Debt bondage? I wonder if not being able to quit your job because you need to make mortgage payments counts? Maybe people will look back on our era of a credit driven economy and consider us all bloody indentured.
(Incidentally, NEO isn't outside the Earth gravitational field. Its just that in orbit everything is falling at the same rate and thus appears to be relatively weightless)
To be blunt, a serious outfit would know how long their damn engine burns for.
The reason they've done everything on such a small budget is because they cut through the red tape that holds government agencies back. Unfortunately, some of that red tape was obviously important for quality control.
In any case, they aren't doing that well at reducing cost - Falcon 9 for instance is 5 million dollars per flight more expensive than Proton (albeit it with a slightly bigger capacity) and Proton has the longest and best record of any currently operating heavy lifter. People with 20+ tonne satellites will be designing them for current heavy launchers like Proton so the extra payload capacity won't be an issue for quite a while, leaving Falcon 9 looking a bit mediocre even if it does ever fly.
So, for all Musk's bluster, your lean mean private enterprise doesn't seem to have much of an edge over decades old Soviet engineering.
Yep. He is a Randian hero - a 'rugged individualist' who drives society single-handedly by paying other people to do things.
When a person, such as Musk, has his ambition turned into results through the ingenuity of those he has employed, it is tempting for him to attribute that success solely to the ambition part. Its a fairly quick path from there to monomania and hubris.
In academic research it might not be a problem, but in industry it certainly is - because big companies keep churning out such nuisance patents - and its industry that decides where the big R&D money goes rather than academia
(That said, the link I showed was an example of academic research using patents amongst other things as a measure of progress)
Industry isn't necessarily being stupid though, just gaming the system well. They are pursuing patents that pay, the fact that such patents don't necessarily overlap with patents that actually have technological merit isn't directly their fault.
You need to understand the difference between being a sceptic and being a dick. Asking people for citations of personal observation falls squarely into the latter category. Nevertheless, I shall humour you just this once:
This is something I found through a few minutes googling, something you could've done if you were actually interested in finding out instead of trying to score points by demanding citations of peoples personal observation.
You are a total cockmuncher. You obviously consider yourself clever for 'questioning' things without any regard for the quality of your questsion. You actually illustrate the point quite nicely: you measure your intellectualism by gross output rather than quality, and end up coming across as a nitpicking little shit instead of a sharp minded critic.
I didn't make any statements about US research output, you did. I'm asking you to support your assertions.
I did support my assertions, certainly more than you have done. The question is whether or not I am prepared to spend 20 minutes trawling google to provide citations to satisfy the smarmy nitpicking of some random twat on the internet.
Indeed: you were completely oblivious to the issue. But either the US is using the best known practices for quantifying research output, or it is not. If it it using best known practices, you have nothing to complain about. If you want to argue that the US is not using best practices for quantifying research output, then please point to something that supports your statements.
Bullshit. This is the 'if you don't like it, leave' crap that TV pundits come out with all the time and it has no logical foundation at all. You say there is no reason to complain about a suboptimal situation if no current example of a more optimal solution exists. Why? Its a total fucking non sequitur. I might not have provided a long list of web links, but at least my argument made logical sense. Yours is nothing more than mindless blithering.
Indeed, and that is exactly what you're doing. So far, all you have done is bash US research without any substance behind your arguments. Put up or shut up.
You really are a deeply stupid person, and a clear troll. I think it would be more appropriate therefore for you to shut up.
Sorry, but you're confused. Research output in the US is quantified by many different factors.
I hear politicians, economists and pundits all the time cite patents as evidence of innovation.
And how would you know? What quantities do you base that assessment on? And "little" is relative to which other nations?
What are you producing then, smartarse?
Indeed. Now, which nation do you think is more "aware" of the state of its economy than the US?
Who said I was trying to compare the US to another nation? It really pisses me off when people try and deflect or dodge questions in place of making a point.
All this money that is being spent pursuing retarded patents like this is classified as R&D spending. It is seen as successful R&D spending because it produces patents (a handy metric for innovation) and money. The question of quality, of whether it actually corresponds to real technological advance, seems to be irrelevant to most people in industry and high office.
The US, seeing itself as a high tech economy, is measuring inputs (R&D money) and gross outputs (patents and the money they produce) and patting itself on the back for the resulting 'growth' (innovation), despite the fact you are producing little or none.
Being completely unaware of the true state of your economy is a dangerous place to be.
There seems to be a desperation in the news coming out of Fermilab recently, as they scramble to discover something, anything, before the LHC comes online and puts the US squarely in second place for particle accelerators.
You had your chance, and you blew it. Perhaps the SSC was jinxed by the idea of naming it after Reagan. We shall never know.
Its a strictly practical limitation. A facility capable of making a shuttle sized SRB would be huuuuge, certainly of a size impractical to transport to Mars.
I would say sooner. What a lot of people have suggested to me is that the Bush administration wanted spending up to make it look like the economy was healthy, just until he got out of office. That is why they looked the other way whilst people were tossing out cheap credit. I think the Republicans want to lose this election so the bomb drops on a Democrat's watch.
Basically, he deliberately maxed out Obama's credit card for him and remortgaged the house, with the plan to later on call him fiscally irresponsible.
A lot. SRBs are very sensitive to defects in the fuel grain, and if the thing burns unevenly you've got problems. Also, big ones have to be manufactured in segments. I can't really see all that infrastructure being boosted up to Mars any time soon.
Which are cultural and geographical distribution issues. Rural vs urban living as well as cultural hurdles surrounding sex contributing to HIV are contributing to a general depression in wealth distribution. You're trying to get an economic system to fix problems it's not designed to. Economics can't force people to move to where the jobs are - though it does give them incentive and many of those living in rural Botswana live off of income from relatives working in the cities. It certainly can't force people to change their sexual behavior.
No economic system is perfect, so it begs the question - if you're not happy with the capitalistic mixed economy of the west, what would be a better one?
You know saying 'Well you think of something!' is conceding to a criticism?
You also can't just ignore progress and complain rather than change - at some point people need to take responsibility for themselves. If food is cheap find something else other than farming, the world can't be handed to you. The economies that are thriving are those that can change.
Most of the people starving are under 5 years of age. Perhaps they should've 'taken responsibility' and invested more of their earnings when they were in the womb?
Here is the part where you switch to a vaguely racist/eugenic argument about how much African people 'breed'.
"Botswana has maintained one of the world's highest economic growth rates since independence in 1966, though growth slowed to 4.7% annually in 2006-07. Through fiscal discipline and sound management, Botswana has transformed itself from one of the poorest countries in the world to a middle-income country with a per capita GDP of nearly $15,000 in 2007." - CIA Factbook
You are so absurdly wrong. The country has a Gini coefficient of 63 (fucking huge) so ordinary people are not seeing any of that growth. Its all going into the pockets of Diamond magnates. It also has the second highest HIV infection rate in the world despite the aggressive promotion of ARV drugs.
The US isn't the only western nation. One of the major industries in Cuba is tourism, primarily from Canada and Europe.
Lots of countries have tourists, not many have such good healthcare for their money.
Yet western societies manage to feed their people with enough excess to export to other countries. One of the keys is development of other industries has contributed to improvements in food productivity. In fact until recently food produced by the west is too cheap which negatively impacts developing agricultural nations. Again they aren't starving because there isn't food, it's more about political stability.
Western societies are not closed systems. The UK, for instance, has little manufacturing but a great many manufactured goods. You can't just take the economic growth of a country then ignore the consequences of that growth that exist out of the country.
That is because we are a labour aristocracy. The poverty that results from our wealth is outsourced to the 'developing world'. The idea that this is somehow inevitable is a pure lie.
Generally, the more the "developing world" trades with the west, the better their conditions from all the invested capital. Of course depending on the politics of the area the mileage may vary.
Not true. Botswana, for example, follows all the trade rules laid down by the west and is still mired in poverty. Meanwhile, Cuba is a pariah nation and manages notably better standards of living than many of its regional neighbours who are on board with the Washington conesnsu.
There is enough food in the world for everyone, it just isn't getting to those who need it.
This isn't because of captialism, it's because of political instability. Food is rotting on the harbor in Haiti because it hasn't cleared customs or gets stolen by warlords in Africa so they can maintain control. You can send the food but unless you want war you can't necessarily get it to those who need it.
These are problems, but most of the time people simply cannot afford enough food for their families. Markets have no mechanism to ensure the price of food stays within the income of the hungry.
That is because we are a labour aristocracy. The poverty that results from our wealth is outsourced to the 'developing world'. The idea that this is somehow inevitable is a pure lie. There is enough food in the world for everyone, it just isn't getting to those who need it.
A police state isn't erected in one chunk. It is built up brick by brick, and this kind of seizure is one of these bricks.
People will tell you that you are being alarmist when you raise this sort of thing with them. But if you don't pay attention to it when it is at this level then there will be nothing you can do about it when you've completely lost your freedom.
His idea is that you can make money and help people at the same time. For capitalism to be creative, monetary value has to represent an improvement in human life.
Like all surrogates though, whenever you try to use money to represent anything other than money itself it loses its ability to represent that thing immediately. The idea of carbon trading shows this, because its become quite apartment that carbon credits have stopped representing actual amounts of carbon emissions.
Poverty, suffering and hunger are inherent components of capitalism. Enjoy your dinner people.
Shit NASA sends up doesn't blow up with this frequency. What you see as pork is probably necessary to the proper running of a space programme, but because everyone is so indoctrinated with the idea of the supremacy of the market you assume it can do things better.
Musk and his employees have 50 years of other peoples failure to draw on, computing power for modeling that would've been unimaginable when the first space programmes started, and far superior materials and construction techniques.
So I am sorry, but this excuse simply doesn't wash with me.
Well, they did get scattered I am sure. However, I hope the families of those people are to be compensated for the cockup with their loved ones remains.
Slashdot Mirror
Debt bondage? I wonder if not being able to quit your job because you need to make mortgage payments counts? Maybe people will look back on our era of a credit driven economy and consider us all bloody indentured.
(Incidentally, NEO isn't outside the Earth gravitational field. Its just that in orbit everything is falling at the same rate and thus appears to be relatively weightless)
To be blunt, a serious outfit would know how long their damn engine burns for.
The reason they've done everything on such a small budget is because they cut through the red tape that holds government agencies back. Unfortunately, some of that red tape was obviously important for quality control.
In any case, they aren't doing that well at reducing cost - Falcon 9 for instance is 5 million dollars per flight more expensive than Proton (albeit it with a slightly bigger capacity) and Proton has the longest and best record of any currently operating heavy lifter. People with 20+ tonne satellites will be designing them for current heavy launchers like Proton so the extra payload capacity won't be an issue for quite a while, leaving Falcon 9 looking a bit mediocre even if it does ever fly.
So, for all Musk's bluster, your lean mean private enterprise doesn't seem to have much of an edge over decades old Soviet engineering.
Yep. He is a Randian hero - a 'rugged individualist' who drives society single-handedly by paying other people to do things.
When a person, such as Musk, has his ambition turned into results through the ingenuity of those he has employed, it is tempting for him to attribute that success solely to the ambition part. Its a fairly quick path from there to monomania and hubris.
He has one of these in each cave
In academic research it might not be a problem, but in industry it certainly is - because big companies keep churning out such nuisance patents - and its industry that decides where the big R&D money goes rather than academia
(That said, the link I showed was an example of academic research using patents amongst other things as a measure of progress)
Industry isn't necessarily being stupid though, just gaming the system well. They are pursuing patents that pay, the fact that such patents don't necessarily overlap with patents that actually have technological merit isn't directly their fault.
No, cuntface, that article does not say what you think it says. Read it again, and stop being a total wanker.
You need to understand the difference between being a sceptic and being a dick. Asking people for citations of personal observation falls squarely into the latter category. Nevertheless, I shall humour you just this once:
Here is an example of the rate of patents being used as a surrogate for rate of innovaction
This is something I found through a few minutes googling, something you could've done if you were actually interested in finding out instead of trying to score points by demanding citations of peoples personal observation.
You are a total cockmuncher. You obviously consider yourself clever for 'questioning' things without any regard for the quality of your questsion. You actually illustrate the point quite nicely: you measure your intellectualism by gross output rather than quality, and end up coming across as a nitpicking little shit instead of a sharp minded critic.
I didn't make any statements about US research output, you did. I'm asking you to support your assertions.
I did support my assertions, certainly more than you have done. The question is whether or not I am prepared to spend 20 minutes trawling google to provide citations to satisfy the smarmy nitpicking of some random twat on the internet.
Indeed: you were completely oblivious to the issue. But either the US is using the best known practices for quantifying research output, or it is not. If it it using best known practices, you have nothing to complain about. If you want to argue that the US is not using best practices for quantifying research output, then please point to something that supports your statements.
Bullshit. This is the 'if you don't like it, leave' crap that TV pundits come out with all the time and it has no logical foundation at all. You say there is no reason to complain about a suboptimal situation if no current example of a more optimal solution exists. Why? Its a total fucking non sequitur. I might not have provided a long list of web links, but at least my argument made logical sense. Yours is nothing more than mindless blithering.
Indeed, and that is exactly what you're doing. So far, all you have done is bash US research without any substance behind your arguments. Put up or shut up.
You really are a deeply stupid person, and a clear troll. I think it would be more appropriate therefore for you to shut up.
Sorry, but you're confused. Research output in the US is quantified by many different factors.
I hear politicians, economists and pundits all the time cite patents as evidence of innovation.
And how would you know? What quantities do you base that assessment on? And "little" is relative to which other nations?
What are you producing then, smartarse?
Indeed. Now, which nation do you think is more "aware" of the state of its economy than the US?
Who said I was trying to compare the US to another nation? It really pisses me off when people try and deflect or dodge questions in place of making a point.
All this money that is being spent pursuing retarded patents like this is classified as R&D spending. It is seen as successful R&D spending because it produces patents (a handy metric for innovation) and money. The question of quality, of whether it actually corresponds to real technological advance, seems to be irrelevant to most people in industry and high office.
The US, seeing itself as a high tech economy, is measuring inputs (R&D money) and gross outputs (patents and the money they produce) and patting itself on the back for the resulting 'growth' (innovation), despite the fact you are producing little or none.
Being completely unaware of the true state of your economy is a dangerous place to be.
There seems to be a desperation in the news coming out of Fermilab recently, as they scramble to discover something, anything, before the LHC comes online and puts the US squarely in second place for particle accelerators.
You had your chance, and you blew it. Perhaps the SSC was jinxed by the idea of naming it after Reagan. We shall never know.
Its a strictly practical limitation. A facility capable of making a shuttle sized SRB would be huuuuge, certainly of a size impractical to transport to Mars.
I didn't think of that, very interesting... you could perhaps take a small amount of catalyst with you and be set up for long term life support.
The surface of Mars has plenty of oxides beside this.
I would say sooner. What a lot of people have suggested to me is that the Bush administration wanted spending up to make it look like the economy was healthy, just until he got out of office. That is why they looked the other way whilst people were tossing out cheap credit. I think the Republicans want to lose this election so the bomb drops on a Democrat's watch.
Basically, he deliberately maxed out Obama's credit card for him and remortgaged the house, with the plan to later on call him fiscally irresponsible.
A lot. SRBs are very sensitive to defects in the fuel grain, and if the thing burns unevenly you've got problems. Also, big ones have to be manufactured in segments. I can't really see all that infrastructure being boosted up to Mars any time soon.
Which are cultural and geographical distribution issues. Rural vs urban living as well as cultural hurdles surrounding sex contributing to HIV are contributing to a general depression in wealth distribution. You're trying to get an economic system to fix problems it's not designed to. Economics can't force people to move to where the jobs are - though it does give them incentive and many of those living in rural Botswana live off of income from relatives working in the cities. It certainly can't force people to change their sexual behavior. No economic system is perfect, so it begs the question - if you're not happy with the capitalistic mixed economy of the west, what would be a better one?
You know saying 'Well you think of something!' is conceding to a criticism?
You also can't just ignore progress and complain rather than change - at some point people need to take responsibility for themselves. If food is cheap find something else other than farming, the world can't be handed to you. The economies that are thriving are those that can change.
Most of the people starving are under 5 years of age. Perhaps they should've 'taken responsibility' and invested more of their earnings when they were in the womb?
Here is the part where you switch to a vaguely racist/eugenic argument about how much African people 'breed'.
"Botswana has maintained one of the world's highest economic growth rates since independence in 1966, though growth slowed to 4.7% annually in 2006-07. Through fiscal discipline and sound management, Botswana has transformed itself from one of the poorest countries in the world to a middle-income country with a per capita GDP of nearly $15,000 in 2007." - CIA Factbook
You are so absurdly wrong. The country has a Gini coefficient of 63 (fucking huge) so ordinary people are not seeing any of that growth. Its all going into the pockets of Diamond magnates. It also has the second highest HIV infection rate in the world despite the aggressive promotion of ARV drugs.
The US isn't the only western nation. One of the major industries in Cuba is tourism, primarily from Canada and Europe.
Lots of countries have tourists, not many have such good healthcare for their money.
Yet western societies manage to feed their people with enough excess to export to other countries. One of the keys is development of other industries has contributed to improvements in food productivity. In fact until recently food produced by the west is too cheap which negatively impacts developing agricultural nations. Again they aren't starving because there isn't food, it's more about political stability.
Western societies are not closed systems. The UK, for instance, has little manufacturing but a great many manufactured goods. You can't just take the economic growth of a country then ignore the consequences of that growth that exist out of the country.
Generally, the more the "developing world" trades with the west, the better their conditions from all the invested capital. Of course depending on the politics of the area the mileage may vary.
Not true. Botswana, for example, follows all the trade rules laid down by the west and is still mired in poverty. Meanwhile, Cuba is a pariah nation and manages notably better standards of living than many of its regional neighbours who are on board with the Washington conesnsu.
This isn't because of captialism, it's because of political instability. Food is rotting on the harbor in Haiti because it hasn't cleared customs or gets stolen by warlords in Africa so they can maintain control. You can send the food but unless you want war you can't necessarily get it to those who need it.
These are problems, but most of the time people simply cannot afford enough food for their families. Markets have no mechanism to ensure the price of food stays within the income of the hungry.
That is because we are a labour aristocracy. The poverty that results from our wealth is outsourced to the 'developing world'. The idea that this is somehow inevitable is a pure lie. There is enough food in the world for everyone, it just isn't getting to those who need it.
A police state isn't erected in one chunk. It is built up brick by brick, and this kind of seizure is one of these bricks.
People will tell you that you are being alarmist when you raise this sort of thing with them. But if you don't pay attention to it when it is at this level then there will be nothing you can do about it when you've completely lost your freedom.
His idea is that you can make money and help people at the same time. For capitalism to be creative, monetary value has to represent an improvement in human life.
Like all surrogates though, whenever you try to use money to represent anything other than money itself it loses its ability to represent that thing immediately. The idea of carbon trading shows this, because its become quite apartment that carbon credits have stopped representing actual amounts of carbon emissions.
Poverty, suffering and hunger are inherent components of capitalism. Enjoy your dinner people.
Shit NASA sends up doesn't blow up with this frequency. What you see as pork is probably necessary to the proper running of a space programme, but because everyone is so indoctrinated with the idea of the supremacy of the market you assume it can do things better.
Musk and his employees have 50 years of other peoples failure to draw on, computing power for modeling that would've been unimaginable when the first space programmes started, and far superior materials and construction techniques.
So I am sorry, but this excuse simply doesn't wash with me.
Well, they did get scattered I am sure. However, I hope the families of those people are to be compensated for the cockup with their loved ones remains.