6 ms·

No, rockets landing themselves is just controlling the mechanism you use to have them take off, and builds on trust vectoring technology from 1970s jet fighters

No, rockets landing themselves is just controlling the mechanism you use to have them take off, and builds on trust vectoring technology from 1970s jet fighters based on sound physics. Figuring out how to radiate a lot of waste heat into a vacuum is fighting physics. Ordinarily we use a void on earth as a very effective _insulator_ to keep our hot drinks hot.

fourseventy 8mo ago
His point is that everyone said landing and reusing rockets was impossible and made fun of Elon and SpaceX for years for attempting it.
- SmirkingRevenge 8mo ago
  He also said he could save the us a trillion dollars per year with DOGE, and basically just caused a lot data exfiltration and killed hundreds of thousands of people, without saving any money at all
  - sejje 8mo ago
    Elon Musk killed hundreds of thousands of people?
    - SmirkingRevenge 8mo ago
      Yes. Mostly kids, because of the DOGE ransacking of USAID https://healthpolicy-watch.news/the-human-cost-one-year-after-the-us-took-a-chainsaw-to-global-health/ https://healthpolicy-watch.news/the-human-cost-one-year-afte...
      - AlexandrB 8mo ago
        Not to be crass, but as much as I dislike Musk US taxpayers are not responsible for the lives of children half a world away. Why is the US the only country held to this standard? No one ever complains that Turkey is killing thousands of children by not funding healthcare initiatives in Africa.
        SmirkingRevenge 8mo ago
        Not crass, it's a fair point. It is our money and we're not obligated to give it away if we think it's needed for something else. I'd note though, that in terms of the budget, USAID was like change in the couch cushions and nothing else in the world was even close in terms of lives saved per dollar. Why the man tasked with saving the government trillions of dollars went there at all was nonsensical to begin with. Nevertheless, it is fully within our rights to pull back aid if we (collectively) decide it's best thing to do. But the only legal way to do that is through the democratic process. Elected can legislators take up the issue, have their debates, and vote. If congress had canceled these programs through the democratic process, there almost certainly would've been a gradual draw down. Notice and time would be given for other organizations to step in and provide continuity where they could. And since our aid programs had been so reliable and trusted, in many cases they became a logistics backbone for all sorts of other aid programs and charities. Shutting it all down so abruptly caused widespread disruption far beyond own aid programs. Food rotting in warehouses as people starved. Medications sitting in warehouses while people who needed them urgently died. The absolute waste of life and resources caused by the sudden disruption of the aid is a true atrocity. Neither Elon or Trump had legal authority to unilaterally destroy those programs outside of the democratic process the way they did, so they are most directly morally responsible for the resulting death. To add insult-to-injury, Elon was all over twitter justifying all of it with utterly deranged, insane conspiracy theories. He was either lying cynically or is so far gone mentally that he believed them. I'm not sure which is worse.
- myko 8mo ago
  No, people made fun of Elon for years because he kept attempting it unsafely, skirting regulations and rules, and failing repeatedly in very public ways. The idea itself was proven by NASA with the DC-X but the project was canceled due to funding. Now instead of having NASA run it we SpaceX pay more than we'd ever have paid NASA for the same thing. DC-X test flight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE7XJ5HYQW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE7XJ5HYQW4 It's awesome that Falcon 9 exists and it is great technology but this guy really isn't the one anyone should want in charge of it.
  - kortilla 8mo ago
    >Now instead of having NASA run it we SpaceX pay more than we'd ever have paid NASA for the same thing. This doesn’t pass the smell test given that the cost of launch with spacex is lower than it ever was under ULA. NASA has never been about cheap launches, just novel technology. Look at the costs of Saturn and SLS to see what happens when they do launch.
    - myko 8mo ago
      SpaceX is heavily subsidized and has extremely lucrative contracts with the US government. Not to mention they get to rely on the public research NASA produces.
- audunw 8mo ago
  The difference is that it was mostly clueless people like Thunderf00t who said it was impossible, who nobody took seriously. I don’t remember that basically all relevant experts claimed it was near impossible with current technology. That’s the situation now. There’s also fairly clear distinction with how insane Elons plan has become since the first plans he laid for Tesla and SpaceX and the plans he has now. He has clearly become a megalomaniac. Funnily enough, some of the things people said about Tesla is coming true, because Elon simply got bored of making cars. It’s now plausible that Tesla may die as a car company which I would not have imagined a few years ago. They’re arguably not even winning the self driving and robotics race.
- haspok 8mo ago
  > landing and reusing rockets Currently SpaceX have managed to land the booster only, not the rocket itself, if you are thinking about Starship. And reusability of said rocket is also missing (collecting blown up pieces from the bottom of the ocean doesn't count!).
fooker 8mo ago
> Figuring out how to radiate a lot of waste heat into a vacuum is fighting physics. Radiators should work pretty well, and large solar panels can do double duty as radiators. Also, curiously, newer GPUs are developed to require significantly less cooling than previous generations. Perhaps not so coincidentally?
- doctorwho42 8mo ago
  Well there lies the rub, solar panels already need their own thermal radiators when used in space ...
  - fooker 8mo ago
    Great, so you seem to agree the technology exists for this and it is a matter of deploying more of it?
    - Daishiman 8mo ago
      You need to understand more of basic physics and thermodynamics. Fighting thermodynamics is a losing race by every measure of what we understand of the physical world.
      - fooker 8mo ago
        > Fighting thermodynamics is a losing race The great thing about your argument is that it can be used in any circumstance! Cooling car batteries, nope can't possibly work! Thermodynamics! Refrigerator, are you crazy? You're fighting thermodynamics! Heat pump! Haah thermodynamics got you.
        queenkjuul 8mo ago
        Actually all of those things agree with the same laws that dictate why data centers can't work in space. Your examples prove our case. You just must not understand how they work
        8mo ago
Sparyjerry 8mo ago
This is a classic case of listing all the problems but none of the benefits. If you had horses and someone told you they had a Tesla, you'd be complaining that a Tesla requires you to dig minerals where a horse can just be born!
rlt 8mo ago
Figuring out how to radiate a lot of waste heat into a vacuum is just building very large radiators.
- throw310822 8mo ago
  From what I understand, very, very large radiators every few racks. Almost as much solar panels every few racks. Radiation shielding to avoid transient errors or damage to the hardware. Then some form of propulsion for orbital corrections, I suppose. Then hauling all of this stuff to space (on a high orbit, otherwise they'd be in shade at night), where no maintenance whatsoever is possible. Then watching your hardware progressively fail and/or become obsolete every few years and having to rebuild everything from scratch again.

fourseventy 8mo ago

His point is that everyone said landing and reusing rockets was impossible and made fun of Elon and SpaceX for years for attempting it.

SmirkingRevenge 8mo ago
He also said he could save the us a trillion dollars per year with DOGE, and basically just caused a lot data exfiltration and killed hundreds of thousands of people, without saving any money at all
- sejje 8mo ago
  Elon Musk killed hundreds of thousands of people?
  - SmirkingRevenge 8mo ago
    Yes. Mostly kids, because of the DOGE ransacking of USAID https://healthpolicy-watch.news/the-human-cost-one-year-after-the-us-took-a-chainsaw-to-global-health/ https://healthpolicy-watch.news/the-human-cost-one-year-afte...
    - AlexandrB 8mo ago
      Not to be crass, but as much as I dislike Musk US taxpayers are not responsible for the lives of children half a world away. Why is the US the only country held to this standard? No one ever complains that Turkey is killing thousands of children by not funding healthcare initiatives in Africa.
      - SmirkingRevenge 8mo ago
        Not crass, it's a fair point. It is our money and we're not obligated to give it away if we think it's needed for something else. I'd note though, that in terms of the budget, USAID was like change in the couch cushions and nothing else in the world was even close in terms of lives saved per dollar. Why the man tasked with saving the government trillions of dollars went there at all was nonsensical to begin with. Nevertheless, it is fully within our rights to pull back aid if we (collectively) decide it's best thing to do. But the only legal way to do that is through the democratic process. Elected can legislators take up the issue, have their debates, and vote. If congress had canceled these programs through the democratic process, there almost certainly would've been a gradual draw down. Notice and time would be given for other organizations to step in and provide continuity where they could. And since our aid programs had been so reliable and trusted, in many cases they became a logistics backbone for all sorts of other aid programs and charities. Shutting it all down so abruptly caused widespread disruption far beyond own aid programs. Food rotting in warehouses as people starved. Medications sitting in warehouses while people who needed them urgently died. The absolute waste of life and resources caused by the sudden disruption of the aid is a true atrocity. Neither Elon or Trump had legal authority to unilaterally destroy those programs outside of the democratic process the way they did, so they are most directly morally responsible for the resulting death. To add insult-to-injury, Elon was all over twitter justifying all of it with utterly deranged, insane conspiracy theories. He was either lying cynically or is so far gone mentally that he believed them. I'm not sure which is worse.
myko 8mo ago
No, people made fun of Elon for years because he kept attempting it unsafely, skirting regulations and rules, and failing repeatedly in very public ways. The idea itself was proven by NASA with the DC-X but the project was canceled due to funding. Now instead of having NASA run it we SpaceX pay more than we'd ever have paid NASA for the same thing. DC-X test flight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE7XJ5HYQW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE7XJ5HYQW4 It's awesome that Falcon 9 exists and it is great technology but this guy really isn't the one anyone should want in charge of it.
- kortilla 8mo ago
  >Now instead of having NASA run it we SpaceX pay more than we'd ever have paid NASA for the same thing. This doesn’t pass the smell test given that the cost of launch with spacex is lower than it ever was under ULA. NASA has never been about cheap launches, just novel technology. Look at the costs of Saturn and SLS to see what happens when they do launch.
  - myko 8mo ago
    SpaceX is heavily subsidized and has extremely lucrative contracts with the US government. Not to mention they get to rely on the public research NASA produces.
audunw 8mo ago
The difference is that it was mostly clueless people like Thunderf00t who said it was impossible, who nobody took seriously. I don’t remember that basically all relevant experts claimed it was near impossible with current technology. That’s the situation now. There’s also fairly clear distinction with how insane Elons plan has become since the first plans he laid for Tesla and SpaceX and the plans he has now. He has clearly become a megalomaniac. Funnily enough, some of the things people said about Tesla is coming true, because Elon simply got bored of making cars. It’s now plausible that Tesla may die as a car company which I would not have imagined a few years ago. They’re arguably not even winning the self driving and robotics race.
haspok 8mo ago
> landing and reusing rockets Currently SpaceX have managed to land the booster only, not the rocket itself, if you are thinking about Starship. And reusability of said rocket is also missing (collecting blown up pieces from the bottom of the ocean doesn't count!).

fooker 8mo ago

> Figuring out how to radiate a lot of waste heat into a vacuum is fighting physics. Radiators should work pretty well, and large solar panels can do double duty as radiators. Also, curiously, newer GPUs are developed to require significantly less cooling than previous generations. Perhaps not so coincidentally?

doctorwho42 8mo ago
Well there lies the rub, solar panels already need their own thermal radiators when used in space ...
- fooker 8mo ago
  Great, so you seem to agree the technology exists for this and it is a matter of deploying more of it?
  - Daishiman 8mo ago
    You need to understand more of basic physics and thermodynamics. Fighting thermodynamics is a losing race by every measure of what we understand of the physical world.
    - fooker 8mo ago
      > Fighting thermodynamics is a losing race The great thing about your argument is that it can be used in any circumstance! Cooling car batteries, nope can't possibly work! Thermodynamics! Refrigerator, are you crazy? You're fighting thermodynamics! Heat pump! Haah thermodynamics got you.
      - queenkjuul 8mo ago
        Actually all of those things agree with the same laws that dictate why data centers can't work in space. Your examples prove our case. You just must not understand how they work
      - 8mo ago

Sparyjerry 8mo ago

This is a classic case of listing all the problems but none of the benefits. If you had horses and someone told you they had a Tesla, you'd be complaining that a Tesla requires you to dig minerals where a horse can just be born!

rlt 8mo ago

Figuring out how to radiate a lot of waste heat into a vacuum is just building very large radiators.

throw310822 8mo ago
From what I understand, very, very large radiators every few racks. Almost as much solar panels every few racks. Radiation shielding to avoid transient errors or damage to the hardware. Then some form of propulsion for orbital corrections, I suppose. Then hauling all of this stuff to space (on a high orbit, otherwise they'd be in shade at night), where no maintenance whatsoever is possible. Then watching your hardware progressively fail and/or become obsolete every few years and having to rebuild everything from scratch again.