mcpackieh

I don't buy it, for several reasons. In no particular order:

1) 100-150 tons is the estimated payload to LEO, not back down to the ground. For Starship to land (on Earth) it will need to be mostly if not entirely empty.

2) Even if Starship could get that much payload down to the ground, how do you unload vehicles from an upright Starship? A built in crane maybe, but it sounds like a recipe for disaster.

3) Once you land a Starship somewhere remote, how do you get it back? It can't fly back (from Earth). It's too big to realistically airlift unless maybe you have a very large runway nearby for something like a supped up Super Guppy / Airbus Beluga. Do you plan on just leaving this cutting edge hardware in Siberia?

4) Missile defense systems could easily shoot down a Starship landing near enemy territory.

5) Why is this needed? Wars tend to have weeks of warning, at least for those who need to plan them. This is plenty of time for military planners to get their assets prepared to be deployed from nearby military bases or navy ships, both of which America has in spades around the world. American military logistics are already so excellent, there doesn't seem to be much margin for improvement.

The biggest issue with the Mars plan is there's no money in it, no customers lined up and ready to take advantage of it. And even if a serious organization of prospective colonists started organizing and got funding now (nobody has a plausible answer for how a Mars economy would work, how it would get enough Earth cash to pay for itself) it would still take decades for them to develop viable Martian colony hardware. Even test-runs of such technology in closed environments on Earth are in their absolute infancy and have virtually no funding. As a Mars rocket, Starship is a bridge to nowhere.

Yet Starship is costing SpaceX a whole heck of a lot of money to develop. I don't think that makes any sense unless they have some other business plan in mind for it. Launching massive constellations of satellites is that plan, there's a huge amount of profit potential in the near-term if they can make Starship work. Starlink alone might make Starship worth it, but fulfilling SDI contracts could be the real money cow (incidentally, SDI is politically polarized, and this might be part of the reason why Musk has "gotten political". If Musk really wants SDI contracts then he needs republicans to fund it.)

If you're inclined to believe Musk is sincere with the Mars colonization talk, then perhaps you could conclude that the plan is to make insane amounts of money building huge LEO constellations and then use that to fund Mars colonization. But from what I understand, Musk has said that SpaceX won't be building colonies and is focused on building the ships to get there instead. Who's buying?

> The fact that NASA selected Starship as its human landing vehicle for the US's return to the moon strikes me as a remarkable vote of confidence by a highly qualified organization with far more data than we have and a lot at stake.

Maybe. I'm very surprised SpaceX won that contract, maybe people at NASA really believe they can do it. Or maybe they decided to give SpaceX enough rope to hang themselves. Or maybe nobody really expects Artemis to get that far and the whole thing is basically a joke at the taxpayer's expense. Or maybe there are people at NASA who believe in SDI and want to make sure Starship is successfully developed. In any case, even if they can actually do the moon missions there's a huge gap between hanging out on the Moon for a few weeks and making a serious go at a long-term Martian colony.

I knew this was coming, all Americans are the global 1% right? Did I even say anything about America? Regardless...

Get a napkin and sanity check yourself. 1% of 8 billion people is 80 million. There are 330 million people in America. If all of the global 1% are in America and not also in Europe and Asia, which is obvious bullshit, then only 24% of Americans are in that 1% and the remaining 76% are in the lower 99%.

And do you really think only Americans eat meat and wear cheap clothing? Get real.

The more you look into it, the more it becomes apparent that Starship is optimized for launching very large constellations of LEO satellites, not for Mars colonization or even Moon missions. It's publicly pitched as a Mars colonization rocket because this pipe dream is the foundation of SpaceX's recruiting strategy. (It's easier to motivate rocket engineers with the dream of Mars colonies than with SDI contracts.)

The ocelot concern is a transparent farce.

> "The richest 1% is responsible for 49% of lifestyle emissions. [...] luxuries like meat consumption or fast fashion"

How many megatons of meat do you think Musk eats a month? Does Bezos put a billion burgers into his belly? The vast majority of meat is consumed by people in that bottom 99%. For that matter, how many fast-fashion trendy patterned stockings do you think these men wear? It's really disingenuous to act like you're against luxuries for the 1% and then use meat and cheap clothing as your examples of great evils to be eliminated. Who would be sacrificing if large scale production of these cheap goods were banned? Not the 1%. What you are proposing is not to tear down the 1%, but to suppress the standard of living for the 99%.

Maybe you just chose bad examples by accident though, do you have any proposals that would actually limit emissions from the 1% instead of capping the quality of life for the other 99%?

Liquid oxygen as a hypergolic propellant? No. Rockets do not use liquid oxygen as a hypergolic propellant.

Merlin engines combine TEA-TEB with liquid oxygen to start the engines but do not use TEA-TEB as a propellant. TEA-TEB also spontaneously ignites with air; that shit is insane but you deliberately chose not to mention TEA-TEB because you know TEA-TEB would fuck you up (presuming you could even consume it without catching fire first!) Leaving out such a pertinent detail leaves it hard to believe you're not arguing in bad faith.

Why are we even talking about hypergolic propellants? Because a fear mongering comment upthread suggested that rocket propellants are extremely toxic. Scratch hyperbolic propellants off the list and what are you left with? Kerosene, methane, hydrogen, and oxygen. None of these present a significant toxicity threat, the worse of them is kerosene which can contaminate the soil and groundwater but all of the others vaporize harmlessly. So the fear monger was trying to cash in on the toxic reputation of hypergolic propellants to insinuate that Starship presents such a threat itself. This is complete nonsense, a bad faith argument that even a single minute of research can refute.

Go on reddit and ask them. They'll tell you that Elon Musk aligned himself with republicans aka 'literally nazis'. This outweighs anything positive he could possibly ever do. Any cred he once earned for himself by trying to popularize electric cars? Completely gone, he's a republican so he hates the environment. Building rockets is perceived to be little more than a cynical cover story for his real plan to ruin wetlands and murder ocelots.

> 4) Hypergolic just means chemicals spontaneously combust on contact with one another; it has nothing to do with environmental risk.

Lmao, what are some hypergolic propellants that aren't toxic? They're insanely reactive by their very nature, that means they will react and fuck with anything that's alive. They're intrinsically incredibly toxic.

I went to Scotland and couldn't see Big Ben anywhere. Very confusing!

If it were a good idea from the perspective of farmers, then farmers would already be paying to do it themselves. This isn't the case though, so you will have to pay farmers to do it.

Why does it even have to be on farmland in the first place? If it's such a great idea with no environmental downsides, then dump the crushed rock onto other land instead. Then you can dump more of it without being limited by whatever is optimal for farm yields.

It's a baffling suggestion anyway no matter which direction you look at it from, there's nowhere on the west coast of the US that would be friendlier regulatory environment SpaceX than Texas. They would still have to deal with the exact same federal government, except to launch west they'd also have to deal with California and that would be jumping out of the frying pan straight into the fire. So what exactly would you hope to solve by launching west? Launching west to solve SpaceX's problems at Boca Chica cannot be a serious suggestion, honestly just baffling.

> squeaky wheel

Somebody who makes trouble and gets noticed for it.

> gets the oil

Is subjected to 'corrective measures.'

It's another way of saying the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

Synthesis: Work hard at making friends and playing politics.

> a problem that a public transport system cannot and should not solve.

Then people will continue to drive, no matter how much you whine about it. If you can't make city buses safe and clean, then people won't use them.

> Seems you think you're rich enough to put a wall around yourself and never see these problems.

In fact, owning and using a car is an effective way to avoid the filthy of city buses. You seem to think this is a mistaken belief, but you're simply wrong. You will never persuade Americans to give up their cars and use buses instead unless you acknowledge the problem of filth and fix it. You can't gas light people into thinking the filth is fine or their cars aren't an option. Denying the problem and trying to shame people who acknowledge it will never get you to the state you want society to be in.

> He also said the officers were improperly interviewed without legal or labor representation present.

This counts as irony, right?

What's the point of 'playing' a game if a bot does it for you?

> Oh whatever. Short of attacking the driver I saw most of that in a relatively short stay in Paris.

When public transit advocates dismiss such inhuman conditions as a non-concern, I can only laugh. The average driver in America will never be shot at in any point in their entire life, but by your own admission inhumane filthy conditions are so common on city buses that you saw all of the above behaviors, excepting only the assault, during a short stay in Paris. I prefer the very infinitesimally small chance of getting into some sort of Mad Max scenario in my car to a 100% chance of encountering disgusting filth on a city bus. Most Americans agree with me. Most people who say they disagree actually have no choice and when they say they prefer the bus they're just coping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes

If America had a civil and clean population like Japan, then the situation could be different. Clean city buses would be inoffensive, but that's not the reality we're dealing with. The deranged antisocial population of America is substantial. Maybe you'll say that we should fix that. You bet your ass we should. But until that happens, don't expect people to put up with city buses when they have any other choice. Just because you're okay with wallowing in filth doesn't mean the rest of us should be.

I disagree, most celebrities were/are posting what may as well be their fart schedules. Why would anybody care the vacations or fancy meals or random musings of some guy famous for being in movies? Some people evidently do care (voyeurism, and they'd care just as much about his fart schedule) but the point is the such an account doesn't have a check mark because it posts relevant or interesting content but rather because the guy is famous for things completely unrelated to what he posts about. The checkmarks for celebrities had nothing to do with what they posted and everything to do with who they are.

> Using a car without a license is in fact banned

On public roads, but not otherwise.

> Show ID... [...] (not all of us drive or have a driver license).

Your objection is irrelevant. States give photo IDs which are just like drivers licenses except they don't say "drivers license", you don't have to pass any driving tests, and you can't drive with them. Otherwise they look and work the same and every employee trained to look at drivers licenses will accept them without hesitation.

> People recognize that cannabis is habit forming

You say that, but there's a lot of people who flat out deny it. You're saying that everybody knows this, but that isn't true. Same thing with the driving under the influence thing. A lot of people have told me that they drive safer when high because it heightens their senses and slows their roll and makes them paranoid and therefore careful, and a whole lot of cope like that invented to excuse themselves for doing it.

The downsides of cannabis that you claim everybody understands and recognizes are in fact flat out denied by many people.

I mean that prior to the change, twitter gave the checkmark to famous people and brands who's identities were verified, not to accounts that they thought posted particularly good content. It was never intended to be a mark of quality in the first place. If [famous celebrity] was posting nothing but their fart schedule, they were eligible for a check. If [random grad student] was posting insightful findings from their research, they weren't eligible for a check mark because they lacked the requisite notability/fame.

The twitter checkmark was a mark of authenticity, not quality.

In other conversational contexts on this forum, people laugh and gloat about how ineffectual parental control over internet consumption is. Kids find a way, any attempt to lock things down will be quickly circumvented as kids turn computer hacker to access the unfiltered internet. But as soon as the conversation turns to regulating tech businesses, we get people like you pretending that parents have all the responsibility and can easily ban their kids from social media if they simply bothered to try and that failure to do so is nothing more than the product of parental neglect.

The same plays out with "just talk to your kids". In conversations about regulating businesses, the narrative is that parents can simply talk to their kids and persuade them to not use social media. But in other conversations, the narrative is that kids are naturally rebellious and have a strong "always do the opposite of what my parents suggest" instinct.

Presuming innocence doesn't make him actually, literally innocent. The reality of what happened is what it is, regardless of whether anybody can prove it to a legal standard.

Also, when you say "We tend to presume innocence", that's not really true. It's true (or is supposed to be true) for the government and people who want to be civically responsible, but a whole lot of the general population does not actually think this way. People think OJ did it, have various theories about who killed JFK, etc. People read the news about somebody accused of murder and think "yeah, that guy probably did it."

ICE cars make plenty sense if you care more about personal convenience than the environment. Even if gas stations eventually become impossible to find, that's many years off in the future. By the time that comes to pass you'll probably be looking for your next car again anyway.

> We know the downsides already

In the sense that the downsides are documented in the relevant scientific literature, sure. But popular perception of those downsides is very different. A whole lot of people think those downsides are a pack of lies: that cannabis isn't habit forming, that it doesn't make the average user lazy and complacent, that it doesn't increase the risk of schizophrenia, that driving under the influence of it isn't unsafe and is probably even safer, etc. The downsides are all "DARE lies" according to many of the people who think legalizing cannabis is worth it, who weighed the harms of criminalization against 'cannabis is literally harmless.'

(FWIW I voted to legalize it in Washington in 2012.)

Cute. Except SpaceX's rockets are demonstrably the most advanced in the world.

(Hint: Musk didn't program them himself.)

> a world leader saying something very dangerous and scary. i.e. Putin could announce an all-out invasion of the US, Biden could announce aliens have landed and are here to exterminate us, etc. etc.

Who needs deep fakes when you have hot mics?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_begin_bombing_in_five_minut...