totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[Beccab]

20 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

Oh? I had no idea there was Raptor 2 hardware in testing!

Yup, that's recent news. Up to 5 full duration static fires per day at McGregor at the moment, confirmed to be mostly if not fully Raptor 2. Some think the B8 series will fly with Raptor 2, but I have not seen that confirmed so we'll have to wait and see

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

So I am guessing that the whole 'we gotta figure out Raptor mass production or go bankrupt' was about R2 production? 

Or have we heard anything about another, cheaper / easier to build option? 

 

(just thinking about it now... Usually when I see a '2' it means bigger, faster, stronger... Not more efficient and cheaper - so I did not connect the dots back then) 

[AtomicTech]

26 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

bigger, faster, stronger.

 

[Flavio hc16]

Elon Musk is person of the YEAR for TIME magazine.

then you read this 

https://ibb.co/cQycBBk

 

[RealKerbal3x]

B4 lift to the OLM is underway!

 

[tater]

6 minutes ago, Flavio hc16 said:

Elon Musk is person of the YEAR for TIME magazine.

then you read this 

https://ibb.co/cQycBBk

Is that from Time? Time has been garbage for a long time, and of course the stories are written by reporters, experts in pretty much nothing except being reporters, I suppose.

Remember the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. Murray said that he was interviewed (not briefly) by a major paper (probably the NYT), and read the story—and they got his work totally, completely wrong. The amnesia effect was that he turned to another section of the paper, and believed what he had read—in spite of the evidence that reporters can have something explicitly explained to them, and still get it totally wrong.

[Flavio hc16]

Just now, tater said:

Is that from Time? Time has been garbage for a long time, and of course the stories are written by reporters, experts in pretty much nothing except being reporters, I suppose.

Remember the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. Murray said that he was interviewed (not briefly) by a major paper (probably the NYT), and read the story—and they got his work totally, completely wrong. The amnesia effect was that he turned to another section of the paper, and believed what he had read—in spite of the evidence that reporters can have something explicitly explained to them, and still get it totally wrong.

yeap, it's from the time, about 2/3 into it

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Time, Newsweek and others were pretty good back in the 80s... not so much any more.

[AtomicTech]

Except for NPR 

They're the News GigaChads

[sevenperforce]

31 minutes ago, Flavio hc16 said:

Elon Musk is person of the YEAR for TIME magazine.

then you read this 

https://ibb.co/cQycBBk

 

Oh for crying out loud, who the hell

[magnemoe]

6 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Time, Newsweek and others were pretty good back in the 80s... not so much any more.

I guess the 2 hour new cycle killed them. 
Now as the Friendly Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NightmareFuelStationAttendant
Remember they probably make just as many mistakes about things you have little knowledge off as the ones you are knowledgeable about and spot all the mistakes. 
 

[RealKerbal3x]

 

[wumpus]

26 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Time, Newsweek and others were pretty good back in the 80s... not so much any more.

I'm rather curious if we are dealing with the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.  In the 1980s it was not trivial to do fact checking the same way you can do it in the age of google (although this doesn't seem to help the Facebook crowd).  I distinctly remember reading quite a few things in the 1980s and being shocked just how wrong they got it.  It seems rather suspicious that an institution suddenly becomes so very wrong at almost the same time it becomes possible to check how wrong they are.

[magnemoe]

14 minutes ago, wumpus said:

I'm rather curious if we are dealing with the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.  In the 1980s it was not trivial to do fact checking the same way you can do it in the age of google (although this doesn't seem to help the Facebook crowd).  I distinctly remember reading quite a few things in the 1980s and being shocked just how wrong they got it.  It seems rather suspicious that an institution suddenly becomes so very wrong at almost the same time it becomes possible to check how wrong they are.

I think you are correct, reporters, experts in pretty much nothing except being reporters. Remember all the nonsense they had about of computers and consoles back  then and then internet started becoming an thing 30 years ago. Now-day this is way better as you have tech reporters as you have sport and political ones. 
Now add in the political bias and its not an group I rank high. 

[tater]

24 minutes ago, wumpus said:

I'm rather curious if we are dealing with the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.  In the 1980s it was not trivial to do fact checking the same way you can do it in the age of google (although this doesn't seem to help the Facebook crowd).  I distinctly remember reading quite a few things in the 1980s and being shocked just how wrong they got it.  It seems rather suspicious that an institution suddenly becomes so very wrong at almost the same time it becomes possible to check how wrong they are.

Reporters are not the sharpest knives in the drawer.

I'd bet money that you'd do better betting on any random science/engineering reporting being the opposite of what they claim then even deciding on the veracity of it with a coin flip. If they were just randomly wrong, they'd hit and miss, they are usually wrong.

Checking (online as well) requires knowing what questions to actually ask.

[Spaceception]

1 hour ago, Flavio hc16 said:

Elon Musk is person of the YEAR for TIME magazine.

then you read this 

https://ibb.co/cQycBBk

 

Every sentence gets worse and worse, it's incredible.

 

On topic, I suppose we could expect B8 to begin stacking within the month, and ready for its test campaign by Janurary. It's quite the skip though, was there a reason given like going from SN15 to 20?

[GuessingEveryDay]

2 hours ago, Flavio hc16 said:

Elon Musk is person of the YEAR for TIME magazine.

then you read this 

https://ibb.co/cQycBBk

 

They aren't wrong, technically...

As they are only throwing away the payload, unless Starship is the payload.

[Beccab]

49 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

was there a reason given like going from SN15 to 20?

This is leaked information so not really, but it's not hard to guess the reason behind the skip itself. B5 is completed and likely has nearly the same design as B4; B6 is complete as well, but it is a test tank instead of a true booster. Skipping B7 is only natural as every last number of Starship lines was skipped, so here comes the B8 series with 33 engines and possibly raptor 2

[tater]

 

 

 

 

 

[RCgothic]

neat

 

[SunlitZelkova]

6 hours ago, tater said:

Reporters are not the sharpest knives in the drawer.

I don't think this is the full story. The primary problem lies with either editors or the people above them (management).

I haven't seen any evidence that journalism courses in either high school or university have declined in some disastrous manner. But at the news companies/agencies themselves, one of the following happens-

a. The news organization gets bought by an entertainment media company

b. People mainly experienced in the entertainment media industry become key management figures- or leading figures- of the news organization

c. The management and leading figures in the news organization are profit-focused and lack ethics to begin with

This then influences the editors. The editors get instructed by their bosses on how to run the paper, what stories are ok, what stories they should have, and so on, and then the editor enforces that throughout the organization.

All private organizations need to make profit. For news companies, this is primarily done by running ads. To get revenue from the ads, you need more people reading your stories, so you can charge more for people to run ads in your paper/website/whatever. This means getting people's attention, and nothing gets people's attention like controversy, scandals, and so on. Even subscription based services need to do the same thing, because people will only subscribe if you have their attention/interest.

People lose interest in things that are too detailed. They also will be more interested if the content is further dumbed down, and even further interested if the content plays into their own preconceptions about the world or the topic of the article/story. They also like drama. These are the kinds of stories that sell.

So then the following happens-

1. Reporter writes decent story using his common sense and skills from school

2. Reporter takes it to the editor. The editor massively edits it, dumbing it down, making it more dramatic. He probably tells the reporter "this is how it should be", and then proceeds to have the edited version published. This is, as mentioned earlier, based on what management has ordered the editor to do in regards to content and reporting practices

3. Reporter doesn't want to lose his job (imagine, after having it checked by your teacher, being told by him/her "this is how the project should be done" and then proceeding to undo his/her edits and make it in the way you did originally. Not only would you presumably get a bad grade/score, but the teacher would likely feel offended too). Reporter proceeds to use the "style of writing" recommended by the editor

4. Other reporters take note of what happens. Either just by noticing and deciding on their own, or by being directly told by the editor, they start using the same style as well

5. With poor reporting being rewarded, the entire news organization becomes geared towards producing such content. Those who do not comply are fired, although most will comply as they want to keep their job (there isn't much else they can do with a degree in journalism). In the post-Cold War hyper-consumerist society and culture, many probably can't tell the difference between whether this constitutes poor reporting or simply "adding a little fluff" anyways, and thus do not oppose the situation

Now you could blame the reporters for not speaking out, but this is not a problem with the reporters themselves as much as it is with society itself. Failure to speak up to change the organization (assuming they could in the first place, there is a lot going against one if they have the courage to) occurs everywhere, from the government (NSA surveillance practices) to aerospace (Boeing) to... well, just name an industry and you can probably find an example where problematic practices persisted despite the employees knowing of it.

[tater]

I assume anything written by an unknown reporter on a subject is wrong until I demonstrate otherwise.

[mikegarrison]

On 12/8/2021 at 6:51 PM, SunlitZelkova said:

SpaceX and Musk would be doing what they are doing whether it was in Brownsville or in an "all white" community.

Maybe, but somehow it's never the rich white resort communities that end up with a chemical plant or a spaceship factory right in the middle of them.

On 12/8/2021 at 10:22 PM, Beccab said:

considering we're talking about one of the poorest areas of the US until a few years ago I can't imagine the demand to be high. They can't, like the people in the article, espect it to be valued as high as even just highly touristic zones like South Padre island

Which is another way of saying exactly the same thing. These sorts of facilities get built in the poorer neighborhoods.

[mikegarrison]

6 hours ago, tater said:

 

There is already a way to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and turn it into fuel. It's called "biofuel".

[tater]

7 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

There is already a way to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and turn it into fuel. It's called "biofuel".

Doesn't work on Mars.