NASA indefinitely delays return of Starliner to review propulsion data
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
If you ever come across a bright teenager getting lulled into communism keep this in mind as a very edifying example of the pitfalls of that system. The recordings are chilling.
The ones who watch that recording and sort of pause and after a minute double down that the ends justify the means are a lost cause.
Disclaimer: I'm a random replyguy dumbass and both of these systems have huge problems. I have no better alternative.
Very few people beyond edgy internet teenagers advocate for authoritarian communism today. The real takeaway of Marxism for modern audiences is that an economy where the preponderance of firms are owned by an elite ownership class is going to create a society where all social and legal forces benefit the wealthy to the detriment of the working class. We could have a society where the average person works ten hours a week, has ample time off and plenty of spending money, and owns a home. But instead money is continually funneled to the elites who own and control the means of production.
In this sense, Marx’s analysis of capitalism seems correct. And in fact he never advocated to authoritarianism. It was opportunity Soviet leaders Lenin and Stalin who used the popularity of communism in popular culture to seize the power they desired.
Other communists like Peter Kropotkin renounced the idea of anyone, even themselves, holding that much power. Sadly they were defeated in the political sphere by the authoritarians.
Spend a little time looking at the history of anti-communism efforts by the United States in South America and you will see that we’re authoritarian too.
I don't think 10 hours a week on average is enough hours to grow the food to feed everyone, or keep any other part of the economy running. There's probably truth in some of the other parts of what you're saying but this, no way. Maybe 30 hours might be believable.
Cows allowed to milk themselves via automated milking apparatus actually produce more milk and seem happier.
Societal investment could easily bring these technologies to every farm.
Not necessarily desirable for every type of produce or animal agriculture. Automated chicken factories are also enormous and remarkably light on labour input, but there are other consequences.
A remarkable amount of labour goes into generating income to pay for care, for example. Both people saving for their own in later life (or insurance to pay for it), and working to pay for childcare so they can work.
And a sizeable amount also just to facilitate the work itself. Car payments so you can get to work. Student loan repayments on your training, and so on. Paying over the odds for a city apartment because that's where the work is.
None of this can be magicked away of course. But the amount of hours that directly address economic need or generate discretionary income is a lot less than 40.
It’s difficult to grasp the degree to which the economy would change if we had community oriented production. It’s not a simple incremental change, but a massive improvement in conditions for the average person.
Another angle to think about it is like this: imagine a world where all school children are taught how to properly participate in a cooperate economy from youth. We all learn how to write proposals and vote in regular meetings and work out disputes and by the time we’re adults we’re running big cooperative organizations smoothly. Okay now imagine a place like Amazon starts up as an co-op and all the workers are sharing in the profits. Let’s say they’re just as good as Jeff Bezos at running the company, but there’s no Jeff Bezos to absorb all the profits? How much would each worker earn?
Now in a truly cooperative economy there wouldn’t be poor third world workers to exploit for profit the way Jeff Bezos did so there wouldn’t be such massive windfall profits available, but it’s worth briefly considering how much each Amazon worker would be worth if they actually earned their fair share of the value they’re producing.
By the way the Black Panther Party ran a community learning center for children that focused on cooperation back in 1977. Imagine if all our schools were like this:
In my eyes communism is fatally flawed.
Inequality is inherent in human society at scale. Better to accept that fact and design the society with mechanisms that try to keep it in check.
Ironically, the Soyuz family of spacecrafts still flies to this day.
On the other hand, it's not the communists that knowingly sent a defective, leaking Boeing spacecraft into space because a cancellation would have been disastrous for a project so flawed it should never have been authorised to fly in the first place. And the consequences of that decision to fly are so severe that they are postponing a return to avoid probable death.
Nor is the communists that overruled fixing issues with a criticality 1 labelled item, leading to loss of Challenger and the death of 7 astronauts.
And last, but not least, it is not the communists that forgot the costly lessons of their complacency, leading to the loss of Columbia and the death of an other 7 astronauts.
And here we are again, 21 years later. Non-communists, yet complacently sending astronauts to their deaths because corners were cut. The only thing that changed is the ideology being revered. Personally, I don't believe that shareholder return is an improvement..
This does not work at all in most instances. I'm a descendant of Poles who suffered greatly from Soviet oppression and later due to communist rule in Poland. I'm always open to share their horrific stories because it's important to know the past.
The two most frequent arguments I'm getting from those young people fascinated with communism is:
1. The history books are false, Gulags were education communities where people chilled and exchanged ideas
2. USSR was not real communism and we'll make it work this time.
> As of March 2024, in-flight accidents have killed 15 astronauts and 4 cosmonauts in five separate incidents.
It's not; the US has launched more people into space; most of them using far more complex vehicles (reusable shuttles); some of them into far more dangerous missions - beyond the low earth orbit, to the Moon and back.
The US has had no fatal in-flight accidents involving simple rockets and space capsules comparable to Soyuz despite going much further and flying to the Moon. Their accidents happened with an experimental space plane (X-15 in 1967) and space shuttles (Challenger in 1986, Columbia in 2003). Russians spent over 20 years on their space shuttle, but it only flew a single unmanned test flight. The US space shuttle flew 133 successful manned missions out of 135 launches. Likewise, the US flew 199 missions with X-15 space plane, whereas its Soviet counterpart MiG-105 flew only 8.
In other words, Russians never got to flying at scale the kind of missions that killed US astronauts. You need to take that into account when comparing safety records.
I could spoon feed more details about this incident but if they are already going out of their way to avoid reality there is nothing to do but avoid them.
Or a Soyouz
What will be hilarious is if starship collects the starliner capsule in a couple of years and returns it to earth.
- Starliner's current showstoppers all seem to be in its Service Module's propulsion systems
- Relatively little delta-V is needed to deorbit from the space station
- Rocket Labs has been zealously developing several "as a service" versions of their Photon satellite bus/kickstage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Lab_Photon#Photon_versi...
SO: Could Rocket Labs quickly launch a "space tug" Photon, capable of replacing the Starliner Service Module's propulsion system well-enough for the undocking and controlled de-orbiting? Hard to imagine NASA allowing that with a manned Starliner. But is there any current capability to handle "dead" spacecraft near the ISS? Docking ports are very limited, and "drifting nearby" can be damned dangerous in orbit.
Even with Columbia and after, the discussion was always around sending a second shuttle up if the backflip inspection found a damaged heat shield. Maybe that's more understandable given the number of people involved on the Shuttle.
Still... What's the purpose of having that lifeboat there if it's never considered?
There’s plenty of supplies to take time to work up a better plan in this sort of scenario that doesn’t use the lifeboat.
And, quite frankly, that it can still operate with all those leaks is a testament to good, robust, design.
but i can see the potentiality of clickbait
source: wild speculation with no understanding of how difficult or risky that would be
This makes a lot more sense.
> At the rate SpaceX launches, they could probably send up a life boat and not even interrupt their schedule.
I was wondering about this, but the bottleneck might be Dragon 2 capsules which are ready for launch.
And would it produce some detente or raise tensions?
In the end, turning the crew into long duration stayers until a dragon capsule and suits to fit can turn up, or negotiate with the Russians may be a better outcome than repeating engineer fear of losing face a la "o" ring decision logic.