851–860 of 1001 posts
This makes me think of Intels decline over the last decade or so. It feels to me like a canary in a coal mine. Perhaps of a failing in the US system as a whole. It is possible we are not quite the world leader we once were, despite bailouts, despite legislation like the CHIPS act, despite a CEO dedicated to a roadmap to regain technical superiority … maybe we cannot win this race. Have we reached a point where managi…
This makes me think of Intels decline over the last decade or so. It feels to me like a canary in a coal mine. Perhaps of a failing in the US system as a whole. It is possible we are not quite the world leader we once were, despite bailouts, despite legislation like the CHIPS act, despite a CEO dedicated to a roadmap to regain technical superiority … maybe we cannot win this race. Have we reached a point where managi…
This is a global problem, not limited to the US. It's also the end-state of capitalism because having (access to) more money makes it easier to have access to more money, and money drives everything else.
> where our institutions now function to primarily manage and preserve an unhealthy society that is primarily exploitative and does not have the needs of the populace first and foremost.
For me, it has always looked like the use was primarily exploitative and completely opposed to supporting the populace.
> Where economic indicators, economic lingo and policy just uses a vernacular to hide its direct purpose to provide safety for the haves at the expense of the have nots.
This is not new. Chomsky told us this in the 60s. The Catholic Church used a similar strategy for over a millennia.
I'm not disagreeing with you, only attempting to disperse your sense of surprise.
Oh yeah. Replace the stainless steel by carbon fibre, give it to your pals of Boing and instead of being ready in 2030 for 2.3 billion it will be ready in 2050 for 50 billion. Much better for making your friends rich.
Stainless steel was a questionable choice for starship. If the pros outweigh the cons, which is yet to be seen, it will be mostly due to the peculiarities of Starship's other design choices. In general it's a terrible choice for rockets. I'm not saying Boeing would do a better job, but any actual engineer doing a ground up redesign starting today would definitely go with carbon fiber.
You seem like commenting on a situation as one would comment about a moon visuals by looking at it without a telescope. But maybe I'm wrong and you are very close to SpaceX engineers and know some folks that work there or other internals...
But you should then have known that Tesla/SpaceX is very well known to remove stupid requirements or solutions if there is much better alternative. And they don't leave stupid decisions there.
I'm no expert that I can attribute the durability of the vehicle to the choice of stainless steel or whatever alloy they have there, but me and online folks have been amazed at IFT1 when starship tumbled and didn't break apart... or IFT11 when heat tiles were purposefully removed on critical spots and the ship still landed. Maybe suffered burn-thru but it didn't prevent a soft ocean splashdown.
Can it be attributed to stainless steel? I'm no engineer, so I don't know. It's just that the observable result is amazing.
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US dominates with SpaceX internet project. For moon landing it's far behind at this point.
Far behind who? China still doesn’t have a Falcon 9 competitor, let alone Starship.
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To me, a significant part of the value presented by space exploration is the way that it inspires society. I think that whatever else we would do instead would need to be equally inspiring. Honestly, I can't really think of something comparable.
So lets focus on genetics and see if we can get fire breathing dragons instead. That should be just as inspiring
NASA: "We may need to boot SpaceX" SpaceX: makes political contribution to executive branch NASA: "SpaceX is back on the menu, boys!"
NASA: "We may need to boot SpaceX" SpaceX: makes the only rockets capable of actually doing anything NASA: "SpaceX is back on the menu, boys!"
There is just so much wrong with this from start to finish. Here are a few things, by no means inclusive: 1. We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting. 2. Nothing based around SLS is remotely serious. The cost and timeline of doing anything with it are unreasonable. It is an absolute dead-end. The SpaceX Super Heavy has been more capable arguably as early as the secon…
China wasn't trying to land people on the moon 56 years ago. You "beat" someone when both are competing to do it.
I learnt Python, Rust and Go in my twenties and Trump is like twice my age and can't code in any of these languages. I didn't "beat him" at it though, because he's not even trying.
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So lets focus on genetics and see if we can get fire breathing dragons instead. That should be just as inspiring
Humans with feline features!
I was really hoping someone could come up with an idea along a completely different line.
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Crucially, not during his term (or his life, but that's irrelevant).
The moon landing would have probably happened during JFK’s second term, if he hadn’t been assassinated and if the Apollo 1 tragedy hadn’t set the project back significantly.
So, I imagine if he hadn't been assassinated, they probably would've landed on the moon around the same time, which would be after a possible 2nd term (unless he lost re-election and then won again).