Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

I really should read my own blog.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

The willow is too close to the house.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

A dilettante blog from the great progressive state of West Virginia.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Open Thread: But My Giant Space Peni… Rocket!

Late Night Open Thread: But My Giant Space Peni… Rocket!

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What an amazing thing it is, to have a Fandom of one’s very own…

Think that’s Jordan Peterson between Musk & Rogan:


You would be WRONG, Popehat…

Never be a beta tester, the tech gurus told me.

Reader Interactions

75Comments

  2. 2.

    Major Major Major Major

    SpaceX does good work. Musk’s insane hyperbolic promises aside, they’ve done some impressive things.

    I really do want to (briefly) meet the sort of weirdo who would test a first generation brain implant from Elon Musk, an idea that gets worse with each word.

  5. 5.

    NotMax

    The real Tesla was a certified oddball and a dyed-in-the-wool genius.

    Musk get half the equation right.

    //

  6. 6.

    Chetan Murthy

    @sab: does she have stock in tesla ?  My thesis is that it’s all about that.  You’re invested, you’re committed.

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    If for no other reason (whole thing only about 40 minutes long) the story of taking Werner von Braun and other high level Nazi rocket scientists shopping for women’s lingerie in <Camp Confidential on Netflix is worth it.

  8. 8.

    LeftCoastYankee

    He got ridiculously rich buying into a company that was at the forefront of allowing people to sign up for internet porn and not have “internet porn” show up on their bank statements.

    Everything since has been leveraging “Tech Genius” into fleecing rich and powerful rubes to pay for his half-assed ventures, which naturally brings those folks’ fanboys along for the slobberfest.

    PT Barnum tips his cap.

  9. 9.

    Jerzy Russian

    What is this neuralink thing supposed to do?

     

    Also, too:  The Sun is my new hero.  I mean, I have always liked the Sun, but its actions recently have made me like it even more.

  10. 10.

    sab

    @Chetan Murthy: No! Something about what he does in media appeals to her. She thinks he is innovative, adventurous and daring, instead of the corporate grifter that he actually is.

  19. 19.

    mrmoshpotato

    A geomagnetic storm triggered by a recent outburst of the sun destroyed up to 40 new SpaceX satellites.

    And that, boys and girls, is why Elon Musk tried to destroy the Sun.

  20. 20.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jerzy Russian:

    The Sun is my new hero. I mean, I have always liked the Sun, but its actions recently have made me like it even more.

    Meh.  It’s too hot during the summer.  Spicy, spicy Sun.

  23. 23.

    Major Major Major Major

    @mrmoshpotato: it’s actually really smart! Engineering-wise. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

    The Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 is generally acknowledged to have ended the project. However, from Project Longshot to Project Daedalus, Mini-Mag Orion, and other proposals which reach engineering analysis at the level of considering thermal power dissipation, the principle of external nuclear pulse propulsion to maximize survivable power has remained common among serious concepts for interstellar flight without external power beaming and for very high-performance interplanetary flight. Such later proposals have tended to modify the basic principle by envisioning equipment driving detonation of much smaller fission or fusion pellets, in contrast to Project Orion’s larger nuclear pulse units (full nuclear bombs) based on less speculative technology.

  24. 24.

    Geminid

    A sobering report from the Times of Israel, about efforts to evacuate Israeli citizens from Ukraine by Tuesday:

         “Israeli officials believe the window for evacuating citizens from Ukraine is closing, and may be shut Wednesday morning.”

    There are believed to be 10,000 to 15,000 Israeli citizens in Ukraine, including 4,500 who have registered with their embassy.

  25. 25.

    Brachiator

    He got ridiculously rich buying into a company that was at the forefront of allowing people to sign up for internet porn and not have “internet porn” show up on their bank statements.

    By God, that’s worth a commendation. Maybe a presidential medal.

    I think that government space exploration money should be spent on non-manned spacecraft and robots. But if Musk and Tesla want to throw money at Dickie Rickie Rockets, it’s fine by me, especially if it brings down the cost of manned spaceflight in the future. I would love one day to vacation at a lunar colony hotel.

    Meanwhile I hope that California sues the crap out of Musk’s Tesla operation.

    California is suing Elon Musk’s Tesla, alleging it runs a “racially segregated” workplace and discriminates against Black employees.

    And I hope they double sue the crap out of game companies like Blizzard for their awful sexism and racism.

  28. 28.

    The Dangerman

    Elon Musk : Starship

    ::

    Howard Hughes : Spruce Goose

    I should give a shout out for the Aerospace Museum where The Goose is (McMinnville, OR?). Quite well done. I expected to spend a few hours there and it was an all day thing and I could have gone back for more. They were kind enough to take a fairly big problem off my hands (a Family member who was a BIGTIME modeler passed and I had no idea what to do with … I don’t recall actually … it was over a thousand, I think, and this museum took em all … thank goodness).

  32. 32.

    Anne Laurie

    @Major Major Major Major: If he really wanted to up his supervillainy level he would start pushing for nuclear bomb powered spaceship propulsion.

    AFAICT, Musk makes an earnest effort to stay in the regulatory ‘grey zone’ where he can brag on his Free Market Mastery without *quite* doing anything actionable.

    The minute he starts (publicly) investigating nuclear anything, I have the impression 17 levels of governmental agency would be crawling over his various enterprises like ants on a dead rodent.

  39. 39.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @patrick II:

    I am moving in about a month and am already having dreams about it. I hope your own move goes smoothly and that the new home is a place of joy and peace for you.

  41. 41.

    patrick II

    @Geminid:

     

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Thank you.  That is very thoughtful of both of you. I am very lucky. It was one of those things you read about, I happened upon a one-day estate sale for a beautiful house on a small lake that I would never have thought I could own.  It is next to a nature preserve and deer come wandering through my back yard, and in my home town which I have moved back to to be near family.  If I am not happy here, it will be my own fault. It is very beautiful.

  43. 43.

    Geminid

    I caught this joke on @wonderking82’s Twitter feed:

    Teacher: Barron, where’s your homework?

    Barron: My Dad ate it.

  44. 44.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @patrick II:

    That sounds amazing! If you can, please take pictures and submit them to WaterGirl for the “in your own back yard” part of OTR. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d love to see your lake and the occasional deer.

  47. 47.

    Geminid

    @SiubhanDuinne: The apples played out in the 90’s when warmer winters caused early blossoms that April frosts then nipped. The orchard was never much of a moneymaker anyway. A later tenant planted some pears that bear fruit, though. 

    My landlord planted 18 acres of apple trees around 1980. He moved to Crarottesville a few years later; his wife worked at the hospital and needed to be closer to work. Bill has been coming out more lately, and last spring  he planted three apple trees to see if better pollination will help some surviving apples to fruit. My friend Debbie put up a couple beehives last year and those bees will help too.

  49. 49.

    m.j.

    I’m just wondering if the same people who think there are chips in vaccines are enthrall to the machinations of Musk and his mutilated monkeys.

  52. 52.

    John S.

    @patrick II:

    Congratulations! I’m right there with you waking up in the middle of the night with anxious thoughts running through my head…

    We also got very lucky finding a place on a lake surrounded by natural beauty that didn’t cost us an arm and a leg. We don’t move in until June, but it’s going to be one hell of a move as we trek from Florida to Washington.

  54. 54.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Major Major Major Major: Project Orion was from a time when going into space was difficult, rocket science was HARD! and the technology and materials weren’t really up to it — see the Rocketdyne F-1 engine used on Apollo missions for a horrible example. Orion was considered as a possibility since compact nuclear weapons were off-the-shelf and would provide a lot of lift-to-LEO capability despite the crudity of the system (more than half the propulsive energy of each “shot” gets wasted in the wrong direction, the parasitic weight of the shock-mounted buffer plate etc.) Orion’s big benefit was that it would almost certainly work first time and every time, it wasn’t rocket science after all…

    Today it’s a rare rocket launch that goes wrong due to the engines and propulsion systems blowing up, mostly it’s “Hey, there was another successful launch of something mundane earlier this afternoon, what’s for dinner?” If anyone wants a thousand tonnes in orbit they can buy a hundred launches from any one of a dozen launch vehicle companies from around the world for a lot less than a single Orion launch would cost today.

  55. 55.

    Ken

    just to give you a comparison, waymo has 0.033 disengagements per 1000 miles. tesla “full self driving” has 0.22 disengagements _per mile_.

    Is “disengagement” a euphemism for “accident”?  Or perhaps “fatality”?

  57. 57.

    Ken

    @Spanky: I’m not sure government agencies would have jurisdiction over his secret island lair.

    Another way to think about that: His secret island lair is not under the protection of any government.

    I just finished Stross’s latest Laundry Files, Quantum of Nightmares. Part of the plot involves the Channel Islands and their peculiar legal status, which largely amounts to “we haven’t bothered updating the Normal feudal law that was in effect at the Treaty of Paris (1259)”.

  58. 58.

    Shalimar

    @Ken: I assumed disengagement was a situation where the human driver had to take over.  Surely they couldn’t put a self-driving car on the market if it has an accident every 5 miles.

  59. 59.

    Ken

    @Shalimar: I was being somewhat snarky, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t put it past Musk to try to market it.

    It’s sort of like my “scratch monkey” crack above — I don’t really think he did it deliberately, but he’s one of the few people where I would even entertain the thought.

  60. 60.

    Matt McIrvin

    When I was a kid, I was a huge space fan and while I already knew I was far from astronaut material (you have to be a nerd AND a jock at the same time, and completely immune to panic), one of the things I believed as an article of faith was that when I grew up, non-astronauts would be able to buy tickets to space, so I could go as a tourist.

    Well, it’s… nominally true now.  If I dumped a large fraction of my retirement savings, I could book a ticket on a moderately dangerous 15-minute suborbital hop to the very edge of what is arguably considered space, from Branson’s operation or maybe Bezos’s.

    Somehow, this does not seem that attractive a prospect. There are much cheaper thrill rides.

  62. 62.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Robert Sneddon: Project Orion has really obsessive fans who believe that a future of massive human expansion into space was killed by the libs. We could send whole cities to the moons of Saturn! etc.

    The thing is, you get the *biggest* advantage from it if you use the nuclear-bomb propulsion to lift off right from the ground. Which… that certainly would be a thing.

  63. 63.

    Ken

    @Matt McIrvin:

    SKEPTIC: “But won’t that cause huge amounts of fallout and harm or kill many people on Earth?”

    ORION PROPONENT: “Yes, but I’ll be on the rocket.”

  68. 68.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Ken: The US fired off over 200 nuclear devices (not all were weapons) aboveground in the US mid-West over a period of about 17 years and nobody really cared. It took SCIENCE! and sensitive instruments to detect significant radioactive contamination in places like Utah and further east from the test sites. The fallout had no noticeable effect on people or animals over several generations.

    The Project Orion vehicle(s) would probably have launched from open ocean, maybe the central Pacific so any fallout from the special propulsion bombs, designed to produce specific levels of blast, would end up in the Great Garbage Disposal anyway. The bombs would also be tuned for minimal fallout, preferably isotopes that were short-lived so that most of it it would be gone a few days after the launch.

    The really “dirty” weapons are fusion devices, too big and complicated for Project Orion and a lot of the “dirt” is irradiated debris blown up from the ground. Open ocean water doesn’t irradiate to any great extent in comparison.

  70. 70.

    Chip Daniels

    Its been discussed several times why superhero stories are inherently fascist, and I believe its because the idea of a superhero itself slides inevitably into authoritarianism.

    The Strong Man On Horseback idea, of a Cincinnatus who rides in to save the day while all the ordinary people stand by watching in stupefaction is the core of all fascist thinking, and Musk is no different.

  72. 72.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Major Major Major Major: The real problem in SPAAAACE! is reaction mass, not energy sources. A surprising amount of mass into orbit from the ground at five thousand bucks a kilo launch costs is fuel and oxidiser, or in the case of ion engined satellites, pure reaction mass such as xenon.

    Nuclear propulsion has a lot of drawbacks even in SPAAAACE! given the large mass overheads of the reactor or other methods of employing fissionable fuels to provide thrust like the Zubrin salt-water open-cycle nuclear rocket. Within the orbit of Jupiter solar panels can provide lots of electrical energy to power ion engines which can provide low but steady thrust — see the proof-of-concept SMART-1 Lunar mission of a few years ago where a small ion-engined spacecraft flew from Earth geostationary orbit into Lunar orbit over a period of eighteen months while consuming only 80kg of xenon gas propellant.

    There’s also the VASIMR electrically driven thruster which can generate more thrust than an ion engine but at the cost of efficiency. There was supposed to be a demonstration flight of a VASIMR motor to the ISS to act as a station-keeping thruster but in never happened for some reason. The VASIMR concept has the advantage its reaction mass can be pretty much anything that can be volitalised, like waste gases or contaminated water found aboard a manned spaceship.

  73. 73.

    kindness

    I understand I’m kind of an old, but honestly I would never put a car in self drive.  Parking assist?  Sure.  Self drive?  What are you nuts?  At least that’s my feeling about it.

  74. 74.

    Matt

    TBH, I’m torn about Neuralink human trials:

    • on the one hand, it’s almost certainly going to result in multiple deaths and/or permanent maimings
    • on the other hand, the only people willing to volunteer will be the hardest-core Musk fanboiz so very little of value will be lost

    Ideally he’ll kill off a couple dozen of his most ridiculous sycophants and then go to jail for the rest of his life, win-win.

  75. 75.

    patrick II

    @kindness: 
    I am with you about Self-drive until I am satisfied they have worked out the moral choices kink. Say a group of four people was jaywalking in front of you and your car couldn’t stop in time to avoid hitting them. It would have to make the ethical choice to kill four people or drive you over the nearby cliff. I say they were jaywalking and shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

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