electric car.

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what are we missing? There are some (many?) European companies which are considered as least as much as a jobs program as anything else. In 2018, Alain Charmeau (in)famously expressed frustration with SpaceX in an interview with Der Spiegel and rejected reusability with these words: “Let us say we had ten guaranteed launches per year in Europe and we had a rocket which we can use ten times—we would build exactly…

That's the only good answer of the thread. ArianeGroup is mainly the SLBM program of France and after that a way to maintain european know-how in rocket building and for nearly 20 years was the main space launch company in the world before Space-X. All those companies success and failures (be that Space-X or ArianeGroup) are linked to their political environment and how much money can be spent on their launch market.…

SpaceX launched three times and would have failed if their fourth launch hadn’t worked. They certainly never had the money to launch many times and fail.

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for the Sami people who have to inhale the rocket exhaust blast.

Istar's Spectrum rocket does not use RP-1 (kerosene), like Falcon 9 and Electron, which burns very dirty. They are using liquid propane, which burns extremely cleanly, especially when combined with their liquid oxygen. There is a lot of noise, but that should be the only pollution generated by this launch.

The first and second stages being disposed of aren’t pollution?

Re: Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

#480
post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US only became actively involved in supporting South Vietnam a decade after it had achieved independence from France in 1955, after the negotiated division into North and South Vietnam in Geneva, and after the last French forces left in 1956. The cause of that intervention was North Vietnam sending Viet Cong insurgents into South Vietnam, attempting to overthrow the government, and ignoring the South's sovereignt…

That is a very particular arrangement of the facts, that really doesn't have the shape of truth to it. Vietnam was a former French colony conquered by the Japanese WW2, that wanted to restore their independence.The Allies liberated South Vietnam, restoring French colonial rule and seeking to reconquer the whole nation. It was deeply unpopular with the people. Moreover the South wanted to conquer the north with French…

Fair call on the funding, I know the US was paying for the French military's involvement for years. Still, by active support I meant troops on the ground, which happened significantly later.

Who resumed the fighting does matter, as even though Diem refused the 1956 reunification elections that didn't justify resorting to an armed insurgency by the North. It's also not ambiguous, Hanoi's 15th plenum officially authorised that insurgency in 1959 and formed groups 559 and 759, and later the NLF (Viet Cong).

They were already killing hundreds of innocent South Vietnamese village chiefs, teachers, and officials by the late 1950s, trying to create a local insurgency and insurrection. That's what the US got involved with to oppose, and I really can't say it was a morally wrong decision at the time. Hanoi had the option of sticking with diplomacy and chose to send guerrillas south instead. You're giving only the US agency here.

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