Reaction Engines are not NASA, true. And as such they don't have any experience taking engines (of any sort) to space and back. And yes, other hydrogen engines have been cheaper. But they weren't designed to be reused, either.
It's not difficult to imagine an organization that can do things more cheaply than NASA. But just wishing away costs like that isn't going to work. Even assuming they get the damn thing to work at all, I will be shocked if their net $/kg figure is lower than SpaceX's.
But even if you manage to land the booster stage, it’s going to need a very expensive inspection before it can be flown again. Rockets tread a fine line between flying and exploding. It’s hard enough to get them to work just once, let alone tens or maybe hundreds of times.
Ultimately jet engines are just complex rocket engines that use outside air for the oxidizer. The reason commercial jet engines are more reliable, generally, is they aren't pushed to the very edge of what's possible, performance-wise, and they're produced in large quantities. But neither will be true for the Skylon SABRE engines. I don't see any reason to think they'll be any cheaper to maintain than the Space Shuttle Main Engines.
Traditional engineers are regulated, certified, and subject to apprenticeship and continuing education. Engineering claims an explicit responsibility to public safety and reliability, even if it doesn’t always deliver.
Oh? I worked as an electrical engineer early in my career, and I was never "regulated, certified, and subject to apprenticeship and continuing education."
Yes, I know that STEM jobs are considered well-paying, but with the same work ethic and intellectual ability that they require, one could easily make more money in other fields.
You're comparing the very top and the almost-very-top of the economic pyramid here. A salary of $143,705 in the US, which is definitely achievable for a software developer, puts you in the 98th income percentile. The fact that you can find other jobs that pay even more doesn't mean STEM jobs don't pay well, and the idea we're "doing the hard work for little money" just doesn't pass the laugh test.
There's no reason to believe we're talking about a corporation at all. The father-in-law may be the sole owner of the business, and were he in the US he might want to incorporate for liability reasons. But Japan isn't the US.
Which leads to the second point: It isn't reasonable to make sweeping generalizations about the details of corporate law, as it varies significantly from country to country.
It has nothing to do with crime. The difference is if you try to use a personal check in Japan people will look at you like you've grown a third eye. It's only been in the last generation or so that employers stopped paying their employees in cash.
The purpose of a business to generate profits for the owners. A beneficial side effect is the creation of goods an services. "Keeping people busy" is neither a purpose nor a benefit.
That's the point of a public company, sure. But the purpose of a private company is whatever the owner wants it to be. If the owner thinks the social benefits are worth what he spends to employ extra people, then his business is serving its purpose. It should be pointed out social pressure on Japanese people in all aspects of life is stronger than it is in the US, and business owners aren't immune.
"The rich" never pay more than about a quarter of their income in taxes, so anybody trying to build a utopia with OPM is going to be very disappointed.
If you're wealthy enough you have teams of lawyers to figure out he most expedient ways of dodging taxes (the Kenedys paid no inheritance taxes at all Jackie died using some dodgy trust shell game), you can just pick up stakes and move to another country. Almost every first world country has some sort of investment visa, e.g. the EB-5 in the US. Londoners like to complain about all the rich people driving up property prices (dubbing it "Londongrad" for all the rich Russians), but they were enticed there by the British government with low taxes and easy immigration.
The way I see it, these kinds of UBI plans will eventually precipitate an unsolvable fiscal crisis, but it may take a generation or two before people who feel ashamed for not contributing are replaced by people who don't.
In the early 1960's the USA had the fear of Soviet missiles to motivate it. We don't currently have anything equivalent. Maybe if the Chinese send a person to the moon we'll finally get worried enough to devote the resources.
Why? There's nothing there. The only possible use for a moon presence would be manufacturing rockets to go somewhere else. And we just don't have the technology to make that work.
Obviously gamers aren't prudes. But games are expensive, and to have a sexual relationship with the maker of something (anything) you're reviewing and not disclosing it doesn't meet the lowest bar of journalism. If the sites involved had issued an apology and let it drop that would have been the end of it.
But instead they doubled down, disparaging their customers, engaging in sleazy journolist-style story coordination, and then trying to cover it all by by accusing their critics of being motivated by misogyny.
People have been swatted on both sides. Threats have been made on both sides. The idea this somehow has anything to do with sexism or misogyny is a smoke screen by corrupt journalists trying to obscure the fact they sold good reviews for sex.
When I worked warehouses in the mid-90s, pickers most certainly didn't make anything like $12/hr. They made the federal minimum. Something like $4.75. Even in constant dollars $12 is more than 50% higher than the wage pickers I dealt with earned.
Picking was always a low paid, crappy job. I don't know anything about Amazon, but if you worked for one of our customers and had two brain cells to rub together you wouldn't be picking for very long - if you showed up for work every day and could read they moved you into a position of more responsibility (and money). From what I can see, what makes these jobs worse than the ones in the '90s is the way they're using hundred-plus-year-old time management policies enforced by software.
But the pay isn't bad for that kind of work - it requires literally no skill whatsoever. You could have picked for 10 years and be no more valuable as an employee than the guy they hired yesterday.
The company is under no legal obligation to provide severance pay. It's more than a little dishonest to agree to do something for money and then welsh out because they can't force you to honor your end of the bargain.
Good luck with that. White men never actually win these kinds of lawsuits. In practice it's perfectly legal for companies to hire only women or only non-Asian minorities because of "diversity" or some other crock.
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Your feelings aside, I think the reason most people don't take this project seriously is so far all they've actually produced is a pre-cooler.
Reaction Engines are not NASA, true. And as such they don't have any experience taking engines (of any sort) to space and back. And yes, other hydrogen engines have been cheaper. But they weren't designed to be reused, either.
It's not difficult to imagine an organization that can do things more cheaply than NASA. But just wishing away costs like that isn't going to work. Even assuming they get the damn thing to work at all, I will be shocked if their net $/kg figure is lower than SpaceX's.
Ultimately jet engines are just complex rocket engines that use outside air for the oxidizer. The reason commercial jet engines are more reliable, generally, is they aren't pushed to the very edge of what's possible, performance-wise, and they're produced in large quantities. But neither will be true for the Skylon SABRE engines. I don't see any reason to think they'll be any cheaper to maintain than the Space Shuttle Main Engines.
Oh? I worked as an electrical engineer early in my career, and I was never "regulated, certified, and subject to apprenticeship and continuing education."
You're comparing the very top and the almost-very-top of the economic pyramid here. A salary of $143,705 in the US, which is definitely achievable for a software developer, puts you in the 98th income percentile. The fact that you can find other jobs that pay even more doesn't mean STEM jobs don't pay well, and the idea we're "doing the hard work for little money" just doesn't pass the laugh test.
There's no reason to believe we're talking about a corporation at all. The father-in-law may be the sole owner of the business, and were he in the US he might want to incorporate for liability reasons. But Japan isn't the US.
Which leads to the second point: It isn't reasonable to make sweeping generalizations about the details of corporate law, as it varies significantly from country to country.
It has nothing to do with crime. The difference is if you try to use a personal check in Japan people will look at you like you've grown a third eye. It's only been in the last generation or so that employers stopped paying their employees in cash.
That's the point of a public company, sure. But the purpose of a private company is whatever the owner wants it to be. If the owner thinks the social benefits are worth what he spends to employ extra people, then his business is serving its purpose. It should be pointed out social pressure on Japanese people in all aspects of life is stronger than it is in the US, and business owners aren't immune.
"The rich" never pay more than about a quarter of their income in taxes, so anybody trying to build a utopia with OPM is going to be very disappointed.
If you're wealthy enough you have teams of lawyers to figure out he most expedient ways of dodging taxes (the Kenedys paid no inheritance taxes at all Jackie died using some dodgy trust shell game), you can just pick up stakes and move to another country. Almost every first world country has some sort of investment visa, e.g. the EB-5 in the US. Londoners like to complain about all the rich people driving up property prices (dubbing it "Londongrad" for all the rich Russians), but they were enticed there by the British government with low taxes and easy immigration.
The way I see it, these kinds of UBI plans will eventually precipitate an unsolvable fiscal crisis, but it may take a generation or two before people who feel ashamed for not contributing are replaced by people who don't.
When you put it like that, it makes even more sense.
Why? There's nothing there. The only possible use for a moon presence would be manufacturing rockets to go somewhere else. And we just don't have the technology to make that work.
While it's true in they're laying claim to a label that doesn't apply, in the US leftists are typically called liberals.
That's true, in the same way Pearl Harbor didn't need to be defended because the only people with bombs in that area were the US Army and Navy.
When you find a comment like that, you just know there's a grammar mistake in there somewhere.
Even if you've written it yourself.
Literally.
So what? The government gets those kinds of warnings all the time. The president should not be trying to micromanage that kind of stuff.
That's what I was thinking. Maybe the first unsuccessful attempt.
Obviously gamers aren't prudes. But games are expensive, and to have a sexual relationship with the maker of something (anything) you're reviewing and not disclosing it doesn't meet the lowest bar of journalism. If the sites involved had issued an apology and let it drop that would have been the end of it.
But instead they doubled down, disparaging their customers, engaging in sleazy journolist-style story coordination, and then trying to cover it all by by accusing their critics of being motivated by misogyny.
People have been swatted on both sides. Threats have been made on both sides. The idea this somehow has anything to do with sexism or misogyny is a smoke screen by corrupt journalists trying to obscure the fact they sold good reviews for sex.
That was my first thought. Nothing anti-GG people say can be taken at face value.
When I worked warehouses in the mid-90s, pickers most certainly didn't make anything like $12/hr. They made the federal minimum. Something like $4.75. Even in constant dollars $12 is more than 50% higher than the wage pickers I dealt with earned.
Picking was always a low paid, crappy job. I don't know anything about Amazon, but if you worked for one of our customers and had two brain cells to rub together you wouldn't be picking for very long - if you showed up for work every day and could read they moved you into a position of more responsibility (and money). From what I can see, what makes these jobs worse than the ones in the '90s is the way they're using hundred-plus-year-old time management policies enforced by software.
But the pay isn't bad for that kind of work - it requires literally no skill whatsoever. You could have picked for 10 years and be no more valuable as an employee than the guy they hired yesterday.
Affect "the human race"? Whatever could you mean by that?
The company is under no legal obligation to provide severance pay. It's more than a little dishonest to agree to do something for money and then welsh out because they can't force you to honor your end of the bargain.
It's funny you should say that. I wouldn't work for any of the companies on that list, and I can't be the only one.
Good luck with that. White men never actually win these kinds of lawsuits. In practice it's perfectly legal for companies to hire only women or only non-Asian minorities because of "diversity" or some other crock.