I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. “The biggest flying object ever made” blowing up in the atmosphere is not a “success.” It’s an environmental disaster. This is the sane take and the entire space industry is insane for surrounding our pale blue dot with trash.
@carlysagan not to mention the emissions
@louisepryor @carlysagan or the damage to nearby wildlife sanctuaries.
@louisepryor @carlysagan It's a rocket not a gasoline car space is one of the most important things to humanity
@thedogspaw @louisepryor @carlysagan
Funny how humanity survived hundreds of thousands of years without going into space then.
Here are some more important things - breathable air, drinkable water, food, stable land to live on, freedom from being killed in a war, healthcare, education...
Get all those sorted for everyone, then you can mess about with rockets.
@suearcher@toot.wales @thedogspaw@mastodon.social @louisepryor@mastodon.green @carlysagan@mastodon.social It's not a zero-sum game. The scientific potential of Starship (which you'll note we hear almost nothing about) is incredible. I just wish it wasn't going to be wasted on polluting the skies for yet more profit.
@suearcher @thedogspaw @louisepryor @carlysagan
The most efficient logistics the world has ever seen, the logistics that feeds half the world; relies on GPS and satellite based meteorology.
The world would be a much worse place if people hadn't decided to
"mess about with rockets".
@InsertUser @suearcher @thedogspaw @louisepryor I beg to differ. Sure, GPS timing/tech is great and fuels just about everything right now. But what happens when a giant solar storm takes all of that out? We’ll be going back to the dark ages bc not a single thing down to a credit card will work. We most definitely would have been better off without it rather than relying on it to such an extreme that it’s going to be mindless chaos without it.
@carlysagan @suearcher @thedogspaw @louisepryor
A bad thing might happen at some point so we should just allow poor people to starve in much greater numbers today?
Meanwhile more serious approaches to protect against solar storms involve solar monitoring and forecasting which involves ... putting things in space. https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/space/how-we-ll-safeguard-earth-solar-storm-catastrophe-n760021
BTW I've seen credit cards used without any electronics, it's the reason we should be pushing to keep the raised lettering.
Like The Beatles said:
And in the end
The carbon you take
Is equal to the carbon
you make
I kinda think whether Musk knows it or not, is consciously aware of it or not, for every action he and his companies undertake to reduce the climate crisis, he and his companies undertake an equal and opposite action to worsen it.
In this way he reminds of the worst kind of cynical Wall Streeter: never interested in investing per se, but eager to make money on the way up and on the way down
@carlysagan In between arms races we're having idiocy races around the competition, who's polluting space "best", serving rich but fragile egos.
@carlysagan space industry?
You mean telecoms, billionaire fuckheads, and other liberal institutions?
@carlysagan
Say it again and again and again and...
I think it was an awesome attempt. I have a feeling they’re going to make it work soon. With more than 100 metric tons to LEO for less than $10/pound, many of the companies building the servicing craft will be able to put their devices in orbit, where they will get busy de-orbiting a lot of the dead and spent Russian and Chinese 2nd and third stages that comprise the majority of the dangerous space debris.
@carlysagan Said the person using the internet.
@carlysagan It blew up less so yes it is a success.
@carlysagan There's a Tom Lehrer song about Wernher von Braun, quoting him as saying (approximately) "We only make them go up. Where they come down in not our department." Von Braun apparently really said that - after a string of the rockets blowing up on the launch pad, one finally went up a meter, dropped back down, and then blew up. Hence the quip - to ease frustration. At least this one got out of the atmosphere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio
@bzdev wow! I didn’t know they were making fun of rocket science back then haha, thank you for this!
@carlysagan what about starlink ?
@carlysagan One thing I do NOT want to see is rich people escaping to terraformed or domed city colonies on the Moon or Mars while most of humanity suffocates in the pollution the wealthiest 10-20% made.
If people like Elon Musk try to escape a dying planet by rocket, the rest of the world should close the skies to them and block their escape by any means necessary.
Thankfully, intersteller distances protect us from the "Columbus Scenario" of the whole planet getting what Turtle Island got due to invasion from another star system. It also keeps future human wannabe Columbuses from trying to colonize the whole damned galaxy at the expense of whoever is already out there.
@carlysagan that's why the trajectory was intentionally sub-orbital. So any possible debris does not stay up there.
Also: compared to literally any other industry, space industries impact on the environment is absolutely minuscule.
So, just try a bit harder not to be dumb please.
@carlysagan Is this about the rocket of that insufferable Elon?
@carlysagan Don’t understand how they can’t figure that out after destroying forests, tundra, grasslands, rivers, oceans…yeah, all of it.