Give me a single example of capitalism without rampant cronyism, and maybe I'll believe you.

We've got more gadgets, but energy, healthy food, and property, the most "real" things you can get, have not gotten cheaper in line with the reduction in incomes.

Oh, it's definitely not a zero-sum game - total inflation-adjusted income income has nearly tripled in the last several decades, it's just that every single income bracket outside the top 10% has seen inflation-adjusted incomes fall dramatically at the same time. So long as wealth inequality increases more slowly than economic growth it's possible for everyone to win, but that's not what's happening.

Yes, and costs have been rising relative to income for many decades - in inflation-adjusted dollars salaries have been falling for every income bracket except the top 10%. Gadgets are getting cheaper, but food, property, energy, etc,etc,etc. - all the essentials, are getting steadily more expensive relative to income.

It's the latest in Slashdot efficiency improvements - since almost nobody reads TFA anyway, a link is just a waste of electrons.

I'm fairly certain such passive systems only make the problem worse - as I said the backwash will be subjecting the platform to forces exceeding the weight of the rocket: the rocket is decelerating (Fa greater than Fg), and at close range the wake is all hitting the landing platform, transferring the same force as to the rocket. So the platform is already at "maximum give" before touchdown occurs, and the instant the rocket is shut off the platform will rebound, increasing the impact forces if touchdown hasn't quite occurred yet, or at best "bouncing" the landed rocket.

Indeed. Perhaps they could be paid primarily in stock options vesting 10 years after they're issued.

I think a soulectomy is standard procedure in the MBA curriculum.

Nah, GDP has been growing by leaps and bounds for decades, the economy is running fine. The problem is that it's been intentionally re-tuned so that wealth is being transfered to the 1% even faster than the economy is growing, and the rest of us have gotten screwed.

The fact that so many people think that the problem is people not working hard enough is an example of the effectiveness of propaganda in class warfare.

But it's fine for the 0.01% to rewrite the laws to allow themselves to seize an ever-greater portion of the national profits? They thank you for your loyalty I'm sure - or they would, if they gave a fuck about the proletariat.

>Forget about the class warfare, OK? Even Bruce Springsteen would agree that as long as everyone is winning, it shouldn't matter if someone is winning more.

Sure, *IF* everyone were winning. But they're not. Real wages have been falling for the lower 90% of the population for ~50 years, even while the GDP has been climbing rapidly. And even most of the top 10% are substantially worse off than they would be if wealth disparity weren't climbing so rapidly - only the 1% are actually better off than they would be if not for the aggressive class warfare being waged by the uppermost echelons of the 1%. Double the salary of someone making $35k and they're STILL losing, just not as badly.

That said, in this particular instance yeah, the CEO is to be applauded - he can't change the game single-handedly, but he can and has improved the lives of many of his employees,

Hardly - the welfare system in the US barely even qualifies as socialism under the most generous definitions - more like appeasement to the impoverished masses to avoid uprisings.

Sure, that's why they don't attempt re-use on launches near the limits of the Falcon's capabilities. But it's not like they can just build a smaller rocket for normal launches, so as long as they have the unused lift capacity carrying a bit of extra fuel comes almost for free. And it's still nothing compared to substantially increasing the mass of the Falcon itself - the extra fuel needed in that scenario *also* requires a bunch more fuel to lift - face it, it's a losing proposition. Even a simple parachute that could support that kind of weight is probably going to mass more than the extra fuel needed to do the same job.

And if SpaceX weren't already the cheapest way to orbit without reusing the first stage, that might be relevant to the metaphor.

I suppose magnetic/sticky harpoons might help (you don't want to damage it after all), sort of like guy-lines on an airship. I don't know about a shock-absorbing landing pad (your catcher's mitt) though - in the moments before landing the backwash would be subjecting it to forces exceeding those of the weight of the rocket itself - probably at least as difficult to tune any "give" to occur at the proper moment as i is to land the sucker in the first place.

Plus, as others have mentioned, Musk seems to have his eye on Mars. Landing a colony ship can probably only be done by rocket, and there won't be any special landing pads on Mars. Plus, for more terrestrial concerns, if he can master landing on a simple barge, he can land pretty much anywhere, which dramatically improves the value of his rocket design onte international market: any bit of flat, stable land is a potential cheap spaceport that his rockets can service.