Because sometimes we need an easy laugh. *Everything’s* a metaphor, now…
Breakup of SpaceX’s Starship Rocket Disrupts Florida Airports
Video showed the upper stage of the most powerful rocket ever built spinning out of control in space, a repeat of an unsuccessful test flight in January that led to debris falling over the Caribbean.
By Ken Chang
nyti.ms/41KW7oK— Eric Lipton NYT (@ericlipton.nytimes.com) March 6, 2025 at 7:46 PM
SpaceX still calling it a "rapid unscheduled disassembly." Also known as an explosion that sent debris falling over thousands of miles.
— Eric Lipton NYT (@ericlipton.nytimes.com) March 6, 2025 at 8:05 PM
FAA grounds SpaceX Starship yet again. It will not be able to fly again until SpaceX completes an investigation into this accident. Although the investigation from January's flight explosion did not last much longer than a month.
— Eric Lipton NYT (@ericlipton.nytimes.com) March 6, 2025 at 8:24 PM
Didn’t Trump say he’s asked Elon Musk to take the Space X Starship to the International Space Station to pick up the two astronauts who were stranded up there?
— It’s Too Early For This (@not2early.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 8:28 PM
— Plantsmantx.bsky.social (@plantsmantx.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 10:18 PM
Urza
Please send the whole crew up on SpaceX rockets every day until the problems are solved. Which problems you ask, all of them.
Virginia
By all means, put the rump on the rescue ship.
i would watch that.
TONYG
I’m sorry to repeat myself but — goddamn NPR. I was listening to NPR bloviating a week or so ago and one of their talking heads was blathering about “the good things that Elon Musk has done” — and citing Space X as an example of Musk’s “talent for efficiency”. I had to restrain myself from bludgeoning my radio.
prostratedragon
YES!!! the people cried out.
Steve LaBonne
No worries, Skum will just fire anyone at FAA who gets in his way. As happened to the guy who was the head of FAA when Trump took office.
Steve LaBonne
@TONYG: I long ago realized that I can’t put NPR on the car radio because I might drive off the road.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Open thread?
Tomorrow, the Schaumberg IL library will hold its local author fair from 12-3
I’ll be there along with a bunch of other writers with books to sell and sign. If you’re around, come meet up. Look for the little old lady
Shakti
SpaceX explosions also affect cruises. This is cruise season iirc. If I had paid absurd amounts of money to be on a cruise right now in the Caribbean from Florida or Louisiana ports, I would be quite pissed off — that is if if could even get news [Starlink provides the extremely costly (and unreliable) connection for cruise ships].
The astronauts should be able to come to earth without worrying that their transport back home is going to turn them into reentry ashes.
Jokes/Not Jokes: They’ll either find a way to get themselves home or NASA will bring them home or the Blue Origin flight will and Lauren Sanchez will do some victory parade spread.
Baud
@Shakti:
A lot of cruise ships offer their own Internet access. Sometimes as a perk, sometimes at a costly fee.
JoyceH
someone needs to hold a hearing and ask the FAA why they okayed this launch before they’d completed their investigation of the last explosion of the exact same type of rocket? Could it be because Musk was breathing down his neck demanding the date while his minions were crawling through their computers and threatening to fire everyone?
Halteclere
I have two nephews who were traveling through Miami to see tomorrow’s Liverpool soccer match. Their 40 minute layover has turned into an 18 hour layover because of this explosion. Last I heard, they were still hoping to find a flight that gets them to England on time.
Nukular Biskits
Good evenin’, y’all!
Putting my motorcycle back together, found I needed a 3/4″ 1/4″ button head bolt to finish remounting the windshield. Went to big box hardware store only to find the one size I needed was the one size they didn’t have.
So I bought four flowering crabapple trees.
A Ghost to Most
It blowed up real good. Just like Tesla sales. Elmo is screwed.
TBone
Heh
Canadian Senator Politely Tells Don Jr He Wants To Punch His Stupid Face
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: I like yer style!
Geminid .
@Baud: I never wanted to take a cruise until I heard a travel agent pitch a one week cruise to Bermuda. It would leave Norfolk, Virginia on Sunday and return Saturday, with three days in Bermuda.
That sounded pretty cool. Norfolk is a three hour drive. I’d need some new clothes, but that seems more a feature than a bug.
Nukular Biskits
@TBone:
That’s something no one who actually knew me would ever accuse me of having.
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: 💋🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w-G7-yLFmCQ
hells littlest angel
Me personally, I wouldn’t refer to a rocket that is unable to get more than a few miles high without exploding as “the most powerful ever built.”
Nukular Biskits
@Baud @Geminid .:
I’m “meh” about cruises. Ms. Biskit loves ’em.
I keep telling her that I go on all-expenses-paid cruises all the time (I get underway on US Navy ships) so I don’t understand why I’d pay good money to do something I already get paid to do.
She refuses to listen to my good sense.
Plus, this:
Jay
Learned something new today.
Tesla has a deal with other US Auto manufactures. Tesla sales in the EU “underwrite” US ICE sales for a combined Emissions rating, (Fleet).
For that, Ford, GM, Stellantis pay Tesla $20billion, annually.
Tesla is not going to sell enough Tesla’s in the EU this year, to make that number. GM, Ford and Stellantis will have to pay massive carbon taxes to the EU.
Redshift
It’s sad that so many people now associate “rapid unscheduled disassembly” with Elon and SpaceX. They just adopted it, it goes back at least to the 1970s, black humor among engineers because designing new rockets is hard and they blow up a lot. (I first heard it at a NASA public event.)
Nukular Biskits
@Jay:
Sounds like they made a deal with the devil.
sab
And we wonder why in a big country ( not a bunch of little countries) we should have one FAA with big enough teeth to bite the world’s richest sad little man.
am
@TONYG:
@Steve LaBonne:
NPR isn’t the problem, it is everything on the AM “dial”. NPR is an ally. You’ll miss it when it is gone, which it may be soon, if Brendan Carr has his way: https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-public-editor/2025/02/27/g-s1-51050/we-cant-answer-audience-questions-about-defundnpr-without-talking-about-the-larger-implications-for-public-media
TBone
@Redshift: I have a word that is not at all sad.
Redshift
@hells littlest angel:
Hey, it’s a very powerful explosion!
YY_Sima Qian
I am definitely not flying into the US, anymore.
sab
@TONYG: You will be happy to know that NPR will soon be Federally defunded, so I won’t get my local news and classical radio. I hope you are happy. I am not at all.
Baud
@YY_Sima Qian:
The US may be flying into you.
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: see?!? It’s a style!
TBone
@Jay: jfc
John Revolta
*knock knock*
“Who’s there?”
“International Space Station, this is SpaceX! We’ve got a vehicle outside your station ready to pick you up and take you back to Earth!”
“……………………..Naahh, we’re good.”
TBone
@Baud: gah!
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: My sister is flying out and then in. Bad idea all around. There are busses from Ohio to Canada, but they nave billions of frequent flyer miles on a particular US airline.
Nukular Biskits
@TBone:
LOL
(Note to self: Never let @TBone meet Ms. Biskits) …
TBone
@John Revolta: LOL!!!
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: good advice, I was flirting!
WTFGhost
I’ve just completed two days of testing that might determine if I live or die. Um, yeah, I know, melodramatic much? But, it might. I’m exhausted, scared-but-dealing, and recognizing that, since I didn’t always know what was being measured, all I could do was the best I reasonably could, and hope the data supported what we need it to. I also wonder if we might extend the testing, if needed, to get more data, because, wow… I came out with just enough energy to realize my social skills and language skills are totally effed up (not “effect up” autocorrect), while I’m’ so anxious I’m babbling. And, part of me was like “hold on, I can feel a lot worse!” and part of me was relieved as heck to get out of there.
sab
@hells littlest angel: Depends on the size of the boom when it fails.
Success wasn’t the metric. Power was the metric. Big boom should count.
Nukular Biskits
@TBone:
You’re cheating on Prof. Bigfoot?
;>)
Steve LaBonne
@WTFGhost: I’m very sorry, and fervently hoping for the best possible results.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@WTFGhost: I hope the tests point a positive route forward
Joy in FL
@WTFGhost: I’m so sorry. I hope you have what you need as things develop.
Joy in FL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I wish I could come. I hope you have a good time.
WaterGirl
@WTFGhost: Yikes. Hang in there.
Nukular Biskits
@WTFGhost:
WTF, WTFGhost?!?!?!?!?!
Good thoughts your way.
catclub
Space travel by any means is not that reliable.
They ALWAYS have to worry they will turn into re-entry ashes.
Gloria DryGarden
Without having read the opening post, only the headline (I know)
I wouldn’t mind blowing something up, myself. Maybe only in fantasy life.
Gloria DryGarden
@WTFGhost: uh oh. Do you have a list of your tools and skills that help when it becomes too much?
( positive vibes emojis )
kalakal
@WTFGhost: So sorry to hear. Here’s hoping for good news
catclub
Looking at massive amounts water is wonderful. Looking at massive amounts of ice and water is amazing.
…..Unless it is going to sink the vessel you are looking from.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Joy in FL: These things are usually fun. I like talking to the other writers and to people coming into the library
Jay
Family of 4 rescued after crossing the border into Canada, getting lost in the Quebec woods, hypothermic, no shoes, Tshirts, recovering in hospital, asylum claim being processed
Gloria DryGarden
@Nukular Biskits: what colors? Those will be beautiful!
what about a redbud?
bbleh
I have the uncomfortable feeling that POTUS is heading toward a psychological rapid unscheduled disassembly …
prostratedragon
Arts can be a path to self-knowledge. Watching North by Northwest, I’m reminded that that’s where I probably learned the incandescent rage provoked in me by cocksure stupidity. For one’s own safety, that is a good thing to know in these times.
Gloria DryGarden
@bbleh: the country , too?
Nukular Biskits
@catclub:
Many a time have been underway such that the nearest land was straight down.
Saw (or at least I think I did) the green flash once while at sea.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid .: for you. Something seems to be afoot in Syria
Syria map by areas of control
Nukular Biskits
@Gloria DryGarden:
Reddish-pink.
I have redbuds planted in the backyard but they seem to be struggling. These are for the outside of the fence to replace the four pink dogwoods I planted last year but didn’t survive.
Part of the problem in a subdivision is the the ground is hard-packed red clay with sod thrown on top … no real topsoil or subsoil. That makes it hard for plants with deep roots (like trees) to get started.
Plus, the dogwoods and redbuds really like partial sun whereas the crabapples supposedly prefer full sun, which is the case where I want to plant them.
geg6
@am:
Can’t miss what I quit back in 2009!
Timill
@Virginia: Since the rescue mission will be a Falcon9/Crew Dragon, it’s not likely to go wrong (an F9 went bang in 2015, and a second stage misfired last year on a Starlink launch, and they lost a secondary payload in 2012, for 455 successes from 458 launches)
Trump is more likely to do a D D Harriman on launch, so I’m all in favor of it…
Miki
Paul Krugman’s post today with a transcript of his conversation with Kim Lane Scheppele was incredible. Her metaphor of an immersion blender in an aquarium making fish soup that cannot be put back together is better than perfect.
And perfectly descriptive of where we are.
Gloria DryGarden
@Nukular Biskits: it ate my comment.
clay: clay buster amendment/ cotton bolls/ pesticide risk.
expanded shale? I love this for my clay
mattock and crow bar time, to poke deep holes?
line the outer parts of your hole w green scraps for worms to compost, for some nice mycelium to grow in?
I’m told where there’s lots of rain, the soil gets striped of soluble minerals. Your clay situation might be different than mine.
Jay
@Nukular Biskits:
People think the fix for clay is sand.
It’s not, compost is the fix.
Sod is grown in a clay mix, so it stays together when being cut and laid.
Because of this, in the Lower Rainland, sod lawns become lakes when the rain hits.
YY_Sima Qian
@sab: Think positive thoughts, or pray.
YY_Sima Qian
50% of what is wrong w/ the development of STEam human capital in the U.S., in two tweets:
The other 50% is not nearly enough college students enrolled in STEM majors, period, & too many of those that do are international students more likely to leave for the home countries (especially in the age of Trumpian misrule, & the reactionaries want to shut off that pipeline, too!
Nukular Biskits
@Gloria DryGarden @Jay:
Unfortunately, all I can do is use my rolling compost spreader to add organic material but this is going to be a long term project.
I don’t know how they do construction in other parts of the country but here, for subdivisions, they pretty much clear the lot of the top 12″ – 24″ (give or take) and then backfill with red clay/sand mix, which is then compacted to provide a stable subsurface upon which to form and pour a slab. The rest of the yard gets the same material, which is compacted into a near impenetrable crust during construction of the house.
Finally, when the actual structure is completed, the landscaping contractor hauls more of the same stuff in, spreads it, compacts it and then throws sod down on top.
So, yeah, it’s almost like laying sod on top of granite.
bbleh
@Gloria DryGarden: @Miki: musing about the Elonpocalypse today, I figured that, presuming there is a hereafter, governmental structures won’t be that hard to reconstitute — and even improve somewhat upon — since the templates and lessons-learned are still there, but getting people back to make them alive and functional is gonna be much less certain. Some will return, and others will emerge, but whether it will be enough, in time, I dunno.
The bigger question for me though is, what kind of country will be left, especially the relationship of the people to the government? They’re leaning really hard into the nihilism now — burn it all down and Something Better will result — but when they have, and what’s left is nothing better and a lot less of anything, where are people’s heads gonna be?
Adderall, ketamine — coupla emotionally stunted legacy-rich-boy junkies going nuts because they can. Thanks again, Republicans!
danielx
I gotta admit, “rapid unscheduled disassembly” is this best euphemism for “blowing the fuck up” that I’ve ever heard.
Geminid .
@Gloria DryGarden: Yesterday Syria saw the heaviest fighting since the Assad regime fell three months ago. It’s a complex situation with a lot of conflicting accounts. I have followed this some through a Syrian news site, Levant 24 and a couple others. Reuters is also reporting on these developments, and I expect others like the BBC and Agence France Press are also.
bbleh
@danielx: you may have seen, there was an “energetic event” prior to said R.U.D. (Note: this is different from R.O.U.S.s.)
What ever happened to (somewhat) simpler words like “vibration” and “disintegration”? The extra verbiage comes off kinda … pompous.
YY_Sima Qian
Good thread on the Sino-US technological competition, which the Trump Administration has basically conceded w/ DOGE gutting S&T spending, lots of useful links in the thread:
All sensible advise, but still written as if for the Biden/Harris Administration.
Even if the cuts are reversed later, the U.S. might find that a lot of its human capital has already been snapped up by competitors. & when it comes to economics & technology, all countries are competitors.
TONYG
@Steve LaBonne: Yeah. But the sad thing is that in my area (northern New Jersey) the alternatives to NPR for radio news are either AM commercial news radio (useless) or the Performative-Cosplay-“Leftist” radio station WBAI (10% useful, 90% infuriatingly stupid). Maybe I should just listen to music! (Or I could get a Neuralink attachment and just have Elon Musk tell me what to think directly.)
Jay
@TONYG:
CBC Radio International.
Gloria DryGarden
@Nukular Biskits: brutal! Im sorry!
The city and water department contractors dug up a portion of my yard for a lead pipe main replacement. They mixed my almost decent topsoil in with this yellow clay, and they filled it, and compacted the bejesus out of it. later by layer.
I used a large crow bar pry bar thing, hurling it straight down over and over. There were some parts I still couldn’t loosen enough to dig and replant with my xeriscape planties I’d saved. It was quite a lot of work.
Geminid .
@TONYG: So you are from New Jersey. I’m curious: how’s the Democratic primary for Governor shaping up? Last I saw there were several viable candidates. Do you have a favorite? I’m guessing it’s not Josh Gottheimer.
HopefullyNotcassandra
Wow
Mr trump wants to know if we think he should get on a rocket that keeps exploding?
Any awareness there, man?
bbleh
@YY_Sima Qian: this one genuinely mystifies me. The only … rationale I can imagine might be behind this (assuming it’s something other than ketamine-fueled frenzy) is some fuzzy notion that “private enterprise” will do the basic research and profit thereby, which of course is entirely at odds with the reality of how basic research is conducted in the US and subsequently taken up and profited upon by business (and has been since WWII btw, tyvm Vannevar Bush et al). And frankly I’m not sure there even IS such a rationale, and that it isn’t all like a drunk guy deciding to re-do the whole kitchen one night, with predictable results.
In addition to wrecking our geopolitical leadership, they’re wrecking major parts of our global economic leadership. MAGA indeed …
WTFGhost
@WTFGhost: I guess I should expand on this.
I have a severe disability; it’s lifelong, so, it took a long-ass time to figure out what I have. Well – I very nearly worked myself to death, twice, as in, I had a plan to die, but, because I had a plan, I didn’t need to carry it out, you see? I could always wait a day, a week, two weeks, and, it never seemed that important once time passed.
So: I worked until pain and exhaustion left me in a state in which I was constantly thinking about dying. Then, I found out that it’s nearly impossible to get ERISA disability for invisible disabilities. The rules are all stacked in favor of the employers, who’d rather see you die than win disability payments.
So I got a lawyer, and I ran through a test that I thought showed I was good and properly disabled, and it does – it shows my exhaustion drops my IQ a significant amount.
Well, make up some numbers. 20 points is a lot of IQ, and 130 IQ down to 110 IQ means you’re *still* above average. (Let’s not discuss what IQ *is* or how reliable it is, or how it’s overused.)
One thing I don’t think people get, is, you don’t get the guy with the crippled arm to do the job that forces him to use that arm, right? Even if he doesn’t have to use it much, even if he doesn’t think it’s all that painful or uncomfortable, you don’t push people to use their disabled body parts, you let them push you so you’re convinced you’re not being mean.
Well, using a defective brain hurts. You try to sum a column of numbers, and you know you can do it faster, and more easily, and it’s frustrating. You keep trying to draw conclusions, and you have to keep checking and re-checking things to make sure you’re keeping the thread of the problem, because, what if you made a mistake?
That’s not enough to win disability. So, I went in for a two day assessment, and… well, I kind-of wish it was a 3 day assessment, it’s like, I only worked myself to *exhaustion* – I’ll be glad to go one more day if that’s what it takes!
What if I don’t win my ERISA claim? Well… all my life, I’ve had to accept the pain other folks offer me, see? I’m always in the wrong, and my pain never matters, because my pains are invisible. To me, having worked myself nearly to death, the ERISA disability payments are what I deserve – literally, part of the contract with my employer.
If I don’t get it, will I suddenly die? No, I’m already starting Social Security Disability applications, with an attorney to help, I’ll be 59.5 soon-ish, and that will let me pay off the house (which I bought in 2010 at fire sale prices)… it’s just, I’ll have lived a life doing my best, and gotten kicked in the ass for it every step of the way. I’m in constant pain, which robs me of every pleasure in life (yes, that one, that one too, and no, I can’t read(!!!), and, yes, *especially* that is ruined), and… I’ve been depressed (diagnosed) for over 31 years, and OMG I just want to lay a heavy burden down.
If the assessment comes out in my favor, well, everything should be fine. I’m just terrified we didn’t get enough of the right data, and, of course, I won’t know more for a while, and, I’m afraid of what one conclusive kick in the teeth, in return for having done the right thing, would do.
YY_Sima Qian
@bbleh: The hardcore libertarian-authoritarians around Trump want to establish a techno-feudalistic society. Having the state dole out money presents the state as an alternative.
The sole exception, for now, is defense spending.
This is not just Musk, & the rhyming w/ the Great Leap Forward is getting stronger all the time.
As I’ve said, the national suicide continues apace.
Gretchen
@WTFGhost: That sounds really tough. We’re rooting for you here. Keep us posted when you know more.
bbleh
@YY_Sima Qian: I get the techno-feudalism, and the similarity to the Great Leap Forward, and I can see where that might be feasible (if not a good thing) in some respects, but it almost doesn’t work at all with basic research. Post-research development and commercialization perhaps, but to try to compartmentalize fundamental research that way — or worse, simply to assume it will happen somehow — is badly unrealistic imo.
Not saying they’re thinking it through. In fact, this would suggest they’re not. And as you point out, and as mentioned in #70 above and in others’ comments, trying to put things back together after they’ve been busted up is NOT straightforward, especially as regards the people.
YY_Sima Qian
@bbleh: These TechBros have never done research, they’ve only ever ordered researchers around. Their businesses don’t even engage in basic research. They are detached from reality & are too arrogant to know it.
pajaro
MAGA, like the 1950’s.
And one thing I remember from the 50’s was rockets exploding on launch pads. One after another…as we tried to keep up with the Russkies, who had already put their satellites into orbit, which we were told to look for in the night Soviet sky.
They said they would bury us. God knows it took them awhile, but here we are, under the boot of Russia, with our rockets blowing up.
Nettoyeur
“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department, ” says Wernher von Braun.” by Tom Lehrer
Bill Arnold
@YY_Sima Qian:
There has been significant research, including publication, some of it fundamental, in corporate laboratories for many decades. AT&T, IBM, others. There still is, but much less. And always with a focus on areas with monetization potential, though e.g. IBM’s investments in quantum computing have continued for decades, with no products that outperform conventional computers, yet. (Yeah, with funding from an interested US government agency that also has long-term visions.)
YY_Sima Qian
@Bill Arnold: The TechBro in charge are not from the C-Suite at Google, Microsoft & Meta.
Geminid .
@YY_Sima Qian: Have you heard of the Teknocracy movement? It was popular in the 1930s. They believed that society should be managed by experts, in place of democracy.
I had never heard of this until I encountered the term in a New Lines Magazine article about Elon Musk. It turns out his grandfather Joshua Haldeman was a proponent of Teknokracy.
The article was written by Capetown-based reporter Joseph Dana. It was published February 17 and titled:
This link ought to work:
https://www.newlinesmag.com/argument/the-worldview-of-the-afrikaner-diaspora-now-haunts-the-us/
Like most New Lines articles, this one is long and in-depth. Its conclusion:
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid .: Thanks for the link. I’ve not heard the term, but the concept in popular in East Asia.I think the difference is that East Asian polities are still very heavily influenced by Confucianism of the responsibility of the rulers to the ruled, as well as the developmental mindset of growing the pie & lifting all moats. The TechBros want to reestablish feudalism to entrench their positions.
Geminid .
@YY_Sima Qian: I ran into New Lines Magazine last December when Oz Katerji recommended its founder, Syrian American Hassan I. Hassan, for his Syria reporting and analysis.
New Lines is quite a resource, with in-depth articles covering a wide variety of subjects. They are all long and detailed, which is a challenge for me. I’m so used to reading news aggregation sites my powers of concentration have declined.
TONYG
Wait. So Space X is going yo “investigate” its own fuckup???! What’s next? Murderers will conduct their iwn homicide investigations?
Another Scott
@WTFGhost: With everyone else here, I’m hoping for a positive and peaceful path forward for you.
Good luck!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Yutsano
So…
Is the price of eggs down yet?
Kayla Rudbek
@Geminid .: you need warmer clothes than you think you would for the days at sea. I did a cruise to Bermuda out of Baltimore once. I would probably be willing to go on more cruises if they ever get Covid and norovirus under control, but Mr. Rudbek gets extremely antsy about being confined to a ship. I tend to point out the themed knitting/crafting cruises to him and we joke about him not wanting to be confined to the ship.
Kayla Rudbek
@Nukular Biskits: you’re like my dad was about going camping (the Army made him sleep out in the woods in a tent, he would only do it if he was paid to do it.)
Kayla Rudbek
@WTFGhost: good luck and I hope that 1) they figure out what is wrong and 2) that there’s effective treatment.
Another Scott
@YY_Sima Qian: Relatedly, … NotebookCheck.net:
(Emphasis added.)
The graphs show that the battery resistance of the fancy Tesla battery is much higher and thus the parasitic heating of cell is 2x that of the BYD cell. Heating during charging is one of the major limits in fast charging.
Rather than carefully doing the iterative work to carefully measure what’s happening and iteratively figure things out to overcome problems, Melon makes up arbitrary numbers and “wants to push people”. It’s his approach.
And progress in life doesn’t work that way for long…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Kayla Rudbek
@YY_Sima Qian: and I would say that another huge percentage of the problem is that most of the funding and training/education goes to young able-bodied white men (with some Asian men in the mix, particularly in the computer science and electrical engineering sector).
Gloria DryGarden
@YY_Sima Qian: I wish we had these qualities here
Another Scott
@Bill Arnold: As you know, AT&T was a special case because it was a highly regulated monopoly. It could afford to do basic research based on stable, predictable internal funding streams, and because of receiving lots of government contracts (there were fascinating volumes in the 1960s Bell System Technical Journal of their scientists and mathematicians doing the derivations of the equations of motion for the most efficient paths to the Moon for NASA) because they had a hugely successful track record in basic research by experts who had worked on their field for decades. Kinda similarly for RCA and IBM and GE and many of the big defense contractors (Honeywell, General Dynamics, Hughes, etc.).
When those monopolies and stable funding sources went away, and the MBAs were called in to goose the stock price, those investments in basic and early applied research went away and the labs closed or shrank dramatically.
It can, and often does, take 50 years or more to go from an idea to an important commercial product. Take blue LEDs and solid-state lighting. Almost no private research labs are willing or able to make that kind of investment anymore. They tweak ideas that are shown to work and make the products better (and that’s vitally important!), but once someone shows that something is possible, it’s a clear path to making it better. Basic research is the foundation for that clear path, the foundation to create that new industry by actually showing that the new thing is possible in the first place. More of the research is being done in universities these days, but then what happens to the PhDs and post-docs when they’re done with that research? There are only so many positions in academia, and many people who do research aren’t that interested in teaching or writing 20 research proposals with the hope of getting one of them funded… Who wants to spend another 5-10 years in school before getting a “real” job when the prospects of actually getting a “real” job in that field are bleak??
Yeah, there are important exceptions. IBM in nano and quantum stuff, Hypres in superconducting circuits, etc. But there are fewer organizations that have that kind of depth and history, so the risk is that fancy new startups chasing some new breakthrough will spin their wheels a lot, reinventing stuff from 30-40 years ago because too much of the important history has been forgotten.
Research always goes in cycles. Here’s hoping that the depth of the trough this time around isn’t as bad as the path 47 is on could make it. :-(
[/soap-box]
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
YY_Sima Qian
@Gloria DryGarden: It’s an ideal that is often not lived up to in reality, but the population has that expectation, & the ruling classes & government have to at least make the serious appearance of living up to the ideals to maintain legitimacy, or they will face revolution (or lose elections). The civil services in societies w/ strong Confucian influences have far deeper histories & stronger ethos.
There is a reason the corruption one finds in the PRC & Vietnam is different in nature that than in India or Indonesia.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid .: I have read articles from New Lines, on recommendation by people I follow on X & BlueSky. They are indeed very good.
YY_Sima Qian
@Kayla Rudbek: That, too. & they then want to chase the money upon graduation.
Participation in STEM fields skew heavily male in the PRC, too, but not to the degree as in the U.S.
Gloria DryGarden
@YY_Sima Qian: now you’ve made me curious.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: My sister is sceptical about your point of view on staying in China, but that is just her and she is a normie here and wary in China. Although she is quite shocked about here.
Unlike her, I have legal training here and I am beyond shocked about how quickly things have collapsed here and how none of the guard rails and checks and balances have worked.
My conspiracy theory: Putin robbed his own country of their petrol money and used a chunk of that money to buy the Republican Party. And Republicans cannot challenge him because accepting his money was actually illegal, so they cannot discuss why they are behaving as they do. Or they are actually that venal and money grubbing.
sab
@sab: So we are all Russia now, which in two thousand years has not managed to develop a government better than the current thugs are in control. And they want to spread that thuggery across Europe and the Americas.
YY_Sima Qian
@sab: I have my own concerns about staying in the PRC long term. Even aside from the ever more constrained space for expression, succession after Xi passes will be a huge unknown & potentially dangerous moment, & there is no outward sign that Xi is making even long term preparations.
OTOH, a huge amount of disruption is baked in at this point from AGW, & I think the PRC probably the greatest level of state capacity to face the challenges.
If neither the U.S. nor the PRC are viable places, there will not be many other places that will be much better.
Also, at this point, I can be close to a normie in the PRC, & the U.S. feels slightly alien, & increasingly alienated from.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: I am beyond white ( British ancestry) and even I feel alienated from my country’s government. All of my grandchildren and all of my nephews and nieces are mixed race, some black, some east Asian ( China or Japan), and they all feel threatened here by our government. Just normies trying to live their lives.
YY_Sima Qian
@sab: So are we all.