Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to say about printing small rocket parts, such as for the engines. But they were printing basically sheet metal cylinders, which is such an immensely slow and inefficient way to go about it, and it left them with parts that were heavier and less aerodynamic (rougher surface). Crazy that idea ever got any funding.
The one seen over Moscow might have been, with a bit more thrust...
"SapceX has got to be a huge scam too" - SpaceX launches the vast majority of the world's commercial cargo to orbit. The Falcon 9 FT has the highest success rate of any rocket with a statistically significant number of launches under its belt, and is dirt cheap. SpaceX's core operations are roughly breakeven, but that's including subsidizing the development of Starship. Starlink is a money printer.
There are lots of things sketchy about the SpaceX IPO, to say the least, but SpaceX, as a company, has been extremely successful with rocketry.
MidJourney was the first sizable AI company to become profitable, having done so back in 2022.
...Like their opinion is supposed to control our democracy?
The funny thing was that I knew him for like six months online before I realized he was fully paralyzed. He's been covered in the Finnish press a number of times. Amazing guy. Up until recently he was living in a house he built himself before ALS struck, but the medical service decided he was too far away and he had to move closer. You lose a lot of control over your life with ALS.
He wrote a book about nuclear safety engineering recently, which is a fascinating read, and which I strongly recommend.
There are plenty of cities in western countries where drones are entirely prohibited and you need to drive to the countryside to fly it, observing various nature reserves and restricted airspaces.
It is also very common that training, a test or license, insurance, etc. are required.
The odd thing is that buying is restricted. Does that include ordering online?
Smartphones have matured enough there is very little incentive to upgrade.
64 camera lenses oughtta be enough for anyone!
- Phone J. Gates
No surprise here. Why is this even news? Every product that uses memory is raising their prices. This "story" is merely Apple mollifying their customers.
Might check out this film: The Eagle Obsession.
(only in pre-release screening now, but there's a youtube preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... )
> And no the bubble isn't going to pop.
It's smells more bubblier over time. Sales of AI services are not self-supporting the hardware and infrastructure needed. AI usage numbers are based on the heavily discounted services supported by investors and market-share fights. These subsidies cannot last forever. Users will be more judicious with AI use when they have to pay real prices, and the market will realize it over-built.
Investors are pricing in big breakthroughs, and if these don't arrive, the existing stacks are financially hosed.
BTW, AI is a godsend for ALS patients. Even with an eye tracker, your writing throughput is low / tiring compared to typing, and of course you can't do anything that requires physical activity (painting, playing an instrument, speaking, etc). AI tools help fill the gaps.
Did *she* want to die? Did *she* want to be "released"?
Did she have an eye tracker, to allow her to communicate naturally?
Motor neurons dying != brain control of motor neurons dies.
Anyway, you don't need a brain-computer interface for an ALS patient to work. I have a friend in Finland with ALS who works as a consultant on safety for a nuclear reactor startup (he was a nuclear safety engineer before becoming paralyzed). All it takes is an eye tracker.
The biggest problem is the typically short and unpredictable lives of ALS patients. He has lived abnormally long (I think something like 13 years now), but a large part of that is due to him thinking like a nuclear safety engineer (backup on backup on backup, training his nurses to have zero tolerance for error, etc), and still has a close call like once per year or so, and I regularly worry when I don't see him online in a while that something happened that killed him. A tube comes off a life support system. A nurse forgetting to reconnect something. A mucus plug in his airways. Etc. ALS patients' lives are fragile. He does CAD design for parts on his computer (it's too hard to do it with the mouse using the eye tracker, so he designs the shapes programmatically) and orders them 3d printed to correct any deficiencies he finds in his support systems.
ALS patients also have to constantly fight the medical system. Even in a place like Finland that will actually do long-term care for ALS patients (which is very expensive), it shows that it would be much more convenient for them if those danged ALS patients would choose to die (and there's often pressure put on them to do so). One of my friend's goals is to outlive a doctor who told him he would only live a year or two put a lot of effort into getting him to choose death. It was a battle to get long-term ventilator care. It was an even bigger battle to get to use a cough machine and to be able to control the settings on it; without regular, meaningful cough support, your lungs fill with mucus, and you'll probably eventually die of a mucus plug, pneumonia, or whatnot.
By contrast, ALS patients today can actually live a decent life using eye trackers. It's not like before when you had to tediously spell out things one character at a time to a helper holding an E-tran frame. Given that 1 in 500 people will get ALS at some point in their life, we really should be allocating a lot more money toward researching cures, even if purely from a cost-saving perspective.
(One final note: if anyone here starts getting peripheral weakness and worries its ALS: your instinct will be to exercise more. Do just the opposite. If your peripheral neurons are dying, the last thing they need is more work. ALS overwhelmingly strikes active people - one researcher I was reading noted that in her entire career, she's never met a couch potato who got ALS. Take it easy, see a doctor immediately, and if it is ALS, start preparing early, but know that you do not have to be forced to choose to die, so long as you can get care. You can live a decent, productive life if you choose to).
Let's look at the various aspects of the Eagle design.
1. It was "designed to work in space" so wasn't designed to be aerodynamic
Except, of course, for the front part, which was weirdly aerodynamic
2. It was modular
Easy to do when you have no fuel tanks.
3. Mass was kept to a minimum without compromising strength, which is precisely what you would want if your job is to carry a significant mass in space and be able to manoever without ripping apart
I have no idea how you calculated mass. But about a third of the vehicle (not including the detachable part) seems to be the landing pads, which doesn't seem very optimum.
There were terrible aspects as well (nowhere to keep fuel, for example),
Yes, the lack of fuel tanks is a real problem. Also, how do they fly? They only have engines in back, but they skim over the surface of the moon like they are levitating. What holds them up? When they blast off to go into deep space, do they rotate 90 degrees to point the main engines downward?
A computer scientist is someone who fixes things that aren't broken.
