Who says that was their first effort?

When reasonable conversation fails, violence is an effective fallback position.

We've mostly given the government a monopoly on violence (a.k.a. the legal system), but we regularly use (the threat of) it to coerce people into complying with the law when they'd rather not.

And illegal violence directed against the elites has in fact been the cornerstone of virtually every major advancement of freedom and liberty in human history.

When one party has a vested interest in not accepting your position, there are generally very few other options available.

If you don't want to tax vessels flying a different flag, don't.

Tax the people selling them fuel, when *they* buy it. They're already paying income tax on the income from selling fuel to foreign customers, a carbon tax paid at the point that the carbon is brought into the US economy would be no different.

Though frankly I suspect the foreign sailors already pay sales tax on the latte they buy at the coffee shop on the dock, so I suspect the issue is not so problematic as you portray. You buy a product in [jurisdiction], you pay [jurisdiction]'s taxes. If you want to put it in a foreign ship, that's your business.

That would only affect *outbound* flights, not inbound, for which the fuel would be bought overseas. And you could easily offer tax exemption exclusively to international flights if that's your concern.

Not to mention, a worldwide tax exemption on aviation fuel seems like it should be a major target for those international climate mitigation agreements in the first place. Why the F are we all subsidizing airlines compared to other modes of transportation?

Yes. Absolutely.
Just probably not in hideously inefficient airplanes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

A *stupid* race to the bottom, since airlines in other countries are not actually in competition with airlines in the US. If they want to operate here, they'd end up paying the same taxes.

Hear, hear on a fuel tax. Or a fossil-carbon tax. Personally I'd tax all fossil carbon products upon extraction or importation into the country, perhaps with a VAT-like system to waive whatever carbon taxes they can prove were already paid overseas. That would also catch a lot of synthetic fertilizers, which are pumping just as much fossil carbon into the ecological carbon cycle.

Of course that would also hit plastics and lubricants... but given the (different) horrible ecological impacts they have as well, perhaps that's not actually a bad thing.

So, you're saying we need to have a corporation run the bots to grant them full legal rights and personhood?

Hmm, that is true. And to be fair getting to and from the moon's surface is child's play compared to getting into orbit from Earth. Well, at least so far as raw power is concerned.

Nice to have a backup for Starship HLS anyway, especially since Musk seems at best lukewarm on the idea. And Blue Moon may prove a much better "everyday" lander for scouting and crew transport - landing an office building every time is going to get expensive.

Of course, SLS is still likely to be useless unless Blue Moon is small enough to ride it to orbit. And with the lack of public details on the "unspecified launch vehicle" it smells an awful lot like a Starship or New Glenn.

Certainly - the arsenal used to reject critical thinking is vast. There's been lots of vested interest in improving it through most of human history.

That doesn't mean that critical thinking itself is difficult. The problem is that a huge swath of the population actively reject it, and no amount of rational argument can change an opinion that wasn't reached rationally.

And of the two groups, the rejectors are generally far more emotionally invested in spreading their world view. Unsurprisingly, since their view is not based on facts, but on fictions intentionally created to elicit that emotional investment.

We like to believe that the truth wins out in the end... and on a long enough timescale it generally does. But history is full of tales of societies turning their back on uncomfortable truths in favor of impassioned beliefs.

I would say it's a lot easier than that. You get a *huge* percentage of the benefits by asking two questions:

- Who has actually put in the years of effort required to understand the topic? Don't listen to the opinions of anyone else, they're basically worthless. That includes the entire media industry. Consider the subject experts if they're *actually* experts, but if the talking heads voice an opinion onit's a safe bet they're either spouting paid propaganda or just making shit up to pander to their audience. Assume it's a lie.

- Do they have any incentive to lie to me? Don't believe anyone who is going to get power or money from you believing them, or who is being paid by those who will. They may not always be lying, but the moment profit and truth parts ways, they will be. And a disheartening number of experts are willing to sell their opinion.

A bigger problem though is that a huge part of the power structure in the US and abroad is actively hostile to teaching critical thinking skills. Especially many politicians and religious leaders.

Con-men and authoritarians of all stripes will always be opposed to critical thinking, and between the two they seem to have a majority among policymakers these days. And probably most days.

If Starship-HLS doesn't work, then SLS is still mostly useless, because we've got no other way to get to the lunar surface. About the only thing it's good for is going to the Lunar gateway station - whose primary reason for existence seems to be to give the SLS somewhere to go.

They absolutely *don't* need to man-rate an HLS soft landing on Earth - it only has to make it back to low Earth orbit. From there Crew Dragon or whatever can ferry people back to Earth.

In fact HLS is destined to never touch Earth again, unless they decide to burn it up in the atmosphere. It has no reentry heat shield or control flaps - they'd be too heavy to haul to the moon's surface and back, at least for now. Long-term I imagine they'll try to figure something out so that maintenance can be done on Earth.

And if all goes well they could then refuel HLS and send it back to the moon... maybe without crew since there's no way to inspect it thoroughly in orbit. Even just parked on or around the moon it could be a valuable asset. Especially when you consider those huge propellant tanks would be easy to convert to additional pressurized space if you weren't planning to fly it again.

Yeah, orbital refueling is the really hard part. And also absolutely essential to the serious development of the moon, making it probably the single most important piece of the Artemis program.

For overly complicated though? My first pick would be that the most expensive part of the system (SLS+Orion) doesn't appear to serve any purpose whatsoever. Not to mention the dubious utility of the entire space Lunar Gateway space station.

I can totally understand not wanting astronauts on board during the immature orbital refueling process, but why not just load them up afterwards while still in low Earth orbit, using your choice of well-tested human-rated launch vehicles, and only have HLS go to the moon and back? They're already trusting it to handle the most dangerous part of the voyage, the landing and launch. Cramming the astronauts into a much more expensive tiny tin can for the long, boring cruise to and from the moon, where they transfer to a slightly larger space station, before transferring to the behemoth HLS just doesn't seem to contribute anything to the plan.

I guess we all know the real answer, pork-shoveling Senator Shelby and friends.

Though I suppose there's always the slim chance that HLS could be damaged during the landing or takeoff on the moon just badly enough to still be able make it to lunar orbit and shut down safely, but not make it all the way back to Earth orbit. I can't think of many ways that could happen though - maybe a sufficiently small propellant leak? I suppose a failed engine or two could also make the launch back to lunar orbit require more propellant to make up for the reduced thrust while fighting lunar gravity.

Alright. *Maybe* I won't begrudge the Orion on the first launch or two, though a couple redundant HLS's seem like they would be much better bang for the buck, and could even double as a much larger alternative to the Lunar Gateway station. Focus development dollars on things like modular life support systems, research stations, etc. that can be used in *whatever* shell you happen to have available, and ideally work in both freefall and gravity. Things that will actually continue to be useful once we have established a real foothold in space, with an eye towards relatively inexpensive "mass" production in their design.

You know, as much shade as I've thrown Blue Origin's way, I really hope their impending tests and first launch goes well. If nothing else, having *two* much cheaper and more capable alternatives to SLS should make it that much more difficult for Shelby to piss away so much of our limited space budget on a hopelessly obsolete rocket.

Heck, I don't even care if he wants to keep shoveling pork to the bastards - lets just get them on the hook to deliver something actually worthwhile for our money. At this point, they've got to be at least as sick of dealing with SLS and its finicky Frankenstein launch system as those of us that only have to watch.

Remember your economics 101 kids: In a well functioning free market, any profit is incentive for a competitor to come in and offer lower prices.

The obvious corollary is that any large profits are a symptom of market failures, and should be draw serious regulatory scrutiny for exploitative and/or anti-competitive business practices.

I mean anyone who complains about any effect on their property values like their government should care. The government has absolutely no obligation to prop up the value of your investments.

It does however have an obligation to use community resources for the benefit of the community, and the usage levels make it clear that pickleball courts are of far greater value to the community than tennis courts.

I completely agree about property values.

And even if I were sympathetic, it's still not the government's job to care about your property value. It's there to serve the community as a whole, not just a few entitled assholes.

Gasoline fires also spread rapidly, and are prone to explosions if they reach the gas tank. Unless you've got someone on-site when the fire starts, with the skills and equipment to fight a gasoline fire quickly and effectively, you're likely to have a big problem.

Battery fires generally don't threaten anything except the car and anything in its immediate vicinity. As long as you can get out, and the car isn't in a garage, it's not really a big problem. Especially since most new EVs now have sufficiently armored battery compartments that the car pretty much has to be totaled anyway before the battery is breached.

But hey, the burnt out husk of a totaled EV on an otherwise pristine street makes for much more dramatic footage than the far more common singed husk of an ICEV surrounded by burn-scar that everyone has been seeing for decades, AND it plays into popular anti-EV sentiment, so of course it's getting coverage.