Strip mining Earth orbit as in destroying a natural environment for short term gain.
“-everything it has (government) is confiscated from the people whom create it. Those are redistributed as a result of politics not free market economics-“
Neoliberalism is wrecking the planet. The Ayn-Rand-in-Space libertarian crazies that flood these space forums with their toxic ideology need to be exposed. Exactly why I am here.
The big lie being pushed is that “wealth creators” are the only beings of any “value.” The rest of us are just “looters.” As I explain in the next paragraph this is essentially a cult that makes money the god of this world.
The nation collectively creates the wealth: Businesses have in the past spent almost exclusively on R&D only for applied research that will generate profit, but the basic research is government research and is redistributed to corporate interests. For example, a cure for para and quadriplegic spinal injuries, for which the basic research exists, does not generate enough profit to satisfy their fiduciary duty. So…no cure. Neoliberalism has driven down how much government spends on basic research and forced industry to now pay more- now up to 30 percent. But that research is only available to the company. That companies actually place profit above human life is no myth- and the most glaring example is climate change.
“There is a trade in finance known among some as the “Chomsky trade”, after the linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky. Mr Chomsky once pointed out that, if you want to know what’s worth investing in, look at what US federal research funding organisations such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) are investing in today, and then go long 30 years. In the 1950s, the big thing was transistors, which gave us the microelectronics revolution in the 1980s. In the 1960s, it was digital processing, which gave us personal computers in the 1990s. In the 1970s it was biotech, which started to come on line in the 2000s. And in the 1980s, it was the beginnings of machine learning and big data, which will transform much of the world of work in the 2010s and beyond. . . . Despite the ill-informed claims of politicians, the US government and the US taxpayer are the critical investors in basic scientific research, not the private sector. Private foundations fund only 6 per cent of US research and development. The federal government funds 55 per cent.”
I do not think this movement to hold historical figures accountable is “disgusting” in any way. It is simply an adjustment society needs to make and, in my opinion, it is very important in that it teaches this generation not to deify individuals in these cults of personality that have always afflicted civilization. That many of the founding fathers had slaves, that the south was not “fighting for states rights” (well, they were fighting for the right to have slaves, anyway), that Mr. Brown and others had their past as nazi SS officers erased…all this being exposed is not disgusting, it is a good thing. Fascism is an ideology that wants the cult of personality, and all the psychological tricks, to be effective. And we the people, as a democracy, need to understand that, and make progress. And that is why I am a progressive. Any ideology that logically ends in children in gas chambers is my enemy. I am anti-fascist.
Okay, you understand why, but nobody else does. What are you babbling about? Why would SLS make me anti-fascist? And it was being trolled that kept Goddard away from public life and government grants. He was so incredibly humiliated by newspaper articles mocking his research that he became reclusive. Think about that when you reply to me.
China would do well to NOT imitate Musk, and this article-that-is-actually-a-spacex-advertisement and hopes that “last nail is put in the coffin of SLS” is playing on the popular culture myth- generated by a decade of rabid fanboys endlessly posting sycophantic internet praise. But SpaceX may not be around that much longer in it’s present form. Doubtless the F9 will be putting satellites up for a long time to come but the toxic dragon is not a great design and if the company goes under it will probably get dropped. Their business plan right now:
Pandering to rural video gamers by strip mining Earth orbit to pay for a super-size version of the shuttle.
SpaceX is the Enron of space exploration. Elon even hired the Enron prosecutor as his personal lawyer.
Like Enron, only so much can be faked and there are just not enough customers to support Starlink.
Actually, Robert Zubrin has a chapter in the case for…that planet which will not be named, that talks about the Chinese Superships. I am not a Zubrin fan in any way, but I have to say that chapter made a very important point. I interpret it differently than NewSpace fans. It was about a state sponsored Super Ship. Not a private venture. And THAT is the only way humankind is going to expand into the solar system- by way of government resources. The fanboys scream Orwellian treasure by insisting the opposite. So bizarre.
China would do well to NOT imitate Musk, and this article-that-is-actually-a-spacex-advertisement and hopes that “last nail is put in the coffin of SLS” is playing on the popular culture myth- generated by a decade of rabid fanboys endlessly posting sycophantic internet praise. But SpaceX may not be around that much longer in it’s present form. Doubtless the F9 will be putting satellites up for a long time to come but the toxic dragon is not a great design and if the company goes under it will probably get dropped. Their business plan right now:
Pandering to rural video gamers by strip mining Earth orbit to pay for a super-size version of the shuttle.
SpaceX is the Enron of space exploration. Elon even hired the Enron prosecutor as his personal lawyer.
Like Enron, only so much can be faked and there are just not enough customers to support Starlink.
Instead of all these billions going to stealth bombers, missile submarines, proliferating the weaponizing of LEO….the cislunar infrastructure that could be built with that treasure is mindboggling. Consider the trillions spent on foreign interventions and DOD programs since the turn of the century. We could be in the process of powering civilization carbon free with Space Solar Power right now. Instead…..
Maybe we need a “Green New Space Deal.”
Station orbit upkeep was likely the main reason spacex went with a particularly bad escape system design. It was just too tempting.
Tens of thousands of satellites in Earth orbit are increasing the risk of conflict on Earth and have the potential to restrict future access to space. Describing megaconstellations as “strip mining” is accurate.
Neoliberalism is real and so is climate change. Your cognitive dissonance does not make that “meaningless.”
America is a democracy and “liberty”, as defined by neoliberals like you, is just the practice of absolute greed, which inevitably leads to corruption and the death of democracy at the hands of autocratic oligarchs. So, it is you that is actually “anti-American,” not me.
America is a nation by the people for the people and we the people ARE the government through our elected representatives. I understand that perfectly but you consider “the market” as the only system that should have any actual power and anything else is “socialism.” By your definition America was, and is, socialist…and you seek to end that. I call that treason.
Not waste…just the consequences of going cheap with the original Space Shuttle. If the originally specified pressure-fed liquid boosters had been used they would have been more powerful and perhaps such hot-rod engines would not have been required. As it was, railing the segments back and forth to Utah was not economical. As it is, recovering the RS-25’s with some kind of return module is also not going to break even without more flights per year. The SRB’s are fairly powerful but still problematic due to environmental concerns. With liquid boosters and a RS-25 return module it would be sustainable and desirable. Sacrificing the upper stage tankage on the altar of the rocket equation instead of landing it back like the Starship allows a large payload which was the original Shuttle concept.
Ice on the Moon 