southernplain

Despite how ungodly expensive it is, SLS is going to look good once it is all stacked.

Everything is bigger in Texas.

Not sure if you are joking, but the Amish rather prove my point. Plainness is a cultural virtue, but shoddy materials are not. Their clothing might look unadorned to you or I, but that does not mean it is not nice. Despite their apparent plainness, they still enjoy fine things, like finely crafted furniture. The technology thing is a bit of a thorny problem for the Amish to Mars scenario, but I think it is quite likely there are splinter religious groups in the world that would like to get off planet so they could do their thing undisturbed.

Shockingly, people like to wear nice clothes and have nice things. This is a human universal across all time periods and cultures. If people derive joy out of their baubles, then it serves a purpose for society. Improving some industrial process on the order of a few percentage points is arguably less valuable than the enjoyment people derive from their baubles. Life is for living, not for some marginal efficiency improvement in manufacturing.

I think you are right here. This isn't really a knock on Tesla. FWIW Tesla said in a press release in early 2020: Of course there is bias inherent in a Tesla corporate press release. They can be fudging the numbers one way or another, but they can't straight up fabricate them. I doubt Fremont is significantly better or worse than other automotive plants, which aren't particularly dangerous to begin with compared to some heavy manufacturing, resource extraction industries, or even garden variety construction workers. Edit: Metal and construction workers at Starbase are probably more likely to get injured than line workers at Fremont.

Literally a conspiracy theory that has been debunked many times. Citation needed. All of the reporting I have seen suggests this isn't the case and maybe never was. Tesla workers are free to unionize. The UAW is not a good union and Tesla workers would be stupid to let them in right now. Entry level line positions at Austin are starting at $15-17/hour IIRC. What do you consider living wages? Citation needed. Abusive is not a term to be wielded lightly. From what I understand, the relationship was not working and the divorce was messy. But allegations of domestic abuse I have never heard.

He is the Chief Engineer of SpaceX. He doesn’t do all of the engineering, but he is certainly more invested in engineering than the business itself. He has said as much many many times.

It won’t really. Even in the IEA’s most aggressive net-neutral-by-2050 forecasts there will still be daily production of roughly 24 million barrels of oil per day, down from a peak of ~104 sometime mid 2020s. However, electricity, transport, and heating are three enormous sources of emissions that can be transformed by renewable energy sources and different technologies. All of those sectors transitioning will put enormous downward pressure on the petrochemical industry.

Right! Wind power is much more mature than solar and has grown by 356% over the last decade. Having solar and wind growing at double digits percentages per year over the next decade radically reshapes the US electricity generation landscape. That extra capacity can be used to reduce the coal/natural gas generating capacity (already happening, coal capacity declined by 1050 TWh 2010-2020) and electrify sectors like transport.

My apologies, I did the number wrong in my head US energy consumption is 4000 TWh, not 4 TWh. Hopefully my math is correct this time. Re: takeoff. US solar generating capacity expanded at a rate of 58% increase year over year over the last decade. Even forecasting 19% year over year growth (the average of the last three years) over the next decade puts new solar starts alone at 425 TWh. Never mind increasing economies of scale and a better incentive mix as local/state/federal governments mandate renewable energy use.

Your numbers really don't make any sense here. You don't calculate consumption based on the number of hours per day or the size of the battery pack, you calculate it based on distance travelled. There are ~225 million drivers in the US. They travel on average ~21 500 km per year. A nice even estimate (although a bit conservative) of consumption for an efficient EV is 200 Wh/km combined. Multiply the three numbers together and you get roughly 967 TWh of electricity need if every single driver only drove electric vehicles. That is a lot of electricity certainly. But the US already produces and consumes ~4000 TWh of electricity and the change to all EV transportation is not happening overnight. Over the next decade or two a roughly 25% increase in electricity generation is completely achievable solely through scaling out solar/wind/batteries. This is also probably the worst case scenario for EV adoption, as US drivers travel further on average than drivers from other countries. I find your dismissal of solar/wind very amusing especially since we are already living in the takeoff phase of widespread affordable solar/wind power generation. New generating starts in the last decade in the US for solar/wind are already on the order of ~400 TWh while costs for solar/wind have fallen by ~80% and ~40% respectively over the same time period. This trend will intensify, not recede.

If Wikipedia is correct, roughly 13. Of course, we don't typically know until one is spotted in the wild. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters#Block_5

Space Corps would have been good. USSC has a sci-fi ring to it.

Gorgeous view of stage separation and boost back

It is simulcast on NASA tv so I imagine it has to conform to their standards.

Well obviously not, but that doesn't mean we should stop pursuing fusion power. There is functionally very little nuclear waste from fusion, it is vastly superior to fission power in every way if we can scale it out economically.

"In a fusion reactor, there will only be a limited amount of fuel (less than four grams) at any given moment. The reaction relies on a continuous input of fuel; if there is any perturbation in this process and the reaction ceases immediately." ITER knows what they are talking about. https://www.iter.org/mach/safety

I will take a look. Overall, I am extremely optimistic about the potential for solar power generation. I hope they can get orbital solar working economically but I think terrestrial solar is going to scale so much faster that orbital solar is have a tough hill to climb.

Not even close. Total provable reserves are already on the order of ~2 trillion of barrels of oil equivalent. It won't be economically or ecologically possible to exploit those reserves, but we aren't running out.

Sure, but the vast majority of human populations live in locations where insolation is just fine. Maybe, but regular terrestrial solar is forecasted to hit as low as $0.01-$0.03/kWh by the end of this decade. And it isn't in space.

There really isn't any compelling economic reason to put them in space. Regular terrestrial solar power is already very good for power generation. Besides, Musk is CEO of a certain high profile company that already sells solar panels so not sure he is eager for SpaceX to compete with Tesla. The transition to renewable energy is already happening right now, no oil company can stop it.

What is another month after fifteen years of delays?

The USAF certainly has a large network of airlift squadrons, but there are limits to how quickly they can react. Edit: Not all US bases have strategic airlift stationed at them either. This SS study isn't looking to replace strategic airlift, they are brainstorming the niches that P2P SS may occupy. It certainly seems likely there could be a military application for SS.

I don't think anyone in the DoD would consider SS for stealth applications. They aren't stupid. What obviously interests them is the extremely rapid deployment possibilities of P2P SS anywhere in the world in roughly two hours.

It was actually a really small budget movie, only $10 million. Given the budget constraints, they did a remarkably good job. I liked the movie. It wasn't perfect, but I don't care to nitpick every detail.