lol, only he obviously is, so....
And I guarantee he was long before starlink - the riches man on earth doesn't get that way and stay that way without owning at least a handful of politicians (and now his own media outlet of which he has absolute control and millions of existing followers ready to worship his every word).
I genuinely don't understand how anyone can still look at anything this man does and think it's benign, or worse, clueless..
And SpaceX as a whole. It's entirely government funded anyway. Should have kept that money in NASA where it belonged. Fortunately, there's an easy way to put it all right back.
We would’ve never gotten propulsive landing so quickly purely through NASA. See how far behind the SLS was. And SpaceX’s funding comes mostly from private equity.
The whole point is that there shouldn’t be an absence. The absence is there because of the private corporations. This is another insidious tendril of capitalism.
I agree wholeheartedly. Public money is being funneled into the MIC, of which SpaceX is now an integral part. If that same money or even a significant fraction had been instead alotted to NASA since the moon landings, we’d have bases on Titan already.
However, I want to see us touch the stars. And right now, it’s pretty much only SpaceX that has the drive and capital to get there.
That’s an odd question because government programs aren’t and shouldn’t be in areas to make a profit, aka act like a private company. They need to act where private sector can’t, won’t, or can’t do it well and when there is an important stake. Eg roads, schools, healthcare, police, firefighters, etc. This is why people are telling you it’s unlikely SpaceX would be around without government contracts and funding.
Privatizing a new space race is maybe the best idea the government has had in decades. NASA isn’t mothballed, quite the opposite. They’re doing more, faster, and with fewer costs.
NASA’s budget isn’t the only reason SpaceX has been able to innovate faster. NASA is incredibly risk averse, as their failures reflect onto the US government and by extension their budget. Even when safety isn’t important such as with unmanned rockets, NASA doesn’t want news headlines blasting them for their rocket’s tendencies to blow up. SpaceX, by being a private company, is free to take risks and have rockets explode (if they’re unmanned that is) without much repercussions as they’re a private company, not the US government. They’ve had 7 unmanned rockets explode and several more reusable lander’s fail in their course to develop cheaper, reusable rockets, which had NASA done themselves would have been a national embarrassment, but because it was a private company they were free to take those risks to learn from their mistakes
not entirely government funded, but enough that, if they withdraw funding, it would totally collapse.
the entire argument that “private companies do it cheaper” is mostly because they cut corners, skirt regulations, and screw over employees to do business on the cheap. then, we find out there may be massive security breaches like, oh, chatting with Putin and god knows who else…
Part of the problem is nasa seems to be very risk adverse now. Letting private companies take the risk is one way to get around that. I'm just glad we don't have to depend on russia to get to space or the iss.
Don’t forget potentially underpay people. I don’t believe that’s happening for SpaceX specifically, but it does for many other competitors to government jobs. Government jobs aren’t necessarily super high pay, but they usually have solid pay with excellent benefits, pension, and work/life balance.
So when jobs move from the public to private sector, it often comes at the cost of employees. And in some extreme cases, employees are paid so little that they have to rely on government benefits to get by, which is extremely dumb. That’s subsidizing the private sector.
Pretty sure they did ages ago, that was kinda the point of the space shuttel program. And thats just the most notable attempt, the DC-X is another example. Reusable rockets are just kinda inefficient for a lot of shit.
I mean please, forgive my imperfect analogy and call Edison an asshole, but for the love of all that is good don’t embarrass yourself by claiming electricity is useless.
Reread what I typed, reusablle rockets have their place but they can become rather inefficient or even outright wasteful depending on the circumstances. Remember it takes about a lot of energy to land something coming down from orbit, that means more fuel, more fuel means more weight. And sometimes it better to put that fuel and weight into putting more shit into orbit.
Remember it takes about a lot of energy to land something coming down from orbit, that means more fuel, more fuel means more weight. And sometimes it better to put that fuel and weight into putting more shit into orbit.
…That sounds like bull, and quick back-of-the-envelope arithmetic shows there’s probably no way it’s true in the general sense.
<span style="color:#323232;">Falcon 9 LEO payload, expended: 22.8t
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Payload, recovered: 17.4t
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Structural material: Various aero-grade aluminium alloys.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">First stage dry mass: 25.6t
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Propellant mass (LOX+RP-1): 395.7t
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Second stage dry mass: 3.9t
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Propellant mass: 92.67t
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">CO₂ emissions to produce aluminium: 2t·CO₂/t·Al to 20+t·CO₂/t·Al
</span><span style="color:#323232;">(Depending on whether fossil fuels are used— Al is very energy-intensive. MINIMUM. Does not include mining, alumina, alloying, machining, etc.)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">CO₂ emissions to burn LOX+RP-1: ~0.8t·CO₂/t·Fuel
</span>
The launch kinematics shouldn’t change too much otherwise, so assume the difference in payload approximately correlates to the fuel amount that must be saved— Oversimplifying and overly linear, I know. (I’m not breaking out Tsiolkovsky for this. You do it, if you want.):
In even the most conservative scenario, the carbon footprint of the extra fuel to land a Falcon 9 will be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 12X less than even just the raw material costs to replace the aluminium in it.
…Then we’re looking at the carbon footprint of the fuel to reuse a rocket being 65X lower the carbon footprint of replacing it. This is still not even counting either the actual mining, preprocessing, and alloying of the aluminium ore nor the machining nor the rocket structure, so the real number will be even higher.
…In fact, it looks like nearly half of all the carbon emissions from a rocket launch are likely to come from just manufacturing the rocket, not even the fuel it burns. I’m honestly pretty surprised by this too; You’d think, and I’ve always personally assumed, that the big tank of carbon-based fuel and not the thin sheet of metal around it would release the most CO₂, but apparently not.
I guess it makes sense when you remember that GHG costs for other types of vehicles are usually amortized over the useful lifespan of the vehicle in question.
Reusable rockets are just kinda inefficient for a lot of shit.
Remember it takes about a lot of energy to land something coming down from orbit,
This entire premise is somewhere between false and dishonest or misinformed. It costs basically zero energy to land something coming down from orbit, compared to what you’ve already spent to send it up there in the first place, because all you have to do is lower your periapsis into the atmosphere and then fire a quick thrust burst for a couple seconds to land at the end once air drag has done all the hard work of bringing you down from hypersonic to subsonic terminal velocity. The Saturn V had to be millions of tonnes to get to the Moon, but the command module and capsule to get back was kinematically basically one step above an inert rock with a couple of whoopee cushions strapped to the back.
Call out the shitty labour practices, security risks, and deeply problematic political and economic injustices. But don’t try to lie about physics.
Firstly I wasnt even thinking about co2 emisions and was thinking almost exclusively in total mass movement. Secondly when I was refering to the amount of fuel required for slow down for landing I was more so thinking yet again in total mass. Almost all of my points on the matter had to do with the idea of alocating energy toward putting stuff in space.
If you can realocate fuel toward moving stuff further into space for example. I doubt think the falcon is completely bad either, just that it has its niche. If memory serves me right its mostly doing things like putting satalites into orbit, thats a great use of a reuasble rocket.
All I was stating is that such rockets can be kinda inefficient for certain jobs. To put it in nautical terms you wouldnt use a fishing trawler as heavy cargo ship.
Perhaps this is showing my ignorance for arospace shit, IDK but as I understand it more fuel and less mass means you can get shit farther. Thats all I was really thinking.
Firstly I wasnt even thinking about co2 emisions and was thinking almost exclusively in total mass movement. Secondly when I was refering to the amount of fuel required for slow down for landing I was more so thinking yet again in total mass. Almost all of my points on the matter had to do with the idea of alocating energy toward putting stuff in space.
What do you think the GHG from the manufacturing comes from? Expendable rockets means you’re “al[l]ocating energy toward putting stuff in space” much less efficiently because you’re spending (apparently) much more fuel and energy to replace the rocket.
If you meant “total mass and fuel in the rocket”, then frankly that’s an arbitrary and cherry-picked metric in this context. If you’re talking about the social impact and technological history of first NASA then SpaceX developing reusable rockets, then “efficiency” should include everything that they’re paying for.
I doubt think the falcon is completely bad either, just that it has its niche. If memory serves me right its mostly doing things like putting satalites into orbit, thats a great use of a reuasble rocket.
…So its “niche” is… Literally the entire thing that space launch rockets are scientifically and economically useful for???
Literally every space mission, outside of like upper atmospheric research sounding rocket launches (which aren’t really relevant to space launch), is “putting satellites into orbit” (regardless of whether those artificial satellites house crew that they’re then going to ferry Mars, or whether they’re just there to relay your cat gifs).
All I was stating is that such rockets can be kinda inefficient for certain jobs. To put it in nautical terms you wouldnt use a fishing trawler as heavy cargo ship.
“For certain jobs”— Yeah, no, not really, at least unless you can name those “certain jobs”.
Sometimes a payload is too heavy for reusable mode but still okay for expendable mode. But that’s not really being “inefficient”, just too small, and would be more efficiently solved with a bigger reusable rocket. And there are certification and supply chain concerns which mean that expendable systems like SLS and Ariane 6 still sorta have a place for now, but that’s not really an efficiency issue either.
But overall, from tiny cubesats to massive moon landings, reusable rockets are consistently and increasingly demonstrating significant efficiency advantages in all areas of spaceflight, because as it turns out, despite all of Chief Twit’s mistakes and harms, throwing away the rocket after you use it once was in fact just a sorta dumb way to do things in the first place.
Perhaps this is showing my ignorance for arospace shit, IDK but as I understand it more fuel and less mass means you can get shit farther. Thats all I was really thinking.
Yeah… I feel like you’re getting defensive because I might have come across as trying to dunk on you… Which is… Fair enough, I guess, and sorry if I came across that way.
And I get not wanting to like anything that Musk’s tied his name to. But you presented yourself as an authorative/informed speaker on a technical subject, while making a claim that simply isn’t true.
The DC-X/Delta Clipper was really cool, but the Space Shuttle was a design-by-committee safety and maintenance disaster. VentureStar didn’t go much better either, though that was mostly Lockheed.
NASA’s had the tech, the expertise, and the will for a while, but the political process was never going to give them permission to do anything more than slow-moving rehashes and incremental evolutions of old technology.
oh I know! It’s just that some humans throughout history had this insane amount of intelligence and creativity and they jumped our level of technology, and our understanding of the universe by decades, or arguably even more! It always blows my mind that there are people like that
Or they should’ve never left this to the private sector if there was going to be a strategic component to it. Now they’re at the mercy of an unstable foreign national, who is himself beholden to a bunch of foreign investors.
The most insane part is that they never even entered into a contract with Starlink to provide service. Starlink is the backbone of Ukraine’s communications infrastructure, and it’s shocking that the DoD and the Ukraine Armed Forces never thought “hey we should get a contract with Musk so we can ensure he keeps Starlink available throughout the war”. For such a critical service, they were content with dealing with Starlink directly and having Elon subsidize it personally, giving him a large degree of control over one of the most vital components of Ukrainian communications, rather than what they eventually did by going through the DoD to negotiate a contract with Elon using taxpayer dollars
I mean unironically yeah. They can basically ignore a significant part of the electorate with the threat of the Republicans coming into power if those voters don't capitulate on their interests and vote Democrat. It's a hostage situation.
You’re not describing anything new. This has been the only reason to actually vote democratic my entire life. I mean, it’s also the Republican messaging. Hats not exactly any way to elect the best government.
In the early 00s, here in my city, it was fun to go to a certain pedestrians-only avenue to drink with friends. Or a date. If you do it now - yes, post-COVID lockdowns! - you can’t hold a conversation for five fucking minutes without someone interrupting you with advertisement. As a result, people use that avenue nowadays strictly to commute.
I’ve ditched TV when I was 14. (I don’t regret it.) But plenty people told me that open TV, and then cabled TV, became unbearable due to the sheer amount of advertisement.
Unless I recognise the number, I’m not bothering to pick the phone up any more. I’m probably not the only one doing it.
Are you noticing the pattern? Perhaps the internet suffers a bit more with it because people are a bit freer to do what they want here, but the problem is not exclusive to the internet, it’s everywhere advertisers appear. The world has become less fun due to advertisers (“how do people DARE to have fun and ignore our «marketing opportunities»?”).
Not comment OP, but I assume its similar to mine. People will approach you to give you flyers of their buisness, free samples, or otherwise smooth talk you to enter their shop/stand.
It’s “a thing that happens” when it’s sporadic. But when it becomes frequent, annoying or obtrusive enough, it becomes a reason to avoid the space, it makes the space less fun. Same deal with the internet.
The thing in my city? It’s like this, but each 5~10 minutes. Each time it’s a different person advertising something else. It’s frequent enough that you can’t hold a decent conversation, even if your only “mistake” was to sit on a bench in a public space. If you ignore the advertiser, they’ll insist and use a slightly louder tone, as if you were assumed to be deaf; and if you ask them to leave you alone [even politely] they’ll babble about “trying to help you so you don’t miss this amazing opportunity”.
Just to give you an idea: once, my then girlfriend and me decided to count it. We sit on a bench, drinking some booze, and we got twelve advertisers bugging us in a hour and half. Including: eyeglasses stores, phone providers advertising “number portability”, local popular restaurants, handcrafted accessories sellers, gold buyers, so goes on.
It’s basically an offline example of the same thing that happens on the internet. Everybody and their dog wants your attention, and they’ll make sure to be heard against your will. The text doesn’t directly acknowledge that, but note how everything there ties it to advertisers, from “S.E.O. hackers have ruined the trick of adding “Reddit” to searches to find human-generated answers” (why? For ad views!) to Tiktok “pushes us to scroll through another dozen videos of cooking demonstrations or funny animals” (why? Ad views.)
I never looked for potential laws against that, because… well, Latin America. But I think that it would be hard to classify it as either - it’s multiple independent and uncoordinated agents, and the disturbance/harassment is not due to one of them interacting with you, but all of them.
I think that the city needs to pass some law specifically against selling and advertising stuff on public places.
This is gonna sound silly but I have that with joggers. Like I just want to relax in the park and there’s all these joggers stressing me out with their self improvement vibes. So I end up having to go outside the city to find some peace in nature.
To be fair I do it myself too.
Anyway that sounds really annoying for you.
One time my roommate let a solicitor in during Corona. My god I gave him such a stern word I wouldn’t be surprised if he quit because of it. I was so angry because I hadn’t seen my friends in ages and then this fucker can just come visit? There’s no way that was legal in Germany.
Well, in my country you can call the police when the person doesn't leave you alone when told so. But given the US police and US Freedom of Speech (TM) I'm not so sure...
unbearable due to the sheer amount of advertisement.
I spent 3 days in a hotel room this week, and while I did bring my Steam Deck and dock with me for entertainment, I got there to find that the TV had no HDMI ports. I was stuck with basic cable and the only saving grace being Showtime, which wasn’t at extra cost and doesn’t have ads.
But when both Showtime channels had stuff I was less than indifferent to watching, the advertisements on any of the other channels were horrible. The shows felt like they were 1:1 in terms of content to ads.
Don’t get me started on the radio, either. I used to love listening to the radio, but now all they play is the same set of a couple dozen songs, with 5 minutes of ads that play every 3 or so songs. Also, no rock station in my area plays anything newer than ~15 years old, tops. They’re all still playing the same music that I listened to on those stations when I was a teen, and I’m a little over 30.
I feel you on the radio aspect, I cycle through all my presets on my 25 minute commute because so many of them are just ads for 5 minutes. And for some reason my rural area has 4 classic rock stations but I can’t find one that plays anything modern but pop and pop-country.
She didn’t. It was the people that voted for her. Stop placing politicians on pedestals. We, the people, hold the power. Alt headline: How the people of Michigan made it a Democratic Stronghold
You’re not wrong, but folks who are competent who want to do the work also have to put themselves forward to do those positions. You have to have someone running who people will want to vote for.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
As a counterpoint to this. Americans travel more now than they ever have in our history and I’d say culturally we are not significantly more open-minded or charitable as a whole.
I mean, I very much get how it feels that way given the current political climate, but the data does indicate Americans have gotten more open-minded over time, especially about racial/cultural differences.
And this studyspecifically notes a huge shift in rhetoric about immigration between 1945-1965 - correlating with the big boom in travel in the 40s, post WWII, and jet travel coming into play in the 50s-60s - two of the biggest increases in American travel. And the overall trend positive has continued, despite the increased polarization in the last couple decades.
I’m not at all saying that increased travel caused all of this, correlation is not causation and society is way more complex than that. But the trends are there, at least.
I’d argue that the absolute shift in biases aren’t the measure of open-mindedness, and it’s the rate of change that determines how open-minded you are. From that regard the second half of the 20th century was fairly close-minded about the unmitigated correctness of our institutions and our place in the world. I’d say the year 2020 was one of the most rapid periods of open-minded inquisitiveness in my lifetime and that was when everyone was stuck at home.
I don’t particularly agree with that, as it would essentially require exponential change in biases for a population to be considered open-minded, which isn’t how societys work. But even so, the study did actually show an increased rate of change towards positive sentiment corresponding with the boom in travel. Perceptions shifted from trending negative to trending increasingly positive during the period of inflection they describe.
My perception of the COVID years was… quite the opposite, at least outside of my immediate bubble. It felt like polarization and isolation increased more intensely that I’d ever seen. And the strong negative impact on conservative-leaning populations has been well documented.
Almost like the industry was better before it became 24-hour infotainment. The media doesn't need as many people as it has. It needs to cut back its hours and stop serving us all a constant stream of crap.
Y’all, the article is talking about a media extinction event, referring to the increasing difficulty of obtaining enough funding to remain solvent as a news source and “race to the bottom” as far as advertisement revenue, page views, and subscriptions.
It is not talking about an actual human extinction event, although of course that is a huge blaring concern at the moment.
I honestly have not the slightest idea. I read it on the train, and I thought holy shit, that's a really good deep dive into a significant problem that seems like it's only going to get worse. I liked reading it and I felt like it was worthwhile and so I wanted to share it.
And... I honestly can't even make any sense of the reception. I can't tell if people are just reacting to the title alone, or (ironically) don't like that there's a paywall, or think it's not news, or actually read the article but disagreed, or what it is.
Honestly, if I had to guess, I think the lemmy.world section of Lemmy has mostly completed its arc of evolution into full blown "Hold my referential in-joke, I'm going in!" Reddit 2.0, and there's just not that much going on there to even read into. But like I say I genuinely just have no idea. If someone tries to explain it to you, let me know.
Sure, it’s hyperbolic to envoke extinction when you’re talking more accurately about the collapse of an industry… but like, it’s not like the author is passing off the metaphor as literal.
I guess the answer is that people don’t like the title? But the article is interesting and thorough. I enjoyed reading it and hearing the perspective of the journalist.
In one case, a Haitian professor of ethics had won asylum in an immigration court, yet was kept in ice detention for two years while the government appealed the case.
Also
Both guards found endless excuses to sanction Keldy. They confiscated her Bible, barked at her in front of the others, and cut her prayer services short.
"The Christian persecution is coming from inside the house! "
Lastly ::: spoiler The article ends with her deportortation without her kids. That’s beyond fucked. :::
Edit: The whole article is an excerpt of the book: “Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis”
He is, but he is only the second president to ever be, after Kennedy.
There are more Catholics than any single Protestant denomination in the US, but there are more Protestants in total than Catholics. Last I saw, about half of the total Catholic population are racial minority groups, and I’m going to estimate that the other half are mostly Irish and Italians who are “nouveau white”. This is all to say, there is still a lot of historically-derived prejudice against Catholics, especially in the South.
Anything "weird" will change into "normal" when you get exposed to it enough.
Feel it strange to see a person with three heads once in your life?
Feel it strange to see a person with three heads after living for years in a country filled with three-headed people?
Or even just things like being around people with amputations regularly means some people lacking limbs is just normal. Or being around people with different skins tones and languages. Anything people are around enough becomes normal.
Not sure if the amputation part is sarcasm, but if new folks get born there, they surely have all limbs intact (unless there's a secret cult that creates amputees out of new peeps or something else crazy).
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