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Comment by wesleywt | Hacker News Reader

Politicians and empire-builders (Elon) is currently standing in the way of human progress and history.

So creating cheap, reusable giant rockets is standing in the way of human progress? Being able to use neural links to restore sight to the blind is standing in the way?

I'm pretty sure that GP commenter was referring to the other stuff.

He shouldn't leave people guessing what he was referring to.

Maybe not, but one can always converse curiously and ask them what they meant. It's nicer to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

My replies ended in question marks.

You're really going to play the "just asking questions" card? You're smarter than this. Or should be.

There was another group of people famous for building innovative rockets, but are otherwise not associated with human progress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb

So it is about the big picture. (And about small pictures like that of Elon making a salut like the other group).

So yes, currently his rockets do not transport explosives. But that can change anytime and I expect it will very soon.

I thought American space flight etc was directly indebted to the people behind the V bombs? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

The Saturn V was simply a scaled up V2. The critical components were all there:

1. boundary layer cooling

2. pre-heating fuel and cooling the nozzle by pushing the fuel through tubes in the nozzle

3. baffles to prevent pogo-ing

4. turbo fuel pumps

5. supersonic airframe

6. guidance system (although primitive)

The V2 was an ineffective military weapon that did little damage - because its guidance system was too primitive to be able to hit a target. Hitler also poured enormous resources into the V2 program, shifted away from producing weapons that were effective.

Elon rockets are only interesting because they can be reused.

What use is a reusable rocket with respect to explosives?

A car can be used to take people to the hospital, or it can be used to transport explosives.

They can bring explosives to space, loitering space ammunition.

Pretty easy. The only limits are your imagination and depravity. You launch the rocket, drop an orbital vehicle behind, and land. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

That vehicle could deorbit and drop a tungsten penetrator, smallpox, a nuclear device or any number of things.

All funded by a combination of government spending and defrauding the public via the Tesla Ponzi scheme.

Dropping a tungsten penetrator from orbit is an idea only science fiction can justify. In the real world the economics never close.

Huh?

In the real world we so far just managed to keep space free of military weapons not because they are expensive, but because of treaties. I just don't expect those to last much longer.

And frankly I never looked into the concept, but why do you think, a space base tungsten penetrator would be way more expensive, than a nuke on a missile?

The idea as proposed in various places is a very large multi-ton vehicle. He chose to focus on trivia. Pretty common for Elon fans.

Humans are pretty clever at devising ways to kill each other. The Russians put a garbage can of concrete on a ersatz ballistic missile on a terror strike against Ukraine. Like you said, these things don’t exist because of treaties.

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