I'm still surprised they moved to this orbital fly so quickly without doing more tests. Going from 3 engines to almost 30 is crazy. Also, If I understand it right, both booster and starship will end up in the ocean. I hope they will be able to reuse at least a few engines.
A whole industry bootstrapping itself to make semi-conductors doubling every 18 months, going from exotic, mission critical hardware to commodity; SpaceX is doing the same thing with flight hardware. Contrast that with previous generation engines (the RS-25 comes to mind) with a sticker price of 125 millions... per engine! [0]
[0] https://spacenews.com/aerojet-rocketdyne-defends-sls-engine-...
> A whole industry bootstrapping itself to make semi-conductors doubling every 18 months, going from exotic, mission critical hardware to commodity;
Silicon Valley did not bootstrap itself. It received untold billions of dollars from the US government during the Cold War (and lots of stuff happened during the WW2 economy, when the US was the Allies' armorer). Do you think it a coïncidence that most spy satellites are launched from Vandenberg? Or that Skunk Works, located in California, developed so many secret aircraft?
Do a search for "The secret history of Silicon Valley":
* https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
> SpaceX is doing the same thing with flight hardware.
Notwithstanding the millions that NASA gave them in their early stages.
* https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/news/COTS_selection.html
The list of spinoff technologies just from NASA is impressive:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies
The fact that the US was, post-WW2, the largest economy in the world, and the main developed nation that didn't see mass destruction, certainly didn't hurt.
The fact that the US government throws a lot of money around certainly helps private industry:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State
This also does not diminish the entrepreneurs that, once the baton is handed to them, charge forward. My main argument is that there's not as much "bootstrapping" as many people believe.
The government gave $18B to the SLS and so far has vapor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System
The government spent $211B on the shuttle program and got 133 launches. SpaceX will probably surpass that number this year at a fraction of the cost.
NASA's record on rockets since Apollo has been abysmal.
I don't think government is necessarily bad (the Russians did a much better job in recent decades!) but it leans into its failures and often has bad incentives. SpaceX fails fast, has great incentives, and has achieved an incredible amount on a (comparatively) shoestring budget.
I think we can all agree on those points. The point of the GP that I (and I think many others) react to is the "Only in America things like this can happen" part. I just don't get American exceptionalism I guess.
Saying that something "could only happen in America" (usually) indicates a view that America is somehow unique (as in the American exceptionalist view).
I'm not saying that America hasn't done great things, or that Americans shouldn't believe they have done great things. It's just that no country is unique in this manner, and Americans seem to often say they are in ways that I rarely see other countries do.
Having had a bit of a ground-level view of this going back over a decade, yes, America is exceptional in this respect. Lots of people tried to do private launch overseas. Trivial barriers like explosives licenses stopped most at the gate. The sole success stories are in the U.K. (Skyline) and New Zealand (Rocket Lab), with the former stretching the definition of "success." Meanwhile, America has SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and a trove of others.
The permissiveness and commercial latitude the U.S. government affords Americans is unique. The protections American law and culture afford private property is similarly quite extreme. These facets come with downsides. But in 2001, I can confidently say that had Elon started SpaceX anywhere but in America, it would have dismally failed.
Yes, SpaceX could only happen in the United States. But let't not pretend that the whole American package warrants the 'favored and exceptional nation' badge that so many seem to want to bestow on it, which is what this American exceptionalism is all about. Shining city on the hill and more of that kind of crap.
One cannot ignore that they did their later work here. Not there. As did many others whose own societies collapsed or otherwise failed them.
In any case, I’m arguing a narrow argument: that a company like SpaceX could only have been founded, when it was founded, in America. Because of its certain characteristics that are an exception in the set of the world’s cultures. (One among many: its unique ability to assimilate and positively appropriate from immigrants.) That doesn’t mean it’s faultless; that’s a straw man.
The US is not unique in that regard. Australia and New Zealand are very comparable in that way. Canada probably belongs in that list too.
I agree that, in the contemporary world, SpaceX could only have happened in the US. But that's because of economic factors (government funding for the space industry, easy and plentiful access to venture capital, a low regulation business environment.) That particular combination of economic factors is unique to the US. Being exceptionally welcoming to immigrants is rare but not unique.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
In a more just world they would have stood trial in Nuremberg.
But occasionally I think it has some justification. And I think SpaceX is one of those rare cases. I just can't see a firm like SpaceX existing in any other country. The US offers a unique combination of easy access to capital, relatively low regulation, and high government funding for private space ventures, which I doubt you will find anywhere else.
Yes. And none of those things are historically unique.
They just happen to be true now in the US, partly because the US is the large economy in the world. But those things were true during different times in history in other countries.
Do you think it was a coïncidence that the Industrial Revolution kicked off in the UK, when they just happened to be one of the larger economies in the world at that time? Where did all the early research in electricity happened, in the US? Do you think Volta, Ampère, or Hertz are American names? Or the concept of interchange able parts (see the book The Perfectionists by Winchester)? Where was the internal combustion engine invented? The American space program was kickstarted by a bunch Germans.
Of course culture helps as well. Britain actually lost its initial lead in the chemical industry, even though things started there:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauveine
Fiddling with industrial chemicals was poo-pooed by the British intelligentsia, so the industry in Germany ended up surpassing Britain (e.g., BASF). See the book Mauve by Simon Garfield for a pretty good history on this:
* https://www.simongarfield.com/books/mauve/
It may be that the US has the go-go culture now that other countries used to have.
What is happening now in the US is a great thing, but to call "unique" is an insult to countless historical figures IMHO.
I never said it was historically unique, if by that you mean without any historical parallel. Of course if you look at other industries and other historical periods, you will see other cases where a certain industry in a certain country has pulled ahead. And US leadership in space (or any other industry) is not guaranteed to last forever, and is in fact unlikely to last forever. But the US does provide a supportive environment for private space entrepreneurship which is unique in the world today.
The US has both some unique strengths and unique flaws. It is a world leader in both the space industry and in mass incarceration. The first is something it can be proud of, and the second is something of which it should be ashamed. Neither lead is guaranteed to be permanent, so in neither way is it unique in an absolute historical sense, but in both ways it is unique relative to the world of today.
> Do you think Volta, Ampère, or Hertz are American names?
I feel like you are arguing, not against anything I actually said, but things you are imagining I said. I'm not an American. I'm perfectly capable of being critical of the US (there is much I could say on that topic) but I also think it has its strengths and SpaceX is evidence of some of them.
You're siting 0.1% historical outcomes when you look across all of the active civilizations across all of human history.
The conditions in the US currently, and Pax Americana more generally, are extremely rare in the history.
[1] Joel Moker's Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress. I'd also highly recommend Moker's "The Gifts of Athena"
Or geopolitical concerns.
The government (US taxpayers) were the ones that did the initial work to level the raw earth and pave the road. SpaceX may be doing amazing work improving the process, but comparing the two as you’re doing is not appropriate.
The multiple problems with Nauka suggest they've lost their edge and never learned the lessons from docking issues with Progress in the past.
SpaceX is/was just another entry on the long list of private contractors commissioned to build things for NASA, DoD, et al. But different here is that SpaceX worked at very very different speed than Aerojet Rocketdyne, ULA, and all the other old-space fossils. Still, those old contractors are valuable for other things — good welders, technicians, and engineers take many years to train and these old legacy corps provide a steady income stream to maintain a certain level of manufacturing readiness.
All created because the government wanted something done and was willing to cut a check:
I agree that the Space Shuttle had a cool factor that nothing else does.
The they didn't. What nonsense. They just keep flying the same old stuff as the quality gets worse and they don't do anything new.
It's not a coincidence, it's geography.
It is desirable for reconnaissance satellites to cover the entire planet regularly. That means high inclination orbits. That means southward launches (as opposed to eastward). That requires a launch site with ideally lots of ocean and not a lot of population to the south/southeast.
The US does plenty of military launches into other orbits from the east coast.
And the billions spent on the technologies that allow those engines to exist. SpaceX didn't invent rocket engines. It stands on the shoulders of many giants going back through Apollo to the early days. There are even traces of Soviet tech in the raptor (ie closed cycle). Nearly all of that work was funded by taxpayers ... and by whatever funded the soviet programs.
Building a better mousetrap is great, but that doesn't mean that all the previous mousetraps were not also great too.
Legitimate criticism of SpaceX fanboys is not "Pooping on the party". People who pretend that this is a ground-up space program, an icon of how private enterprise is always better at everything, need to be educated in the history of spaceflight. I myself could build a car in my garage that is better/faster/cheaper than everything available in decades past. That doesn't mean that I am one iota smarter, better organized or more innovative than the engineers who built those classic cars.
> better/faster/cheaper than everything
So do talking down SpaceX based on that makes no sense.
They kind of did invent full-flow engines though, which were an unattained holy grail of rocketry.
"Staged combustion (Замкнутая схема) was first proposed by Alexey Isaev in 1949. The first staged combustion engine was the S1.5400 (11D33) used in the Soviet planetary rocket, designed by Melnikov, a former assistant to Isaev.[1] About the same time (1959), Nikolai Kuznetsov began work on the closed cycle engine NK-9 for Korolev's orbital ICBM, GR-1. Kuznetsov later evolved that design into the NK-15 and NK-33 engines for the unsuccessful Lunar N1 rocket. The non-cryogenic N2O4/UDMH engine RD-253 using staged combustion was developed by Valentin Glushko circa 1963 for the Proton rocket."
And way down at the bottom of a long engine list spanning more than half a century...
"Raptor—SpaceX LCH4/LOX engine in development, first flown in 2019[19][20]"
(Yes, there are others listed, but SpaceX was first to actually fly something.)
That the IPD was hydrolox and didn't proceed to the point of a full engine, let alone a flight is besides the point.
What you said was: "They kind of did invent full-flow engines though", which is completely false.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX
> SpaceX was first headquartered in a warehouse in El Segundo, California. By November 2005, the company had 160 employees.
> El Segundo is a city in Los Angeles County, California,
That's the only place you can launch a polar mission over ocean from the continental United States.
> Semi-Conductor doubling every 18 months
IIRC, the recent doublings have been happening in Taiwan. That's why people make such a big deal about TMSC. America (i.e. Intel) actually has some catching up to do.
One related anecdote. I read somewhere a while ago about how Apple had a lot of internal security, even between teams. They said the reason for that is that if someone in the iPod department found out about the iPhone they'd realize the threat to their career and work to undermine it.
[1] https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-t...
In Canada we lock out all foreign investment in lots of areas.
> but didn't seem to have any problem with Airbus taking over the CSeries program for almost nothing.
This is actually a somewhat amusing to bring up in this context, because US protectionism is what made that happen.
Boeing tried to kill off the C-Series by getting the US administration to impose 300% (sic!) import duties because ... it threatened US jobs. Airbus was targeting the program aggressively as well with tactics like price matching, so the CSeries was already struggling before that.
Bombardies only viable way out was to join a partnership with Airbus (which got 50.1%), so the planes could be manufactured in their Alabama plant and it could be positioned within the Airbus product range instead of competing.
The partnership was forced move, and quite a big middle finger to Boeing. The alternative would have probably been just shutting it down.
Could you imagine the French letting Dassault, Airbus or the US government letting Boeing fail?
Perhaps the government doesn't like foreigns tapping Canadians' communications? The NSA listens in on its own citizens with the coöperation of the US telcos, so what chance would foreigners have?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
As a Canadian I would certainly like more competition, but I can certainly see the reasoning.
Canada's position on foreign ownership and trade is fairly consistent with norms in advanced countries, and fairly liberal, probably more so than most nations.
Non-market forces also play a huge role in this, for example, irrespective of what the auto-trade policies actually are between the US and Japan ... the Japanese would simply never allow US firms to compete on equal terms there.
Cultural factors, some more systematic and institutionalized than others, provide enough impetus that they represent at least as much of an issue as anything agreed upon formally by trade representatives.
Never understood putting barriers and quota on entertainment (as well as government subsidies). Companies like Disney and Marvel both made billions simply by making content people want to watch. Canada is pretty much free to export its content anywhere and sell it. Why not simply compete?
There are two fundamental reasons that content everywhere is subsidized and protected. They are of course related.
First, more obviously is the cultural aspect. The things we believe, the stories we tell, are part of our identities. With critical mass and investment those stories some will take root.
It's a little bit of a myth to suggest that a small creative team just 'makes something' and it goes big. This does happen, but generally speaking, it takes a machine. Many layers. 'Taylor Swift' should be thought of as a 'Brand and Production Company' - as opposed to a person.
You'll find that almost all truly creative endeavours are at least partly communitarian. The ballet exists only because Louis XIV, the most powerful man in the Western Hemisphere, personally created it.
Almost all such endeavours have a purely creative component, it's actually more rare than not that those works are purely commercial. The creative world is in constant tension between 'art and money'. You often hear famous movie stars say 'One for Me, One for the Studio' hinting at that.
Some cultures are stronger than others (aka European), and some have more of a critical mass in terms of audience (aka Indonesia), some have both (aka Japan). Some have contiguous histories of relative sovereignty (aka Thailand), some the opposite (aka Laos, Tibet) and so varying levels of support and protection are needed otherwise a lot of it would just evaporate.
Most countries provide fairly significant tax advantages etc. for creative works.
Second, is the fact that creative works on the commercial side, like anything, are an industry with similar kinds of underlying components and critical masses.
In that context it's a little bit glib to say to a group of people in a little region for example to 'compete' with a massive established industrial base. Whatever the industry.
Hollywood is big enough, has several very institutionalized layers of production, incredible degree of hyper-specialization (i.e. you will find more 'kinds of trades' and people who are really good at it there, than anywhere in that field). That includes access to capital, legal frameworks, specialized talent, workers guild specialization, harmonization with government (i.e. getting locations), talent agencies, distribution channels and relationships with Netflix etc..
This extends to the rest of the 'support' aspects of the industry like bookings on talk shows, morning shows, cover placements in magazines, media dockets etc.. It's all professionalized and mostly corporate.
Marvel films, in particular are a really good example of this - they are not particularly good films, but the production quality of them is basically '1st rate' at every turn, from writing, production design, direction, story narrative, the immense production support, post-production / effects, marketing.
Once you add in language and cultural barriers, i.e. the fact that a movie about 'Captain America' will have a strong enough audience domestically, with some acceptance abroad, and you have insurmountable competitive advantage. (Nobody is going to watch a film about 'Captain France', or 'Captain Japan' - or rather, many fewer).
The only other place that can compete really is the UK, which has many of those same foundational advantages, plus a long history of 'popular theatre' and especially the BBC which exists in part as a systematic support / lynch-pin under the auspices relevant to Point #1.
Canada, pound for pound, actually punches above it's weight relative to the US in a lot of production aspects. The new Dune film is Denis Villneuve, and his 'posse' of creatives are from Montreal. In some ways, it's a 'Canadian-led' film, but that just happens to be talent, it's not really part of the industrial base. Villneuve exists because Quebec strongly supports creative endeavours (and FYI for every Villneuve, there are 10 you've not heard of, 50 who never really had support or a shot, and 1000 who tried and failed).
FYI there is actually a lot of film production in Toronto/Van/Montreal, but mostly the 'labour' bits of production, not the choice roles.
The raw economics of entertainment, in the short run, optimize like anything else. Take a 'Large Open Economy' and put it next to 'Small Open Economies' and you'll see consolidation hugely disproportionately in the 'Large' economy, which is where all the talent, surplus, and good jobs end up.
Entertainment happens to be at least one sector, where due to 'Point #1' (i.e. culture), there's wide recognition of the need to support it via non-market forces, so at least there's that. But really the same applies to any sector.
If we really think that we should just all enjoy Marvel and Netflix - and that's that - well then all of that is fine - but it's such a hugely narrow aspect of creative output.
Finally, the true globalization of the industry has seen the biggest budgets move towards ever dumber films. Fast and Furious, Transformers ... they have to appeal not not just to 'working class Americans', but to 'the global working class' which is barely literate, and of course they're from diverse cultures so there's a lot less to draw upon for cultural reference. 'Transformers' , 'Godzilla' etc. are basically giant action sequences and that's it. Of course that's totally fine - but they suck up the budget and attention of other potential works, which don't get made. So ironically, this problem has manifested itself even for the 'Large Open Economy'.
For your reference, here are quotes from a few dozen industry luminaries on that subject [1]. It's a good read.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/20/movies/movie-...
That explains why Parasite and Money Heist flopped.
> The new Dune film is Denis Villneuve, and his 'posse' of creatives are from Montreal. In some ways, it's a 'Canadian-led' film, but that just happens to be talent, it's not really part of the industrial base. Villneuve exists because Quebec strongly supports creative endeavours (and FYI for every Villneuve, there are 10 you've not heard of, 50 who never really had support or a shot, and 1000 who tried and failed).
From what I've been told, Quebec is the only place in Canada that consumes its own culture.
It explains why thousands of films, just like 'Parasite' and 'Money Heist' flop, why they are not on Netflix or in theatres, and why you've never heard of them, and why neither Spain nor S. Korea are entertainment powerhouses in film.
KPop however, which is definitely a Korean export, has some strong 'industrial foundations' along the lines of what I'm talking about. It's a real industry there.
Here are 2021 'Canadian Films' - have a gander and see how many you recognize. [1]
Quebec consumes it's own content because they are a distinct from the rest of North America, and they invest a lot in culture. And a pretty good comparative basis for Ontario / Rest of Canada.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_films_of_2021
That's true in America as well. There's only so many good movies!
> Quebec consumes it's own content because they are a distinct from the rest of North America, and they invest a lot in culture.
And they buy it, they don't need a government check to make it.
As if foreign countries needed to actually own the infrastructure to tap it [0]. All they need is to have employees inside with double allegiances [1] [2] [3]
[0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-now-...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-china...
[2] https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-csis-right-to-w...
[3] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-sent...
you mean a utility, right?
Once a location is served by more than one provider, it becomes a commodity (who can sell packets the cheapest).
There’s multiple ways to deliver ip packets to a property in the country.
A better solution could be to have ducts to run whatever owned by the council and available on a RAND basis - sane way roads are, but it’s not essential for competition.
Like every other aerospace company
> It never achieved its sales goals.
Looks like they have years of backlog. And the whole program is profitable. They landed Delta as their North American launch customer.
> Moreover the money that they dumped into it was ruled illegal by the WTO
Wasn't it overturned?
Also, Telecoms, Banking and Communications are protected industries in every country, Canada is not special there.
If Canadian Telecoms Bell, Rogers and Telus went up for grabs, and even if Canada realistically had the same access to US markets - do you think Telus would be buying AT&T? Or the other way around?
It doesn't matter 'how well run' Canadian telecoms are (I don't think they are, but even if they were) - or how poorly US firms were run. The 'big' would eat the 'little'.
All of the 'good jobs' in Telecom like network planning, research, anything related to R&D, executive management - would go to the US. Canada would be left with 'Customer Service' and some local marketing.
There wouldn't really be that much gain for anyone, the net 'savings' would be marginal, and then, you'd be left with the Canadian government trying to regulate giant behemoths the size of entire sectors of the Canadian economy without much leverage.
That sector is verticalized with Entertainment and so with Bell, would go a whole bunch of TV / Cable stations etc.
Then AT&T/NBC would even more effectively be able to push their own programming, guests (who promote films, books, sports) and further push down anything remotely local towards hegemonic products.
So aside from the not-so-obvious economic advantages, there are quite a few externalities to worry about as well.
America in particular likes to push the concept of 'Free Markets' - because it has tremendous advantage in that context.
'Just Open Your Economy!' is the strategy of a 'Giant Economy' telling 'Little Economies' that 'We Will Devour Everything Of Value'. It's essentially a form of economic colonialism.
Adam Smith isn't exactly wrong, there can be many benfits to both sides, Canada has this kind of 'Gilded Cage' situation wherein it can maintain a very high standard of living by being next to the US, but it comes at the cost of losing the ability to do almost anything exceptional that in any way competes with the US.
The EU is not as unbalanced and they have different national constituents, with longer history and more potent foundational industries. Tiny Sweden makes Jet Fighters (!) which comes out of their cold war Air Force history of independence and a formerly relatively giant Air Force.
That America can have guys like 'Elon Musk' + Space X is a function of a few things, but at very least, it's scale.
The US is a huge market and only certain things can only be done at that scale. Most small countries do not have competitive automakers. Space X is essentially dependent on US Government contracts, at least indirectly.
Second, it's 'much bigger than it's peripherals'. This means that the US sucks all the talent and capital from neighbouring states into it's systems.
Think of the 'Silicon Valley' as not an 'American' place - think of it as an 'International Zone' that happens to be in the US. A 'super cluster' with a giant critical mass of talent.
Right now, arguably due at least partly to the inherent advantage that the Euro gives to Germany - Spaniards, French, Italians etc. are moving to Germany at considerably greater rates than in the other direction. That's where the industrial base will grow jobs from. Peripheral European states that don't manage to found their own competitive sectors will turn into places like Alabama and Louisiana where the talent vacates before it can establish into critical mass.
Third, another major artifact is inequality. Low-end jobs in American don't pay well, and they don't get benefits. The surpluses to the high side of the pyramid are huge. But when you take into consideration the 'off the books' economy, it's massive. California has almost 3 Million undocumented citizens, who are more likely to be young, more likely to be workforce participants, almost entirely working at the lowest end of the labour pool, and definitely earning far sub-minimum wage. Every manual activity from planting, to picking, to trucking, to food preparation and cleaning - everything but the 'front facing stuff' is often fulfilled by people 'off the books' and the consumer and corporate surpluses from that are gigantic. Add to that the downward pressure on wages ... and basically you have a giant wealth transfer machine with enormous surpluses floating into the hands of those with middle to upper class incomes.
Just consider what all of the US stats would look like if we accounted for those jobs, at those wages. What would GDP/capita start to look like, GINI coefficient, other measures of inequality and % 'uninsured', voting rights.
I'm not making a political comment here, it's a problem and a paradox, but pointing out the material advantages to the non-serfdom population.
This excess free cash-flow both on an individual level and corporate level enable so many things to happen, it's hard to fathom. It's so common in America for individuals to have hobbies i.e. drones, cars, travel, tech etc. that are 'really expensive', beyond the reproach of the middle class in other nations.
Relatively cheap energy, wide open spaces and relatively cheap land, especially compared to Europe for example, again, this has all sorts of 'unseen surpluses'.
So those are just a few of the differentiators and of course, there are so many more, it's complicated.
... So they do block international investment. Therefore, the comment is correct.
> Second, it's 'much bigger than it's peripherals'. This means that the US sucks all the talent and capital from neighbouring states into it's systems.
Choosing innovation has the side effect of attracting talent. Other countries can simply compete on perks to retain their talent! I recall Musk, in an interview, saying that he felt going to Stanford was a better use of his time than military service for the (then apartheid) regime.
> Think of the 'Silicon Valley' as not an 'American' place - think of it as an 'International Zone' that happens to be in the US. A 'super cluster' with a giant critical mass of talent.
And yet it's very much in America. And every time you are hearing "the Silicon Valley of X" it's someone trying to sell you something...
In other words the most critical quality is permission-free innovation.
In all other systems from feudalism to socialism to communism there generally is just one department or agency responsible for each thing, and it's usually either the state itself or some state-blessed entity with an enforced monopoly. If that entity does it's job well, that's great. If it doesn't, tough shit. Nobody can go around it.
This is also why I disagree with market purists about anti-trust. If a private company gets so huge that it is able to occupy an entire market niche for a prolonged period of time, it's important to do something to either break it up or incentivize other entrants. A private company allowed to remain super-dominant in one sector for too long starts to look and behave like a Soviet bureau.
I would say that if a private company gets so huge and can control an entire market niche for a prolonged period of time, they will inevitably stagnate which leaves them open to competition. The biggest problem issue for such private companies is not that they can control entire market segments but that they can lobby the government for regulations that permanently entrench themselves by making competition illegal in some way. The regulations are almost always done in the name of safety (if we don't regulate this then new unsafe entrants who don't follow all our internal practices could enter the industry and kill people). So they get government regulations created that exactly follow the company's own internal regulations. That both accelerates the company toward stagnation (they can no longer update the regulations) and also puts up walls for new competition as the new entrants can't innovate if they have to follow all the legacy processes.
That further gets trade unions/teamsters involved who learned to follow those regulations in trades schools and further act to restrict any improvement as it would kill their jobs.
Them being a monopoly in and of itself is not a problem, as long as we can prevent them from putting up barriers that would protect themselves from competition once they stagnate.
The USA brings in 50 million or so people from other countries. Often they are bloody minded, stone cold, hard workers that will sacrifice everything to give their children the opportunity to be Americans. These people are some of the best in the world in my opinion.
The US dollar being used as a reserve currency for most of the world means that it is the center of international investment. This means that the billions of dollars that flowed into PayPal and Elon Musk's startups probably came in large part from foreign investment funds.
Our universities crank out some of the weirdest and least conventional engineers you can imagine. Most of them are half-crazy in the first place. The archetype of Mad Scientist can be found in physics departments and engineering labs all over the country. Conformity is often seen as a kind of perversity. We idolize professors like Feynman and read novels like Ignition! This is why you see bridges collapsing and power grids failing while we build some of the most advanced technology in the world. We hate boring maintenance and love to launches cars into space.
Finally in no small part is American sub-culture. Specifically the science fantasy of space travel and colonization that is in the heart of a lot of American engineers and scientists. The same fantasy that captured the heart of Elon Musk, a billionaire South African immigrant who made his fortune in Silicon Valley. In addition there is the added fact that few other countries would allow some random small company to build ICBMs in their metaphorical backyard. The USA is kinda loose like that...
Over the last 40 years I've known and worked with some of these people, and I marvel at their tenacity and the sheer force of will they have to succeed. It just blows me away. Sadly, it seems to disappear from the next generation. I'll admit that I have a small sample size.
I don't know what component is responsible for the difference between immigrants and natives. Maybe it's the selection, the change of environment, the adversity, or sheer diversity of individuals. If we could manage to build an education system that produced students as dedicated, creative and hard working as our best immigrants, the USA would secure a place in history that would make the 1400 years of the Roman Empire seem like a blip in comparison.
These people are actively undermining the American spirit - I am saying this as an immigrant to USA and a person of color. I am fine with understanding racism in USA, it is completely unacceptable to inject this into STEM education. The next generation is going to grow up learning more about race at the expense of learning mathematics.
This isn't just my opinion - professors from UC Berkeley/Stanford and many major universities have written an open letter to the California Governor: https://www.independent.org/news/news_detail.asp?newsid=2287
Apparently, the message was clear and the California government is pausing this initiative: https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/ag/ag/yr21/agenda202107.asp
This disgusts me. Some kids are stupid (Apologies for blunt language, but it's true, life is unfair.) or have poor home lives, so let's remove education that can help them have better lives because some of the struggling kids are black. Counterintuitive, oversensitive, and directly hindering
Dragging everyone down because some diversity quotas aren't met is awful. Unless there's clear evidence that teaching advanced math directly contributes to racism, teach it, make it harder. Make our kids work and succeed and fail again.
What about the black overachievers? Princeton certainly didn't lower the bar for him [0]
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/10/us/princeton-first-black-vale...
I'm not even saying that black kids have any inherent disadvantages, but that people have become so sensitive to that perception as to seriously hinder actual education.
Seriously, people are worried about racial sensitivity in math. These two things do not go together, should not go together, and have almost zero reason to interact.
Instead of paying for a committee of bureaucrats (with generous pensions!) to write about "racism in math", why not hire a couple of undergrads as extra tutors for students of color struggling with math?
Overcorrection is the norm.
Probably because incrementalism simply isn't possible. So when reform does happen, it releases decades of bottled up pressure. Like a dam bursting.
I don't have a dog in this fight. I've seen too many of these spasms to care too much.
That said, my hot take on bias training is two fold.
1) Bias training for teachers (and every other profession) is long overdue. This is indisputable.
2) I'm unaware of any validation which shows bias training for students is worthwhile. Maybe it is. But hippocratic oath dictates that we figure this out before committing.
Teachers et al should dog food their own training for a while. Lead by example. See how well it works.
My hunch is that students will pick up most of the important lessons thru osmosis.
Simply removing teacher-born biases, those negative role models, certainly couldn't hurt.
The big problem to me is that teaching math is hard, and teaching math well, as recommended in that booklet, is really hard. You can write all the pamphlets you want, but in the end the answer will be about the same - get really good teachers. Which probably means paying teachers a lot more than we do now.
It is strange that you think that letter would change my opinion though. It doesn't really contain any analysis or arguments. It just says that the changes are bad, and here is a long list of people that agree. After having read the actual document, why would you think reading that letter would change my mind?
Originally, you linked to a pamphlet and implied that the authors of the pamphlet were "actively undermining the American spirit". I pointed out that the packet appeared to provide good advice for math instruction. You responded "perhaps you should question your stance based on what apparently is a marketing pamphlet precisely designed to persuade people". Why did you link to it then?
What information are you pointing me to that would "convince [me] otherwise"? I read the letter you linked to, and it provides no arguments. As I said previously, it is mostly a list of names of people who are publicly stating their disagreement with a different document - literally appeal to authority fallacy.
I think you would be surprised how much we are aligned on the importance of math education. I'm an engineer from a family of engineers. I clicked your link because I have a son starting kindergarten in a California public school in two and a half weeks. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that the math education being advocated appeared better than the one I received, not worse.
It's important to show what the marketing material is - verbatim - and what kind of BS is being peddled by these people. Apparently, you didn't find it BS so I asked you to read up on it.
I am not following your logic in this entire argument chain. Let's move on.
“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus
But have access to fewer resources, networks, capital, markets etc..
Also, the % of US immigrants that are on the 'high end' is relatively smaller.
Migration to the US, when you include off the books migration, is a little bit towards the low skilled end.
But definitely the smaller relative portion of 'hardcore talent' is still actually quite large in real terms, and yes, they do disproportionately contribute. It frankly doesn't take a large quantity.
For instance, look at Russia! Their engineers are probably twice as crazy as Americans, but they have very little room to do crazy things with that talent. They don't have trillions of US dollars being sheltered in their tech startups by VC funds.
I think this mostly populist myth.
It's definitely possible for people to do 'great things' but there are innumerable factors beyond that. 'Passion' I would say is not even an important or necessary element.
'Grit' is probably necessary, but not nearly sufficient either.
That anything is possible, doesn't mean that it's remotely likely to happen even with unlimited 'passion and grit', or even talent.
So their bankers and politicians just can't compete.
After years of living abroad, I've come to realize one thing about America and Americans. We're a bit more willing to risk it and fail. Sure, loads of people would rather have a secure job and not make risky decisions. Still, I think there's a higher concentration of those who will. Compared to lots of places on Earth.
Also, for many who immigrate here, there's kind of no choice but to risk it and try to do something bold and crazy to make it.
US arguably has the world's easiest access to venture capital. Compared to the US, venture capitalists in other countries tend to be more cautious, demanding much more equity for the same investment, and often much more interfering as well.
A low regulation, low corruption business environment. Trying to start something like SpaceX in many other countries, the government will force you into various inefficiencies – using politically favoured suppliers, etc. The US has comparably little of these problems.
Why not simply... follow the model that worked?
VC economics rely on a portfolio theory of a few gigantic winners making up for the other losses. So if different economic conditions creates a difference in the ultimate size of our 'winners' than you have to figure out how to have fewer (or smaller) losses.
It's a little goofy, but I have a personal hunch that the high level of sunlight in Silicon Valley help entrepreneurs there - as building companies is rough so it helps to persevere if it's always bright out.
(Background, I grew up in Boston, moved to Silicon Valley, and have tried to start companies with varying amounts of success.)
(Please, I'm not making a political point, I just cannot refrain from punning.)
You're unaware that the US is one of the world's leading manufacturers of semiconductors?
For 2019 the US exported $44 billion worth of semiconductors. The third largest export for the US, behind airplanes ($130 billion) and oil ($152 billion for all oil products).
There are only a few major semiconductor manufacturing nations and the US is among them.
Wiki:
N1 LEO payload is ~95 t, weight 2750 t, height 105.3m
Starship LEO payload is 100~150 t, weight 5000 t, height 120m.
Perhaps explaining GP's surprise: I've heard SpaceX's testing philosophy contrasted against this sort of thing. That none of their tests are "too big to fail". On the other hand, according to this narrative they also stress iteration speed over success rate, and ramping up fast works to that end too.
Maybe they were getting diminishing returns (in terms of lessons learnt) in small scale tests though. No doubt there are phenomena you only see in larger tests, and (as you say) their confidence in getting the smaller stuff right might be quite high.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-will-pay-a-stag...
[2]: https://www.google.com/search?q=merlin+engine+dry+mass
[3]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28630+kg+of+gold+in+U...
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%28%28630+kg+*+%28d...
Current spot price of gold is $1800/oz. Merlin dry weight is 1380 pounds. 1380 pounds of gold is right at 40 million dollars.
Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25#Space_Shuttle_program :
"A total of 46 reusable RS-25 engines, each costing around US$40 million, were flown during the Space Shuttle program"
Beautiful.
In the chamber, the hot gases are >3500K, and touching the inner walls with a melting point at ~1400K, yet the walls don't melt, because they are cooled with more power than they are heated.
I'd argue that they're being cooled with equal power, otherwise they could freeze infinitely which is physically impossible.
I'll bet they're going to remove all 29 of these engines and re-attach them again later. I would expect they want much more testing than they've done to date (for example, pressure testing the tanks -- they have not done that with this booster, BN4, according to Reddit).
You mean for the first test flight? Do you have a source?
Long term plan is definitely land landing, but I haven't seen anything about the first test flight.
I assumed that they would try and land it from the start, they've already landed starship a few times, and it seems like that's where a lot of the unknowns still are (e.g. they're apparently adjusting wing size down after the last landing)?
Article: https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/05/13/spacex-outlines-plans-...
Video (Marcus House): https://youtu.be/9-9k513UIVw?t=298
Basically both vechicles (the massive booster and the starship itself (2nd stage) are going to "land" on the water, which means a hover and then sinking into the water.
Booster - Boost and separate, boostback burn and splashdown off the coast. Starship - 90 min orbit at about 120km, reentry and spashdown near Hawaii
It's fairly quite likely that both would crater on this first flight - for instance this is the first booster flight and also the first reentry for the starship itself.
The Falcon 9 booster also had similar flight plans until it could successfully fly a controlled trajectory to the surface of the ocean before they risked a drone ship too.
Although, I'm not sure about that "then sinking into the water" part. There are big LO2 and methane tanks and If they are empty enough and closed, both Starship and Booster shouldn't sink. I guest, we'll see it soon.
But part of it will be underwater, initially the very expensive flamey part (engines). They will not "be the same" after the experience.
They also don't yet have any drone ships capable of landing the Starship or booster.
But yes, it'll very much "prove it can more or less land" prior to actually giving them anything (breakable) to land on.