@cstross@drdirtbag
Until Musk decides unilaterally to invade Ceres and create a kingdom of Heaven...
I don't have many problems with SpaceX, apart from their littering of the skies and making astrophotography a fruitless hobby/science, but Musk is another problem.
Nasa famously took shortcuts, very dangerous ones (17 dead Astronauts prove it - all preventable fatalitiles). They frequently flew dodgy stuff without any good testing or background (Hubble Mirror and Mars Viking biology tests).
The 'Right Stuff' thing is pure pilot/astronaut pipeline propaganda.
@cstross@ovid@glitzersachen Apollo rocket costs were coming down rapidly when Nixon cancelled almost all, it would be interesting to see a lot of different payloads being send around the Solar System with significantly less weight worries. Viking landers could have had a lot more science in them, for example, and why stop at two - we could have sent more landers with new science equipment for decades.
Pathfinder was in 1992, and Viking was launched in 76. 16 years wasted.
@cstross@ovid@glitzersachen I genuinely believe USA was afraid of finding something alive in Mars, and there were laws passed blocking looking for life anywhere (SETI got canned around the same time).
“But some people have a hard time accepting and respecting that some humans are different from others. Those fantasizing... that the heteronormative ideals they grew up with are absolute gospel sometimes take great offense at being asked to adjust their vocabulary to communicate respect for a community that has spent centuries forced to live in the shadows or risk safety due to the widespread pathologization of their identities.”
If you got upset at me for pointing out that more people died of Covid under Biden than Trump, in large part because Biden rolled back common sense restrictions that were in place under Trump...
Then you'll hate me pointing out that Trump introduced a 25% tariff on Chinese EVs, and Biden is upping that to 100% tariff.
Look: British and American fighter jets are now shooting down Iranian #drones (#Shahed) over #Israel, #Syria and #Jordan. And yet they are not in a direct war with #Iran.
Why can't we shoot down exactly the same Shahed drones over #Ukraine, just like that - without a state of war?!
That rule was never followed up since Korean war. Russians or Chinese pilots or weapons operators were always at hand in wars in the Middle or Far east.