neaanopri

"Speed" is latency and bandwidth.

Bandwidth is solved with phased-array antennas at a high carrier frequency (Ku/Ka?). The high carrier frequency allows for high (literal) bandwidth. However, the phased-array antennas are physically the same size as some smaller, lower frequency antennas are, and thus transmit/recieve more power. This stuff in general is called a link budget and is standard in satcom.

Latency is just satellites at a lower orbit. This is only possible now because: 1. Chip manufacturing can produce a cheap phased array antenna that's electronically steered to follow the satellite in low orbit. 2. Launch costs low enough it's economical to launch tons of satellites

Bent-piping to a GFW ground station makes a lot of sense

We've decided not to do anything. Any other conclusion is foolish optimism. The effects will happen.

I'm skeptical 'big oil' campaigned against nuclear.

Oil doesn't compete for power generation, fossil fuel power is mostly from coal and natural gas.

I would totally believe coal companies did that

100%

Rent control in crises makes sense. Rent control was applied in WW2 in NYC for example.

Just like rationing is a good response in a crisis, but not in "peacetime".

Risk tolerance is not just engineering, but also how comfortable we are risking human lives.

In a "good war" like WW2 we should recognize that fighting that war is worth the risk and that casualties are going to happen. We don't need our own aircraft to compromise their performance to be 99.9% reliable instead of 99%, because we strongly believe we need to e.g. beat Hitler.

You can view homosexuality as an identity or as a behavior.

Recently the identity option has been emphasized. Part of those is because it offers more legitimacy: if I can convince you that:

1. Gay people exist 2. I am gay

Then, my homosexual behavior is more legitimate. Without the identity, Western legal codes were able to ban homosexual behavior.

It's probably the BOM cost.

I've seen the "burn up in the atmosphere" constraint before, and it struck me as a bit crazy for Shoot First and Ask Questions Later SpaceX to care about this

You're running a "resistive heater" which turns 1 unit of electricity into 1 unit of heat.

Heat Pumps can "pump" heat from the outside into the house, and this get more than 1 unit of heat from 1 unit of electricity.

Don't adjacent solar panels shade be each other? If not, then are the panels spaced less dense than they could be if they were fixed?

I can't believe I had to scroll down this far for someone to point this out.

If there's abundant pure hydrogen, synthesizing methane gets a lot easier, and we can use natural gas infra with no modifications.

One of the cases I think about for Hydrogen is moving energy around globally. The Sahara has tons of energy potential, but nobody lives there. How can we move that energy around efficiently, even across continents? Definitely not "batteries on boats"

One of the reasons liquid methane works well as a rocket propellant is that rockets need to carry their own oxidizer with them. Because methane is a smaller molecule, less oxygen is required to oxidize a given amount of methane.

With an airplane, which gets its oxidizer from the atmosphere, methane's lower oxidizer requirement is basically irrelevant.

That sounds like a helpful hint as to what the "price of carbon" should be: $500 per ton of aviation fuel burned or so

Masks work.

If everyone is wearing a mask, there are at least two masks between you and an infected person.

Masks don't provide 100% protection, but nothing does. However, masks are important, because they enable people to safely perform essential activities like grocery shopping, and most jobs.

We don't need to stop _every single transmission_, all that we need to do is make sure that each infected person doesn't infect more than one person on average. If each infected person infects two people, for example, that's a chain reaction of spread where everybody eventually gets the virus. However, if each person has a 50-50 chance of infecting somebody else, than over time infections will go down, and Covid will eventually be gone.

Wearing a cloth mask is not difficult, and is a very tiny tradeoff in favor of a significant decrease in transmission chance.

https://tomaspueyo.medium.com/coronavirus-the-swiss-cheese-s...

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...

To be fair, Delta IV had been flying for decades

I totally agree. I think the plans right now just aren't going to happen, a cycler probably makes the most sense

I mean there's not _no_ market, but I agree it's specialized. I could see this capability making sense for high-value, time-sensitive construction projects, such as oil rigs or wind turbines.

Also, the "global" nature may lend itself to container ship salvage or search and rescue. Esp. if the Starship doesn't need to turn around immediately, I can see a market for that.

All of these seem like they will need special-purpose custom Starships operated by a non SpaceX entity.

US Military is used to training recruits to use high tech equipment, and had the pockets to buy hardware to sit around "just in case"

I completely agree with you, and I'm thinking of blind people and some people with epilepsy who have animals which can detect and manage their seizures.

Agree with the sentiment, String Theory is (right now) untestable. However, virtual particles are part of the standard model and have been indirectly shown to exist by particle accelerators. "Shown to exist" here means "a theory which includes virtual particles makes correct predictions, while other theories don't"

None of the Trump voters I've encountered can even be remotely described as shy

I totally agree with you.

So why hasn't this happened yet?

I believe this is because what we have here is not a technical problem, but primarily a regulatory and legal problem. If the political leadership of the NHTSA had the will to make highway self-driving happen, they could publish a draft safety and liability standard.

The technical problem here is that while shuttle and robotaxi systems can go slow enough as to make fatal accidents rare, as you said, the most consumer benefit potential is for a highway self-driving system that would not require active monitoring like Autopilot does.

The political/legal question is: when fatal accidents occur, who has the legal liability? If it's the manufacturer, then why would they accept the risk? If it's the driver, then who would actually go to sleep and let their robot potentially kill people? Especially given the problems that Tesla autopilot has with stationary targets in the road.

It's possible that the key innovation required here is not anything technical, but an insurance product that would allow the manufacturer to assume the liability, but be insured for damages. This insurance product would involve a deep technical evaluation of the self-driving system to get actuarial-level probabilities of mortality.

On the NHTSA website, there are many >50 self-driving test sites, but only 3 which are classified as "highway". The most common vehicle type is "shuttle". A full self-driving airport shuttle, with purpose-built road markings, makes a lot of sense as a goal achievable with today's technology, and is far more likely to kill people due to its controlled built environment and slow speeds. https://www.nhtsa.gov/automated-vehicles-safety/av-test-init...

Revenue

This article is so smug. It reminds me of Communist arguments AGAINST worker's rights.

These communist arguments boil down to: "we should not try to make workers' lives better, because in order to have The Revolution, workers need to be angry and dissatisfied."

Just take a good thing where you can get it!

I find that what causes SW to break most often is changes to the OS, either other app updates or OS updates.

I work in a hardware company, and for any important function I usually set up a dedicated computer, install the software, and then never touch it ever

This is how the more sophisticated oscilliscopes etc. work. They often have Windows XP installed if you buy them used. Simple, doesn't break, no internet, if it's mission critical or expensive it's worth a dedicated and frozen computer

I have been following this blig for several months, it really is done of the best writing on the internet

Amazon successfully created a monopoly, with a combination of choosing the right market, and good execution.

Uber failed to create a monopoly, both due to their choice of market and poor execution.

Just because it is possible to create a monopoly, does not mean you will necessarily succeed.

This is a crisis, not a normal time. Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing. That's worth enduring a bad boss for.

To be fair, Boeing is developing a new capsule, while SpaceX is making Dragon 2, drawing on the legacy of Dragon 1, which they were awarded at least $1B for.

This sort of issue would have shown up on the first Dragon 1 flight if SpaceX had it.