When did America stop dreaming big? On colonizing/exploring Mars and hating on Musk

[blindbear]

It most certainly is. As for Musk, he can do whatever the hell he wants, that's a feature of capital entrepreneurship and whatever his vision is. More power to him.

He is a crony capitalist who built a neat rocket, he literally refused to shut his factories down to stop covid and probably got people killed, less power to him and all like him.

He is not a good person, but he may have push the electric car forwards. Kind of same as Steve Jobs, he is not a good person either but he did push advancement of smart phone. A lot of the inventions are advanced by horrible people.

 

[blindbear]

Plutonium! OMG! There's at least two there now, might have to send bigger ones later. And if people are going to "spend the night" there, I'm sure they won't mind that a little Plutonium is keeping them warm.

I mean... I think there's a slight difference between a tiny generator using the natural decay of radioactive isotopes, and a nuclear fission reactor.

Obviously you can't have an industrial earth style nuke plant with a fissile core that needs cooling from a river or whatever. But you need heat and power, and some type of nuclear fuel provides both.

So, can they "scale up" the RTG concept or what? It's not like the humans have to sleep with a chunk of it. But if it's that bad, then just keep powering the robots with it and fix the problems on earth.

We can also have the robot build the reactor after the material leave the earth. They do not ever need shielding (at least not as much).

 

[blindbear]

Given how aggressive these companies are about protecting their image (but not actually protect workers), it is hard to know how safe the Musk's facilities are. Theoretically, building cars should be relatively safe if properly steps are taken.

 

[blindbear]

Well there were a lot of infections right?

They may not work as closely together as people working at meat processing plants but they must come close enough and there must not be enough air exchanges in that plant.

Hard to say, there are a lot of community transmission going on in Fermont at the time. My company (biotech) take reasonable measures (test weekly, social distanced desk, limited people in a room, etc.) We still get cases every week for awhile. It have slowed down now as the area moves to tie red.

I do find it is distasteful that he fight the public health officials publicly instead of work with them. Also, cars is not a essential products.

 

[blindbear]

Judging by the data of covid infections in Alameda County(https://covid-19.acgov.org/data) Musk certainly seems justified in keeping it open. Closing it from Nov-Feb makes a lot more sense than closing it in May.

One can also argue that California (and USA) should have lockdown harder to begin with. We have never gotten the R number lower enough in the summer to prevent the raise in Nov-Feb. This discussion probably more suitable for the cov19 thread at this point.

This is not the first asshole thing Musk did. The overpromise of assisted drive, treatment of the employees, crazy talk on twitter, possible self dealing with Solar City, etc. While I will admit part of his success it due to his pushiness, I think society can still progress without this most toxicity to other human beings.

 

[blindbear]

Supposedly over 400 positive cases in that plant.

Did they become positive after returning to work?

If it was within the first 10-14 days of returning, maybe they got it elsewhere. But after that?

Also 400 in a plant seems like superspreader numbers.

What percentage of the plant workers do all those infections represent and how does that percentage compare to the overall percentage of infected in the surrounding communities?

Unless there are over 10000 workers who returned to work in that plant, it seems like the percentage would be high.

As best as I could find, there are 10,000 workers in that plant. Though, that is probably a round figure, so say somewhere between 900 and 11,000 workers.

I would assume the onsite staff is less than that during cov19. My company only allows critical staff to be onsite (people who actually works with physical things). We are less than 50% onsite, and ever onsite staff are not in everyday.

Though it is Musk.....he may or may not be follow health guideline/advice.

 

[blindbear]

I see no indication that Blue Origin and Virgin are anything other than compensation for their respective CEOs’ self-perceived shortcomings.

Bezos seems every bit as serious as Musk about humanity actually moving out into space:

The solar system can support a trillion humans, and then we'd have 1,000 Mozarts, and 1,000 Einsteins. Think how incredible and dynamic that civilization will be.

I don’t give him any credit for this. I see this as Bezos having a role in fucking up Earth, and then seeking an escape route for him and his selected fellow zillionaires.

I think it's more like seasteading but in space. If you can get enough people to make it mostly self sustainable, you can ignore even more laws than those already afforded to the uber wealthy.

I guess it is kind of like the cities in the Bioshock games? They may want to create their own versions of "Utopia". Or may be we are just reading too much into it.

Space originally was a "dick" measuring between USA and Russia. However, it did end up product some important science/technology.

 

[blindbear]

I don't think whoever it was's vision of a trillion people in space has a snowball's chance in hell of becoming reality though. I think it's highly unlikely that the majority of humans will ever live anywhere but Earth, and if I'm right about that, there are few opportunities to make space profitable that aren't based on selling services to people on Earth. Of course the dystopian possibility is space simply gets weaponized (yay Space Force!) and the product we get is death from above.

As I noted on the previous page, there's a lot more of "space" than there is of "Earth." Like, really a lot, even just in this solar system. This means that if we figure out how to live in space, it's essentially inevitable over a sufficiently long timespan that most of us will live there.

I think you're mistaking the problem for its solution. The fact that there is so much space (between everything of value) is the problem. Life is easy on Earth because everything we need to survive is highly concentrated in a place where there's also abundant energy. There's no other place like that, so life anywhere but on earth will comparatively be a struggle for resources you need to survive, let alone grow a civilization. The moon? Not enough volatiles. Maybe we can have some small settlements on the poles. Everywhere else on the moon there's nothing you'd want but rock and while you can live on rock you can't make living things out of it. Mars can provide a lot more, but it's never going to have an atmosphere so you'll be stuck living underground. Can it be done? Yeah, but anybody who can scrape together the savings is going to head for Earth, which is a relative utopia.

The only reason for mining in space is to build things in space. It's never going to be cheaper to produce anything out there than it is to produce something good enough on Earth, so while asteroid mining might exist, it won't be for us here. It won't be a profitable exercise but instead a necessity to make things that cost too much to bring up from Earth. Almost anywhere but Earth and Mars the price of everything will be in delta V, which means water that has to be burned away into the vacuum. On the moon, the price of everything will be in water, nitrogen, and carbon.

It that any manufactory process that would be easier in zero G?

 

[blindbear]

The problem appears to be that Matisaro cannot abide Musk earning a penny for anything therefore anything he does is abhorrent by nature.

Because I'm not seeing a valid point in any of his statements otherwise.

In particular the "nationlize space" suggestion of course raises the question of "So should the US control it all or should every government control the space directly above their country" and yes I'm aware of how absurd the latter statement is...

I am more worry about space trash than light pollution. I though some of the orbit are no longer usable because of space trash?

 

[blindbear]

Where are you putting these satellites?

I am not participating any more as I said but I wanted to clarify this. The problem with starlink is not that it is a satellite, it is that it is thousands of them for one purpose, a single highly build satellite does not blind astrophysics. Mesh networks in space are the problem when it comes to astronomy.

Is there any reason why actual astronomy has to be done on earth anymore? We could have invest in satellite that probably would work better?

 

[blindbear]

Is there any reason why actual astronomy has to be done on earth anymore? We could have invest in satellite that probably would work better?

There are some things which can only be done on earth like massive radio antenna arrays currently.

We also have several billions of dollars of active scientific instrumentation which is on earth being rendered much much less effective, if we worked out a space replacement I would want that up before we blind our earth based devices.

We have a generation of the brightest thinkers and theorists who need that equipment to continue to develop fundamental science, blinding them for 30 years while we figure this out robs us of a generation of potential Hawkings too.

All good points. I guess if the world care enough, they could have stop/limited the satellites in space anyway. There is nothing to stop the regulator to put restriction on commercial satellites to limit the light pollution, space trash, etc.

 

[blindbear]

What did Musk do *in 2021* that was world-class consequential?

Yeah, that got me baffled too.

I mean. as a comparison, this year Xi basically proclaimed himself emperor of China for life and quashed Hong-Kong's democracy. Those aren't good things, but damn sure they are more consequential than whatever Musk has been up to lately which to the best of my recollection was mostly pumping and dumping his stocks/various cryptocurrencies via twitter...

Pretty sure the Xi thing is 2019 or 2020? The CCP changes the rule and allow him rule for life.

 

[blindbear]

I think the problem is sociopathic values are inherent in financial capitalism. If you start with a healthy person they will be pushed in that direction, and people able to operate in that mode will be placed in leadership positions. Capitalism is the destructive AI Musk claims to worry about. It might not be intentionally malevolent, but it doesn't recognize human interests like having a habitable planet to live on. Even Musk who makes a great show of being concerned with climate change is all in on cryptocurrency in spite of that consuming a significant share of electricity on the world's dirtiest grids.

Now even that is a problem? Really?

Yes, increasing emissions at the critical moment for climate change is a problem in any framework that recognizes people's interest in having a habitable planet to live on.

But you know what? The liberal politicians are now in power, they can increase taxes for crypto currencies and make them unprofitable.

Why would they do that? Their function is to add a slightly more friendly veneer to capitalism, not hold it in check.

How about fixing problems instead of allowing problems to exist and screaming in outrage in order to score political points?

Seems to me identifying and characterizing problems is necessary in any effort to address them. Something I realized during the pandemic is that if the US will kill a million people to avoid inconveniencing capital during the pandemic, there's no reason it wouldn't kill a million every year from climate change or other problems. Even when this creates problems like the present labor shortage there's no mechanism to recognize the value of not undermining societal foundations. The decision making is targeted at the micro-level, which means penny-wise-pound-foolish decision making prevails. It's ultimately self-defeating, and even though most wealthy people understand that quite well they see themselves as being better off capturing as much wealth as they can in the short term as using it to prep for doomsday.

I wonder can they ever escape the doomday by leaving wherever they are. I feel that when the doomday came, someone will always come after them due to how globalized we are. Someone like Trump may able to get away with it because he has a loyal cult. I am not sure Elon's cult will follow him to death.

 

[blindbear]

It occured to me that the answer to the title of the thread is, "Whatever year the government started cutting back R&D funding and outsourcing it after it'd ramped it up during WWII and The Cold War."

America stopped "dreaming big" when all its dreams began orbiting Wall Street. Wall Street's dreams are small and myopic.

It is not just R&D. We do not do infrastructure either. Where is my generation's Oroville Dam?

 

[blindbear]

If as a nurse I said "naw no salary pay me in stock" and then I effectively made zero dollars from 2014-2018

This isn't how this works. If your company pays you in stock or stock options, then your income was whatever those shares or options were worth at the time that they vested and you have to income pay taxes on that value when that happens. You cannot dodge income taxes by asking to be paid in something other than money.

Wait until company towns make and come back, and they will pay you in housing, food and may be healthcare. :devious:

Come to think of it, how did the old company towns paid their workers?

 

[blindbear]

People have multiple motives. Musk could simply want to be known to be the men conquered Mars (Ego) or he could be just a science nerd that just want to go to Mars (curiosity). He could be taking advantage of the capitalism system, bad father/husband, etc. but still have noble/neutral intention in other areas.

 

[blindbear]

This is disastrous, because open discussion is the only real way a society can ever make progress toward having more accurate beliefs.

The paradox of tolerance is not a myth man.

In a ideal society, everyone who shows such believes would be laugh at and face social pressure (none want to be your friends, church kick you out, etc.). Unfortunately, we have way too many Xenophobic people.

 

[blindbear]

I for one can’t wait for the topic of this thread to get back to space exploration and mars colonization.

"...and hating on Musk"

Should we ever "hate" Musk? He is not a good person IMHO. However, he is not particular worse than any rich people through out the history. I think it is interesting that anyone who have accumulated power/wealth are generally bad persons.

 

[blindbear]

I saw that political ideology one from Musk. The reality is that he's not actually wrong about the "left" part. Being "progressive" actually does mean that your views become more progressive over time. If you look at that chart through the lens of acceptance of gay marriage, it fits perfectly. Or for a longer view, the use of the N-word was rather common in the 1950s, looked down upon by the 1980s, and shockingly inappropriate today.

So yeah, someone lamenting that they've got the exact same political views as they did 15, 25, 35 years ago, yet they're now considered regressive rather than progressive, congratulations on finally discovering what being "progressive" actually means!

People forget how far we have gotten "progressively" in social issue. We were still doing "don't ask, don't tell" up to 2000s. Females were also not allowed to service in combat roles until fairly recently.

We are pretty bad on economic issues though. I would argue some of the economic issues have actually moved backwards in the 80s to now. In honesty, I think Musk only cares about economic issues that directly impact him anyways. Just looking at how he treat his employees. I think he is moving Tesla to Texas has a lot to do with labor laws. I am also pretty sure Tesla has benefitted greatly from progressive/green policy at the time. I think Tesla would have bankrupted before success without government's help.

Musk is a hypocrite. He does not have a consistent political view beyond what is good for Musk.

 

[blindbear]

It's weird how people that think they are smart and in other ways he is smart can be so fucking stupid.

Although, the way he is actually smart (weird Tony Stark reputation aside) is that he's good at picking investments and hiring smart people, right? This screw up seems like a real mark against one of his core competencies. I wonder if there's something going on in his life (did he try to but Twitter while high?) or if it is just a matter of, he's now working in a higher visibility situation, less room for error.

It is also possible his success has more to do with luck and starting at 3rd base, than we have initially assessed. In a way, Musk is a gambler. Tesla almost did not make it. He essentially caught lighting in a bottle. Tesla stock is way way overvalue because of its myth in USA's culture. It makes good cars, but its valuation implies that it will become more than a car company.

Musk is definitely not Tony Stark ever before Tony Stark became Ironman. Tony Stark actually has engineering chop at a super genius level. Honestly, there are no such things in modern society. Every inventory/discovery is build on others' successes and have team of people work behind the scenes.

 

[blindbear]

Democrats are clearly smarter than Republicans in all possible ways and cases.

This doesn't seem to hold water either. Please provide evidence or a retraction.

We have to have a objective measurement for smartness first. Then we need to test a statistic representatives group of people to ensure the sampling is done corrective.

The truth is we do not know.

I think we may able to claim that Democrats are generally have more empathy based on their policies. Ever then, I am not ever 100% given how NIMBY are in area heavily controlled by Democrats. Also, we probably do not have a objective measurement for empathy or at least one that can test a large group of people easily.

 

[blindbear]

There have been claims in the past that conservatives like things which are black and white while liberals are more adept or comfortable with ambiguity, nuance, complexity.

So they're quick to label enemies the evil empire and lean on religious frameworks for ordering the world.

Meanwhile the godless commies refuse to categorize things into good and evil silos.

So it may not be a question of intelligence but which model of the world better fits the complexity that people encounter.

I think most people are more complex than good vs. evil in general. I do think Musk is a selfish person though. May not be want the world to burn level of evil, but he is certainly willing to take advantage of his employees.

I think selfishness is one of the components of evil. It is however, also how we keep ourselves alive and push ourselves to be better.

 

[blindbear]

To go back to the topic, should we ever "hate" Musk? Musk is probably not my favorite person, but it is also a product of the social/economic system. In a democratic society, we sort of choose the current system (Yes, I am aware of the misinformation, and other ways to affects the democratic system).

The raise of people like Musk speaks volume about our current system and may be ever human's basic nature.

 

[blindbear]

There aren't much loyalty between workers and companies in today society. People just do not build their career around a single company now. We are incentivized to get get as much out of our current position, leverage that for a higher/better position in a different company. It is not ever about stock options. The current culture makes it hard to get promotion/salary increase if you stay at the same company.

 

[blindbear]

Tesla's standard of quality control should give you a pause about their cars also. People like their online update....but I can not understand it. It is a car, I just need it to move me from point A to point B safely/comfortably.

 

[blindbear]

I'm not sure "drive to the resources you need" is a thing you can actually do on Mars. At least, if you need any resource that isn't a rock.

I mean, rocks are where you get a lot of important resources. Per Wikipedia:

Based on these data sources, scientists think that the most abundant chemical elements in the Martian crust are silicon, oxygen, iron, magnesium, aluminium, calcium, and potassium. These elements are major components of the minerals comprising igneous rocks. The elements titanium, chromium, manganese, sulfur, phosphorus, sodium, and chlorine are less abundant but are still important components of many accessory minerals in rocks and of secondary minerals (weathering products) in the dust and soils (the regolith).

[...]

Hydrogen is present as water (H2O) ice and in hydrated minerals. Carbon occurs as carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and sometimes as dry ice at the poles. An unknown amount of carbon is also stored in carbonates. Molecular nitrogen (N2) makes up 2.7 percent of the atmosphere.

For insulation and radiation shielding you can dig tunnels, carve into cliff faces, or just pile up regolith on top of pre-constructed habitats. You can probably also use regolith for rammed earth construction or make bricks out of it.

The main concern would be food, water and oxygen? In Expanse, people are mining ice asteroid. I assume that is for water?

 

[blindbear]

One day, it may make sense to move human and industries into space or Mars. However, we are still very far off. I do wonder how Musk is interested in Mars. May be he just want to be the first one who do it and make a mark in history? A more insidious view would be he wants some sort of company town in the early 1900s where he can rule as king/CEO.

 

[blindbear]

Those are engineering problem. What about social/economic issues? If the colony do not need earth at all, can laws still be enforced? How the law will be enforced?

 

[blindbear]

I do wonder if the Tesla valuation remotely accurate. Personally, I always feel Tesla is overvalued as a car company. But then I was told I do not account for all the battery technology and what not. Still not seeing it, I am happy that Tesla started the battery car trend, but I am not sure it can maintenance its lead.

 

[blindbear]

Musk is for EVs what Kalanick was for Uber/urban transit: an asshole who gets the job done. I wouldn't want to work for him, but there's no doubt that the company is tremendously more valuable with him in charge.

Lots of morons get lucky once, but Musk hasn't gotten lucky only once: PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, Boring, OpenAI... it's increasingly implausible to attribute all of that to luck. Especially because there are plenty of billionaires who don't do a second big thing. He's got at least six projects, each of which would be a massive achievement on its own.

Boring and OpenAI are not success or at least not yet a success. Starlink is a very nature extension of Space X. He currently have three successes Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX.

 

[blindbear]

I think he's going to end up in jail, one way or another.

That's an awfully hot take, considering there are no criminal investigations going on.

...yet.

Considering how full of himself he seems to be right now, and how his behaviour seems to be getting worse, maybe he'll do something really stupid like giving his buddy Putin access to Starlink base station locations in Ukraine.

Possibly has he always been an asshole or is that a new thing? I think his exes would suggest it isn't.

Some would say power/money simply reveal who we really are.

 

[blindbear]

Musk has a particular opinion/message. Twitter is a social media platform. The question would be how Musk opinion/message influence the moderation. The guy has issues due with people with different opinions. Is he going to fight people on twitter? Or simply ban people he does not like?

Moderation is difficult ever in best of time. Given everything is partisans today, it is ever more difficult.

 

[blindbear]

What was the issue with Twitter to being with? I really do not understand how Facebook, Instagram, etc. were able to get good ad. profit but Twitter cannot.

(obviously not a Twitter using bear).

 

[blindbear]

If they do loose all that money they have invested is that a tax write off for them?

There is the "stock loss harvesting". Not sure how private stock works.

From fidelity:
Tax-loss harvesting allows you to sell investments that are down, replace them with reasonably similar investments, and then offset realized investment gains with those losses. The end result is that less of your money goes to taxes and more may stay invested and working for you.

 

[blindbear]

If I were given to rabid fantasies I'd love to indulge in one where this Musk v. Twitter fight was the one that caused America's corporate culture to cannibalize itself when faced with its own worst practices.

Looks like you'll get your wish, as they apparently fired a senior director when he criticized the plan to decide layoffs based on number of code commits. As should be obvious to anyone that's worked in a large development environment, that is not a reliable way to understand where the critical non-redundancies are in institutional knowledge. My earlier pessimism regarding how difficult it would be to identify key SMEs for retention in this short a timeframe now looks like it's actually too optimistic; they're not even trying. And when they get feedback from the management tier most able to help with layoffs while minimizing risks to the business, they fire the person.

May be it does not matter? The software probably pretty refine at this point. Twitter probably does not need much work if they do not plan on making any change. It would be like in maintenance mode for video game? I think Twitter may be more affected the moderation policies than actual technology behind it.

It is possible my assumption is wrong and Twitter still need a lot of engineering update.

 

[blindbear]

Monetizable conspiracy promoters would easily shell out for the checkmark. You think a few bucks will discourage OAN or Gorka?

Once it has turned into OAN, Gorka or 4chan, etc., would anyone else wants to be on it?

 

[blindbear]

Honestly, I always hated twitter - I feel that something a lot like facebook is an inevitable evil, while twitter is an additional evil that arose by sheer chance and required an unlikely combination of various events and technological shortcomings at the time.

I think Twitter was inevitable, and even as useful and necessary, as Facebook and YouTube.

Why? It loses money year after year. There's no market reason for it to exist, other than this very tiny market of selling startups to investors, which, being tiny, is not subject to any sort of inevitability that comes with many people wanting something.

It has 5 billion revenue? There must be way to scale this thing. I mean Facebook, Youtube and may be Twitch have done it. It should be doable. I am not sure if Twitter can be a big money maker, it should be at least profitable.

 

[blindbear]

Why can’t he just focus on building the rocket factory? Is it too much to ask?

He could do it next week*

The week after that is the Tesla trial where he's accused of self-dealing his way into $55B in Tesla options.

I still remember the solar city deal.

 

[blindbear]

https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1587596672439402497

Everyone in charge of running ads at Twitter is out. This probably means ads are dead as a revenue stream. In the highly likely event Musk does not turn subscriptions into a billion-dollar a quarter business in the next couple of months that probably means Twitter will not be able to make payroll or pay the power bills in the data centers.

The exact timing depends on how much of Twitter's cash on hand went into the sale. Their credit being downgraded to junk means it will probably be difficult to borrow to make payroll.

Advertisements will still be running, even if top staff have departed.

But with a hugely influential social media platform that journalists irrationally hug like a safety blanket, I could easily see surreptitious agreements with deep-pocketed firms, countries, or groups to boost their Twitter profile. It's untapped revenue and only requires a reduction in ethics to pursue. Hell, offer dumps of specific user or group activity to buyers for a fee.

those journalists could move en-masse to any of several platforms that already have bigger audiences than twitter.

Like what?

Twitter is a zero effort platform to post on, those posts are easy to link in articles and even without an account anyone can read stuff. That last part is getting worse with popups, but still better than a lot of other social platforms.

It has become nearly impossible to look at a twitter thread while not logged on these days. I had to add custom exclusions to ublock to keep it from popping up that sign in message after you scroll through more than 4 or 5 messages in a thread.

I just give up reading them if the popup shows up. There are nothing important enough for me to read there.

 

[blindbear]

I think you can really abuse employees if you have enough carrot/stick. I do not think Twitter employees will fall into that category. The only Software Engineering field I think you can abuse is in video games. This is mainly due to people have passion for it. I can't imagine people have passion for Twitter.