Posted by ls612 1 hour ago
- in orbit refueling
- moon landing
- Mars rendez-vous
- Mars landing
- humans on Mars
Nah, the game is to put data centers in space. Plus the Space Force dreams.
So, what would amaze me? Ending homelessness in the United States. Because that takes more than money. I would like to swap the "passion" or engineering for the "compassion" of ending suffering. Very easy to shape and change material things, very hard to change the heart.
The people you want to share your excitement might be suffering under the same separation of wealth that made this landing possible. (Yet there is little talk that they failed to catch the booster and it exploded).
There are ample government and private support mechanisms, including housing and food, but most choose not to take advantage.
You don't need private people/companies or more taxes for that. US has enough resources to do it already. Maybe you should go ask your politicians, better yet, ask your friends/neighbors/yourself if you are ready to take the drastic steps necessary to solve that.
But imagine engineering hearts so that we did not have to ask?
If govt really cared about it, more than that, if (most) PEOPLE really cared about it, it should be top 3 priority of any govt in any country.
- Govt should build massive cheap hotel-type housing spaces (full free) equipped with bare minimum necessities like roof, heating, food, basic healthcare (not million $ free cancer treatment).
- Mandatory drug rehabilitation (if applicable)
- Mandatory job search/placement/training
- Jail with forced-labor for people who put no effort and/or causes disturbance
If your govt has $6M to fund tourism in Egypt, money to fund opera/ in columbia, comic book in peru, then they have money to help homeless people IN the country. No money should go to non-citizens (let alone non-citizens in another country) while citizens of a country go homeless.
I am typing this from the security of my home, without worrying about 0c temp, or food. So it is easy for me to say this but still, I am sorry that you are going through this, and I sincerely wish you the best; that your life turns around, even if just a little, enough to have a roof over your head.
I grew up reading Zubrin's The Case for Mars, The Martian, and October Sky. I went to space camp at NASA, and as a 14 year old I sent an angry email to NASA when I learned of the early ISS decommission date(they later extended the lifespan several times, and I like to think I was the reason ;) ).
I followed Bigelow Aerospace in the 2000s doing the only interesting commercial work in space, and afterwards became amongst the first online SpaceX fanboys, long before they ever landed a merlin engine.
I studied hard in school with a passion of going to Embry-Riddle to learn to build rockets - though I ultimately chose a software path in life instead, I stayed an enormous space fanboy over the 2010s, frequenting the SpaceX subreddit and catching every launch and landing stream I could live.
I've cried watching so many rocket landings. The spirit of human endeavor is god damn BEAUTIFUL to me.
I want to point my finger and say that everything else changed. The Internet became what it is. Elon Musk showed his true colors. Software Engineering became middle management.
But the truth is that I've changed.
I care about the people wealth disparity hurts more than I do about us getting our perfect vision of the future now now NOW.
The faster we pump this machine, the louder the Earth is SCREAMING.
The world is on fire, and we're covering it in data centers with the goal of building artificial machines for strip-mining humanity of the very competency in engineering that has given us so much joy.
We're caught up in a race to the bottom and without diverting our path I have to wonder if this starship landing will be one of the last great human-driven engineering achievements before we lose the ability to do so ourselves.
I don't think the answer is to swap the passion for engineering with compassion, as I think they can both live happily together, but I hear where that desire is coming from.
It's coming from a place of love.
And when the last tree has fallen, we may find that we cannot eat money.
May love fill this place.
Musk's Neuralink is ironically likely to help on the psychiatric disorder side.
Just Send More Money™ is not likely to help (as you recognize). Neither is "compassion".
And a nuclear ion rocket scheduled for 2028 as well.
The current NASA administrator is doing a good job getting rid of all the things keeping NASA from doing things. (And at least after Artemis II, both parties in congress seemed to be on his side.)
After Artemis II, there was a moderately hilarious congressional hearing in which the Republicans insisted on giving NASA more money, the Democrats insisted on giving even more money than that, and Isaacman trying to say "we're good".
(I believe NASA got the more money.)
Google is only able to fund Waymo, Quantum Computing, etc because of their questionably moral ads cash cow.
I'm not trashing people's interests, obviously I am the odd man out in not giving a damn, I just don't see what we're trying to achieve when there are so many issues we can't even figure out on earth.
Earth issues are mostly coordination problems. Space issues are technological problems. Elon Musk has been very successful at solving technological problems: electric vehicles, space flight, mind-machine interfaces.
It makes sense that people like him who can solve technological problems point their attention and substantial agency to the things that their unique skills place them in a position to solve.
The Elon Musk of coordination does not currently exist. One must imagine that the kind of person or school of people who instituted NATO and the US-Japan MDA and turned our one-time enemies into our staunchest allies were people of such caliber but there’s no one I know today who qualifies for that.
Musk definitely has mastered firm-level coordination but clearly national coordination (let alone international coordination) is a problem beyond even him. His teams nearly religiously point the same way, and they have achieved wonders. It is truly remarkable what these people have done. Good for them, and I’m glad to see them at it!
He is reckless and ignorant and yes it works for some of his stuff and it doesn't work for others.
His ignorance alone in DOGE probably killed children and humans. Don't get me wrong, US of America doesn't has to pay for aid around the planet even if they contribute massivly to climate change and consumes a lot of resources importet around the planet, but his abrupt cancelation and involvment in USAID killed chilrden and humans.
Do we also ignore everything else if you list up things which are only positive? Like Boring company? Solar city? Buying Twitter and manipulating democracy around the planet? Doing an Ad tour in front of the White House and disrespecting anyone else who can't buy themselves next to Trump?
The people who “had an interest” in pursuing the unknown built the entire modern world that you exist in, since so many things have some connection back to the space program, including ironically the very device you’re using to express your opinion. So it’s probably worth paying them a little respect.
Well there you go. I did not know that. And yet, instead of saying, "The space program is useful because of X and Y, it's pretty cool actually, I recommend book Z about it.", I get replies that I am a lost cause who doesn't respect scientists.
Unreal. I could have a more balanced conversation with a Muslim imam about religious beliefs.
Shouldn't you be able to articulate a proper answer without any issues?
Is it an engineering feat? Yes.
But i would bet James Webb Telescope and Moon landing were a lot bigger?!
Soooo?!
Its cheaper okay, we can send up bigger things good but the comment stated
"So it’s probably worth paying them a little respect."
It sounds like i get down to my knee for Space-X and i still don't get it
That will open vast new opportunities for space-based researh and services.
For example a university that has to pay at least $50k to launch a research cubesat today will be able to do it for about $2k.
Okay I get it, discussion useless.
Just to be clear: James Webb was build and designed with nanometer aligned optical system, has to be cooled down while being at L2, can't be serviced and repaired and it was only enough money there to build it once and took 5 years of building and 25 years of planning.
A rocket is an engineering joke inc omparision.
I'm disagreeing with the level of it.
I'm also disappointed that we celebrate this and ignore that the richest man on the planet is also involved in reducing usability of starlink in a real war were real humans are dying. And his involvment in USAID, DOGE and co.
Starlink is not allowed for offensive usage.
So take your complaint to govt. Also, nobody is stopping you from using starlink-alternatives.com . In fact, since you hate him, that's what you should do.
Now Elon Musk, the richecst person on the planet and part of US of America is interfering with his system, which gives him A LOT more power than a single human and non gov should have in a WAR which is not his probably due to some indirect garbage between him and the current US of America Gov.
While the EU is paying for it.
And i do not use anything Musk.
Musk has only direct negative impact on my life, no posive one. He used his money to buy twitter because he couldn't shut up and then leveraged it to manipulate and allow manipulation in our elections in germany (search for Elon Musk and AfD).
He is potentially poisening our atmosphwere with his rocket launches.
And in general, I do care about fellow human beings and i'm pissed in their names for all the people he is responsible for being killed (after all he is also responsible apparently for all the invention of the companies he invested in eh?).
edit: Rate limited so adding link to interview the reply mentions here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujfF_SnxvZQ
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2069_Alpha_Centauri_mission
“Okay, they can, but the engines are too complex and expensive!”
“Okay, they can be made much simpler and cheaper, but they’re not powerful enough!”
“Okay, they’re powerful enough but the heat shield won’t work!”
“Okay, it works, but catching a rocket is impractical!”
“Okay, catching a rocket is practical, but…” <—- we are here.
"They'll never be able to re-use the ship"
"They can re-use it, but it's not economical".
"They can re-use it economically and fast back to back...but look at the amount of environmental damage!"
"They can't generate enough power to fix the damage"
"They generated enough power to undo environmental damages but ruined the sky"
...
That remains to be determined. The math with blackbody radiation cooling borderline works. So they may be cool, but whether it is enough ...
But I don't think we will see success before the craziness down here has settled down and they don't face the political headwinds they currently do. And I don't think that they can compete with ground based per unit cost no matter what kind of black magic they do.
Only catching both the booster and the rocket would top this one. But the rocket only being caught is still impressive regardless.
SpaceX below $1T is criminally undervalued.
Launch itself isn't super profitable and doesn't have a very big TAM, especially if you carefully treat the TAM as a present value and discount future cash flows. Also, at least by my personal guesswork, Starlink alone shouldn't get close to a $1 trillion valuation. It seems like the current valuation is based on people's guesses about the likelihood that space data centers pan out in a big way.
You do understand that a company needs to have a business case equivilient to its valuation right?
Going to Moon only costs money, going to Mars only costs money.
Our whole planet sends 1000-2000t of payload into space, most of it is now starlink.
The market values SpaceX over multiple areas of the business and their future plans and it isn't just this event which they have proven to accomplish.
> You do understand that a company needs to have a business case equivilient to its valuation right?
Nope. That is not how this works nor how investors see it. It is about their total addressable market (TAM) which SpaceX can capture over everyone else. So here are some more further questions:
1) Who is paying SpaceX for the compute that they have?
2) How quick is SpaceX building their data centers to support their customers?
3) How many people use Starlink as their primary internet provider?
You understand that almost all of where SpaceX businesses can expand into those areas and grow into that valuation and higher?
> Our whole planet sends 1000-2000t of payload into space, most of it is now starlink.
Your point is?
So who else can catch and reuse a rocketship to frequently deploy satellites into space in a very short period of time? (Don't say Blue Origin.)
2) ? I don't understand what you mean. Are we now talking about Datacenters for others or the space thing?
3) probably below 8 million. 10 Million customer overall, plenty as an alternative or for camping etc.
Amazon Leo is an alternative. But for sure Space-X started a race to the bottom (china, blue origin and co) so they have to start moving and use their first mover advantage.
My point is, that Space-X is already responsible for the most amount of payload which gets send into space. We as a whole planet don't have that much payload and Space-X made it alot cheaper to send payload up.
So were is the 1 Trillion evaluation? Btw. its currently at 1.89T
The Grok models and products also use the compute in SpaceX's data centers. It only makes sense to provide that excess compute to others such as Anthropic that don't own any, and that is worth tens of billions a quarter.
> In parallel Neoclouds are building up the same compute and its more like a negative sign that they got lucky
It is not the same. You can ask any chatbot, how many GPUs do the neoclouds have over SpaceX in their data centers?
Then:
> 2) ? I don't understand what you mean. Are we now talking about Datacenters for others or the space thing?
Both. The point being that they (SpaceX) are already quickly building new ones on land codenamed "Gun Range" and "Spam" and are the only ones that can launch and connect all of them via Starlink (if they in space) and serve both themselves and new customers.
> Amazon Leo is an alternative. But for sure Space-X started a race to the bottom (china, blue origin and co) so they have to start moving and use their first mover advantage.
Amazon Leo is not even generally available. So that doesn't even count.
> My point is, that Space-X is already responsible for the most amount of payload which gets send into space. We as a whole planet don't have that much payload and Space-X made it alot cheaper to send payload up.
So what happens when the neoclouds are not able to build data centers on land anymore due to legislation that prohibits more of them getting built [0] and ultimately they get paused? Most of the neoclouds are already sold out and cannot build more of them and have deadlines on these loans with interest on them.
Maybe the compute has to be deployed somewhere else in the long term.
> So were is the 1 Trillion evaluation? Btw. its currently at 1.89T
Exactly. It if goes lower than 1T it is cheap. This is not even pricing in the building of their own semiconductor fabricator (Terafab).
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/nov/04/datacenters-...
It was meant to be a dual catch of the booster and the rocketship and only the rocketship itself was caught.
Catching both of them in another mission would top this one.
(let's see who gets the joke)
seriously though, do we know the names of the engineers who made this possible or is it a secret?
* structures
* propulsion
* avionics
* flight software
departments, because they all work together to make this happen, along with support from IT/SRE. The person most responsible for ensuring that it happens is Lars Blackmore[1], who was also the Responsible Engineer in charge of making sure Falcon 9 landed successfully
(But lose the bastard at the top, OK?)