spaceheretostay

Well, signal strength yes - it does have those limits. But pressure data from the barometers can describe some higher altitude conditions (if you can map pressure at the surface over a large geography with decent density, you can infer metrics about the higher atmosphere).

And I do agree that other instruments are required for a complete picture of the weather, not just phones! But a remarkable amount can be done from phones. GPS attenuation for example, can also be read from some Android phones and can inform about high-altitude conditions.

That's interesting - I'm working on using cell signal strength as an indicator for live weather features! There's a simple relationship between signal strength and clearness of weather - light rain has a distortion signal, heavier rain a heavier distortion, etc.

I'm betting that when all is said and done, the cell phones will help the weather forecast more than hurt it - but this may take some years if the cell companies are too greedy about it.

I'm working on detecting weather using all kinds of phone sensors like barometers and cameras in All Clear if you're interested: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearwe...

and the open source sensor package: https://github.com/JacobSheehy/AllClearSensorLibrary

Yeah, I guess that's where Elon ended up! SpaceX will do it in the extreme then, without batteries and with just rocket engines.

These are small, low-altitude, low-capacity planes - because this is a hard problem and you have to start small.

I wonder though - does Bye have ambitions in creating larger ones that fly at higher altitudes? I've thought about this ever since Elon speculated that high-altitude electric planes could be insanely efficient: they don't require the intake that normal jet engines do, so they can fly in thinner air and thus require less power to overcome air resistance.

The main problem being battery density, IIRC. I wonder how that has changed since the ideas were floated some years ago.

I want the super-fast, high-flying, supersonic electric planes please! That could do more to alleviate greenhouse gas emissions than even electric cars might!

I'm not making fun of anyone! To me it sounds like the poster is making fun of all of us fools who have repetitive tasks in our lives.

> 'What repetitive tasks do you do?'

> 'None. I'm in pure math'

...just seems snarky and condescending. I'm listing real problems that most people have, that are indeed repetitive, mostly work-related, and could have solutions (at least partial solutions).

Maybe you don't want such a machine, but I sure do! And I consider all of those things tedious, and repetitive. I get that not every startup idea or problem-solution set is for everyone - but come on, I'm out here pitching dozens of real-world relatable problems that real people have.

I honestly don't believe that there are people with 0 repetitive tasks in their lives that could see no improvements with software (or hardware?). It's just not possible.

Sure. I don't see why not? Peeing is an enormous time sink on humanity and would be absolutely ground-breaking if a startup could make signifiant progress there.

If you were being sarcastic and intentionally telling me to stop being creative and thinking big-picture, please don't do that. I hate when HN just shuts down all creative thinking with sarcastic laughter.

I don't see breathing as a tedious repetitive task because it happens mostly automatically and can be done in parallel with other work quite easily. But I could be wrong and I suppose there's room for improvement there too. CO2 detectors and air quality monitors in meeting rooms - as a standard - would likely boost productivity and reduce other tedious work as employees will be able to breathe easier (with better knowledge about CO2 in the office, more efforts for improved ventilation would likely happen).

So the commenter is on HN, but has literally zero (0) things that could be automated through software in their life? I just don't believe it's true.

Sorry if some of my guesses were not in line with the question directly.

Oh I'm still adding. I consider them all repetitive, but it's okay to debate some or most. The point is I'm guessing about a stranger's life and I'm bound to hit on some repetitive tasks they do.

The answer 'none' is just condescending to the point of silly and it's obviously not true. I'm hoping to illuminate how there are repetitive patterns in everyone's life. Even 'pure math researchers'.

Not sure if serious or joking.

You don't stand up every now and then to stretch your legs?

You don't take a sip of coffee or tea or water periodically?

You don't ever run out of ink or pens or paper and have to get new ones?

You don't ever check your email or flip through math journals looking for interesting new papers being published?

You don't ever turn on a computer or turn it off/put it to sleep?

These are all repetitive tasks and I have a hard time imagining you do none of them or anything like them in your work life.

You don't refresh HN ever to see if there are new stories related to your pure math?

You don't ever type your ideas into a document and email it to someone?

You don't ever log in to any financial account to view balances?

You don't ever check your phone to see if someone has texted or if there is an important message waiting?

You don't ever spin a pen on your fingers while you think?

You don't ever pace around while thinking?

You don't ever have something online you have to manually log into to check for work? Vacation days? Researcher collaborations? Grant results? Nothing?

You don't have to get gas to fill up your car tank? Do you work remotely? You don't have to check the bus schedule or wait for the subway? Doing the same thing every day that doesn't really require your mental energy - like filling up your tank of gas on the way to work - is something I would call repetitive.

You don't ever click on links to open video chats or type in phone numbers to make phone calls?

All this fancy stuff, but where's my Sets at? Google took down the website like 15 years ago. I used that thing daily. Then they put it into Google Sheets. You could type "apple" then "pear" then "orange" and then select cells, drag, and you'd get a list of fruits! Some you never heard of before!

I looked around and Google has a patent on it, and seemingly no public implementation. This makes me super sad because I honestly considered Sets one of the most useful exploration and ideation tools ever created.

BigQuery in Sheets, cool I guess? I want Sets back.

Given that cannabis is far less dangerous than alcohol, both to the person having cannabis and to those nearby them, I think it should be treated very differently indeed! Alcohol use is responsible for like 90,000 deaths per year in the USA and cannabis close to 0 (there may be some related car accidents, I don't know, but no direct deaths and far fewer related ones).

Cannabis should be far more acceptable to use in modern society than alcohol. Persons having cannabis are much less likely to cause violence than those with alcohol, and are much more likely to think calmly about ways to improve the world.

I can think of 1000s more reasons why cannabis should be treated differently than alcohol by our governments and societies!

Sure, not my intention - I think most people don't care. It's not a judgement about them. I just think they don't grasp it because they don't care and that's okay.

It is extremely short-sighted, how we have treated our planet. With oil and gas companies lying to the public about their research for 50 years, and politicians intentionally taking stances that we should pollute more (just because we can), the main issues on Earth are around decision making.

It will not be technology that solves climate change; it will be a reigning in of externalities, correctly pricing pollution into corporate development and taxation, and the recovery of truth into politics and decision making.

It should be common knowledge that most corporations are trading our long-term health for short-term profits; if only the corporations could wait 5-10 more years for profits, they could be had sustainably for centuries, rather than all in a burst today.

We need better decision making on Earth - and better technology. But it's hardly SpaceX's fault that we haven't solved our Earthly crises yet.

Oh I agree, it won't be soon! But that's the real goal of today's launch: to learn more about the technology that will enable the technology to terraform Mars (and to bank money to fund it).

I think that is lost on most people. There's no point in today's launch for SpaceX if they don't get closer to colonizing and then terraforming Mars. They don't care otherwise - that is the goal.

Edit: Not sure what you mean by elitest, but okay. Every SpaceX launch, including today's, works towards this goal: this is what watching SpaceX launches is about for a lot of people, maybe most who watch.

> people are amazed by it.

Being 'amazed by it' isn't equivalent to fully realizing what SpaceX's achievements imply: specifically tracking the progress of SpaceX means counting down the years until you can buy a ticket to Mars.

Do most people realize that these launches are primarily done to create Mars colonies? Do most people realize that the goal of SpaceX is to terraform Mars into a planet livable like Earth? Do most people really grasp all this?

I haven't met a single person (aside from existing friends) IRL that understands any of this. It seems to be mostly "cool, rockets!" to most people - none of the full understand of what each success is to SpaceX: money in the bank for Mars development and experience launching rockets to colonize space.

The vertical landing via rocket is to make it easy to launch and land on any solid surface in the solar system. Do most people realize the impact of this? I would be shocked.

At least initially, I think ticket sales will do. With ticket prices floated for like 20 years before any go on sale, the target price is like $200,000 or so and the idea is that many people will be both willing and able to sell their Earthly possessions and go.

They will produce multiple exports from Mars that are most likely going to be scientific data and software, things that are easily transmittable back to Earth (unlike rocks etc).

I would also imagine the more distant future profit models will be similar to on Earth; people will buy and sell goods and services there, just like they do here. There will be Martians who want to go explore the rest of the solar system, so they will build that tech as well.

I could list more and maybe I will but I gotta run. There are limitless potential sustainable profit motives and economic activities that will happen on Mars; until we go and establish the colonies, we can only speculate the exact nature of them. But given that millions of people are saving their money clamoring to move to Mars ASAP, I imagine there will be millions of ideas for generating income on Mars.

Where there are problems that people have, there will be solutions that people will pay for. And there will be millions of people on Mars - so I expect millions of problems and millions of solutions.

Edit: I imagine sports arenas will be built, and new sports created/adapted for Mars (the moon will surely be popular for this too). There will be Martian olympics and various other games that nobody on Earth can do - but will surely pay $20 to 'livestream' ppv.

I'll keep thinking about possible _differentiated, diversified, and large-scale_ revenue sources for self-sufficient colonies on Mars to consider prior to and during their founding.

FH is reliably going up and coming down, which is incredible: my attention is barely here since they are building multiple Starship Hopper test articles in the open fields of south Texas. [1, 2]

The increasingly most likely scenario with SpaceX and BO is that we'll have self-sufficient Mars colonies and space colonies in the next few decades. The funding is economics-based this time around rather than taxes and government projects, making it less volatile and less likely to be cancelled. Pumped!

[1] Tethered first test: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1114390314565787648?s=19

[2] https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=47730.msg1...

SpaceX's goals of creating a Mars colony with millions of people moving there in 20-60 years andreducing most long-distance travel on Earth to ~40 minutes create much wider audiences with huge excitement attached to every move. Also, Elon Musk is a celebrity and drives a lot of SpaceX interest.

Israel's SpaceIL is much smaller, has much more constrained focus and draws a smaller crowd due to the less-epic plans and less-known personalities. Not to take away from their accomplishments - I love this news story - but are lots of reasons that this is less-publicized as compared to SpaceX launches.

We all know that each successful SpaceX activity gets us closer to a Mars colony and that is super duper exciting.