1. The US gets into a war with China. 2. China sends a kill signal to all Chinese vehicles in the US. 3. The US government says they'll rapidly build millions of new vehicles in the US to replace them. 4. Ooops, we don't have the factories and anyway we forgot how.
Even if the Chinese didn't kill the cars, parts would rapidly become unobtainable.
Review your WW2 History. The US managed to gear up to fight a 2 front global war.
So China’s long game is to sell the world cheap cars and then engage a kill switch at some point?
How does that benefit anyone?
True dat. And just as a data point, if a person has a GM Vehicle, they have ONStar. And you don't need a subscription for them to hit the kill switch and cause the car to only idle. So you pull off the road, and let popo come to visit.
American cars have sucked since about the 1970s.
When I was a kid, it was "American cars have sucked since the 1920's"
Oddly enough, those good cars befrore rusted in a few years, and I remember celebrating when my 1965 Buick Skylark hit 100K miles. And then I sold it to a junkyard. Tires lasted 15,000 miles, Water pumps maybe 20,000 miles. Brake pads mayby 15,000 miles.
Today, I put around 300,000 mile on a vehicle, First time body issues hardly ever start before 200,000 miles.Ceramic brake pads seem to last forever. The engines are essentially what we used to call "blueprinted" which would have resulted in gasps
I get some of it - nostalgia for the older cars. Wife had a 69 Mustang and I had a 73 Mach 1. Awesome rides. But compared to anything now? We sold them before the 100,000 mile mark because they were done.
The person who does not like the group can be "racist" yes, but the statement itself is not racist. It is informational, and it can be 100% correct.
It's not really an apples to apples comparison. You wonder why SpaceX doesn't treat a lost rocket as a big deal where everybody else does. Well, this is why. Same reason you think starship is some sort of joke or vanity project: You're expecting the very first rocket to be fully developed and production ready with all planned features implemented. SpaceX does not.
All apologies if I insulted a fan.
I think GP means they fail to deliver on time or on specification, so contract goes to SpaceX, and this wouldn't be the first time exactly that has happened. SpaceX is already the lower cost, more reliable choice by a very wide margin; the reason the others get the contracts is to more or less throw them a bone and ensure there are future options available.
Right. But I don't think it is throwing a bone. The New Glenn is becoming a good rocket, and is there a good reason to not use New Glenn for rocketry? The recent incident of it blowing up is no different than a Falcon 9 blowing up on the launchpad 10 years ago. New rockets, new problems.
And it is for a darn good reason to have multiple providers. As an example, at one time, Boeing was a respected company that created good products. Now after becoming a bean counter company, they are rapidly becoming an also ran, with a crew capsule that reminds me of the early Soviet nuc subs.
And despite all the love heaped on Spacex, there is no guarantee that the same won't happen to them.
This isn't to disparage the Falcons, they are really good rockets. Starship - not so much, but that's a vanity project. But time moves on, and I've never been into the hot hand theory.
"Most of the fans forgot about the rapid unplanned disassembly of the vaunted Falcon 9 on the launchpad 10 FUCKING YEARS AGO!" TFTFY
Irrelevant. Acting like it didn't happen in early development is a double standard. These candles are dangerous, and it takes a while to perform the learning curve.
Sorry, but none of their new glen launches was without problems, especially the last one, which obliterated their complete launchpad. (Previous one did lift off and flew great but didn't land properly). So in that regard their testflights weren't much better as SpaceX.
Most of the fans forgot about the rapid unplanned disassembly of the vaunted Falcon 9 on the launchpad in 2016. There will always be unplanned events as the rocket makers work their learning curve.
As much as it pains me to say it, I don't think Blue Origin is that far behind. They just have a different methodology to SpaceX. Instead of failing fast and often while they iterate, Blue Origin does a lot of testing and then a successful launch. So it's very hard to say exactly where they are in comparison to SpaceX, but we will find out in the next few years when they are supposed to deliver the first crewed lunar lander to NASA.
Correct, they aren't that far behind. We have armchair engineers in here claiming that BO's big achievement is Launching a suborbital flight with Pop Stars, that Bezos paid baksheesh to the orange shitgibbon, when they've already put satellites into orbit on New Glenn rockets.
This is how the system is supposed to run, with multiple vendors. BO is on their learning curve.
I'm betting they'll contract out to SpaceX for the launching to Mars. It makes sense to give a networking contract to the company adjacent to Amazon.
They have New Glenn Rockets. Hard to imagine they would use Spacex When they already have a livery.
This choice seems questionable. Even with my limited knowledge of the industry, I know that Blue Origin lags behind.
But. the question arises, are we to only provide contracts to some unquestioned leader, which on Slashdot usually means a Spacex monoculture. NASA has a mission to commercialize space with multiple companies doing the reduced to practice grunt work.
Their crowning achievement thus far is a ten-minute, sub-orbital Katy Perry. [wikipedia.org]
Have you forgotten about the New Glenn launches? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Lot's of information on launches.
Seriously, acting like the pop culture all female launch is the pinnacle kinda ignores New Glenn, don't you think?
On the downside, they had one of the New Glenn rockets explode on the launchpad. But then again, so has another company.
Not only do they get the road names wrong, they also get important info such as weight limits wrong. My BIL, who was the civil engineer for an Ohio county, used to complain that Google maps was sending semi-trucks down a road to a bridge with a weight limit that could not handle the load. A semi that approached the bridge then found itself in a spot where turning around was next to impossible. IIRC, they fixed the issue with a road sign that told semis no go since they could not get Google to correct their map.
Sounds related to here in PA, where we have lumbering, and gas well work, there are a lot of signs in the woods with "No Semi's", ""No "company name" past this point"" or my favorite, "Not a GPS Route".
One surprise benefit of the Marcellus shale gas drilling in PA is that the gas companies will grade and repair those back roads. We've got some seriously nice gravel roads in the middle of the wild areas.
I use a product based on how well it works.
Google Maps displays incorrect names for geographical locations.
Indeed. They also get road names wrong, which is an issue when navigating back roads.
Get rid of the 3,494 sensors, computer control garbage and it would make vehicle more affordable in two ways. One, less expensive to purchase and two, less expensive TO REPAIR!
You can always get a model T. They still have some on Facebook Marketplace, and not too bad a price.
Wow - tough crowd. Really think about it. The model T not only has minimal parts, but not even an oil or Water pump. Not even a starter motor to go bad. It's like the ultimate old school machine. And repair? Easy peasy. Most things can be done in your garage, and there are professionals to do the tougher fixes.
The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland"; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
