Utopia Talk / Politics / Spacex launch

sam adams rank	Wed May 27 17:11:40 2020 Lets get it done!
Average Ameriacn rank	Wed May 27 17:19:39 2020 What gun laws do they have on Mars?
McKobb rank	Wed May 27 17:49:55 2020 You must register all Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulators within the first millennium of residency.
Average Ameriacn rank	Wed May 27 18:10:44 2020 Just a few more minutes, the live stream is already is: http://www.spacex.com/launches/
McKobb rank	Wed May 27 18:14:35 2020 How many if you fuckers remember the Challenger explosion? One of my science teachers was an alt crew member and saw it with her own eyes.
McKobb rank	Wed May 27 18:14:46 2020 *of
Average Ameriacn rank	Wed May 27 18:28:01 2020 Oh it will take a few more hours until launch, sorry. McKobb that was long ago, today Trump is making sure everything will work.
Habebe rank	Wed May 27 21:36:10 2020 The privatizing of space launches is something I have to give credit to Obama on. I was hesitant at the time but it seems to have worked out well.
Rugian rank	Wed May 27 21:50:13 2020 "The privatizing of space launches is something I have to give credit to Obama on." Congratulations, you just convinced Trump to nationalize Tesla. Launch cancelled.
Habebe rank	Wed May 27 22:03:35 2020 lol @Rugian.
sam adams rank	Wed May 27 22:05:18 2020 Crew on board and all buttoned up!
sam adams rank	Wed May 27 22:15:34 2020 Sounds like its going to get weathered.
sam adams rank	Wed May 27 22:18:33 2020 Yup done.
Nimatzo rank	Wed May 27 22:55:55 2020 It doesn’t really feel awesome that we still can’t launch rocket because of rain.
Habebe rank	Wed May 27 22:59:54 2020 Nimatzo, Well, it is alot* of rain....still doesn't sound good.but I have turtles swimming in my yard where I normally mow.
Nimatzo rank	Wed May 27 23:13:08 2020 Florida is probably a bad place for this. Why didn’t they build it in the desert? San Diego?
Habebe rank	Wed May 27 23:16:13 2020 IIRC it was built there for political reasons, probably pok spending... I wqtxhed a documentary on it years ago.
Habebe rank	Wed May 27 23:18:48 2020 . It was selected for two reasons: the fact that it is relatively near to the equator compared to other U.S. locations, and the fact that it is on the East Coast. An East Coast location was desirable because any rockets leaving Earth's surface and traveling eastward get a boost from the Earth's spin. A West Coast location would either send rockets over populated areas or have to contend with launching against the direction of the spin. http://www...ets-launched-from-florida.html I could have sworn it had something to do with a senator or something wanting federal $.... Mabry I was thinking of something else.
hood rank	Thu May 28 00:05:15 2020 You might be thinking of all the rocketry and NASA stuff in Alabama and Houston. Those are still around largely for political reasons. Launch pads on the east coast make sense. West coast pads would need to find a bunch of empty desert and then hope anything catastrophic happens before it climbs high enough and far east enough to be over populations.
sam adams rank	Thu May 28 08:21:50 2020 You could launch east out of ~yuma and have better weather but you would be at higher latitude and and have no ability to barge in large components. The ideal launch location would be near water, on the equator, at high altitude, and have good weather, all while being in a first world location. But there is no such location, a few parameters are mutually exclusive. The best combo is probably mauna kea, but that is a logistics suckfest despite the nearby port of kona. The swamps south of miami would be a little better, gain a few degrees of latitude for no other changes compared with the cape.
Paramount rank	Thu May 28 20:53:19 2020 Nimatzo iChihuaha Wed May 27 15:55:55 It doesn’t really feel awesome that we still can’t launch rocket because of rain - - That’s weird. They can shoot missiles in rain (I think), you can drive a car when it is raining, you can fly an airplane in rain. But you can’t launch a space rocket??
Habebe rank	Thu May 28 21:00:19 2020 At 60-90 million a launch Id think they wouldn't want to take any chances, the coordinates have to be just right. Especially launches that have astronauts in them. Still cheaper than 500 million it used to cost though.
hood rank	Thu May 28 21:50:52 2020 "a few parameters are mutually exclusive" Like barge access and high altitude, or equator and 1st world?
sam adams rank	Thu May 28 21:52:01 2020 Its not so much the rain... We want no clouds so we can videotape the launch. This is to hopefully catch and analyze damage events, and was put into place after the launch-debris-damaged columbia burnt up in 2003. Furthermore we want 0.00 lightning risk. Because a 250 metal vessel connected to the surface by an superheated ion plume(low density though it may be at those modest temperatures) makes a decent lightning rod. There was lots of lightning around FL yesterday... and saturday looks similar.
sam adams rank	Thu May 28 21:53:59 2020 'Like barge access and high altitude, or equator and 1st world? " Indeed. Equator is exclusive of both first world and good weather.
Dakyron rank	Thu May 28 21:55:13 2020 Seems like southwest Texas would also be a viable option. Somewhere east of El Paso. You could launch east over the gulf, have good weather, other than the occasional hurricane.
sam adams rank	Thu May 28 21:55:24 2020 250 footlong.
sam adams rank	Thu May 28 21:59:38 2020 "Seems like southwest Texas would also be a viable option. Somewhere east of El Paso." Indeed. Its a decent spot. My buddies at blue origin go there for their little tests. But the latitude could be lower and has no water access for the great rockets.
sam adams rank	Thu May 28 22:02:15 2020 There used to be a group that would drag rockets to the equator on barges and then just launch them from the barges. A little bit of latitude is worth a lot of money apperently.
Forwyn rank	Thu May 28 22:15:02 2020 Time to annex Mexico. Cancun launch pad when? And if there's a catastrophic failure, it will break up over Cuba. Win-win
sam adams rank	Sat May 30 21:00:38 2020 30 mins Wx looking decent
tumbleweed rank	Sat May 30 21:28:40 2020 fitting pic of Bob & Doug http://cdn...ent/uploads/2018/01/1a0zma.jpg
smart dude rank	Sat May 30 21:28:56 2020 trump will try to take credit for this
sam adams rank	Sat May 30 21:39:00 2020 Well that rocked
Wrath of Orion rank	Sat May 30 21:39:24 2020 Yes, very enjoyable (and successful).
Nimatzo rank	Sat May 30 21:45:15 2020 Take us to Mars.
State Department rank	Sat May 30 21:58:04 2020 Hell yeah.
jergul rank	Sat May 30 22:00:52 2020 Nice to see that you are LEO capable again after only a 9 year hiatus.
jergul rank	Sat May 30 22:05:41 2020 For the record. Manned flights to the ISS Shuttles (US) - 13 Musks (US) - 1 Soyuz (RU) - 48
sam adams rank	Sat May 30 22:08:29 2020 Poor jergul is jealous.
Wrath of Orion rank	Sat May 30 22:16:01 2020 Interesting that jergul can't even comment on it without passive aggressive snark.
jergul rank	Sat May 30 22:16:26 2020 Sammy Is it not you that is jealous? Its not hard to imagine the hay you would have made of Russia not sending manned flights for 9 years after their platforms showed a unfortunate tendency to explode and kill the payload. Then you would laugh at Putin once Russia finally launched a private rocket to the ISS. The numbers are just to put things in perspective. I am not at all jealous. It was time to showcase that you do not need to send pork into space. Known in Russia for a while, but is not common knowledge now that the US propaganda machine has pun into action. Reusables is the only truly interesting part beyond that - though I think Musk would be pushing for a Space Needle if only there had been a way to monetize freight properely for that. Space needles is the best way to escape the gravity well paradox if we imagine lifting more than trivial weights into space (I have no idea what the collective payload weight humans have put into orbit since Sputnik, but I think we would be surprised at how little it is).
jergul rank	Sat May 30 22:17:22 2020 WoO You say with a passive aggressive snark. Its just about perspective. Its good to have. You should try it sometime.
Average Ameriacn rank	Sat May 30 22:20:19 2020 MAGA! Hillary would have never achieved that.
Wrath of Orion rank	Sat May 30 22:20:44 2020 That's fucking hilarious coming from you.
jergul rank	Sat May 30 22:21:19 2020 Aint that the truth? Hillary is many things, but she aint no Elon Musk.
jergul rank	Sat May 30 22:22:07 2020 WoO My thing in this forum is perspective. I mirror arguments all the time and several times today so far.
Wrath of Orion rank	Sat May 30 22:22:37 2020 Damn, the level of butthurt from jergul is nuts. I'm not sure why this has triggered you.
jergul rank	Sat May 30 22:24:08 2020 You are the one coming off with a dildo up your ass WoO. Stop projecting, mkay? I said several nice things about the launch high lighting the actually relevant bits about it.
Wrath of Orion rank	Sat May 30 22:28:16 2020 lmfao You also confuse "providing perspective" with arguing only for the sake of arguing. Yes, you're right, just about all you do here is "provide perspective." Call it that if it makes you feel better.
Habebe rank	Sat May 30 22:30:14 2020 Elon Musk is probably the greatest African American alive.
jergul rank	Sat May 30 22:30:49 2020 Not spaceneedle. That seems to be a building in Seatle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
Seb rank	Sat May 30 23:01:20 2020 Jergul: Industrialising rocketry is a hell of a lot easier than inventing the bespoke materials needed for a space elevator.
hood rank	Sat May 30 23:08:49 2020 "For the record. Manned flights to the ISS Shuttles (US) - 13 Musks (US) - 1 Soyuz (RU) - 48" Market competitive rockets: Legacy US: 0 Russia: 0 Musk: 3 Just "providing perspective" for what actually matters going forward.
Nimatzo rank	Sat May 30 23:21:04 2020 What the fuck is Trump talking about?
Habebe rank	Sat May 30 23:28:01 2020 Hood, Very market competitive. Old US rockets cost about 500 million a pop. Musks are 60-90 million.... Plus they look cooler.
jergul rank	Sat May 30 23:43:43 2020 Seb Also, that. But this is still babysteps. Hood The gain in productivity barely registers against the backdrop of how incredibly inefficient Russian space agencies is and has always been. NASA was always better, except for the bit about exploding. But cute that you would invoke market competative to a sector plagued by cronic pork in the billions of dollars range. Habebe Total costs per launch is closer to 5 billion.
jergul rank	Sat May 30 23:45:27 2020 For NASA. Space X? Well, how many payloads has it put up and what is the total cost of its programme? On the bright side, it will be easy enough for Musk to half the cost per launch :-).
jergul rank	Sat May 30 23:49:02 2020 Seb My point was mostly that space afficiendoes are dreaming of the wrong things. Liquid propellant launches is like cheering forth efficiency gains in horse carriage production. Chemical reactions simply cannot defeat the gravity well in a manner suited to intrastellar colonization. I doubt we have sent up a Nimitz class carrier equivalent in payload yet. Fine that it amounts to a small town, but its a pretty small small town.
Habebe rank	Sat May 30 23:50:56 2020 Jergul, Im not saying your wrong, but how do you figure or where did you read that regarding cost?
jergul rank	Sat May 30 23:55:10 2020 I actually just heard it on the Norwegian news. The sunk costs on space launch programmes are hideously large. Everyone prefers to ignore fixed costs and the costs of R&D, and simply focus on the added cost of actually making a launch. Which gives the 500 million price tag. Bad, but the truth is far worse. Russia is worse. Far worse in terms of productivity, but it has gotten away with paying their rocket scientists with potatoes for a while.
Seb rank	Sat May 30 23:59:28 2020 Jergul: You can't build a space elevator without a substantial space based industry. Rocketry is still the only game in town for now. Even if you had electromagnetic accelerators, the g-forces are too strong for people and making all hardware you want to put in orbit rugged against those accelerations isn't going to work. You need to bootstrap your way to anything else, and reducing cost per kilo is the first step. Pretty sure musk would love to build an elevator and accelerators, and nuclear thermal rockets. But none of those are possible without a thriving space industry outside orbit, which requires rockets first.
jergul rank	Sun May 31 00:06:09 2020 Seb I don't think there is an interdependency beyond the propaganda effects of consistently putting stuff into semi-permanent orbit. The required advances will come from other industries.
jergul rank	Sun May 31 00:08:44 2020 Cost cutting may actually undermine the development of systems able to lift actually relevant amounts of payload into orbit (relevant in terms of intrastellar colonization). We will probably end up seeing China or something bootstrapping its way to something reasonably efficient and with an acceptable scale.
Habebe rank	Sun May 31 00:23:05 2020 Jergul, Well yeah, we have spent ungodly amounts of money on R&D, im not sure of the details on how much Spacex has spent, but the new dragons are supposed* ( key word) to get launches down to 2 million, we would be thrilled at 10 million.
Habebe rank	Sun May 31 00:23:06 2020 Jergul, Well yeah, we have spent ungodly amounts of money on R&D, im not sure of the details on how much Spacex has spent, but the new dragons are supposed* ( key word) to get launches down to 2 million, we would be thrilled at 10 million.
jergul rank	Sun May 31 00:29:41 2020 http://www.futuretimeline.net/data-trends/6.htm Still just launch costs. Fixed costs + R&D not included.
Average Ameriacn rank	Sun May 31 00:32:43 2020 Biggest achievement of Norway space program http://www...-at-the-Norwegian-Space-Centre Name change at the Norwegian Space Centre The Norwegian Space Centre is now called the Norwegian Space Agency.
Nimatzo rank	Sun May 31 00:36:37 2020 It doesn't matter with what technology we get there, every step is another step towards realizing the goal. Right now the only one with a vision is Musk and he is getting things done and keeping humanity on a path we slipped out of in the 70's. But sure, if it costs nearly 2 million USD to launch a grown man into space, that will obviously severely slow down this dream. A space elevator or sled sound great on paper and it would lower the bar for entry considerably, but they are still in a conceptual phase. Hopefully the material issue is only a matter of engineering. I think what seb is getting at is that once in space, there are tons of other problems to solve and engineer ourselves out of, lessons that can not be learned here on the ground. That work needs to still be done.
jergul rank	Sun May 31 00:44:33 2020 Nimi That is sort of my argument too. The work that needs to be done at the scale it needs to be done is impossible without a space elevator. Thinking that more of the kind of launches we have done for 50 years is a major contribution beyond keeping the dream alive is a bit misguided. Today, we gather to celebrate yet another 2 people being shuttled to the ISS and consider it a major achievement based on...cost efficiency? Its nice, but it is the wrong dream. If anything, it may be a distraction.
Habebe rank	Sun May 31 01:52:26 2020 Jergul, Are you talking about research we have already done/paid for or research we are doing/will need to do? The nice thing about Musks way is that he helps pay for some of the R&D by other commercial means such as starlink internet. NASA still does research, we just don't build rockets anymore. Honestly, the best thing Obama ever did.
Habebe rank	Sun May 31 01:55:30 2020 Considering cost was a major*** obstacle, yes we should celebrate making it vastly cheaper.Its a stepping stone, Musks true dream is actually to have a colony on Mars.
LazyCommunist rank	Sun May 31 12:43:49 2020 How dare he to steal these lines from North Korean speeches? http://www...hat-got-its-start-a-decade-ago said Vice President Pence, who called the launch "a tribute to the vision and leadership of a president who, from the very first days of this administration, was determined to revive NASA and American leadership in human space exploration."
Nimatzo rank	Sun May 31 12:54:34 2020 Jergul There are problems of scale, I have nerded over this a lot. I don't think it is possible to reach the scale we need to do what I dream of with rockets. But there are a wide range of problems of different scale. Even building the institutional tradition and making it part of the culture and a mission of humanity, that alone has value.
jergul rank	Sun May 31 15:22:29 2020 Nimi We agree then. I have nerded over this extensively myself. Space stuff has value. Reseach is done on the ISS, scientific probes are sent up, the world as we know it could not exist without satelittes. But the scale. So tiny. The sum of payloads we have sent up. So small. Chemical reactions cannot get us to where we think it will. Not even within the Continent, country, State and town where the ballpark might be. People are making order of magnitude errors imagining otherwise.
Habebe rank	Mon Jun 01 03:20:26 2020 So what ever happened to blue origin?
Seb rank	Mon Jun 01 11:02:14 2020 Not nearly as psyched up about this as the vertical landing.
jergul rank	Mon Jun 01 11:37:06 2020 Finally a sensible person. Reusables is the important thing, not duplicating something we have done for 50 years and that Russia does habitually quite a few times a year.
Habebe rank	Mon Jun 01 15:51:06 2020 Dropping launch costs is intimately linked to reusables. I get it, doing something cheaper isn't the moat exciting. But it's sort of how we had computers for years, and then Steve jobs came along with the woz and got them cheap enough to have in your home. 2 million, while not quite there yet is cheap enough for regular people to launch into space.
Seb rank	Mon Jun 01 16:53:38 2020 Habebe: Point is, reusables atte what he did previously. This is just another souyz pod.
Habebe rank	Mon Jun 01 18:42:39 2020 Seb, Its still a step in the right direction. Albeit a less exciting one.
jergul rank	Mon Jun 01 20:52:50 2020 Apple products are your idea of what is cheap to have in a home?
Habebe rank	Mon Jun 01 23:15:03 2020 Jergul, I'm refering to the apple 2. So like early home pcs. Compared to computers the size of city blocks. SpaceX has done two other things. 1. They've made space sexy again.Musk has a 9 year olds sense of cool, he is flying fucking dragons into space. 2. He has proven that we can still go to space. This is probably more a local US thing. We haven't seen a NASA launch for lile a decade. Truth be told they were growing boring then, but now we're doing it again and it seems awesome.
jergul rank	Mon Jun 01 23:54:13 2020 My first PC was an IBM. Macs are many things, but they have never been cheap. Its a local thing hyped to international importance beyond any practical meaning. Thats propaganda for you. I am sad I can no longer tease sammy about not having the capability to transport people into orbit, but nice that you have rejoined.
swordtail rank	Tue Jun 02 00:05:36 2020 what a shit load of government money and knowhow can do. musk is a genius!
hood rank	Tue Jun 02 00:23:24 2020 "As of March 2018, SpaceX had over 100 launches on its manifest representing about $12 billion in contract revenue." vs: http://en...._Launch_System#Funding_history I'd say 100 launches for $12 billion is pretty fucking amazing vs. 0 launches for $18 billion.
Hrothgar rank	Tue Jun 02 09:07:19 2020 It's no contest - Elon and his flamboyant crazy ways IS the genius achiever of my lifetime. He will be remembered like Eisenstein or Thomas Edison or the Wright brothers.
Seb rank	Tue Jun 02 12:09:08 2020 Maybe Edisson. But not Wright or Einstein.
Seb rank	Tue Jun 02 12:10:06 2020 Hood: Does Spacex have debt though?
Seb rank	Tue Jun 02 12:10:35 2020 The relevant figure is the amount of investment and revenue into Spacex.
jergul rank	Tue Jun 02 12:16:55 2020 The comparison to Edison is rather good.
Habebe rank	Tue Jun 02 15:18:33 2020 Edison, but with better business ethics.
Seb rank	Tue Jun 02 15:33:06 2020 Habebe: Not necessarily actually, if you dig around a bit. Asside from the union busting, harassing of staff and whistle-blowers, deeply shady stuff about trying to frame a whistle-blower, the stock manipulation etc. there was some suggestion that the key ideas for re-usable boosters were brought to him by a guy, who he has then sidelined and screwed in a similar way to Tesla (haha, you are my employee, nah, not giving you a share of the business, of course everyone gets stock options these days, but like, you know, a proportionate level of the size given contribution.) but unlike Tesla this fellow decided to suck it up.
Seb rank	Tue Jun 02 15:33:32 2020 An workplace safety violations.
Seb rank	Tue Jun 02 15:37:34 2020 Musk is a smart chap, he's a great salesman and front man. He's got a fairly good grasp of business strategies etc. But he's also a bit of a shit-heel, engages in some very dubious practice, and one shouldn't conflate the scientific and engineering genius of his employees with his ability to pull off the business side. I also think he has at times been a liability for the firms he owns/runs, and gone through periods of executive burnout where he probably ought to have taken a step back for a bit. Edison is a good comparison in many ways. Bezos though, is by any definition going to be recognised as the greatest businessman of the generation, probably followed by Jack Ma.
hood rank	Tue Jun 02 15:59:00 2020 "Does Spacex have debt though?" This I don't know. But any debt they do have wouldn't exactly frighten anyone at this point, considering their Falcon series rockets are the cheapest out there and currently the most reliable active US made rocket. If they aren't profitable, it's because they're pulling an Amazon and reinvesting their money (Starship, Starlink) in a sustainable way.
Habebe rank	Tue Jun 02 16:23:17 2020 Seb, Musk honestly seems less interested in making profit to male himself wealthy than to turn a profit so that he can do some cool shit that interests him. Tesla for example has freely open sourced there cars ( at least some) Eddison was a known monopololist and anti capitalist. As for debt, SpaceX is known for good financials, he may have have 250 million in debt, I know they were looking into it. But at this point they are too important to fail and their number one customer is the US government, thats a good client. Starlink seems to be leading the way and doing well too.
Seb rank	Tue Jun 02 16:53:17 2020 Hood: No, but in terms of launch per funding, should be factored in of comparing to Boeing etc on SLS. If SLS have achieved 0 launches for 18b but spacex has 20b in investment and 12b in revenue, SLS failure to deliver looks less unimpressive. Also I think SLS is higher payload to higher orbit (though falcon is modular). But it's clear Spacex is a better organisation built around agility and sustainable operations at low price point. Agree that Spacex is very competitive so investors aren't losing sleep.
hood rank	Tue Jun 02 17:19:19 2020 Sure, but the entire Falcon 9 stack (not including the Heavy) cost them like $400 million. If SpaceX isn't actually profitable, they're undoubtedly at the point where they could be profitable at any time they chose to pull back on R&D.
jergul rank	Tue Jun 02 23:43:02 2020 Why is "profitable" a relevant metric?
sam adams rank	Wed Jun 03 01:05:25 2020 Because capitalism is how shit gets made, comrade pinko.
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