ggreer

7 ms·

1.
by ggreer 6d ago
An economy needs people and stuff. Productive people take a long time to make. We can make stuff in factories really quickly, but most stuff quickly hits diminishing returns. For example, a worker with two laptops won't be twice as pro
2.
by ggreer 7d ago
I said that wages would fall below human subsistence level, not that income would fall below subsistence level. People would still get income from other sources such as investments, charity, and government (via taxes on others).
3.
by ggreer 7d ago
If you have machines that substitute for human labor, wages fall to the cost of manufacturing & running the machines, which is well below human subsistence level. Fortunately, you also get very high economic growth rates. So even people
4.
by ggreer 11d ago
I'm pretty sure license plate readers and other surveillance tech have been abused constantly in the past, but we see more articles about Flock because they have better logging & auditing compared to smaller competitors or governme
5.
by ggreer 14d ago
What diameter was the part that spun at that speed? Also do you have some idea of the maximum forces exerted on it? It might not be much higher (as in, less than on order of magnitude) than the peak forces exerted on some parts of a recipro
6.
by ggreer 19d ago
Ethanol cost more at the time, doesn’t help seal valves, lowers energy density, and eats certain kinds of plastic and rubber that are often used in fuel systems. Leaded gasoline caused colossal harm, but it did a good job of solving problem
7.
by ggreer 22d ago
I'm sorry, but you do not know what you are talking about. If you'd read the Starcloud white paper I linked to, you'd see that the plan is to put satellites in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit, meaning they would be in const
8.
by ggreer 22d ago
What sort of solar panel gets only 140 watts per square meter in space? Even with efficiency as low as 20%, you'd get 1 megawatt from 3,700 square meters. And you'd design the satellite to minimize heat transfer between the panels
9.
by ggreer 22d ago
If orbital compute fails, it won't be due to heat issues. Current radiators are around 8kg per square meter, and each square meter can radiate close to 1kW. So a 1 megawatt satellite would need less than 40 square meters of radiators w
10.
by ggreer 22d ago
Pecan island is 40 miles away from the nearest distributary of the Mississippi (the Atchafalaya river), and there are several towns (and a highway) in between. It's the ocean & weather that erode the coastline in that area, not any
11.
by ggreer 22d ago
Whether they make economic sense or not depends on launch costs. With current operational rockets (such as Falcon 9), the launch costs are too high for space compute to be profitable. All these projects depend on Starship succeeding. If you
12.
by ggreer 1mo ago
The reason they use old engines and leaded fuel is mostly due to FAA rules, not personal preference. Pilots spend a lot of time around airfields & avgas, so they want to get rid of lead additives as well.
13.
by ggreer 1mo ago
I live near an airfield that has been in operation for over a century. If I found airplane noise particularly annoying, I would have chosen somewhere else to live. I find loud cars & motorcycles to be worse, so I prioritized being away
14.
by ggreer 1mo ago
Around 15-20% of the cost of the lifetime of a jet aircraft is fuel. Electricity is much cheaper than fuel, so that would mean significantly lower ticket prices. Of course, such aircraft can only fly on routes shorter than their maximum ran
15.
by ggreer 1mo ago
Electric aircraft that use normal propellers are significantly quieter than their combustion counterparts. Here's a short video of some takeoffs and landings from both.[1] 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXm4TnaXDWc
16.
by ggreer 1mo ago
I'm trying to address one very specific point: Whether Starlink is profitable. I'm not trying to litigate other business practices. The development timeline for a different's company's fancy car for the super-rich is not
17.
by ggreer 1mo ago
The income/profit numbers I used include depreciation, and even if you subtract all space capex from Starlink income, the program would still have a profit of $482 million last quarter. That's a very pessimistic estimate, as it in
18.
by ggreer 1mo ago
The article about atmospheric pollution from deorbiting satellites leaves out the biggest source of stratospheric aluminum oxide: Solid rocket boosters. A single Ariane 6 launch creates 100-200 tons of aluminum oxide in the atmosphere (depe
19.
by ggreer 1mo ago
How is Starlink financially unsustainable? In 2025, Starlink generated $4.42 billion in income from $11.39 billion in revenue. Last quarter Starlink generated $1.6 billion in income from $4.3 billion in revenue.[1] So it's already a pr
20.
by ggreer 1mo ago
I thought the idea behind exoskeletons and fancy wheelchairs was that they allow handicapped people to go more places, not to substitute for better infrastructure. I haven't seen any of the companies behind these devices claim that the
21.
by ggreer 2mo ago
I was obviously referring to the surface of the moon, where impacts happen. It is impossible for liquid water to exist on or near the surface, as the lack of atmosphere means that water either freezes or sublimes (and is then split into hy
22.
by ggreer 2mo ago
Yes. There is no liquid water on the moon. There is no atmosphere. No life can exist there. The moon is struck by meteors quite frequently. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter noticed 200 new craters over seven years.[1] Compared to what natur
23.
by ggreer 2mo ago
Like most upper stages, Falcon 9 makes itself inert after a mission by venting any remaining propellant. Otherwise there's a risk that propellant could boil off, increasing pressure until the tank explodes, creating a debris cloud. Sin
24.
by ggreer 2mo ago
The moon is a lifeless rock with nobody on it. That seems like a better place for garbage to go than the earth. And since it's going to impact the moon at 2.43km/sec, I don't think there will be much visible stuff remaining,
25.
by ggreer 2mo ago
The ship had a little over 34 tons of payload, but there should be almost no difference in thrust to weight ratio at launch for an empty vs full payload bay. The stack itself weighs over 5,000 tons at launch. Assuming it’s 5,000 tons at lif
26.
by ggreer 2mo ago
Does this mean you think Starship HLS will fail? It will use a steel structure and is planned to be part of future Artemis missions. Also are you willing to stake money on that claim? How about this: If before July 25th, 2036, any version o
27.
by ggreer 2mo ago
Aluminum alloy and carbon fiber, because both have high strength to weight ratios. Steel is denser, so its specific strength isn't as high. But it retains strength at both lower & higher temperatures, and it's much cheaper. It
28.
by ggreer 2mo ago
Solid motors are simpler, but I wouldn't say they're more reliable. It was the solid booster failure that caused the Challenger disaster, and solid booster failures that have caused ULA's Vulcan Centaur rocket to be grounded.
29.
by ggreer 2mo ago
I'm not sure how that would help. If you're descending it's probably to land, and then you can recharge the batteries with electricity from the ground. That would be more efficient (and cheaper) than burning fuel to charge th
30.
by ggreer 2mo ago
The talk about AI water usage exists because in Karen Hao’s book Empire of AI , she got water usage wrong by three orders of magnitude.[1] For data centers that use water cooling, it's almost always non-potable water, and it's us

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