bah, just tunnel through them. they’ll fix it in an OTA update.
Silicon Valley businesses don’t need to check for gas lines before writing software.
Besides, you don’t get it - this is a new kind of tunneling company that will revolutionize everything. Someday, Elon Musk might travel the English Channel… by train!
Where you can’t cross the street without crossing a fault line. LA seems like a really bad place to try this out.
Um, LA does have a subway system.
L.A. does. LA’s water table is only a couple of feet underground. (That’s why New Orleans has pumps.)
LA’s water table is around Silverthorne and Pinedale.
Well yeah. They still chase you but now they’re on fire too.
If you didn’t order your flamethrower already, you’re too late; they’re sold out.
Well, congratulations to Elon Musk. He’s finally running a profitable company.
The Falcon Heavy from SpaceX had a very successful launch today.
Link but warning includes auto-starting video
Elon Musk is pretty awesome, I don’t care what the naysayers, say. He is the living embodiment of a Heinlein Engineering hero. Does he have a red-headed wife?
nobody is “nay-saying” Elon Musk.
we’re nay-saying his army of fanboys who strut around and act like anything he does is their own personal accomplishments.
gloating about stuff you’ve personally done is considered rather crass. Gloating about what someone else has done (and you had zero to do with) is stupid.
“We?” You got a mouse in your pocket? You’re the only one railing against this straw-scourge.
Find a picture of his mom and you’ll know for sure.
(Sorry, Bob. Love you.)
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Wait… You mean to tell me that there are people who take issue with the thought of private companies building “space ships”?
Seriously?
A brief lesson in the history of American spaceflight:
In 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to cross the boundary into space. He did so in a Mercury capsule, which built by McDonnell Aircraft & was installed on top of a Redstone rocket, which was built by Chrysler.
In 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. He did so in a Merucury capsule (again, built by McDonnell Aircraft) that was installed atop an Atlas rocket, which was built by Convair.
In 1965, John Young & Gus Grissom became the first Americans to orbit the Earth as a duo in the same vehicle. They did so in a Gemini capsule (also built McDonnell Aircraft), which was fired into space with a Titan rocket, which was built by the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft company.
In 1968, Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Bill Anders became the first Americans to fly to another planetary body. They do so in an Apollo capsule, which was built by North American Aviation & launched into space thanks to a Saturn V rocket, which was built by Boeing, North American, & Douglas.
The Space Shuttle, which first flew in 1981, was built by Boeing, with the external fuel tank & rocket boosters built by Lockheed Martin & Thiokol, resectively.
The Orion capsule, which is meant to fill the role originally played by the Apollo capsule in getting humans beyond Earth orbit, is a product of Lockheed Martin.
The US, in over 50 years of manned spaceflight, has yet to utilize a spacecraft or rocket which wasn’t built by a private company. Anyone who takes issue with it now apparently hasn’t been paying attention.
I think the time frames he’s discussed are ridiculous, and, if he was actually serious about them (rather than just using them to get headlines), he’d do little more than get people killed.
But as an ultimate goal for his company to continue to pursue long after he, his replacement, his replacement’s replacement, and his replacement’s replacement are all long dead (assuming each holds the job until retirement), it’s not too outlandish.
There’s also the possibility that he’s pushing it in order to get supporters for more realistic goals, which something we’ve seen with a lot of “Let’s go to Mars” campaigns lately.
those programs were all funded and managed by the government, you idiot. Redstone, Atlas, and Titan were all repurposed ICBMs for god’s sake.
Damn! I was going to get two, but they sold out while I was standing in line at the Apple store to get my iPhone X, wearing my Fjallraven backpack and sucking on my Starbucks Frappuccino.
And?
The STG, NACA, & NASA were only as successful as the minds behind the programs. Unless you’re insinuating that the likes of Max Faget, Wernher Von Braun, Chris Kraft, etc. would have done their jobs worse if they were hired by private industry, rather than the government, I fail to see your point.
Any private industry that can get the great minds on board with the resources necessary to act on their recommendations can get the same results as the government contracting those same minds & acting on their recommendations, because they’re the same thing.
The work doesn’t change just because a private company, rather the government, is signing the checks. The capacities of the people involved don’t change either.
You must be joking. The goals and the motivations change enormously. Broadly and generally speaking, they change from a long-term view of the public interest to a short-term pursuit of private profits.
2/10, please try harder.
I’d suggest rereading what I wrote, because it doesn’t say what you apparently think it said.
The US budget devoted (comparatively) large resources to space travel in the late 50s and early 60s because the government wanted to stick it to the Soviets.
The people they hired, on the other hand, didn’t necessarily share their motivation. They did the work because they wanted to see the ends realized.
Launch Control and Mission Control in the 60s was filled with people who couldn’t give a damn about the Soviets–they just wanted to help land a man on the moon.
If those same people were hired by a private company, they wouldn’t give a damn about the profits of the company–they’d just want to help land a man on the moon.
The people whose motivations would change are the ones who write the checks, not the ones who receive them.
And you’re joking if you think we went to space in the 60s out of “a long-term view of the public interest”.
I understood what you wrote perfectly well, thanks. I’m not at all sure that you did.
No, it absolutely was – it was initially a misguided militaristic interest in national security, and later a misguided interest in a symbolic display of superiority, but it was never a mercenary interest and through it all Kennedy felt he was serving the nation’s best interests. James Webb argued for a more evolutionary and systematic approach to space exploration and Kennedy would have done well to listen, but that’s old history and neither here nor there any more.
The rest of what you wrote is bullshit, except for the part about the motivations of those who write the checks, and I don’t think you understand how centrally important that is. People have dreamed of getting to the moon since the first glimmerings that technology might make it possible, but it never happened and would likely not have happened even to this day had not Kennedy – the government – inspired, organized, and funded the most massive engineering project in human history. And the followons to that have been more systematic in the ways that Webb would have wanted: the Voyager explorations, the Viking, Curiosity, and the other Mars landers, the new space telescopes – those have all opened new vistas of science, as have the project fundings of the NIH, the National Science Foundation, and countless other government agencies – government all. So are the important operational organizations like NASA and JPL.
The private enterprise folks that you like to credit with single-handedly accomplishing all this are just people doing their jobs, as there always have been and always will be. It takes vision, inspiration, and very big money to actually coordinate this talent to make big things happen, and only governments have the necessary long-term view and the necessary embrace of the public interest to support projects in the long-term national interest and the long-term interests of humanity. Left to private enterprise, instead of expanding the frontiers of science these bright people would be making can openers and robotic vacuum cleaners in 26 different colors.