Our space launch program was nationalized for decades and decades. Yeah there were private contracts but the really expensive research that loses money was all done by the government and the private contracts were mostly just there to line pockets and to put money in certain districts for political reasons.

If you have something that is universally desirable and needs to be built at scale you generally need to do it with the government one way or another. This is why I transportation network is almost entirely paid for by the government. Even the little boxes of metal we putz around on the network with are mostly paid for by the government in the form of heavily subsidized gasoline and electricity.

It's not just a lack of outsourcing it's the fact that space travel, at least until very very recently, was a public good and a national utility.

Perhaps, but I suspect Starlink (etc) already fills most of that use-case, and for the rest, they'll want that compute to be physically located inside the drones themselves, because otherwise the drones will be susceptible to jamming or spoofing.

There will be jobs that AI can't do. How many? Enough to keep 5-10 billion humans employed? What makes you so sure there will be?

Clearly AI has progressed considerably over the last 5-10 years. It's anyone's guess how much further it will progress -- maybe it'll plateau right where it is now, or maybe it will keep becoming more powerful as better algorithms are discovered. I'm not qualified to predict that, and neither are you, but the AI people certainly seem bullish about it.

Sorry, I thought you would understand that I meant that the resources that money represents appear, once you've solved the automation problems that currently make mass-production difficult. That's why you can buy a pocket computer today for $300 that would have your cost you billions of dollars twenty years ago, if you could have obtained it at all.

I bet you'd have more interesting conversations if you made a good-faith effort to understand what the other person was saying, rather than just jumping straight to the part where you get to throw insults at them and tell them how dumb they are. Doesn't that get boring?

I guess we can add a whole new category to the Darwin Awards.

I have yet to hear of a remotely plausible business case for putting data centers into space. The only benefit is 24/7 solar power, but that benefit is more than offset by the cost of launching everything into orbit, plus the cost of keeping everything properly cooled, plus the cost of radiation-hardening everything, and finally the cost of maintaining hardware in space (or, more likely, the cost of periodically having to write off the entire investment and build and launch new replacement hardware).

Unless Musk is trying to corner the market for AI-generated kiddie-porn (or something similarly illegal that needs to be operated beyond the reach of Earthly authorities), his ground-based competitors will undercut his pricing by a factor of 100, and he therefore won't have a viable product to sell.

Go watch the two Patrick Boyle videos on the subject he covers it in detail but they have basically maxed out their addressable market

Basically anyone who needs launch services is already either using SpaceX or somebody else and there is no additional people who need launch services on the horizon except maybe starlink except that starlink has all the customers it's going to get because there's only so many people in the world who have $100 a month for high-speed internet and don't already have wired or already have starlink.

Now if SpaceX created a magic rocket that could defy the laws of physics and do launches for a fraction of the cost sure go ahead. A drastic reduction in the cost of launching satellites and rockets would increase the number of customers. But there really isn't any sign of that. Even if they get that fully reusable rocket working exactly as planned the cost reductions aren't enough to create whole new markets. It's not a paradigm shift it's a solid improvement. And that again assumes all of musk's promises come true and he has a very very bad track record of making promises. I mean how many cybertrucks do you own? How many $40,000 so I have a trucks do you own?

Kudos to you for realizing the AI stuff is just a scam but assuming you believe the rocket company isn't a scam where is the addressable market that's going to justify the valuation? How are you going to get your money out of that company either in the form of dividends or stock increases? Is this a case where you expect the price to shoot up like Tesla did so that even though the company isn't fundamentally sound you'll be able to sell the stock off? In other words greater fool theory? If not where is the money going to come from to pay the dividends you're going to need in order for your investment to be profitable, again assuming you take out the AI stuff? Because the reason they are doing the AI stuff is that well, all the reasons I listed above. SpaceX and starlink are not profitable enough to justify the valuation and they do not have the growth potential to become that profitable even without the AI anchor dragging them down

Certainly new categories of work will emerge. The question is, will hiring and paying human beings be the most economically efficient way to fill those new positions, or will those jobs be done by AIs instead?

Previous waves of automation allowed people to move "up the food chain" and do jobs the machines still couldn't do, which was fine (at least, for the people capable of doing the new jobs), but if we get to the stage where there aren't many jobs left that the machines can't do, then we're out of luck -- it's unlikely that our tech-bro overlords are going to hire people simply on humanitarian grounds, if they can get an unquestioning machine to do the same work cheaper.

I agree that UBI is unlikely, but only because the billionaires don't like sharing and therefore won't support it. The money does "just appear" when you have mass automation doing the work to make it appear, but it will go into Bezos' checking account, not to the general public.

I have no idea what your point is at all. Seriously, are you OK? Just to make it clear - I am against governments, I am against governments using any technology to make it easier for government to oppress people and this is one instrument of oppression.

Because they eventually come back down. That is a huge problem because it becomes a very large Capital cost to keep starlink in business.

On paper it's nice for SpaceX because it keeps having to send rockets up but in practice since the two companies are owned by the same people and since they're only so many people in the world who give a rat's ass about satellite internet and can't afford it it ends up just being a sunk cost.

One of the core things that was supposed to make SpaceX and starlink profitable was that it would become so cheap to send rockets up because of musk magic that the capital expenditure of replacing the satellites wouldn't need to be factored in so much. This did not happen. It is also why the SpaceX IPO docs keep talking about ai and not rockets. If you're investing in a rocket company that only ever claims to be an AI company then you should have already figured out something is deeply deeply wrong.

I don't think anyone even the musk faithful is going to buy into SpaceX except for a handful of people who think that they can greater fool their way into some quick profits. But I don't think anyone's going to have a choice. Again if you go watch the youtube videos from Patrick Boyle on the topic of SpaceX the way the IPO is structured it is part of nasdaq's top 100 so every single major index fund and investment fund is more or less forced to buy it. There are rules to prevent this but there's so much money to be made on this scam that NASDAQ waived the rules for SpaceX.

People get so excited about a reusable rocket but like I've mentioned before I could keep my old 94 Honda Accord running if I really really wanted to but past a certain point it cost more to keep it running than it was worth. There is a reason why NASA gave up on reusable rockets and that's it. You can't put something under that much stress and keep sending it up into space over and over again without a shit ton of expensive maintenance and if you skip the maintenance the rockets just blow up and if you don't skip the maintenance you might as well have just built another rocket.

The thing I keep seeing though is the faithful don't show up on this website or any other forum that isn't heavily moderated to prevent them from seeing wrong think. The right wing has completely retreated into safe spaces and anyone who is still on board with Elon Musk has joined those safe spaces and the right wing with them because they pretty much have to protect themselves from reality in order to see Elon Musk as anything but a skeezy grifter getting ready to steal their retirement money.

The billionaires are planning on replacing us with robots and machines and AI. So they aren't going to need us to be productive in order to generate wealth. That's the entire point of AI.

The problem AI solves is paying wages. But what that means is you have a machine doing work that you used to have to pay wages for. That means the people you used to pay wages no longer have any bargaining power over you. They cannot threaten to withhold their labor.

Now they could threaten to start their own businesses but you have limitless money so you can just run them out of business.

And finally they could threaten to kill you but well, you have thugs and militaries and automated killbots and a surveillance State and drones that can bomb them into pulp.

I mean Christ they took out Black Wall Street with a freaking biplane and you're going to go up against guys with drones with your semi-automatic assault rifle that you modded to be fully automatic?

The ruling class know about all the things that the working class can do to interfere with their techno feudal hellscape future and they are taking steps to make sure you can't interfere with it. Meanwhile about 40% of the working class is deeply, deeply concerned about ethics and game journalism, trans girls in sports and satanic heavy metal music.

Personally I think we are boned.

Yeah, but it's also electrified. The most MPG a modern ICEV can get does still seem to be around the 55-60 mark, like a VW Lupo, but that's an extremely compromised vehicle. It's a perfectly adequate car for typical uses, but I wouldn't fit in it even if I weren't fat. Germans are tall people (and trending fatter) but they still seem to make cars quite snug. There's more room in a cheap Nissan than most Audis...

ahem, anyhoo what about a 330e? 30 mpg combined, around 3900lb so it's not exactly svelte but that's not bad for a modern kraut kan...

This betrays some really entry-level thinking about money, where you're believing what it says on the back of the software box. (Remember those?) The idea of trickle down economics was that the wealthy were supposed to spend and/or invest their money so that it went back into circulation. That's what happens when normal people get it. It gets spent about five times before it winds up in some rich person's pocket. When rich people get money, it only gets spent twice or so before they put it someplace where it's not employing anyone. They've got it in some kind of tax dodge like in some kind of account held by a trust their name isn't on (legal in at least four states) or just stuck into some kind of investment they can devalue intentionally. They used to use art for this, but that tax loophole has been tightened, so they have to use cars and whatnot again.

The idea that isn't enough money to take away from the billionaires is inherently falling for trickle down economics. It's buying the idea that they are the job creators, when they are the job murderers. They choke the air right out the system. When we get the money, we spend it.

We are the job creators.

We separate history into ages and eras in retrospect for convenience, but we do it along borders which measure real and tangible effects which affected real people's actual lives. These people are not imaginary because they are past. Their challenges were real. Industrialization built empires and killed people, sometimes directly and in numbers. It changed the way we did everything. In a very real way, it ended civilization as we know it.

The information age represents a paradigm shift as profound as the industrial revolution. A huge number of workers get paid simply for causing practical and desirable shifts in the contents of storage devices. Many of them are doing work which is frankly redundant or worse, which will be actively discarded. How are they getting paid without the whole system collapsing? They're not contributing anything to the actual function of society whatsoever, but many of them are receiving good salaries. In fact, they are putting load on the HVAC and burning fuel commuting and so on, they're a net negative in multiple ways. Why not pay them less to stay home? Then when the money you gave them gets spent five times before it trickles up to the wealthy, it will have done a bunch of work in the process instead of getting parked in a blind perpetual trust in South Dakota.

No, but they can be DoS'd by any asshole with a big radio. Around here there is nothing outside of UHF and VHF, and very little digital. Most small FDs seem to have two or three frequencies and use tones with tactical channels. At least they can go to a tac channel if someone floods their main, or vice versa...

Because right now that is literally the only thing I am looking for in a politician. If they are just not an open fascist then hey that's good news.

Also none of you fuckers give a shit about Trump fucking kids so you can piss right off with your infidelity bullshit.

Everything is performative wishes as long as guys like you keep voting for Trump and telling us you didn't. You're not the silent majority you're the silent minority with voter suppression making sure you get to pick your guy. Or rather billionaires pick your guy and you follow along.

I will remind everyone that the $22 an hour minimum wage for fast food workers which is boosted wages for all workers in California was signed by Gavin newsom. And he absolutely could have vetoed it.

Never let perfect be the enemy of good. Newsom is a huge step up from where we are right now.

If done properly under a doctor supervision. Every single sport is using steroids they're just pretending they don't. And we pretend with them. In wrestling they call it kayfabe.

I noticed it when I noticed that the trans women athletes were getting their asses handed to them if they had been on their hormones for any length of time. It's because the hormones that correct their medical condition also conflict with the steroids they need to be competitive and they quickly get to a point where they can't compete. It's why trans women in sports is a complete non-issue.

The reason I bring this up isn't for more dumb woke politics but to illustrate that no matter how tiny or insignificant the sport seems, like women's College swimming for Christ's sake, the athletes are taking steroids.

The main opposition right now to steroids is that it's not fair because it should be a natural competition. But like most drugs making them illegal just puts them underground and makes them less safe.

And if everybody is taking the steroids and taking them under medical supervision then at the very least the playing field is genuinely level.

And if you don't like it there are leagues that are certified steroid free that do actual testing methodologies that catch anyone doping and kick them out. It's not actually hard to do and we know how to do it. If you look at the steroid free bodybuilding competitions though you're going to find those guys are a hell of a lot smaller. They are however a hell of a lot less likely to die in their thirties.

We could for example allow steroids in the broader bodybuilding competitions but use the tactics for catching abusers to catch people who are not doing it safely. So you could have people no longer dying in their 30s but still competing the way people want to see. There would still be health problems from that kind of steroid use but if you cut it off around your mid 30s or your career ends inevitably you can undo most of the damage. Kind of like how some sumo wrestlers go on diets after their career. Still a shitload of damage to their bodies but you can mitigate it.