Elon Musk Reveals Details of Next-Generation Starlink Satellites (gizmodo.com) 126
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The next generation of Starlink satellites are going to be larger, and more powerful, designed to provide internet access to remote parts of the world, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The space billionaire recently discussed the details of the Starlink Gen2 System on the popular YouTube show, Everyday Astronaut. In the 32 minute clip, Musk reveals that SpaceX has already produced the first Starlink 2.0 satellite. The new generation satellite is 7 meters (22 feet) long and weighs about 1.25 tons (approximately 2,755 pounds or 1,250 kilograms). Starlink 1.0, by comparison, weighs about 573 pounds (260 kilograms). The extra weight accounts for a more effective satellite, according to Musk. "Just think of it like how many useful bits of data can each satellite do," Musk said during the interview. "Starlink 2.0 in terms of useful bits of data is almost an order of magnitude better than a Starlink 1.0."
Starlink satellites are lifted to low Earth orbit on board a Falcon 9 rocket, but the rocket will not be capable of carrying Starlink 2.0. "Falcon neither has the volume nor the mass [for the] orbit capability required for Starlink 2.0," Musk said. "So even if we shrunk the Starlink satellite down, the total up mass of Falcon is not nearly enough to do Starlink 2.0." Instead, SpaceX is banking on Starship, a heavy lift launch rocket that is currently under development, but has already suffered from numerous delays. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been working on an environmental review of the Starship program for months to assess its impact, and the report is expected in mid June, although it has been repeatedly pushed forward, much to Musk's dismay. "We need Starship to work and fly frequently or Starlink will be stuck on the ground," Musk said during the interview.
Starlink satellites are lifted to low Earth orbit on board a Falcon 9 rocket, but the rocket will not be capable of carrying Starlink 2.0. "Falcon neither has the volume nor the mass [for the] orbit capability required for Starlink 2.0," Musk said. "So even if we shrunk the Starlink satellite down, the total up mass of Falcon is not nearly enough to do Starlink 2.0." Instead, SpaceX is banking on Starship, a heavy lift launch rocket that is currently under development, but has already suffered from numerous delays. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been working on an environmental review of the Starship program for months to assess its impact, and the report is expected in mid June, although it has been repeatedly pushed forward, much to Musk's dismay. "We need Starship to work and fly frequently or Starlink will be stuck on the ground," Musk said during the interview.
but.... (Score:2)
how wide is it?
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how wide is it?
Is that you Steven Wright?
A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I'm afraid of widths.
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"So wide you can't go around it!"
Dang, I'm gonna need some walking shoes
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"So wide you can't go around it!"
Dang, I'm gonna need some walking shoes
"Anywhere is walking distance if you have the time."
Re: but.... (Score:2)
Elon is Darth Vader now (Score:1, Troll)
Elon Musk is transforming from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader. He’s forgotten how carbon credits, which were a gift from the left, got Tesla out of its darkest days. He won't recall that nowadays or even express any kind of appreciation. The traditional car makers didn't throw a big hissy fit like he threw when they recently got credits for using union labor. As did bailout money (which he paid back, but doesn’t change the fact he was given the money at the time he thought he needed it.) He rec
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FYI, take your copypasta and shove it
You have no idea what Elon Musk's political views are, and PROJECTING what you think they are just make you look like an idiot
I suspect that Elon will play each party as a fiddle to meet his needs
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Well, Warren did try and bash him with the one year he had low taxes SOLEY due to him overpaying in past years
Subtlety is for people who actually listen what Elon says, not to what they THINK he says
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Political Parties are like a Cult where when you sign the paperwork and say you are a member you are immediately considered an ally and an all around good guy. While people in the other political party have now classified you now as the Evil Villon.
And both parties don't trust those Filthy Neutrals.
Musk tried being neutral for a while, however the GOP hated him for pushing an Environmentalist Agenda, while the Democrats hated him because of Anti-Union stances, and the fact being the richest person in the w
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Good lord, when will you learn to take everything with a grain of salt?
If "The Left" feels comfortable with Elon's graces, then they will ignore him
When "The Right" attempts to subvert Elon to their goals, he will elude them
It's a fricking game for Elon, and it _is_ pretty funny that you think he will continue to align with either side of the American political scrabble for any longer than it takes to get what he wants out of it
Re: Elon is Darth Vader now (Score:1)
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You seem to think that sociopath and psycho(path) are interchangeable
Elon has certainly fed into that with his claims of Aspergers and going into "human emulation mode"
It is not so much that he is mocking people, he is simply taking on an affect that he feels is human enough to get what he wants from people
You would want to call him a psychopath then, rather than a sociopath, but I really think that would just be one facet of something with many sides
re Politics, it seems to be something Elon is playing wit
Re: Elon is Darth Vader now (Score:2)
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Your chosen news sources are influencing your views beyond what the facts support. Well, unless you mean the media is quieter.
Just for perspective - (most of) the media glossed over Biden flat out saying Putin cannot be allowed to remain in power and that the US would militarily defend Taiwan. These are not small things, even just to say casually, when you're POTUS. There's plenty more examples, though the media grossly distorts them on both sides.
Trump was a buffoon too - so don't assume i'm either a du
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Anyone want to take odds we have two single term presidents back to back? How about 3?
Between 1877 and 1897 we didn't have any presidents serve two consecutive terms (Grover Cleveland had Benji Harrison between his two terms). Also between 1837 and 1861 had the same occurrence. If not for Abe and Grant that'd be a continuous run of ineffective and inept leadership from the executive branch. I bet we can get past 3 single-term folks with how things are going.
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I know what his views are .. he has been VERY CLEAR on Twitter and in his Babylon Bee interview that he's shifting from humanist-secular-globalist to tribalist-religious-nationalist. I mean, he said he voted for Biden in 2020 but is voting for Republicans in November this year. If you can't extrapolate anything from that well you're an idiot.
Well, the fact that you would cite The Babylon Bee (a conservative christian answer to The Onion) as a legitimate source of journalism tells me that you are the idiot.
Or Poe's Law. Whatever.
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Well, the fact that you would cite The Babylon Bee (a conservative christian answer to The Onion) as a legitimate source of journalism
He didn't. He is going by what Elon said in the unedited podcast/video. Not that I agree, with his reading.
It was an interesting talk. Elon was gaining their respect, but somehow still telling the BB guys that there is no God, climate change is real, and we need a substantial government sector. And they gave him a fair hearing. Right-wing conservatives can be decent people too. Let's stop demonising each other, eh?
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To be fair, the Democrats weren't too fair with Musk.
It took a massive campaign just for Biden to say the word Tesla, in terms of its plans to get more Electric Cars in the market.
Then Pelosi, had giving him a hard time over the amount of taxes he has paid, as well other democrats pushing him to solve more problems.
Now I get the Politics involved there. The new Swing States that will effect elections now orbit Detroit, so the Major Auto makers and UAW need as much political attention as they can get, as i
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Admittedly, my computer screen is MUCH larger than it was a decade ago
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People are negatively moderating you I guess because they don't like your tone or they think it's a good thing (because they are currently on the losing side of that equation). But they didn't respond so we will never know.
The fact is that the cost of living is not the same everywhere, and there is someone out there who can afford to do your job for less money than you do. If you have to compete with them it will affect your earnings.
It likely wouldn't be as drastic as 90k to 9k, but it would certainly be
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He's being downmodded because he is impersonating another user (check the spelling of the name and the UID number).
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He's being downmodded because he is impersonating another user (check the spelling of the name and the UID number).
I've been modding and metamodding here for decades. I've never seen an item on the pull-down menu labeled: -1, Bad Username.
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That's easy. With full on globalism, production costs will be low enough that a $9k salary's buying power will be more than $90k. If production costs reduce 10x, everything you buy, except land, will be 20x cheaper (lower production costs means less capital is needed to start a company, which in turn means more competition, which ultimately reduces prices). And btw I don't believe salaries will reduce all that much but I don't feel like typing out semesters of economics knowledge.
Re: Elon is Darth Vader now (Score:1)
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Not sure why you got down-modded. Sadly, I have no mod points to give today.
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please, why why why have tried to ride on rsilvergun with your trolling?
Wait, what? superkendall? is that you?
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Wait, what? superkendall? is that you?
Can't be, unless superkendall is also a persona. rsliverguy is cleverer.
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Perhaps, although SK has proven to have some depth if not on one of their core topics like AGW (I am shocked as well)
There was a long period where somebody played whack-a-mole with SK, and I honestly wonder of this as some misguided attempt at payback
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Perhaps, although SK has proven to have some depth
There's no depth to literally never knowing what one is talking about. I cannot remember a single SK post that was not thoroughly incorrect.
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Thank you for proving the truism: "There are not dumb questions, just dumb answers"
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How is my answer dumb? I am being honest. You should try it sometime. The real question is why do you people keep asking me why I do it? Rsilvergun is an asshole. He deserves everything I do.
Deserves everything you do? What do you think you're accomplishing, exactly? Do you really lack the self-awareness to realize how truly sad and pathetic you make yourself look?
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He says he voted for Obama in 08, Hillary in 2016, and Biden in 2020 .. but now he is going to vote Republican this November .. that makes no sense whatsoever how is he the same guy he always was? Explain that. Reference: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/s... [twitter.com]
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Back in 2018, he proclaimed himself to be a socialist. Reference: https://twitter.com/AntVenom/s... [twitter.com]
So what's changed since then? The definition of socialism hasn't changed, he has.
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Sorry that reference is https://twitter.com/elonmusk/s... [twitter.com]
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Consumerism is not antithetical to Socialism
The former is an economic model and the latter a control structure
In America, consumerism is used to drive the masses to spend 95% of their income
This in turn keeps the factories pumping and the workers working, and continues to work as long as you can extract enough shareholder value to keep the money flowing from all directions
In America Capitalism is paired to Consumerism, but it would be just as easy to pair Socialism to Consumerism
This may become NECESSARY as
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lol, American liberals are about as "left" as Dick Nixon, the efforts to convince people they are marxists, etc... all come from the big-lie right
Re: Elon is Darth Vader now (Score:1)
Re: Elon is Darth Vader now (Score:4, Insightful)
The democrats have moved to the left since then.
The Overton window has been pushed so far to the right that the Democrats only appear to be further on the left, without having moved at all.
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Re: Elon is Darth Vader now (Score:5, Informative)
How far left is voting for the Women's Health Protection Act, which in the words of the Washington Post is "the radical bill that would have created a national right to “abort a child,” in President Biden’s turn of phrase, up until the moment of birth"? Abortion up until birth for *any* reason. Every single Democrat U.S. senator except one voted for that.
Okay...
First of all, those were not the words of the Washington Post, but an opinion piece by Marc A. Thiessen that was published by WaPo.
Second, have you read the bill? I just did. Perhaps you should too. Here you go, you're welcome. [congress.gov]
TL/DR: Generally the bill seeks to protect access to abortion by preventing states from doing "cute" things that burden the providers so much that they cannot function. And as for terminating a pregnancy "up to the moment of birth", the bill is very clear on this: before viability, access to abortion cannot be blocked, but after viability (as determined by qualified practitioners) access to abortion cannot be blocked if the health or life of the mother is at risk (again, as determined by qualified practitioners.)
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Second, have you read the bill? I just did. Perhaps you should too. Here you go, you're welcome. [congress.gov]
TL/DR: Generally the bill seeks to protect access to abortion by preventing states from doing "cute" things that burden the providers so much that they cannot function. And as for terminating a pregnancy "up to the moment of birth", the bill is very clear on this: before viability, access to abortion cannot be blocked, but after viability (as determined by qualified practitioners) access to abortion cannot be blocked if the health or life of the mother is at risk (again, as determined by qualified practitioners.)
It's annoying to even need another explicit law for that, as it's basically what you'd get applying existing law sensibly:
- At some point during a pregnancy, aborting becomes a homicide (after viability, basically). Before then it shouldn't be an issue.
- Almost every jurisdiction allows justification for homicide if the individual killed is threatening death or grievous bodily harm (risking the life/health of the mother).
All we should really need is an exemption to entering the criminal justice process in t
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- At some point during a pregnancy, aborting becomes a homicide (after viability, basically). Before then it shouldn't be an issue.
That would only be the case if the law defined viability as the point at which a fetus becomes a human that can be subject to homicide. It doesn't. Post-viability abortion isn't generally considered homicide, even when it's a crime. There are a couple of states that have begun to classify abortion as homicide in their criminal code, but they haven't necessarily chosen viability as the point at which it begins. With Roe in effect, they're prevented from criminalizing pre-viability abortion (on any basis). If
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Forget social issues. Most days I'll be happy to go twelve rounds over that because I do have a dog in that fight (how's that for mixing sports metaphors?), but today is not that day. "Build back better" is basically dead in the water. There's a significant push from the right towards defunding public education. Access to healthcare for all and affordable prescription medicines is a non-starter in today's political climate.
I made a trip from Florida up to Indiana a few months ago and personally got to e
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I think part of the reason people see negatives in things that are broadly beneficial to society (roads, healthcare, etc.) is what comes with them:
Corruption
Theft/graft
Enrichment of the wealthy and powerful
The US can't just pass some bills to repave the highways, they'll spend 10s or 100s of millions just drafting proposals and deciding which companies (who are all in collusion) will be overpaid to under deliver until such a time someone decides they needs a New and Improved Build-back-better-er bill for ev
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The teacher using those flash cards has lost their job so I'm not sure what anyone has to complain about. The fake Fox News narrative doesn't mention that part.
Re: Elon is Darth Vader now (Score:2)
Re: Elon is Darth Vader now (Score:2)
The Space Billionaire (Score:2)
It certainly sounds cooler than "the Paypal Billionaire". Maybe using that term is stipulated in his contract.
Full Autonomy (Score:1)
slippery slope ... (Score:1)
The new generation satellite is 7 meters (22 feet) long and weighs about 1.25 tons (approximately 2,755 pounds or 1,250 kilograms). Starlink 1.0, by comparison, weighs about 573 pounds (260 kilograms).
The extra weight accounts for a more effective satellite, according to Musk. "Just think of it like how many useful bits of data can each satellite do," Musk said ...
'Cause bandwidth and equipment size are related how?
Still, think how much more effective it would be if they were even *bigger* ... (thinking of the SNL Triple-Trac Razor joke ad)
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Obviously a bigger satellite can have more bandwidth. It will have more antennas and more power to run them. Yes, a bigger one would be more effective, but these are the biggest ones Starship can launch and deploy, and if/when it flies, it will be be biggest rocket there is.
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Obviously a bigger satellite can have more bandwidth. It will have more antennas and more power to run them.
IDK ... WiFi routers/devices keep getting faster with more antennas and *smaller* chassis all the time.
Just sayin' -- it sounds like someone put the idea in Elon's head that bigger is better. :-)
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Well, he does have some impressively large, um, rockets
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wifi routers get plugged in.
Re: slippery slope ... (Score:1)
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See "US Air Force Transformation Flight Plan" from 2003 that mentions "20-foot-long (6.1 m), 1-foot-diameter (0.30 m) tungsten rods that are satellite-controlled and have global strike capability, with impact speeds of Mach 10"
Each 7m satellite could fit a few of them.
I, for one, welcome out new Space Overlord, Emperor of Mars, Elon the 1st
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And... he didn't even need a moon-base to threaten the Earth [archive.org]
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Rods from the Gods...
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The Rods from God concept has always sounded impressive on paper until you scrutinize it a little bit. For one thing, the actual energy delivered by the strike would be, at maximum, only roughly equivalent to the mass of the projectile in conventional explosives. Basically, an object in LEO has about 32 MJ per kg of kinetic energy. That's about the same amount of energy as a particularly high grade of coal, or about 2/3rds of what you would find in the equivalent mass of gasoline. In order to actually hit t
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The new generation satellite is 7 meters (22 feet) long and weighs about 1.25 tons (approximately 2,755 pounds or 1,250 kilograms). Starlink 1.0, by comparison, weighs about 573 pounds (260 kilograms).
The extra weight accounts for a more effective satellite, according to Musk. "Just think of it like how many useful bits of data can each satellite do," Musk said ...
'Cause bandwidth and equipment size are related how?
More room = bigger tubes. The Internet is a series of tubes, remember?
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More room = bigger tubes. The Internet is a series of tubes, remember?
Ha. I was actually going to mention that.
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No details there FFS (Score:1)
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Well, the starship prototype s24 does have a 7-meter wide pez dispenser installed on it, so at the very least he is backing up his "guesstimate"
Fuckwits like you are just advertisements for Dunning Krueger
Best quote from the video (Score:5, Funny)
The best quote from the video was when Musk said "At SpaceX we specialize in converting the impossible to late."
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thanks for watching the video for me, that quote is just pure gold!
Re:Best quote from the video (Score:4, Insightful)
Good one. Way back when, when answering the question "why Unix", I'd answer "Windows makes the easy stuff easy, and the hard stuff impossible. Unix makes the easy stuff hard, but the impossible possible.
Starjunk (Score:1)
Particularly when the Chinese are discussing how they can knock out Starlink too [thequint.com]; seems to me that Starlink represents a space junk risk.
Re:Starjunk (Score:5, Informative)
Yes [space.com]
SpaceX's standard operating procedure for Starlink involves deorbiting each satellite before it dies. But flying at just 340 miles up provides a sort of failsafe: atmospheric drag will bring a defunct satellite down from that altitude in just one to five years, according to SpaceX's Starlink page.
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The issue is the shear number of satellites that they want to launch, and the fact that if they do it then others will want the same thing.
They are looking at a 5 year lifespan for satellites, so with the expected 30,000 satellites there will be 6,000 coming down every year, and the same number of new ones going up. So that's a lot of de-orbiting going on. Most of it will be controlled, some percentage will be uncontrolled - i.e. everyone else has to dodge it.
So far there has been no environmental impact as
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As others have said, Starlink satellites are in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO). Without burns to raise their orbit, their orbits will naturally decay due to atmospheric drag in a matter of a few years. The satellites themselves are engineered to be 100% demisable, meaning all components will burn-up on re-entry.
Placing the satellites in VLEO limits their lifetime significantly. Not only does SpaceX have to launch tens of thousands of these satellites, they have to continuously replace the satellites they've la
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Being LEO also means that Starlink is safe from space junk, which might explode in numbers over the next decade even if the Chinese can resist the temptation to blow things up in space.
Starship was never going to Mars (Score:2)
Starship was always intended as a Starlink pez dispenser. He never intended to do a Mars mission.
If you had a license to print money with your own worldwide internet, would you blow it all on a money pit mission like that? For what?
He had my benefit of the doubt for a while, the Twitter stock/Self-drive-someday/Cybertruck-deposit scams made it clear who he was.
Elon wants to save the earth my ass.
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Elon Musk is driven by his intention to retire on Mars. He will burn billions of dollars to do that because to someone with that kind of money the value of a dollar takes on new meaning.
I suspect you are likely correct that Elon Musk doesn't want to save the Earth. I see someone that wants to retire on Mars, and has enough money that he just might make it happen. The technologies required to make that happen also have utility to make many other things happen.
Musk knows we can't lift enough fuel to Mars f
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Elon Musk is driven by his intention to retire on Mars. He will burn billions of dollars to do that because to someone with that kind of money the value of a dollar takes on new meaning.
or Musk is able to get others to burn billions of dollars, besides government contracts I suspect he has lots of investors shoveling in loads of cash to be part of the future Mars colonies. For me I consider it a fantasy, humans on Mars has always been 20 year into the future for the past 60 years.
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I see someone that wants to retire on Mars/quote?
were still waiting for electric cars after 20 years, you seriously think we'll be living on mars anytime soon?
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I'm certain Elon Musk knows that living on Mars will take decades of work to happen. It appears everything he does is a stepping stone closer to him living on Mars.
I'm seeing people that appear to believe we can solve the problems of global warming in five years if only people took the problem seriously. No, that will not happen. This is a big problem and it will take 30 years at a minimum to solve. That's not a problem because we have at least 100 years before global warming is a real threat to humanit
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Starship was always intended as a Starlink pez dispenser. He never intended to do a Mars mission.
You can use Wikipedia to verify that the original name for Starship was Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) and that in 2005 SpaceX first announced its aspirations to build it. You can look at the epilogue in Ashlee Vance's biography ("Elon Musk (new updated edition): How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future") to see that the idea for StarLink originated in 2013, that is, 8 years after Starlink's announcement. As such, your assertion is incorrect.
"Environmental Review" (Score:1)
No surprise Musk switched from voting (D). Voted for that shit for his whole life, now he's getting hoisted with his own petard.
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The 2B's (Boeing and Bezos) using their connections and money because they want to slow the fucker down.
He's so far ahead of them they need to hobble him somehow.
So Musk picks a side and purchases a media organisation, twitter.
It's frustrating because I just want to see those rockets fly!
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The fact that this environmental review veto exists to be abused is a direct result of people like Musk voting (D) on autopilot their whole lives.
So enjoy Slashdot; Musk is grounded now and there is no end in sight. That's what you voted for.
ah, his favorite catchphrase!! (Score:2)
If I drank a shot every time Elon claimed "order of magnitude" improvement, I'd be on my 2nd liver transplant.
And if those transplants depended on him actually delivering on the promises, I'd be dead several times over.
Wait for the xPhone (Score:2)
Soon the clients will be able to phone for free worldwide.
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Rocket is mostly built, only question is Wen Launch!
The FAA is almost satisfied (2 weeks added to PEA review), but the Sierra Club has started a lawsuit based on law that allows SpaceX to close beach conflicts with Tx Constitution
At this point, I wish the Sierra Club woul;d keep its nimbyism confined to the Sierras
Their positions on nuclear energy (actually paid for by the oil industry) and Mars colonization make me think that they are NOT aligned with human survival
re: Sierra Club (Score:2)
I find that most of these organizations, whether PETA or the Sierra Club, Greenpeace or the Humane Society of America? They *all* value the idea of leaving nature and wildlife alone at the expense of mankind. It would essentially be "mission accomplished" for them if they put all of us back in the stone age.
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I find that most of these organizations, whether PETA or the Sierra Club, Greenpeace or the Humane Society of America? They *all* value the idea of leaving nature and wildlife alone at the expense of mankind. It would essentially be "mission accomplished" for them if they put all of us back in the stone age.
There is no form/scientific proof that the human Self exists. All philosophies which wish to maintain it must at some point simply assert the I of the Self.
There is also no from-nothing proof that the individual Self has value, nor that we are obligated to recognize and protect it.
Both the existence of the Self and its value are merely agreements, conventions we accept not because they are facts, but because it makes it possible to think about Thinking, and to use language to systematize it.
The thing is, Ci
re: self (Score:2)
Wow... that was a whole lot of philosophical babble to essentially claim mankind's ability to use rational thought to advance ourselves is invalid, simply because we can't "prove" humans exist as individuals (self)?
Yeah... I'm going to go with the fact that relatively few things I experience in this life are provable in the absolute. Everything we experience *could* just be a big computer simulation? Who cares? We can't prove it one way or the other but we know we're only alive for a limited time-frame to e
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Wow... that was a whole lot of philosophical babble to essentially claim mankind's ability to use rational thought to advance ourselves is invalid, simply because we can't "prove" humans exist as individuals (self)?
Yeah... I'm going to go with the fact that relatively few things I experience in this life are provable in the absolute. Everything we experience *could* just be a big computer simulation? Who cares? We can't prove it one way or the other but we know we're only alive for a limited time-frame to experience what we're experiencing here. There's nothing to be gained by making our lives more difficult by NOT trying to invent and use new technologies.
That was not the claim I made. But you're correct to criticize the comment. It was not as clearly written as I would have liked; it's my fault you misunderstood.
The claim isn't "mankind's ability to use rational thought to advance ourselves is invalid". The claim is, "mankind's ability to use rational thought to advance ourselves is of neither lesser nor grater validity than bacteria's use of infection to advance itself, or a mosquito's use of vampirism to advance itself, or kudzu's use of smothering and su
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"Elon Musk is evolving and it is interesting to watch as his goals to retire on Mars "
He's not that stupid. If Elon ever chooses to live on Mars, it'll be because he doesn't expect to have much longer to live. He *may* decide to visit if a colony that's close to civilized gets established but he won't stay there if he thinks he has productive years left.
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He's not that stupid. If Elon ever chooses to live on Mars, it'll be because he doesn't expect to have much longer to live.
Isn't "not much longer to live" kind of the definition of "retirement"? I believe you are trying to make a distinction where there is no difference.
He has a goal to live out his last days on Mars, and because the process of getting people on Mars will take some unknown decades of planning and building there is the potential for Elon Musk to visit Mars before he retires and then go back again for retirement, or Musk may never get to Mars at all before he dies.
The end goal for Elon Musk has been to retire on
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I have to note here that the reason that space-based solar is not viable is because there is no currently feasible method to get the power back to Earth. The old concept was microwave beaming, but the power density for that is lower than for solar power. So if you build a square kilometer microwave array to get power beamed from a space solar installation, it would get less power than if you just built a square kilometer solar array. There might be ways around that like actually running cables to a space-ba
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The benefits of space based solar was that the orbital platform would still be in the sun when it was nighttime at the ground stations. Also, microwave power gets through clouds when sunlight does not. This means continuous power for the ground stations, very much not like solar power on the ground.
Yes, that's all very clear. The point was that, with microwave transmission, the actual practical power density is so low that just having solar panels on the ground beats it even if you account for the periods of darkness, etc. Basically the only way to practically deliver space-based solar to Earth using EM radiation basically requires using a concentrated "death ray". So, ultimately, without some advanced engineering that we don't have yet, space-based solar (or power in general) is pretty useless on Ear
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Solar power in space is going to be limited to orbits inside that of Mars (give or take) and where the panels will not be in extended periods of shade (such as weather or long orbital or rotational periods).
Yes, we both keep saying that, more or less. There are some arguments for future massive engineering projects to create, for example, massive collimating arrays in space near the sun that could aim light at targets in the outer solar system for power and terraforming purposes, but those ideas are way out there futuristic stuff.
Before we figured out solar PV was going to work in Earth orbit we saw experiments in what we'd now call "micro reactors", small nuclear fission power plants to power weather satellites and such. Had that research not stopped when it did then solar power in space might not ever happened, we'd simply have been using nuclear power instead. Solar power in space is quite limited on where it is feasible but nuclear power works everywhere. If humans are going to space then nuclear power is going with them, that's been true since the Apollo program.
Since they blew up nukes in space and we found out about the radiation belts that would create, etc. nuclear resources in space have not been very popular. It isn't helped much by bad
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I expect the USA will pick up what Russia dropped. Or rather North and South American nations to pick up what Asia dropped. We will see petroleum production shift to fill in while the world catches up on building nuclear power plants. This is a near repeat of what happened 50 years ago. Energy prices got real high because of economic depression, war, and an economic boom that followed. This drove people to find energy wherever they could find it, including nuclear fission. Because energy got tight again from a depression and war we will seek energy from nuclear fission to power another economic boom.
Yeah, that attempt to find energy wherever also lead to cars powered by coal dust. Just like nuclear power, a pretty neat bit of engineering, but ultimately not much of a long-term practical success. Wasn't Three Mile Island one of those 1970's nuclear success stories?
My only question is how deep we have to get in this economic depression before we start building nuclear power plants and lift ourselves into an economic boom time.
The building of nuclear power plants isn't what will lift us out of economic depression, it will be people seeking ways to produce energy at lower costs by all means. The shortage of energy is self imposed by governments concerned about the environment, which just meant energy production moved to nations that had no such concerns. Russia declaring war closed off trade, forcing nations to look for domestic sources for replacements. Energy is energy so we will see nuclear power replace fossil fuels. Calories are calories so we could see wheat from Ukraine replaced with rice out of Mexico.
You know, through all your arguments on this, I never seem to see you mention where the uranium will come from to power this revolution. Looking at the price of uranium, it's up more than 200% since the end of 2018, but it's down to about 43%
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You keep going on about how I need to "prove" a point to you after I did just that. Your failure to comprehend the proof appears to be based on your need to not understand the proof. Are you being paid by someone to be so dense?
What point have you "proven" though? You keep making grandiose statements about everyone dying, shivering in the dark without nuclear fission power plants, but you can never demonstrate why that would be the case. The reality is that nuclear is just one technology and you can take it or leave it, but you act like it's completely indispensable. Basically, you set yourself a high bar to prove, but you never reach that level of proof.
As an example it appears quite clear to anyone else how molten salt thermal energy storage gives a near 100% "round trip" return on energy storage while giving only 50% (perhaps that is best case too) for renewable energy sources like solar PV. With nuclear + storage we get "round trip" storage losses so close to zero it is effectively zero. With solar + storage the "round trip" losses can be huge if using any thermal storage method. With pumped hydro energy storage we can get effectively zero storage losses too but pumped hydro energy storage requires favorable climate and geography to be viable. Molten salt thermal energy storage has no such requirements. There's other grid scale energy storage systems with high (above 80%) round trip energy returns but none are so cheap and simple as molten salt thermal energy storage.
No, just no. You're acting like it somehow magically stores more power for nu
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You demand to know where the uranium will come from for nuclear power while making no effort to show that we have enough land, labor, water, steel, and other raw materials for renewable energy. We can produce more than enough uranium if only we set out to do so. If we combine our current stockpile of plutonium (both reactor grade from nuclear waste and weapon grade from "retired" nuclear weapon cores) with the stockpile of uranium produced by mining for other materials (uranium that is now just dumped back in the hole we dug it out from) then we'd have an unlimited supply with no real additional cost or effort.
The land, labor, water, steel and other raw materials that we need for renewable energy come from the same places we get them from now. There's no indication we're going to run out. People make claims about rare earth shortages, etc. but they're not actually necessary for renewables. For standard nuclear fuel, most claims are that we have one to two centuries available at current usage levels and considerably less if nuclear fission usage is expanded the way you want it to be. Obviously there are going to b
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Nope. You aren't paying attention. We did this already. It's nothing new. The new part is light water reactors using thorium. We don't have to use thorium, we can use uranium. We don't have to use light water, we can use heavy water.
I was paying attention. You were talking about experiments, not reliable commercial scale operation. Once again, actually implementing that will take decades. We've hit break-even controlled fusion too, that does not mean that we are anywhere near practical commercial fusion power.
The solution is nuclear power like we've done it for 60 years. All we need to do is pick up where we left off, back when Jimmy Carter told us that we should put solar panels on our roof and wear a sweater indoors instead of build nuclear power plants.
Like we've done it for 60 years is basically a failure on a commercial level. It's slow and inflexible and too expensive.
No, I've seen progress with my "same old links". The progress is just not with you.
I'm not really sure what you mean there. Those are your same old links. The third one is newer than the first