or just tax them properly and make everything better, obviously we have to make sure the money is well spent, but I don't see why we should be relying on billionaire handouts, even though it's "nice of them to give something back to the entire society that created their wealth".
I’ve thought about this. What if we gave billionaires the option (marginal tax rates for capital gains), where they are either paying any taxes above $XM as either taxes or as donations to a list of eligible non-profits. Basically “forced” giving pledge.
The problem is non-profits are not optimal vehicles for societal change. And indiscriminately throwing a large lump sum at organizations that haven't grown to be accustomed to managing themselves in that sort of environment can have deleterious knock-on effects.
A very crude and reductionist example is donating to a clothing center (that is basically a tax write-off vehicle for HNWI) that then dumps those clothes into foreign countries destroying their local economies.
It is such a hard problem, and I have yet to see any brilliant leadership in this area. Off the top of my head, American libraries are the most recent effort that I would consider to have been led well.
Only when you compare it to nothing people already achieved half a century ago.
SpaceX now I basically using taxpayer money to launch empty tubes one after another on suborbital trajectories in hopes that one day they could be used for private Starlink satellites and pretty much nothing else.
Starship is Cybertruck. Watch what some competent people that are critical of Elon have to say and the completely different image emerges than what he tries to project with less and less success. More rooted in facts.
Not only that, SpaceX has launched more mass to orbit than everyone else combined over the entire history of space launches. They are responsible for more than 80% of the world's mass to orbit last year. Starship is a full 2x - 3x the power of Saturn V, the previous largest rocket ever to reach orbit. Raptor operates with the highest chamber pressure of any rocket engine that's ever flown. SpaceX operates the largest constellation of satellites in the world - more than all others combined. The list of records goes on. It's really nuts.
Wild that people think a cult of personality or even billions of dollars can accomplish all that. Not without serious engineering chops to back it up.
No one is under the illusion it’s his cult of personality unless they are themselves in the cult.
Also, serious engineering chops WITHOUT the billions of dollars doesn’t get you very far anyway. It’s not like there is an abundance of organizations with the resources to compete with spaceX.
If the US budget was properly balanced for that as opposed to more war maybe we would’ve gotten self landing rockets and more by now…
Lack of funding is not among the top reasons the US space program never produced a reusable rocket. The US space program, like most nation state space programs, is organized as much to keep weapons developers employed as to build rockets. It was the reason we cooperated with Russia on the ISS. As such, the projects get split and sub-contracted to many different suppliers in ways which prevent the sort of top-down integrated whole-systems engineering required for reusability. Changes to make one part more reusable necessitate changes in other parts of the vehicle, and the moment those cross systems boundaries that span different organizations, you're screwed.
Starship never went to orbit and made all flights so far with zero payload so any launch capacity it might have is purely theoretical and aspirational.
The most mass SpaceX launched are their own Starlink satellites which may very well prove to be uneconomical soon. They'll be falling down at the rate they are brought up.
And all of that supported by tremendous amount of money (billions) from US taxpayer given for unrealistic promises of building something that might get to the Moon on schedule.
NASA's largest payments to SpaceX that I'm aware of have been part of the commercial crewed flight program, which was openly bid, and which SpaceX has provided the only fully working system so far. Starliner, the only major competitor, is a half-decade behind schedule and stuck at the space station at the moment.
Starlink seems to be raking in the cash, and has provided great low-risk demonstration of the world's first flight-proven rockets.
Starship has made it to orbit twice now. With apogees intended to bring it down safely in case of failure, as is prudent with a new platform. But orbital velocity is orbital velocity, and Starship has achieved it.
"In April, NASA selected Musk's aerospace company SpaceX for a $2.89 billion contract to work toward landing "commercial" humans on the moon. Musk beat out Jeff Bezos's aerospace manufacturer Blue Origin for the contract, which gives NASA use of Musk's Starship spacecraft to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon. Musk's company has been developing the spacecraft with the intent of taking the first humans to Mars. "
> Starship has made it to orbit twice now. With apogees intended to bring it down safely in case of failure, as is prudent with a new platform. But orbital velocity is orbital velocity, and Starship has achieved it.
That's still suborbital flight, basically ballistic because they didn't re-ignite engines in space, even if it had orbital velocity (of some orbit) at some point. Also flight no. 3 was helplessly tumbling so even if they could reignite engines it would just move randomly. So far it was basically flung piece of ballistic garbage. Only the last flight achieved some control and only half-burnt on re-entry. The only thing that worked was landing burn (which they had a lot of practice with Falcons) and their engines very gradually improving reliability, which I assume could be done without fireworks if they didn't intend to re-ignite them in vacuum and zero gravity yet.
Project Apollo was way further by their fourth flight, without any modern engineering or computing.
Falcons are solid although market for their services is mostly Starlink, because the rest of humanity simply doesn't need to hurl as much stuff into orbit yet.
Starship is Cybertruck. Baby of Musk's "genius" where "vision" (to mislead investors) overrides actual engineering.
I don't see anywhere in your citation how much of that money has been dispensed, or for what milestones. $2.89 Billion would have paid for exactly one shuttle launch (https://www.space.com/11358-nasa-space-shuttle-program-cost-...). Sounds like a deal to me.
> That's still suborbital flight
You're just making yourself look silly here. Folks who regularly report on space like Scott Manley have spoken at length about the difficulties in achieving orbit and consider Starship to have done so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m0TY6i1Kuo An orbit regularizing burn is not a large obstacle compared to achieving orbital veloticy. The delta-v involved is minuscule.
> Project Apollo was way further by their fourth flight
Project Apollo operated under different engineering principles which emphasized extra expenditure prior to flight to attempt to ensure successful flights. Starship is being engineered through flight-testing which is closer to how the Russian space program did things. Flying rockets is less expensive than spending endless engineer hours testing on the ground and for something the size and flight profile of Starship, no ground testing can ever fully simulate the forces involved.
You're either ill informed, or starting with a conclusion and reaching for things to justify it.
> I don't see anywhere in your citation how much of that money has been dispensed, or for what milestones.
I don't think milestones are public but I can guess that there was some money up front and that some money was attached to Starship launches. That actually explains why SpaceX is sending barely ready empty tubes on ballistic trajectories for no sensible reason whatsoever. And does stupid checkbox things like "opening bay doors" that barely work, even though there's nothing on both sides.
Depends if you are actually getting the thing or just brief illusion of hope of getting some part of the thing.
When it comes to realistic estimates I'd trust Bezos over Musk any day. And Musk outbid him hugely.
> An orbit regularizing burn is not a large obstacle compared to achieving orbital veloticy.
It is a key thing if you never re-lit your engines in vacuum and zero-g. They broke and exploded in earlier flights after relighting in way more favorable conditions.
> Flying rockets is less expensive than spending endless engineer hours testing on the ground and for something the size and flight profile of Starship, no ground testing can ever fully simulate the forces involved.
That would have been true. If SpaceX had computers Russians had in the 60-ties. Ability for modelling and simulations and to test things properly on the ground skyrocketed (pun intended) over last few decades. Be real with yourself. Don't but those excuses. They are half-assing it for the grant money they need rather sooner than later.
And don't start high-and-mighty ad hominem at me. It serves no purpose. I'm dead inside.
Also watch some Thunderf00t between your Scott Manley-s.
Somehow I knew that tool was your "source". He's never done anything but complain on the internet, often parroting outright falsehoods. Watch his videos from a few years back and compare his bullshit with what actually happened. Huffing that stuff will kill your brain cells.
Scott works in the engineering professions.
> I'd trust Bezos over Musk any day.
I'd welcome another vendor of reusable rockets. Really love Rocketlab and Stoke who are doing same. Still waiting on Bezos though. I hope he succeeds. Meanwhile, SpaceX keeps launching and breaking records.
> It is a key thing if you never re-lit your engines in vacuum and zero-g.
Like they did for the landing burn? Yeah, they checked that one off the list already. Firing ullage thrusters before lighting engines is technically rocket science, but not the hard part.
> I can guess that there was some money up front
This isn't pictionary. Guesses don't count.
> Ability for modelling and simulations and to test things properly
> Somehow I knew that tool was your "source". He's never done anything but complain on the internet, often parroting outright falsehoods.
He also does actual scientific research. And in a decade no thing he called bullshit ever turned out to be anything close to what was being advertised. And you are seriously going to accuse him of parroting while you re-post Musk's apologetics verbatim? Do you think I haven't seen "it's good actually, ground breaking even, everybody who says otherwise is incompetent, some smart people cheer for it and you can't simulate everything" arguments?
> Watch his videos from a few years back and compare his bullshit with what actually happened.
Care to share specifics? What was he ultimately wrong on?
> Scott works in the engineering professions.
Scott is affable enthusiast, fellow gamer and software developer. Also astrophysicist. I like him. Has some good points that Thunderf00t misses. None actually contradict the criticism.
> Still waiting on Bezos though.
Bezos isn't working on anything like Starship because he didn't get the grant because he assessed (imho correctly) that it requires many times higher budget and longer timelines. Musk just overpromised as always and will underdeliver as (nearly?) always. He's already underdelivering because he's behind all published schedules for what he's doing.
> Like they did for the landing burn?
Landing burn was done in both gravity (from air breaking) and atmosphere. Also they had a pile of experience in doing landing burn so not screwing that up is not really an achievement. The only impressive thing about it is that they managed to do it with the second stage. Which means in only half-melted on re-entry and didn't tumble with engines forward like on the previous "flight".
> This isn't pictionary. Guesses don't count.
Right... no guessing allowed. You eat up and find out it was crap only after a full plate. Because smell is not always reliable.
> And SpaceX has the best simulation software in the business
Right, you still need to know how to use it and actually use it. It perfectly explains why their engines work at all. Apart from that, it's way simpler just to fling an empty pipe to the border of space for added benefit that it technically meets some milestone and you get cash shower you desperately need.
Here's a well referenced article about the man, titled "The Never Sinking Ship: How Thunderf00t Sucks at Science (or Else He’s a Liar; Probably He’s Just a Liar)":
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/9345
> The only impressive thing about it is that they managed to do it with the second stage. Which means in only half-melted on re-entry and didn't tumble with engines forward like on the previous "flight".
Cynicism is tiring. You don't have to find their achievements impressive. Their goal isn't to impress you. It seems to me that they're relentlessly accomplishing their goals step by step, as any good engineering team will.
IFT5 is right around the corner. Booster has been loaded onto the OLM. I'm looking forward to all the improvements they'll be testing this go-round. It's a blast watching each test flight!
> it's way simpler just to fling an empty pipe
Not sure what you're attempting to describe here. If you think Starship is an empty pipe you aren't familiar with the details of it's construction.
I don't think counterfactual means what you think it means.
Anyways, I didn't ask for minutia of objections people have against him. Just for one thing he called bs that eventually turned out to be as good as how it was advertised.
> Here's a well referenced article about the man, titled "The Never Sinking Ship: How Thunderf00t Sucks at Science (or Else He’s a Liar; Probably He’s Just a Liar)": https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/9345
Wow, such a well reasoned, calm and objective assessment form a non-partisan.
> Appears he's also a creationist.
Are you kidding me? He has the whole video cycle titled "Why do people laugh at creationists" from 16 years ago. It consists of 44 parts and is informative and hilarious. That's how I first encountered his content.
Guy attacks beliefs semi-professionally. With first-hand science knowledge and math. He does that for more than a decade. People don't like their faith challenge so he accumulated a mountain of haters over the years. He doesn't care. It doesn't stop him from going after bs. Even if it's peddled by a billionaire.
If you tried to prove that you don't know anything about him apart from the name and smearing produced by faithful that hate him and hate that he doesn't agree with their bs ... you couldn't have done it better.
Thanks, but it's just booster recovery project for New Glenn which is in direct competition with Falcon Heavy not Starship.
> Cynicism is tiring.
Only for people who can't bare reality.
> I'm looking forward to all the improvements they'll be testing this go-round. It's a blast watching each test flight!
I can agree with that. Fireworks are always fun to watch. I'll enjoy it even more with grounded Thunderf00t commentary. I don't need cheerleaders to enjoy.
> If you think Starship is an empty pipe you aren't familiar with the details of it's construction.
You can see insides of the Starship on the video from the flight tests. Apart from engines and tanks it's empty, it's not even pressurized. There's a girder across to prevent it from collapsing.
Whatever. Enjoy. I see that you are a fervent believer so this conversation pretty much ran its course. But I'm thankful to you for giving me an idea for the best explanation why Elon is doing what he's doing. Milestone was a key word.
Progress is not zero-sum. We can have free medical school and renewable energy infrastructure, and worldwide internet, and multi-use super-heavy-lift spacecraft at the same time.
Not without infighting among those working toward them all, though, apparently.
Okay? But it’s still more impressive than anything Elon Musk will ever do.
Also, I find your sentiment to be lacking nuance. We CAN’T do everything at once. There are obviously priorities and budgets and technological barriers that make some problems practically easier to solve than others. Why not go for the low hanging fruit first? Why not spend valuable resources improving our overall quality of life instead of mass producing some oversized electric hotwheels truck?
> There are obviously priorities and budgets and technological barriers that make some problems practically easier to solve than others.
A great counterpoint that comes up occasionally are weather satellites. They have done more to improve crop yield than anything since the invention of artificial fertilizer. Technological development is like fundamental scientific research in this regard, as new developments which simplify problems in other domains to the point of tractability can be hard to spot until they happen, and can come from any direction.
> Why not spend valuable resources improving our overall quality of life instead of mass producing some oversized electric hotwheels truck?
This seems like a false dichotomy and pejorative opinion rolled into one.
I'm not sure what you consider a quality of life improvement - Musk paid a half million dollars out of pocket to fix the water systems in the schools of my home town of Flint Michigan ( https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/elon-musk-keeps-his-... ) which directly affected the quality of life of my nephews.
As for the truck, it seems to be the industry's first 48v production vehicle, which means 48v chips, motors, heaters, sensors, and other parts are likely to increase adoption, gain production volume and availability, reduce cost, etc. All of which helps my projects. I don't have to drive one to benefit from it. And I'm always pleased to see more options in EVs. That means cleaner air, more sustainable power, increased grid-independence, all kinds of knock-on effects. Every one purchased - from any manufacturer - increases volume, reduces costs, and gets us a step closer to less expensive EVs for all.
If I look through your comment history, will I find as much effort spent lamenting the spending decisions of oil barons? Weapons manufacturers? Advertising executives?
Why not share what you're doing to make the world a better place for us all? Maybe your efforts could be re-prioritized to better benefit us? Maybe you choose to make a difference in the ways you can, and choose your battles, like the rest of us. Maybe 10 billion of us, working together, instead of acting like crabs in a bucket, really can advance everything all at once.
Writing a check for unnecessarily expensive schools to produce unnecessarily expensive doctors is not impressive. 80% of that money goes to administrators that have exploded over the last few decades. The system is rotten and it's not impressive whatsoever to feed into it, let alone compare to the companies that EM runs.
University endowments are usually used the way kwkelly has (since you commented) explained [*] - investing it and using the returns, rather than burning through the capital until it's all gone. It would be extremely surprising in this case if they chose to do it the way you're thinking.
This would probably last forever. The MD class size is only around 120 people and at 70k per year tuition costs would be 8.4M per year (ignoring that only families earning under 300k are eligible). Modest interest on 1B would easily earn over 10M per year and probably several times that. Hedge funds often manage these endowment funds.
I wonder if a better use would be to establish a new medical school at a university without one. It seems like if society has too few doctors we need additional medical student spots more than a reduction in medical student debt.
You could take that money and open another medical school, and you may well get a pretty good medical school, but you probably won't get one nearly as good as Hopkins'.
That seems fine to me. While it sounds nice, I am skeptical this donation will do much in terms of more equitable access to higher education, precisely because John Hopkins is one of the best med schools around. To get in you already need to be privileged or exceptional and probably both. I'd love to know how many people ever have been accepted into Johns Hopkins and declined to go exclusively because of the cost of tuition; I'd be surprised if it's even like 0.5% of students.
Meanwhile, you don't need to be a genius to better yourself.
Or give the money to a more “working class” med school that trains regular doctors to work in regular practices and hospitals.
Hopkins is the elite - those doctors are going to be the best of the best, and they’re going to be well connected and compensated regardless of where they started.
Too few doctors thing is problem with different bottlenecks... Mainly being that the US Residency program is funded by the gov't, and is competitive to get into. Many of the lesser schools and especially DO or carribean schools have graduates who are not able to get into residency on first try because there are not enough slots.
Maybe private universities, but certainly not the public university I went to. People with low incomes financed their education with loans, not scholarships.
Luckily my state used to offer 100% tuition for B/3.0+ students. They still offer up to 100% with 2 scholarships but the main scholarship is not 100% anymore. It’s funded by the lottery.
Either way it doesn’t include room and board. A job is necessary to live but not for the scholarship.
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[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 128 ms ] thread1) a bit disconnected from the real problems in society
2) convinced that their success in one field translates well to fixing society
3) very aware of the need for good PR
Which means that their affect always looks good but there's usually a hidden agenda which is orthogonal to society's best interest.
A very crude and reductionist example is donating to a clothing center (that is basically a tax write-off vehicle for HNWI) that then dumps those clothes into foreign countries destroying their local economies.
It is such a hard problem, and I have yet to see any brilliant leadership in this area. Off the top of my head, American libraries are the most recent effort that I would consider to have been led well.
The government can look into and qualify top tier non-profits like the Gates Foundation, St. Jude, YMCA, etc.
SpaceX now I basically using taxpayer money to launch empty tubes one after another on suborbital trajectories in hopes that one day they could be used for private Starlink satellites and pretty much nothing else.
Starship is Cybertruck. Watch what some competent people that are critical of Elon have to say and the completely different image emerges than what he tries to project with less and less success. More rooted in facts.
Wild that people think a cult of personality or even billions of dollars can accomplish all that. Not without serious engineering chops to back it up.
Also, serious engineering chops WITHOUT the billions of dollars doesn’t get you very far anyway. It’s not like there is an abundance of organizations with the resources to compete with spaceX.
If the US budget was properly balanced for that as opposed to more war maybe we would’ve gotten self landing rockets and more by now…
The most mass SpaceX launched are their own Starlink satellites which may very well prove to be uneconomical soon. They'll be falling down at the rate they are brought up.
And all of that supported by tremendous amount of money (billions) from US taxpayer given for unrealistic promises of building something that might get to the Moon on schedule.
NASA's largest payments to SpaceX that I'm aware of have been part of the commercial crewed flight program, which was openly bid, and which SpaceX has provided the only fully working system so far. Starliner, the only major competitor, is a half-decade behind schedule and stuck at the space station at the moment.
Starlink seems to be raking in the cash, and has provided great low-risk demonstration of the world's first flight-proven rockets.
Starship has made it to orbit twice now. With apogees intended to bring it down safely in case of failure, as is prudent with a new platform. But orbital velocity is orbital velocity, and Starship has achieved it.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-su...
> Starship has made it to orbit twice now. With apogees intended to bring it down safely in case of failure, as is prudent with a new platform. But orbital velocity is orbital velocity, and Starship has achieved it.
That's still suborbital flight, basically ballistic because they didn't re-ignite engines in space, even if it had orbital velocity (of some orbit) at some point. Also flight no. 3 was helplessly tumbling so even if they could reignite engines it would just move randomly. So far it was basically flung piece of ballistic garbage. Only the last flight achieved some control and only half-burnt on re-entry. The only thing that worked was landing burn (which they had a lot of practice with Falcons) and their engines very gradually improving reliability, which I assume could be done without fireworks if they didn't intend to re-ignite them in vacuum and zero gravity yet.
Project Apollo was way further by their fourth flight, without any modern engineering or computing.
Falcons are solid although market for their services is mostly Starlink, because the rest of humanity simply doesn't need to hurl as much stuff into orbit yet.
Starship is Cybertruck. Baby of Musk's "genius" where "vision" (to mislead investors) overrides actual engineering.
> That's still suborbital flight
You're just making yourself look silly here. Folks who regularly report on space like Scott Manley have spoken at length about the difficulties in achieving orbit and consider Starship to have done so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m0TY6i1Kuo An orbit regularizing burn is not a large obstacle compared to achieving orbital veloticy. The delta-v involved is minuscule.
> Project Apollo was way further by their fourth flight
Project Apollo operated under different engineering principles which emphasized extra expenditure prior to flight to attempt to ensure successful flights. Starship is being engineered through flight-testing which is closer to how the Russian space program did things. Flying rockets is less expensive than spending endless engineer hours testing on the ground and for something the size and flight profile of Starship, no ground testing can ever fully simulate the forces involved.
You're either ill informed, or starting with a conclusion and reaching for things to justify it.
I don't think milestones are public but I can guess that there was some money up front and that some money was attached to Starship launches. That actually explains why SpaceX is sending barely ready empty tubes on ballistic trajectories for no sensible reason whatsoever. And does stupid checkbox things like "opening bay doors" that barely work, even though there's nothing on both sides.
> $2.89 Billion would have paid for exactly one shuttle launch (https://www.space.com/11358-nasa-space-shuttle-program-cost-...). Sounds like a deal to me.
Depends if you are actually getting the thing or just brief illusion of hope of getting some part of the thing.
When it comes to realistic estimates I'd trust Bezos over Musk any day. And Musk outbid him hugely.
> An orbit regularizing burn is not a large obstacle compared to achieving orbital veloticy.
It is a key thing if you never re-lit your engines in vacuum and zero-g. They broke and exploded in earlier flights after relighting in way more favorable conditions.
> Flying rockets is less expensive than spending endless engineer hours testing on the ground and for something the size and flight profile of Starship, no ground testing can ever fully simulate the forces involved.
That would have been true. If SpaceX had computers Russians had in the 60-ties. Ability for modelling and simulations and to test things properly on the ground skyrocketed (pun intended) over last few decades. Be real with yourself. Don't but those excuses. They are half-assing it for the grant money they need rather sooner than later.
And don't start high-and-mighty ad hominem at me. It serves no purpose. I'm dead inside.
Also watch some Thunderf00t between your Scott Manley-s.
No kidding?
> Also watch some Thunderf00t
Somehow I knew that tool was your "source". He's never done anything but complain on the internet, often parroting outright falsehoods. Watch his videos from a few years back and compare his bullshit with what actually happened. Huffing that stuff will kill your brain cells.
Scott works in the engineering professions.
> I'd trust Bezos over Musk any day.
I'd welcome another vendor of reusable rockets. Really love Rocketlab and Stoke who are doing same. Still waiting on Bezos though. I hope he succeeds. Meanwhile, SpaceX keeps launching and breaking records.
> It is a key thing if you never re-lit your engines in vacuum and zero-g.
Like they did for the landing burn? Yeah, they checked that one off the list already. Firing ullage thrusters before lighting engines is technically rocket science, but not the hard part.
> I can guess that there was some money up front
This isn't pictionary. Guesses don't count.
> Ability for modelling and simulations and to test things properly
And SpaceX has the best simulation software in the business: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYA0f6R5KAI
It is not sufficient to molecularly model a system as large and complex as Starship, nor as fast as building and flying a rocket.
He also does actual scientific research. And in a decade no thing he called bullshit ever turned out to be anything close to what was being advertised. And you are seriously going to accuse him of parroting while you re-post Musk's apologetics verbatim? Do you think I haven't seen "it's good actually, ground breaking even, everybody who says otherwise is incompetent, some smart people cheer for it and you can't simulate everything" arguments?
> Watch his videos from a few years back and compare his bullshit with what actually happened.
Care to share specifics? What was he ultimately wrong on?
> Scott works in the engineering professions.
Scott is affable enthusiast, fellow gamer and software developer. Also astrophysicist. I like him. Has some good points that Thunderf00t misses. None actually contradict the criticism.
> Still waiting on Bezos though.
Bezos isn't working on anything like Starship because he didn't get the grant because he assessed (imho correctly) that it requires many times higher budget and longer timelines. Musk just overpromised as always and will underdeliver as (nearly?) always. He's already underdelivering because he's behind all published schedules for what he's doing.
> Like they did for the landing burn?
Landing burn was done in both gravity (from air breaking) and atmosphere. Also they had a pile of experience in doing landing burn so not screwing that up is not really an achievement. The only impressive thing about it is that they managed to do it with the second stage. Which means in only half-melted on re-entry and didn't tumble with engines forward like on the previous "flight".
> This isn't pictionary. Guesses don't count.
Right... no guessing allowed. You eat up and find out it was crap only after a full plate. Because smell is not always reliable.
> And SpaceX has the best simulation software in the business
Right, you still need to know how to use it and actually use it. It perfectly explains why their engines work at all. Apart from that, it's way simpler just to fling an empty pipe to the border of space for added benefit that it technically meets some milestone and you get cash shower you desperately need.
Here's a list of 9 counterfactual claims from just one video: https://www.reddit.com/r/thunderf00t/comments/lrhznb/i_fact_...
Here's a well referenced article about the man, titled "The Never Sinking Ship: How Thunderf00t Sucks at Science (or Else He’s a Liar; Probably He’s Just a Liar)": https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/9345
Appears he's also a creationist.
> Bezos isn't working on anything like Starship
It's called "Project Jarvis" and here's a whole article about it with photos: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/first-images-of-blue...
> The only impressive thing about it is that they managed to do it with the second stage. Which means in only half-melted on re-entry and didn't tumble with engines forward like on the previous "flight".
Cynicism is tiring. You don't have to find their achievements impressive. Their goal isn't to impress you. It seems to me that they're relentlessly accomplishing their goals step by step, as any good engineering team will.
IFT5 is right around the corner. Booster has been loaded onto the OLM. I'm looking forward to all the improvements they'll be testing this go-round. It's a blast watching each test flight!
> it's way simpler just to fling an empty pipe
Not sure what you're attempting to describe here. If you think Starship is an empty pipe you aren't familiar with the details of it's construction.
I don't think counterfactual means what you think it means.
Anyways, I didn't ask for minutia of objections people have against him. Just for one thing he called bs that eventually turned out to be as good as how it was advertised.
> Here's a well referenced article about the man, titled "The Never Sinking Ship: How Thunderf00t Sucks at Science (or Else He’s a Liar; Probably He’s Just a Liar)": https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/9345
Wow, such a well reasoned, calm and objective assessment form a non-partisan.
> Appears he's also a creationist.
Are you kidding me? He has the whole video cycle titled "Why do people laugh at creationists" from 16 years ago. It consists of 44 parts and is informative and hilarious. That's how I first encountered his content.
Guy attacks beliefs semi-professionally. With first-hand science knowledge and math. He does that for more than a decade. People don't like their faith challenge so he accumulated a mountain of haters over the years. He doesn't care. It doesn't stop him from going after bs. Even if it's peddled by a billionaire.
If you tried to prove that you don't know anything about him apart from the name and smearing produced by faithful that hate him and hate that he doesn't agree with their bs ... you couldn't have done it better.
> It's called "Project Jarvis" and here's a whole article about it with photos: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/first-images-of-blue...
Thanks, but it's just booster recovery project for New Glenn which is in direct competition with Falcon Heavy not Starship.
> Cynicism is tiring.
Only for people who can't bare reality.
> I'm looking forward to all the improvements they'll be testing this go-round. It's a blast watching each test flight!
I can agree with that. Fireworks are always fun to watch. I'll enjoy it even more with grounded Thunderf00t commentary. I don't need cheerleaders to enjoy.
> If you think Starship is an empty pipe you aren't familiar with the details of it's construction.
You can see insides of the Starship on the video from the flight tests. Apart from engines and tanks it's empty, it's not even pressurized. There's a girder across to prevent it from collapsing.
Whatever. Enjoy. I see that you are a fervent believer so this conversation pretty much ran its course. But I'm thankful to you for giving me an idea for the best explanation why Elon is doing what he's doing. Milestone was a key word.
Great demonstration. Thanks for pointing that out as a motivation.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/mpam1a/why_no...
It still may very well be. As far as we know SpaceX is burning money not earning it.
Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 are very nice rockets. If you go by data provided by SpaceX cheaper than competition.
Not without infighting among those working toward them all, though, apparently.
Also, I find your sentiment to be lacking nuance. We CAN’T do everything at once. There are obviously priorities and budgets and technological barriers that make some problems practically easier to solve than others. Why not go for the low hanging fruit first? Why not spend valuable resources improving our overall quality of life instead of mass producing some oversized electric hotwheels truck?
Pot, kettle?
> There are obviously priorities and budgets and technological barriers that make some problems practically easier to solve than others.
A great counterpoint that comes up occasionally are weather satellites. They have done more to improve crop yield than anything since the invention of artificial fertilizer. Technological development is like fundamental scientific research in this regard, as new developments which simplify problems in other domains to the point of tractability can be hard to spot until they happen, and can come from any direction.
> Why not spend valuable resources improving our overall quality of life instead of mass producing some oversized electric hotwheels truck?
This seems like a false dichotomy and pejorative opinion rolled into one.
I'm not sure what you consider a quality of life improvement - Musk paid a half million dollars out of pocket to fix the water systems in the schools of my home town of Flint Michigan ( https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/elon-musk-keeps-his-... ) which directly affected the quality of life of my nephews.
As for the truck, it seems to be the industry's first 48v production vehicle, which means 48v chips, motors, heaters, sensors, and other parts are likely to increase adoption, gain production volume and availability, reduce cost, etc. All of which helps my projects. I don't have to drive one to benefit from it. And I'm always pleased to see more options in EVs. That means cleaner air, more sustainable power, increased grid-independence, all kinds of knock-on effects. Every one purchased - from any manufacturer - increases volume, reduces costs, and gets us a step closer to less expensive EVs for all.
If I look through your comment history, will I find as much effort spent lamenting the spending decisions of oil barons? Weapons manufacturers? Advertising executives?
Why not share what you're doing to make the world a better place for us all? Maybe your efforts could be re-prioritized to better benefit us? Maybe you choose to make a difference in the ways you can, and choose your battles, like the rest of us. Maybe 10 billion of us, working together, instead of acting like crabs in a bucket, really can advance everything all at once.
[*] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40925597
Meanwhile, you don't need to be a genius to better yourself.
Hopkins is the elite - those doctors are going to be the best of the best, and they’re going to be well connected and compensated regardless of where they started.
Besides the 2 other medical schools mentioned in the article, what other universities have similar scholarships?
Harvard is 85k, but students still need a job https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-works
Stanford is 100k, but students still need a job https://financialaid.stanford.edu/pdf/AW-Finances-Presentati...
Seems like those universities, with their huge endowments, could be doing more..
Luckily my state used to offer 100% tuition for B/3.0+ students. They still offer up to 100% with 2 scholarships but the main scholarship is not 100% anymore. It’s funded by the lottery.
Either way it doesn’t include room and board. A job is necessary to live but not for the scholarship.
I bet Musk has a few dollars to spare on something like this instead of laundering money through his Mars colonization project.