totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[mikegarrison]

Just as a reminder, the way this discussion got (re-)started is that a poster here made a dismissive comment about "NIMBY environmentalists". IMO that's indicative of an attitude that is basically the underlying cause of most of the reason why capitalist industry is usually reviled by people who care about the environment (or any other externalities). It's basically an attitude that says "you can't stand in the way of progress, and us achieving our goals is the definition of progress". It's an ends-justify-the-means sort of attitude.

Many businesses have learned (over time, usually) that it pays to be a good neighbor. It can seem like a drag on profits or accomplishments in the short run, but the good will of others pays dividends in the longer run. SpaceX is (supposedly anyway) solidly focused on the very long run of "making humanity an interplanetary species". They ought to be paying attention to this stuff, not dismissing it.

I am aware that posters here dismissing these concerns is not the same thing as SpaceX themselves dismissing these concerns, but I fear that posters here (and also SpaceX) have been taking their cues from Musk, who does quite often seem to dismiss such concerns. He's a bit blind on this -- making a big push toward things like electric cars and solar power but ignoring more down-to-Earth concerns like COVID safety for his workers and their community and things like, well, not building parking lots in a bird sanctuary.

[Beccab]

7 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Just as a reminder, the way this discussion got (re-)started is that a poster here made a dismissive comment about "NIMBY environmentalists". IMO that's indicative of an attitude that is basically the underlying cause of most of the reason why capitalist industry is usually reviled by people who care about the environment (or any other externalities). It's basically an attitude that says "you can't stand in the way of progress, and us achieving our goals is the definition of progress". It's an ends-justify-the-means sort of attitude.

Many businesses have learned (over time, usually) that it pays to be a good neighbor. It can seem like a drag on profits or accomplishments in the short run, but the good will of others pays dividends in the longer run. SpaceX is (supposedly anyway) solidly focused on the very long run of "making humanity an interplanetary species". They ought to be paying attention to this stuff, not dismissing it.

I am aware that posters here dismissing these concerns is not the same thing as SpaceX themselves dismissing these concerns, but I fear that posters here (and also SpaceX) have been taking their cues from Musk, who does quite often seem to dismiss such concerns. He's a bit blind on this -- making a big push toward things like electric cars and solar power but ignoring more down-to-Earth concerns like COVID safety for his workers and their community and things like, well, not building parking lots in a bird sanctuary.

I hope you won't take offense from this, but honestly, dismissing the whole argument as "stop building parking lots in a bird sanctuary" is the same as dismissing it as "NIMBY enviromentalists", just from the opposite point of view

[DDE]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

Just as a reminder, the way this discussion got (re-)started is that a poster here made a dismissive comment about "NIMBY environmentalists". IMO that's indicative of an attitude that is basically the underlying cause of most of the reason why capitalist industry is usually reviled by people who care about the environment (or any other externalities). It's basically an attitude that says "you can't stand in the way of progress, and us achieving our goals is the definition of progress". It's an ends-justify-the-means sort of attitude.

To be fair, this attitude has is not specifically tied to capitalism.

[mikegarrison]

16 minutes ago, DDE said:

To be fair, this attitude has is not specifically tied to capitalism.

I guess that's true. I'm mostly familiar with the way businesses operate under capitalism, however.

1 hour ago, Beccab said:

I hope you won't take offense from this, but honestly, dismissing the whole argument as "stop building parking lots in a bird sanctuary" is the same as dismissing it as "NIMBY enviromentalists", just from the opposite point of view

So, should they be building parking lots in bird sanctuaries? I mean, is there any argument that's a good thing to do?

[Beccab]

3 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

So, should they be building parking lots in bird sanctuaries? I mean, is there any argument that's a good thing to do?

And is there any argument that NIMBY ambientalists are good? The problem isn't if what is described is good or not, it is that it is very dismissive and with the only purpose of supporting OP's point of view. NIMBY ambientalists is an awful way of describing the counter arguments of the Boca Chica environmental risks and parking lots in bird sanctuaries is an awful way of describing the arguments in favour of the site expansion

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

4 hours ago, Beccab said:

Yep, it's what they use inside the ISS to keep stuff from flying everywhere

(the white squares)

Edit: whoops you said vacuum, not zero g. Please ignore

Ah - the Huggies Wet Wipes... Like a shower when you can't take a shower!

[mikegarrison]

21 minutes ago, Beccab said:

And is there any argument that NIMBY ambientalists are good? The problem isn't if what is described is good or not, it is that it is very dismissive and with the only purpose of supporting OP's point of view. NIMBY ambientalists is an awful way of describing the counter arguments of the Boca Chica environmental risks and parking lots in bird sanctuaries is an awful way of describing the arguments in favour of the site expansion

Um ... yes.

I mean, I consider myself an environmentalist. I've been a hiker and a mountain climber for most of my life. I live in a part of the world where environmental concerns are quite popular. My day job is to control the emissions from jet engines, and my day job previous to that was to control airplane noise.

I really find it very difficult to understand why protecting the environment should not be considered a priority. Not, maybe, the ONLY priority, but certainly an important one.

[Beccab]

7 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Um ... yes.

I mean, I consider myself an environmentalist. I've been a hiker and a mountain climber for most of my life. I live in a part of the world where environmental concerns are quite popular. My day job is to control the emissions from jet engines, and my day job previous to that was to control airplane noise.

I really find it very difficult to understand why protecting the environment should not be considered a priority. Not, maybe, the ONLY priority, but certainly an important one.

...did you miss the NIMBY part?
 

Quote

 

NIMBY

/ˈnɪmbi/

 

noun

informal

noun: NIMBY; plural noun: NIMBYs

1. a person who objects to the siting of something perceived as unpleasant or hazardous in the area where they live, especially while raising no such objections to similar developments elsewhere.

It is wrong to represent enviromentalists that care about boca chica like that, and it is wrong to represent spacex as "they are building parking lots in bird sanctuaries". Why do you have to call out people saying "nimby ambientalists" while making the same exact dismissal of the counter arguments proposal like that?

I consider myself an enviromentalist as well if that matters, but it really doesn't

Edited August 27, 2021 by Beccab

[Minmus Taster]

 

[DDE]

47 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

I really find it very difficult to understand why protecting the environment should not be considered a priority. Not, maybe, the ONLY priority, but certainly an important one.

Easy. The status quo of the environment has no intrinsic value. It is our duty as the superior, more powerful, uniquely intelligent species not to preserve it, but to integrate it into the noosphere - our human noosphere - in a constructive way.

This may mean paving bird sanctuaries into car parks. Indeed, this may mean sundering the mountains themselves and building a new world entirely of steel and glass - and doing the same to other planets, again and again and again. All that needs to be avoided is wastage and pointless destruction.

So, indeed, it's a question of the ends justifying the means. The biosphere can adapt to its new place in the world and prosper, even it takes forms we're not as fond of as those of the past eras.

Edited August 27, 2021 by DDE

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

14 minutes ago, DDE said:

The biosphere can adapt to its new place in the world and prosper, even it takes forms we're not as fond of

Coyotes.

In the city...

 

 

 

 

...the city of Compton

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[tater]

4 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Again, this is not about legal requirements. It is about what they should do beyond what they are required to do, if they wish to solve this problem like human beings.

Then I'm not really interested, and my arguments about the scale of the impact is fine. If it is an actual legal problem, they obviously need to follow the required laws. Short of that, it's a tiny place.

[kerbiloid]

The biosphere is 3 500 mln years old.
The high species are 300 mln years old.
The high species have 50 mln years left.
The biosphere has 1 000 mln years left.

The biosphere has passed its halfway long ago and has approached to its peak.

The peak must wisely utilize the rest 50 mln of the biosphere existence to make the human-derived life conditionally immortal and interstellar.

The natural biosphere of the planet will anyway collapse in a century (decades?), under the demographic pressure of the humans species.
(And no, not of the industrial countries, because they don't need to hunt everything that moves, and their population isn't growing. Also they are ok with fresh water for farming.)

Then the XXII will be the time of the biosphere artificial restoration.
And no elephants, giraffes, and other cool things will exist there in reproductionable amounts.

So, willingly or unwillingly, the human will anyway construct the new biosphere from scratch, and the current efforts to conserve it are just attempts to keep everything as is.

Edited August 27, 2021 by kerbiloid

[Rakaydos]

[citation needed]

[tater]

Live in 30 hours:

 

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

[citation needed]

It's a brief annotation.

[tater]

Weather only 40% go tomorrow.

 

 

[Beccab]

37 minutes ago, tater said:

Weather only 40% go tomorrow.

 

 

Pre launch conference at 16:00 UTC (half an hour from now) on NASA TV

Also, looks like this will be A Shortfall Of Gravitas' first recovery attempt

[MKI]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Coyotes.

In the city...

...the city of Compton

I just went to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, and there is an entire exhibit/showcase featuring a coyote killing a cat in someone's backyard.  

 

 

[SpaceFace545]

41 minutes ago, MKI said:

I just went to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, and there is an entire exhibit/showcase featuring a coyote killing a cat in someone's backyard.  

 

 

Typical SoCal vibes. coyotes and rattlesnakes killing pets aren't too uncommon.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

39 minutes ago, MKI said:

I just went to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, and there is an entire exhibit/showcase featuring a coyote killing a cat in someone's backyard.  

 

 

That's awesome!

...

 

I grew up in L.A., and the most wildlife we saw were skunks and possums.  Possums, are, by the way the most successful mammal in America - as far as I can tell.  They live everywhere from San Diego to Seattle and I've seen them all along the Eastern Seaboard, Arkansas, Kentucky, Colorado and Michigan.  They're literally everywhere.

Another fun fact: LA is one of those cities where you can go jogging along a trail and get killed by a mountain lion.  I never saw one... but I read the papers!

[GuessingEveryDay]

Just now, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I grew up in L.A., and the most wildlife we saw were skunks and possums.  Possums, are, by the way the most successful mammal in America - as far as I can tell.  They live everywhere from San Diego to Seattle and I've seen them all along the Eastern Seaboard, Arkansas, Kentucky, Colorado and Michigan.  They're literally everywhere.

There's one right outside my school as I'm typing this!

[tater]

We're very much on the edge of town, but we have bobcats, coyotes (loads), deer, etc in the yard all the time. Sometimes bear. Mountain lions in the foothills, but I have yet to see one in person (though I have seen pics from around here).

[CatastrophicFailure]

14 hours ago, tater said:

they have a history of pretty catastrophic failures

I had nothing to do with anything, I swear! I was never even in same state!

 

[Beccab]

I... I don't even know what to say