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tw04

It’s also fueled by rampant IP theft. It’s a lot easier to advance when you’re not actually inventing anything.

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The scale of wealth/information transfer probably hasn't closely been accounted for, and is a fascinating story.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/07/09/nsa-chief-cybercrime-co...

https://www.infosecinstitute.com/resources/general-security/...

https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/pub4199.pdf

https://securitypolicylaw.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/06...

America's petro dollar funds research by arming countries that pull oil from the ground, research that is then acquired, emulated, and iterated upon. Who's the crook in that story? The people robbing the earth of a natural resource? The people holding the world hostage forcing them to use their financial system? The people taking scientific knowledge they didn't "pay for."

While a significant portion of the techy American population in their younger years was against America's strengthen of intellectual property rights, while they were focused on art being locked down, were ignoring how much of America's strength in the world is propped up by claiming America owns ideas, information, and knowledge, that others have to buy from them.

Humans would be a lot better off if everyone just copied everyone so we could advance as quickly as possible - imagine if the entire would could just manufacture whatever cutting edge medicine some corporation is holding hostage - and that's just the medicine example. Let your mind wander to every aspect of life - clean energy, transport, tech.

Of course corporations wouldn't make nearly as much money, but is the goal of civilization for humans to live good lives, or for corporations to make maximum profit?

Humans would be a lot better off, if we could agree on what we are progressing to.

When US has agenda of X and China had an agenda of Y, etc, we’ll be pulling at the common center of humanity.

The feeling is pervasive in the enterprise as well. Each one protecting and petting their own agendas…fucking humans.

Yes its works for 1 generation, but nobody ain't going to break their back again to develop next generation cutting edge machine, if the adequate reward won't be there. And some cheers are not cutting it for capable and ambitious folks.

Adequate reward in corporate world means of ten hundreds of millions or billions, since risk of failure and losing it all are often massive and they do happen regularly, risk gets bigger the more revolutionary stuff you do.

That's why US won cold war - individuals and private entities were massively motivated to do their best, and so they did and in few decades leaped light years ahead of eastern bloc. Anybody from former soviet bloc/eastern bloc visiting western country went through absolute shock and disbelief, and that includes Gorbachev visiting supermarket in West Germany in late 80s IIRC, he thought its some sort of propaganda trick on him. I went through milder version of it too, a powerful experience.

Communism in any form doesn't work long term, tried and tested many times already, period. It fails on people, and that's enough for a complete failure. Neutral non-greedy AGI could make this work, if not turning into some form of Skynet... but getting vastly off topic here

As-if all countries are on the brink of launching their own space program, if only they copied a few PDFs from somewhere. Its a US intelligence talking point.

Be that as it may, these things are won by whoever crosses the finish line first and China appears to be ahead of the west at this point and especially if current trends continue.

Also worth noting that American space exploration achievements were also kickstarted by importing the talent from post-WW2 Germany.

"the talent from post-WW2 Germany" is that a new way of saying "Nazi war criminals" like von Braun?

There aren't significant differences between a V-2, AIM-120 AMRAAM, Minuteman, Patriot, Tomahawk, Saturn V, Delta IV, Falcon 9, et al..

They are all metal pipes filled with boom powder that can be used to throw things up.

And a microchip is just a bunch of copper wires with sand around them

One of the differences is that the V-2 was built via slave labor in a massive cave where people were literally worked to death.

"There aren't significant differences between a V-2, AIM-120 AMRAAM, Minuteman, Patriot, Tomahawk, Saturn V, Delta IV, Falcon 9, et al.."

I didn't think news.ycombinator.com catered to misinformation. I'm guessing your PhD is in Aerospace Engineering?

They are all pointy metal tubes with wings and (an) engine(s), filled with fuel that go boom to make them fly, carrying some sort of payload.

Their only difference is to what purpose they are used. Some are used to destroy, some are used to kill, some are used to defend, some are used to throw stuff into space.

But they are all pointy metal tubes filled with boom powder.

Absolutely insane comment and can't believe this is allowed here.

Nearly all modern forms of rocketry trace their roots to German technologies like the V-2, and rockets used for space exploration in particular are direct or spiritual descendents of intercontinental ballistic missiles repurposed for civilian use.

There really is no difference to the rockets themselves, they are all varying forms of pointy metal pipes filled with boom powder. The only difference is the payload they carry; whether they are humans or spaceborne vessels like satellites, or explosives of various descriptions with which to destroy and kill.

If you disagree, and you've certainly made it clear you do, you can put forth counterarguments instead of claiming quackery.

Well, you've almost convinced me.

One quick question though, what was the "powder" used on, say, the Apollo missions?

I've always heard the Saturn V launch had a J-2 liquid propellant rocket engine that used used liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.

Obviously I'm saying "boom powder" as a generic and funny term for the various fuels used in rocketry. They can be liquids (RP-1, liquid hydrogen, liquid methane, various hypergolics like UDMH, etc.) or solids (eg: solid rocket boosters, most military missiles and rockets).

The Saturn V used RP-1 and liquid oxygen for the first stage, and liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for the second and third stages. The Apollo CSM used dinitrogen tetroxide and "Aerozine 50", a 50:50 mix of hydrazine and UDMH hypergolic fuels that was originally used for the Titan II ICBM.