Space exploration certainly will be the final frontier, its the last thing this pathetic species will have ever worked on before blinking out of existence.
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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We saw what happened the last time space infrastructure was privatized.
Boeing gave all the money to the stockholders and delivered a criminally late product that ended up failing and stranding our astronauts. Boeing obviously didn't care to test if the Teflon in those thrusters could survive repeated heatings.
SpaceX decided to go backwards in rocket technology, from Hydrogen to Methane. Hydrogen is more efficient, and makes it easier to bury carbon responsibly. Sure, Boeing's rockets got made fun of for being leaky, but I think that might be Boeing more than Hydrogen at fault. Dirty Methane rockets were cheap, and could be built simple as they experienced less thermal variation without cryogenic fuel.
SpaceX undercut the competition and turned itself into a monopoly while Boeing threw their hand to the stockholders. Now SpaceX picks up the pieces of the game they upended.
NASA was supposed to manage a thriving marketplace, full of competition. Instead it managed its way to a monopolistic structure that a single entity may try to sieze.
Fun fact about autocratic structures like monopolies and dictatorships: they can't grow power themselves, they can only sieze power organized by others.
We need to build our next wave of structures in a distributed fashion such that the levers of power are not so concentrated that they may fall into the wrong hands.
Give the power to the people. All of them.
Almost like Jim Bridenstone was a bad pick….
I wanna try something...
Ahem. Investors! I have the concept of a plan to put gigantic billboards in space that can be seen by half the planet at any given time. Give me money.
It only works for emerald heirs.
Space: the final (capitalistic) frontier.
"final"
Humanity: Let's make a bunch of stories about how space capitalism has some really bad outcomes.
Also Humanity: That sound great! let's do that!
People poke fun of Musk as being a idiot. But he had us Kaiser Soze'd by pretending to be dumb so that he could implement his self-serving ideas.
Musk is not the smart person behind any of the companies he is part of today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell
... is why I would have invested in SpaceX pre-Russian aggression against NATO and their allies.
Now ... no, thank you. They can keep their private equity to their little NAZI hands.
Some other country is gonna have the new nasa, and the united states is going to fall even further behind. It'll just be a brain drain and most of it isn't going to go to space-x.
Any suggestions on where to emigrate? Asking for a friend
If you're a fundamental researcher, engineer, etc. come to the UK. We've got SO many job openings for those roles and would love to bring in talent to fill those roles because the local gammon isn't up to the job.
NASA has already sent out emails to their teams and contractors about what implications this can have on their departments. Shit’s bad.
I had a lengthy argument with someone that Musk couldn't possibly be kissing Trump's ass for money - he's a billionaire after all and "has all the money he needs". No no, Musk is doing this out of the goodness of his cold billionaire heart. Isn't it obvious?
Why are so many people so stupid? WHY?
As we all know, the ultra-rich are famous for getting to a certain level of wealth and saying, "NO MORE! I RENOUNCE THIS CAPITALIST SOCIETY AND NOW ONLY WORK FOR THE GOOD OF HUMANITY!"
I comfort myself by saying I have something Musk and his ilk never will: ENOUGH.
Ah yes, the essential personality traits to becoming the richest person: integrity, and stopping once you have all the money you need.
They have a sense of "enough" and the concept of a thousand millions for someone who barely had a thousand hundreds or even just a thousand is so far out of their realm of understanding that they think "enough" must be a concept for capitalists too
Also dumb as rocks.
Elongated Muskrat is a billionaire who wants to become the first trillionaire. That’s what these people aren’t getting. It’s all just a game to him. He thinks that he lives in a simulation and everyone else is an NPC. He now wants to set a new high score.
I had similar arguments and the synopsis is that people can't admit being wrong because it makes them look weak. It's a toxic masculinity and ego thing.
You basically double down on the bet and ride the boat right into hell over the waterfall.
Dead, but you never had to admit the other person was right about the waterfall!
That's how kids were taught to think when I was in school. Did you get something wrong on your first try? You're a failure! Take your F and move on, you're not allowed to try again unless you fail your entire grade level. 12 years of my school system taught many people to have that ego you mentioned, myself included. I graduated high school 10 years ago and still struggle accepting my failures. I have to remind myself that in real life I can actually learn from my mistakes. Unfortunately many people never have that realization.
Ok I definitely got a different vibe from failing tests. I routinely would have to deal with that stuff again so it was a “you failed, we aren’t going to revisit it but you need to not make the same mistake again
Good things have happened to Elon, therefore he must be a good person, otherwise my worldview is destroyed and there is no point being good.
He efficiently using the government to make himself richer. What more did anybody expect?
Well… that, but inefficient.
And absolutely no one paying attention was shocked.
This is what losing a space race looks like.
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