The ballast could just as easily have been university student design team projects and he would have been doing a ton of good for the world, but instead he decided to waste all that fuel and a whole car for publicity. “Efficiency”.
On the first flight of SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket, a university satellite was the payload. Not only did the launch fail in just the first few seconds, but the payload crashed back. Landing in the shipping container it arrived in. First launches of rockets do not have good track records. Risking a silly car was arguably more fun than the equally useless “mass simulators” used on most first launches. If it were my satellite, I would not have wanted it on the first Falcon Heavy launch.
To give an otherwise unfunded project the chance to go to space, however slim, is worth far more than a tesla roadster with an astronaut mannequin, and costs far less. What was their satellite design going to do on earth?
There isn’t any way we could find a million high school students to donate experiments or golden records. What we need is to use government investment to shoot shameless product placement for my other company into space and live stream pictures of it.
What government investment are you talking about? SpaceX paid for the first flight with their own cash. Launch contracts for Falcon Heavy were for subsequent flights. Heck, SpaceX got in trouble from the US government for the live stream of pictures.
I don’t entirely get what’s going on in the comments here but I just love how one responder pointed out how SpaceX is not the same as Tesla when no one prior had mentioned either.
Every online discussion has the potential of becoming the outlet for one commenter to articulate his personal retort to a fictional argument constructed of a thousand previous or inexistent arguments.
Technically they have, because the implication of the original post is that because Musk burned money sending his car to space, he had to fire 10% of Tesla workers.
I think Musk is a hack and a conman, but what the fuck is with lefty twitter accounts that think behaving like a completely braindead troll online will sway anyone? Hexbears on lemmy have the same style of moronic shit slinging.
People have given up on actually swaying people, as it’s been seen that the most entrenched opinions never ever ever change their stance about anything, regardless of evidence shown.
The most enjoyable thing to do thus is openly mock them, making their entrenched lives miserable.
The most enjoyable thing to do thus is openly mock them, making their entrenched lives miserable.
You are overrestimating the effect this sort of discourse has on people, they are mildly annoyimg at best, and the “mockery” only has the effect of making them look ridiculous.
And you are ignoring the appeal of an obvious joke that’s designed to be annoying to liberals/centrists and whatever. But also just be funny to everyone else. This sub is memes the twitter account is obvious ragebait/ shit posting just from the name alone…
The key here is “enjoyable” not “making their lives miserable” it doesn’t matter whether anyone actually suffers or any change is enacted, it’s a joke it’s primary purpose is to be funny. It’s secondary or tertiary purpose might be propaganda or education or whatever, it’s still mostly just funny, for people that get it at least.
The joke here is on some level obviously includes the absurdity of arguments constructed against a nonsense critique trying to defend a system that the people arguing don’t even really realize the joke is critiquing. Which is why the account tries to amp up the absurdity with their (non) dismissal of the pointles arguments.
To pull this whole joke into a more centrist perspective it’s like posting whatever inclusive or “woke” idea on /pol/ and just typing nonsense as the replies to the highly structured but deeply misunderstanding shit that /pol/ will dream up on that given day. And having a great laugh about it.
Just that we exchange /Pol/ for twitter which is now apparently partially musk dickridig and as such a conservative late stage capitalist realist echo chamber. And we laugh at the stupid defenses they spin up for a non attack on their chosen saviour. Where the point of the joke is so obviously not understood by the people replying, but obviously understood by people voting here.
And probably only partially understood by you, and or me, but that’s something we don’t need to get into, because if we do, we are again missing the point of the joke.
The kind of weirdos that simp for Musk are the exact same ones that dread being openly ridiculed for it. Their Twitter profile is part of their actual persona.
Yeah it’s weird, I think a lot of people use being left wing as an excuse to give up on trying to be a decent person in any way, like ‘I’m on the right side of history therefore anything I do us automatically good and right and heroic’ it’s annoying.
I guess the bright side is that there’s a lot of idiots in the world and if they’re going to vote progressive left as their excuse to be an idiot that’s better than nothing.
Also I hate ‘let’s do a lefty podcast, it’ll be 90% dick and cum jokes, 10% other juvenile shit and occasionally we’ll mention something that happened in politics if we can get a dick joke out of it’
I don’t get this argument. The US government has invested into a tech development. Which means that spacex seemed to have a good base to pull that off. I didn’t see a line of other companies doing anywhere near that capability.
Also, everyone calls for government to take lead in doing stuff for the betterment of humanity, but the second that happened, everyone loses their minds. Make up your mind, are we ok with government doing stuff or not?
Well, you seem to think the public is a monolith and not a bunch of squabbling tribes.
The people who understand shit want progress and understand the government (when not held back) can make wonderful things happen.
Then you have the people who can’t see benefit for anything past the end of their nose arguing to turn the clocks back to 1922 because grandpappy said it was better.
Yeah, government subsidies literally exist to try and get people to do the thing they’re subsidizing - it makes no sense to hate on a company that completes them.
It makes sense when the company basically exploded on the scene with impossible claims which then turned out to be (obviously) lies. SpaceX always claimed to make rockets 10 times cheaper due to reuse. This wasn’t possible, isn’t possible, and won’t be possible due to how rockets work. Yet here we are, the US is paying SpaceX normal and expected prices while they keep claiming impossible bullshit
Subsidies work by the government setting a series of conditions which must be met, those conditions were met. NASA recently did a report about work with spaceX and said it had proven great value for money, the US military have said the same.
Elon is a trash tier person but he’s basically just the company clown, all the stuff they’re doing is highly skilled people and they’re doing it incredibly well.
I don’t have an issue with governments outsourcing “space Works” to other companies. It’s a necessary thing I think.
However, SpaceX (from Elon “I’m a scammer, baby” Musk) which arguably is the most successful amongst the companies from Musk, has… issues.
The basic premise behind the reusable rockets was that they would be 10 times cheaper! Yeah and then reality hits and space x rockets are just about the same cost because of how rockets work.
See, rocketry is basically transportation, just like a trailer truck transporting goods. You always have the vehicle, the fuel, and the material you transport.
With a trailer truck, you don’t need a lot of gas to go very far. This means you have a lot of weight for both the vehicle and thebcargo. So the truck itself can be made very sturdy and you still transport a lot of cargo. Trucks can go for thousands of miles with no or light maintenance and can last very long.
Now take an airplane. Airplanes need more fuel and need to be lighter for flight so you need to use lighter materials. Lighter materials equate more maintenance, more risks of breakage, more work to keep them going. Transportation with airplanes consequently is much more expensive.
Rocketry is at the very edge of what can be done with all known Materials. A rocket typically is about 5% cargo, 10% rocket, and 85% fuel. This is what is needed to get any rocket into orbit. I’d you want to get beyond Low Earth Orbit you might need multiple stages. All this needs to be as light as possible while at the same time as controlled violent as possible to get you there. Rocket engines basically need to pump insame amounts of fuel uit to get a exhaust flow rate that is high enough.
Because of this engines have an enormous wear and tear whist at the same time being as light as possible. Remember the truck engine where it really matters little if you add a few kilos more or less? For rockets, each kilo matters. So rocket engines are extremely fragile in comparison whilst at the same time plowing though factors more power in just minutes.
So Elon comes with the idea of reusing rockets. Cool. Contrary to what he always claims, this his was not a new idea, this was not his idea. (None of his ideas are his, nor new, nor great). This was done in the 80s-90s by NASA and the conclusion was that the cost and waste of returning and reusable rockets typically is the same or more than simply dumping them.
Funny detail: look at DARPA tests where everything is done right and people applaud the safe conclusion of tests vs. SpaceX where people always applaud when rockets explode. It’s weird!
So now look at what SpaceX charges for their reusable advertised as 10 times cheaper rockets and… they cost about the same as other rockets.
Then look at fucking musk. That last rocket they sent up didn’t have flame diverters at the launch Facility because Elon decided it wasn’t needed. Before launch, people who know rocket launches all wondered “eeeehhh WTF are we doing here?” and the launch destroyed ,(obliterated is a better word) the launch facility and heavily polluted the entire area and adjacent ocean. A car parking lot 5 miles away had all cars pelted with debris, it was a fucking disaster.
In conclusion: I guess the main problem I have with SpaceX is Elon Musk. The guy is like trump in that he lies through his teeth with every word he utters. He always comes up with just plain stupid and impossible ideas (let’s daily transport people with ballistic rockets!) and people lap it up thinking he’s a genius. He’s an idiot. And he’s in charge of SpaceX. SpaceX regularly lies about the costs which is a problem. SpaceX does stupid shit because of Musk, which is a problem.
I’m sure there are some very good and intelligent engineers working at SpaceX but I feel their voices and decisions are overrun by the CEO, Musk, making the company a bad thing.
Wait wait you are telling me Musk didn’t pull himself by his boots straps and actually is the biggest welfare queen there is? Nooo, I can’t believe it…
Man that is not the point here.. The point is that your uni now can send stuff to orbit when 10 years ago it was economically prohibitted. Elon can fuck off but spacex IMO is a net positive to humanity.
Yeah better go back to the caves where there were no plastic, right?
Edit: I’m all for sending stuff out in space in a responsible manner, just got bored about lots of people being anti tech here. Probably answered the wrong person, sorry!
BTW isn’t most stuff in low orbit falling out down in the atmosphere or is that just not enough to chean it up?
Yup, low earth orbit (LEO) still has some thin atmosphere that slows things down a tiny bit and makes them deorbit over time. That’s why, for example, the ISS has to reboost to stay up and can chuck garbage bags overboard and not really worry about them. The deorbit time depends on a lot of factors including the mass and surface area. Starlink sats are supposed to passively deorbit in about 5 years.
You realise that littering close orbit with more shit is just going to turn it into a whirling extraterrestrial claymore for anything trying to leave the planet.
Everything that goes up there should have a lifespan to come back down.
Satellites are why everyone in Africa has a mobile phone and they didn’t have to build huge infrastructure projects to connect everyone, billions of the poorest people in the would have cheap access because of satalites which gives them access to education, healthcare information, tools to politically organise and all sorts of other benefits.
GPS is a service we all use regularly from the richest to poorest, hugely advanced and totally free to use - it’s a literal lifesaver
Another literal lifesaver that’s free for everyone to benefit from is whether satalites, when people get warned of incoming hurricanes and typhoons that’s satalites.
The various global warming research satalites could also save our lives, and the lives of everyone in the planet.
And the things we have planned in space will help avoid resource depletion and allow development of far higher standards of life for everyone, mining titanium for example could make this incredibly useful metal as cheap as steel which would totally revolutionise things like water treatment and construction.
Yes musk is an idiot but that doesn’t mean satalites aren’t awesome
Going to space actually is important for a long list of reasons, has made humanity better and who knows, might even save it as we’re on a crash course with this earth. I know, I know, saving it is easier and better, but interest in doing that can’t be found
its basically impossible to sustain a reasonably sized population on mars. like antarctica, except it takes like 18 months or something to get there. i dont believe that anything as dramatic as terraforming is practical or even possible. who will be allowed to go to mars? most likely only the rich. why dont we invest more money and resources into fixing our current planet? overpopulation can be avoided if we plan cities better, advocate contraception, etc. certainly more believable than sending a large portion of people to another whole planet. even if we could: should we? it would create a massive social divide. and who is running this whole thing? so far it seems like elon musk is the most mainstream advocator of this idea. would you like if your entire planet was owned by him. good luck forming a union on sector 7 of the oxygen plantation.
who will be allowed to go to mars? most likely only the rich.
Living on Mars would be miserable. If colonization ever happens, it’ll be because there’s money to be made, and it’ll be poor people who are send to die in the Mars mines or whatever.
I dont believe that anything as dramatic as terraforming is practical or even possible.
I’d also like to add that the amount you’d need to terraphorm Mars you could just… do to Earth. I think a lot of the points you made are valid, but some of those questions are pretty hypothetical.
Idk, I think it’d be neat for humanity to go off planet and extrasolar. Even if it’s not a priority, you can’t really do that unless you’re working towards it. Doesn’t really matter to me regardless, I’ll be long dead before it happens.
They can mine whatever we need, one of the first targets is titanium because it’s very abundant up there, scarce down here, and incredibly useful for all sorts of chemistry and manufacturing
Colonization, if ever possible, definitely is a good reason
Other good reasons are simply science. There are too many advancements made that would not have happened without going to space. Having satellites is a requirement now to monitor the earth and -if still possible- save it.
Of course there are bullshit projects like star link, dumping hundreds, thousands of tiny shit satellites up on the sky even though it’s completely unnecessary… but that is a rich asshole problem more than a space problem
Is the long list written anywhere ? And are they practical right now to everybody kind of reasons, or are they “in this hypothetical far future” kind of reasons ?
I know it’s cool and all, but we know how to shoot things into space already.
Going to space now. I know nasa has contributed to humanity. They are even planing to make a radio telescope on the moon. Spacex is… putting internet into space. Internet… into space. Instead of laying fiber and building radio towers, burning fuel to put a lot of satelites that need to be periodically replaced. They are even making the same mistakes that others have learned from. If that money went into proper research on just about anything… If that money went into fiber… If that money went to nasa, that is doing something actually useful. That money and work is going into burning fuel.
And yea, i get it, rockets are cool. Space is cool. But spacex is not about advancing humanity or anything.
That money IS going to NASA, and then NASA decided it was a worthwhile investment to work with SpaceX to transport astronauts to the space station, resupply the station, and be an important research partner in autonomous landing systems, full-flow staged combustion engines, and many many more.
The rest of the money is coming from commercial launch customers, government and private customers alike.
Also, fiber internet doesn’t do you any good while you’re in the air or on the sea.
There are already enough satelites for airplane and sea (and middle of rainforest) internet. Skylink, or whatever it’s called, was made for price gauged, infrastructure money laundered, usaians. Actually idk what it’s made for. I don’t see the point of private rocket companies at all. Guy was talking like elon, how we need to escape earth or something. Like it’s not our problem.
I feel like FFXIV Endwalker sort of mocked this; the idea that our future lies in the stars.
We won’t get a better chance than here. Most sci-fi books expect space colonization within this millennia, which is a bit of a pipe dream and glosses over issues of atmospheric livability.
Oh I know that a “future in between the stars” is going to be extremely complicated and hard, if possible at all. Going to live on Mars is already close to a pipe dream yeah.
But that doesn’t mean that space exploration and travel itself is bad. There are loads of reasons why it’s good and necessary and we should invest more in it; take money from the military instead.
Finally, the suit alleges that Tesla had guaranteed Eberhard the second Roadster ever produced after Musk insisted he get the first, but then failed to provide that car.
Don’t see anything about that being the same car launched into space in that article specifically, I’m still looking though.
I’m pretty positive the only thing keeping my mother-in-law from getting lung cancer is the constant supply of cheap cigarette smoke she’s pumping into them. That shit’s killing the newborn cancer cells before they can ever replicate.
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