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SpaceX cleared for US military launches

bbc.co.uk

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Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#51

Post by icelancer »

ceejayoz wrote: post #26
engi_nerd wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has a history of overrunning budgets, yes, but the per-aircraft cost is declining and should continue to decline. I thought parent might have been referring to budget issues but I'm not really grasping how that's relevant.

The per-aircraft cost is still 3x or more that of the F/A-18, and the costs of operating it are also dramatically higher. http://breakingdefense.com/2014/09/gao-draft-slams-f-35-on-u...

While I think the JSF is quite the boondoggle, this is not necessariy a fair comparison. We should expect the F-35 to cost quite a bit more in both upfront and operating costs; it is, after all, much more capable.

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#52

Post by nraynaud »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #48
nraynaud wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the US invaded Iraq, and kill people everywhere in the world on a regular basis too, overthrow governments, helps dictators and lie to people all the time. Nobody gets ahead when you only look for scapegoats and with Manichaeism as a policy. We are bringing back the world into the 20st century, this will be a big problem.

That's fine, you are very welcome not to buy our rockets, iphones, software, and processors if you want to protest our foreign policy. We're not buying Putin's stuff, so don't buy ours. I don't see a problem with this. >overthrow governments The middle east is migrating to democracy and has the least amount of dictators in charge in my lifetime, thanks to US foreign policy. While I think foriegn policy is hard to jud…

Life is not a competition towards who has the stupidest, most antagonistic or most isolationist behavior, that's the whole point of discussing in a forum, trying to put ideas in people's head instead of trying to starve them economically or bombing them.

My idea in the initial post was to have people think about one point of view about this deal. In particular because it seem people are mostly from the left here, but there is a real Reaganian aspect to the move.

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#53

Post by stefantalpalaru »

mikeash wrote: post #41
stefantalpalaru wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget how much better the GPS could have been without the military putting the breaks on civilian uses and competitors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_%28satellite_navigation...

Selective Availability stopped in 2000. What alternative system would have been ready to go by then that was prevented from being ready by the actions of the US military? What entity would have paid for creating GPS if not the US military?

They only stopped introducing errors in the signal after the threat of a competing system became real. The interests of US military are simply not aligned with those of civilians around the world. The sooner we get rid of our dependency on their technology, the better.

See what happened to the Internet. Because we kept relying on it, we're now all living in East Germany under the watchful eye of a new and improved STASI.

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#54

Post by shit_parade2 »

yc1010 wrote: post #16
nraynaud wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Putin, Andropov, Chernenko, same stuff.

Not really. I was born and lived during the dying days of the USSR in 80s (left in mid 90s) Under communism everyone knew the system was a failure and everything was a sham, hell the jokes being made were hilarious. Now on the other hand in last few years everything in Russia under Tsar Putin went full retard mode with people actually believing the unashamed propaganda that the state controlled media puts out. Many R…

doesn't sound different from the US.

People believe the unashamed media propaganda, few speak anything besides English, many can't afford to leave, people believe the evil east is out to get them. In the 80s the NSA kept out of politics for most part... But now the state is taken over by a miz of NSA and criminal corporate-military-financial entities.

Nationalism and borderline Fascism is the order of the day. We've been at continuous war for over 14 years.

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#55

Post by shit_parade2 »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #33
nraynaud wrote: post #3

I like the old school dogma underlying the whole thing. Russia is bad, private enterprise is good, the US wants to put weapons in space, and Michael Jackson is rocking the world with Thriller.

>Russia is bad, private enterprise is good Considering Putin is playing politics with space, namely limiting critical RD-180 sales after the west criticized his illegal annexation of parts of Ukraine, as well as funding and arming rebels who are purposely targeting civilians, well, what exactly do you want us to say here? Engage in more mindless political correctness? Sing kumbaya around the campfire as to not offend…

Are you aware of the extensive US driven sanctions against Russia? We pressured the French to reneg on a hardware contracts with Russia, why would they not return the favor?

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#56

Post by mikeash »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #53
mikeash wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selective Availability stopped in 2000. What alternative system would have been ready to go by then that was prevented from being ready by the actions of the US military? What entity would have paid for creating GPS if not the US military?

They only stopped introducing errors in the signal after the threat of a competing system became real. The interests of US military are simply not aligned with those of civilians around the world. The sooner we get rid of our dependency on their technology, the better. See what happened to the Internet. Because we kept relying on it, we're now all living in East Germany under the watchful eye of a new and improved ST…

Right, but the claim was that without the involvement of the US military, we'd have been better off. Which then means that either somebody else would have paid for a better GPS system, or that some other system would have been put up and operational by 2000. So, like I asked: which alternative system would have been ready by 2000 if not for the US military, or what other entity would have paid for GPS if not the US military?

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#57

Post by shit_parade2 »

mikeash wrote: post #43
wahsd wrote: post #36

This seriously compromises the integrity of SpaceX. Even if they were to only support "national security" there is absolutely zero chance they can know whether they are actually supporting national security or global surveillance and oppression of human rights. What people don't realize is that we, SpaceX and Musk, are really no different whatsoever than any of the companies that have been chided for "working with th…

There's no comparison. The US is not trying to conquer the world and the US is not committing genocide. Yes, the US government does lots of bad things. It also does lots of good things. It's a vast collection of sometimes loosely affiliated organizations with lots of competing interests and there's no reason to expect consistency. But there's no sensible comparison to the Nazis.

How many deaths constitute a genocide because hundreds of thousands of middle eastern civilians have been killed during our 14 year war on Islam.

EDIT: down votes? Can't argue the truth so better to bury it.

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#58

Post by drzaiusapelord »

shit_parade2 wrote: post #55
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Russia is bad, private enterprise is good Considering Putin is playing politics with space, namely limiting critical RD-180 sales after the west criticized his illegal annexation of parts of Ukraine, as well as funding and arming rebels who are purposely targeting civilians, well, what exactly do you want us to say here? Engage in more mindless political correctness? Sing kumbaya around the campfire as to not offend…

Are you aware of the extensive US driven sanctions against Russia? We pressured the French to reneg on a hardware contracts with Russia, why would they not return the favor?

If Putin didn't like that, he was more than welcome to end the Crimean occupation and stop shooting children in eastern Ukraine. Again, Putin made space political.

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#59

Post by mikeash »

shit_parade2 wrote: post #57
mikeash wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no comparison. The US is not trying to conquer the world and the US is not committing genocide. Yes, the US government does lots of bad things. It also does lots of good things. It's a vast collection of sometimes loosely affiliated organizations with lots of competing interests and there's no reason to expect consistency. But there's no sensible comparison to the Nazis.

How many deaths constitute a genocide because hundreds of thousands of middle eastern civilians have been killed during our 14 year war on Islam. EDIT: down votes? Can't argue the truth so better to bury it.

"Genocide is the systematic destruction of all or a significant part of a racial, ethnic, religious or national group." From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

There's no systematic destruction of any such group that I'm aware of. I won't deny that lots of middle-eastern civilians have been killed, but it's not any systematic attempt to eliminate them all, which means it's not genocide. (Especially since a large proportion of those deaths are caused by internal fighting which, while arguably the US's fault for going in without a plan for how to deal with existing tensions, is not what genocide looks like, at all.)

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#60

Post by ryanlol »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #48
nraynaud wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the US invaded Iraq, and kill people everywhere in the world on a regular basis too, overthrow governments, helps dictators and lie to people all the time. Nobody gets ahead when you only look for scapegoats and with Manichaeism as a policy. We are bringing back the world into the 20st century, this will be a big problem.

That's fine, you are very welcome not to buy our rockets, iphones, software, and processors if you want to protest our foreign policy. We're not buying Putin's stuff, so don't buy ours. I don't see a problem with this. >overthrow governments The middle east is migrating to democracy and has the least amount of dictators in charge in my lifetime, thanks to US foreign policy. While I think foriegn policy is hard to jud…

>The middle east is migrating to democracy and has the least amount of dictators in charge in my lifetime

How's that democracy working out in Libya and Syria?

Many (probably pretty much everyone actually familiar with the situation) would argue that things were better under those dictators.

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