I was expecting actual warnings about hyperbolic space.

No, the US, a racist country, doesn't want its stuff stolen by China, another racist country. Given that the US already works with Russia, Japan, and the ESA countries, which are all racist countries, I'm sure something can be arranged. Probably what would happen is that the relatively secret stuff that the US has on the ISS like the communication system (TRDSS) will either be opened up or a few wheels will be reinvented in order to eliminate a good portion of the stuff that China would want to steal.

Moving on, I think the real problem with this concept is how badly the ISS turned out. It's an awful lot of money spent for little outcome. I suspect that the parties involved would both want a bigger and flashier space station than the ISS, would want the US to pay most of the cost, and there would be the same massive inefficiencies, vast cost overruns, and corruption as were present in ISS

I agree, but there is a reason for it to happen. Namely, such corruption and inefficiency can get in the way of other powerful interests. My view is that there are some parties that need the Air Force to have better space capabilities and the ULA just wasn't delivering on that.

Let's not get hasty here. There's a reason I'm a fan of SpaceX, but not of the ULA. Sure, you might be right. But it also might be a way for the ULA getting to compromise SpaceX's competitiveness, at least in Air Force contracts.

Because the military industrial complex wants less subsidies.

We've had orders of magnitude more than 27,000 years of human flight, FYI. I'd say that there are probably a few tens of thousands of airplanes in the air at any given time. Meaning that we're accumulating about that much flight time every year.

This isn't an argument you will win. If we can't accept the past few centuries of history because it is less than a few thousand years, then we can't accept those few thousand years, because they're less than the few tens of thousands of years of cro-magnon man and so on. It's no longer the age of spear chucking empires. Something has changed.

That's the oddest way to state such things. Those mean, ole Koch brothers are getting away with spending one or two orders of magnitude less than their opposition because they're rich. We're also ignoring that a lot of their money goings into weird games which just don't get them anywhere. There's a better way to put this. Their money is spent just as terribly as their oppositions' money, but the ideas that they frequently back, such as liberty, personal responsibility, and less government meddling resonate with a lot of people these days.

I don't consider you capable of deciding who is rich. And why shouldn't the rich or anyone else for that matter not want more. Your sane "standards" aren't feeding anyone.

Well, they can't possibly have more than three times their fair share just due to the size of the wedge.

Well, what about them?

The socio-economic development happened. Technology development appears to be one of the drivers of that.

The developed world had the exact, same problems. It got better in the same way that these societies are improving now.

Except you corrected a reply of mine to jythie.

If we're going to play that game, how about the several billions years before empires? Or most of the age of the universe when there wasn't even an Earth or Sun? Norms change.

And that ignores that empires aren't necessarily worse off for their inhabitants either. Since neither you or I have any "expectations", I really don't see any point to continuing an argument that doesn't make sense in the first place.

So what? I don't see the point of arguing something can't be perfect. Should we just no longer allow flying because of your concern?

There are several things to note here. First, the cost of Hubble included six Space Shuttle launches and 24 years of operation. Second, The JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) is eight years behind schedule. Third, massive increase in scope of a federal project is a common ploy for siphoning more funds. Maybe nothing untoward happened with the changing of JWST's scope, but it's an easy thing for a bribe to arrange. And the project went on for five more years as a result of this changing of scope.

I know. That's why I posted. It's just not that much CO2 being produced by that much concrete.

Notice that you could offset about half of that emissions just by putting out all coal fires. Concrete is generally a very high value product for the amount of carbon dioxide produced and this case appears no different. I don't see the point of the complaint.