Yes, America should stop doing their genocides in the name of humanitarianism until the homeless are housed. I mean they should probably just stop all together but even in a fantasy world there are limits.
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We would not have Tang.
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How about 5% less genocide?
After some consideration I dont want the US/China or Russia leading the charge in space exploration. All of them are powerhungry and even so the USA might be a decent option as NATO member the 4years of “America first” with Trump and the continuous “America First” during the pandemic by not allowing vaccine exports during the Biden presidency showed me we couldnt be sure that important advancement will be shared. Some time ago I actually searched the job openings of SpaceX and all these jobs had the requirement of being an US citizen.
What are you actually advocating for here? I’ll fess up here–I make close to all of my spending decisions with minimal regard to what has the best bang for the buck in terms of solving humanity’s problems. Am I still going to be allowed to buy Cheetos?
Assuming the answer is yes, where exactly do we start requiring private sector money to be spent in a way that maximizes social returns? To be frank, it seems overwhelmingly likely that you all start with the conclusion that Elon Musk sucks, and are kind of flailing around for some reason to argue that researching new rockets is bad, and you’ve settled on this weird argument that any research that doesn’t deliver maximum benefit for humanity per dollar is bad, even though no one applies that standard to anything. I mean, it’s even a bit controversial to say that charitable spending should be done in a way that maximizes impact per dollar. To suggest that money spent trying to invent things has to be done in a way that maximizes social benefit is completely absurd.
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I had two coworkers leave because they got lured away by fancy SpaceX after their felonies cleared up. It wasn’t more money, but it was more benefits and perceived (ok, actual) security.
“has” to be? Or “should” be?
You have a standard of living that’s sustainable for everyone on Earth and you spend some money to go to the movies? Nothing wrong with that. Double it? Triple it? Ok, not that big a deal. Quadruple it? mmmm ok, but you are in control of $150B even after setting aside $1B for yourself? Then you suck if you aren’t using that for what you think maximizes social benefit, if not just being reasonable about how much power one person should ever have and giving it up.
And Musk is a freak and a weird dude obviously, but whatever, he’s done some good for the world for sure. Tesla cars are cool. They’ve done good semi-original stuff with energy storage. I’m not out to get him and I don’t care a bit that he went on Joe Rogan and tweets like a fool.
Thanks Spaceman, and nice to see you around.
NASA has spent almost $9 billion on the Space Launch System (ignoring the money spent on just the Orion capsule which is another few billion) so far and don’t even have a single rocket to show for it, plus once that rocket does exist it will launch 1 time then be discarded in the Atlantic. In the meantime multiple private launchers have delivered 34 supply missions to the ISS at a cost of ~$6.1 billion.
NASA doesn’t build its own rockets, it pays United Launch Alliance (Boeing & Lockheed Martin) to build them and ULA does everything it can to just soak up money without delivering shit.
Does most of your money come from raping your workers and ripping off other businesses?
Because that is pretty much requisite to get a billion dollars.
These guys are clout chasing with this space stuff. It’s like the new age philanthropy so they can get good press and boost their ego. They pretend they are doing it for humanity.
When you go to Olive Garden do you pretend you are doing it for humanity? If you do I have a problem with you.
They are all extreme sociopaths so they are never going to get their on their own. Which is unfortunate. They hurt millions of people to get their hundreds of billions of dollars. The very LEAST I expect is that they do significant things to help people. Crashing people into trucks and practicing book price fixing are not enough.
I’d like to remind folks that it is possible for both Elon Musk to be a weirdo deplorable-adjacent bad hombre and for scientific advancement/space exploration to be Good for Mankind™.
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Good luck finding one in this forum. :)
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I’d guess it specifically has to do with GOIN 2 MARZ. We’re not goin to Mars. We’re not going anywhere. There’s a reason we (humanity) broke our necks going to the moon and then called the whole thing off.
And if Elon doesn’t know that he’s real real dumb.
I mean, imagine how many times scientists and engineers in his orbit had to smile and nod after hearing that shit.
I’m catching up on the thread in reverse but I’m surprised people even believe space really exists. It’s all a hologram inside a black hole.
Oh man i’m getting strong Elizabeth Holmes vibes from that dude.
I’ve always thought of things differently; I was building supercomputer systems when I was 9, 10, 11 years old.
Yeah ok champ. The kids building “supercomputer systems” when they were 10 years old get hired as salary workers by people like you.
p.s.
Russell: We are basically all the same [laughs]. Here’s what I will say, I do have a lot of respect for the Zuckerbergs and Bill Gateses of the world, guys who were able to create huge value in their careers. Einstein talked about how one of the wonders of the world was compounding interest in that you can have significant value creation over time the earlier you start. It’s for sure special. I think I missed Zuckerberg by about a year so I lost on that one.
This is apparently a dude who can’t think critically enough to ever ask himself if that quote actually sounds like something Albert Fucking Einstein would’ve said.
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I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. Also stack that paper dollar dollar bill playboy.
-Albert Einstein
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Let’s get really sci-fi: What if we need to be able to travel space before important natural resources on earth are depleted?
I don’t think we’re gonna like the answer to that question.
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I actually suspect that you’re right. I think if SpaceX hired a team of economists to figure out how a Martian colony could be viable, they’d get some very disappointing news. That said, the conclusion that it’s impossible for humanity to live on Mars any time soon is based on a ton of contestable assumptions and inferences. The chain of reasoning I object to is: (I think) going to Mars is impossible → (It is true that) going to Mars is impossible → spending any amount of money on going-to-Mars research is bad. More specifically, I think it’s extremely laudable that Musk is taking his crazy scheme to go to Mars, breaking it down into a bunch of concrete goals, then just trying to do the things in order to see if they can be done. If he’s right, then it will work. If he’s wrong, then it won’t, and he’ll just have a bunch of intermediate technologies that can be used for other things, like launching communications satellites cheaply. As an example for the robotic probe peeps, the Europa Clipper mission, which was originally intended to launch on an SLS, will likely end up having to launch on a Falcon Heavy, because SLS is trash. If Musk wasn’t out there with his weird Martian schemes, then it would have to launch on a tricked out Atlas V, which would cost a lot more and have to take a more indirect trajectory.
There’s a sense in which it’s a very socially useful outcome for Musk to build a huge fortune starting an electric car company, then frittering it away inventing weird space technologies that no one else would ever invest money in because they’re not weirdos. How else are you going to get those weird space technologies?
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