Very inspiring, glad I woke up to watch it. Congratulations to the SpaceX team. This is what competition looks like. It’s funny how last decade SpaceX had to sue the government to get more launches.
https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1845131546501734440...
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/10/california-reject-m...
I cannot remember a more explicit case of authoritarian government abuse in a developed nation in recent memory, and it’s especially infuriating given SpaceX and Musk are one of the most important and innovative companies and leaders of all time. No other country would think to look at such accomplishments and try to undermine themselves through petty politics and lawfare.
Ideally, the commission will withdraw its objections and allow the launches; SpaceX obviously chose this site both for its proximity to the Pacific Ocean and for redundancy in case of poor weather in Florida (like this past week for example).
But then, there may be military missions that require launching from an air force base.
An orbit from there is useless for a mission profile that was slated for Florida. It costs more fuel and has completely different ground tracks.
The sats that spacex launches for Starlink, which are about as interchangeable as you can get, are less valuable in polar orbits because they spend significantly less time over population.
Congress shall make no law respecting
an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the government for a redress
of grievances.
Therefore, for a California state government agency to punish SpaceX for its founder's speech is unconstitutional.
Title 18 USC section 232 lays out criminal penalties for violating a citizens civil rights, thus unconstitutional acts can be and often are criminal acts.
Every fucking time we don't need to increase the size of the Government. It only gets bigger. Never smaller.
A prime example is the environmental impact stuff. They have already done that multiple times. Nothing really changed. If it succeed and doesn't blow up the impact is X, if it blows up the impact is Y. Yet these approvals take weeks and months.
There are also multiple agencies that put their foot down. Famously fish and wildlife was worried starship would crash in the water and hit a shark/whale. No seriously. https://youtu.be/kS8G5D9fg3g?t=21
Then there is the story that at Vandenburg air base, they had to strap a seal to a board and play rocket noises through headphones to see if it was distressed. Keep in mind Vandenburg has been a military rocket launch site for decades. But only now when its SpaceX do these agencies put up road blocks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SvJP5wfN4k
Not one of which ever returned to base with a sonic boom.
I assure you, the folks who tried to kill goats via mental powers and staring at them have required weirder tests than the seal.
They need to die off and get replaced by better competition when they mess up. And their market centralization ground to a halt instead of encouraged by the gov because of jobs and total risk aversion.
The FAA manages more flights and space launch operations than it did in the 1980s, when it had a budget more than quadruple the size.
To put it bluntly: you get what you pay for.
Our risk-to-regulatory oversight cost benefit analysis seems extremely off - we overregulate small things that do not have large-scale meaningful impact while basically grandfather in stuff like depleting the Great Salt Lake, coal emissions, etc. which have vastly less regulatory $ spend per environmental impact.
Ideally, if we could quantify all environmental impacts into a single number (ie. CO2 emissions but also wildlife impact, etc.), the $/impact spent across different fields would be equal.
Currently, however, we are likely spending 100x+ on a per-impact basis on SpaceX regulation.
Gee, almost as if decades of austerity politics, lobbying by financial interests, and regulatory capture has malformed a well intentioned regulatory apparatus? Seems like we need more regulation that's less interested in what "united citizens" have to say. (read lobbyists)
How are you arriving at that assessment of regulation of spaceX? i'd be interested in reading more.
> How are you arriving at that assessment of regulation of spaceX?
I mean, SpaceX launches simply do not have a large impact on the environment compared to say, all cumulative coal emissions in the US. The FAA AST budget (which is for SpaceX launches) is about 60 million. Total EPA budget is about 9 billion. That’s about 160x the size of the FAA launch regulatory budget, but the environmental impact of things the EPA covers (and mostly fails to cover) is much much much more than 160x the impact of spacex launches.
Reagen's and thatcher's whole agenda can be summed up by: "the biggest lie is 'i'm from the government and I'm here to help'"
Have you not paid much attention to politics since Reagan and Thatcher? Their whole objective was to hollow out the government piece by piece, then point to its declining performance as justification for getting rid completely, or to gut further. Repeat. This has been the modus operandi for conservative parties since at LEAST thatcher and Reagan.
>we have record spending as a percentage of gdp and are approaching a sovereign debt crisis
Yeah, it's those pesky regulatory agencies riding up that tally I'm sure, not the almost 1 trillion we spend a year perpetuating apartheid states or our military bases all over the world while 3 americans hoard more wealth than 50% of all americans combined. Silly, patently false defense for an already silly position.
Couldn't be the trillions we spent on the war on "terror". Or the trillions we spend on futile measures like the war on drugs. It's def the ftc and the epa. Those lot. That's who's causing our problems. Yep. That makes sense.
Are you serious? Either you're not a student of history or we have drastically different readings of the past 40 years of american government.
>We never really had an austerity movement
Patently false, dishonest rewriting of history. Did you not pay attention to Reagan actually did?
Reagan's whole thing was the whole govt helping is a lie.
Reagan cut food stamps and almost all other spending while drastically increasing the military budget, cut taxes on the wealthy, deregulated in the name of austerity, got the war on drugs going to villainize his political opponents.
You simply can not be serious. Maybe read Reagan's wiki page before writing such demonstrably revisionist history.