While I'm with you almost on every point I would caution very strongly against taking any financial statements at face value. Elon is an expert at moving money around to try and make businesses look good, and one of his favourite ways of doing so is to get the insanely profitable SpaceX to pay for everything. The Starlink division reports very high operating profit as they do not pay any funds beyond consumables for launches with SpaceX. They pay a tiny portion of the market price and SpaceX gets to bury the costs in their balance sheet. Kind of like how SpaceX also bought a whole lot of Cybertrucks at full retail cost when Tesla was sold with unused inventory.

To be clear I still think Starlink is profitable as a business (there's a reason competitors are trying to get into this space too), but their total net income figure is a fantasy afforded to it by clever accounting.

Why? Did you understand what I said when using the trope? I suspect yes. That means we communicated, which is the purpose of me typing in this box. It clearly works and works well.

If you want change for change's sake go join Microsoft's UX division.

That's not how those words work. NASA is the project lead, that's it. It's not a US project. Now if NASA developed a satellite by itself without help from anyone else then outsourcing would be allowed. You also mentioned the Soyuz earlier but conveniently left out the bit that the only assistance received from Russia is to the international space station - also not a US project.

US projects.

That's nothing compared to ignorance on the topic. Starlink satellites re-enter the atmosphere within about 5-6 years. They leave zero space junk and don't contribute to Kessler Syndrome. They are in too low of an orbit.

Also give the low orbit, the relative efficiency of spacex launches, and the number of satellites in a payload per launch it turns out each Starlink satellite produces 340/25/5 = 2.72 Tonnes CO2 / year, or about half as much as your car. The entire Starlink program produces less emissions than a tiny tiny country town near bumfuck nowhere, Wisconsin.

There's so many problems with Starlink, how did you pick the two things that are completely irrelevant to complain about?

Tell us you don't know what we're talking about without telling us.

The JWST is not space launch or service industry. It's a single product, and there's no limit of who can launch it.
The JWST is also not "US". It's an international joint project by multiple countries (including agencies like the ESA, CSA and NASA) collaborating to develop a telescope.

By the way there is one good example in the JWST of what we're actually talking about: The JWST was launched on an Ariane-5. The Ariane-5 is wholly manufactured in Europe which just like the USA it limits it outsourcing to prevent any external parties manufacturing components for launch vehicles, and that launch proceeded from an a European territory.

We already had that thanks to Russia. When Europe showed the world fossil fuel dependence on foreign nations isn't a viable strategy, THAT is when a major acceleration to energy independence starts. And ever nation has light and wind.

Yeah like I said positive effect, but one already known. Any country who were looking towards hedging any kind of bet on energy already got the hint a few years ago. Those who didn't are unlikely to be moved this time.

Yeah sorry but that's a scenario that only happens in your head, especially given how a simple file server could actually be admin'd by a simple LLM manual. Look for another article to rage at the young generation rather than making up scenarios irrelevant to this one.

Err no, objectively not. Xilinx has more than 50% market share across the entire FPGA market. Intel/Altera are sub 30%

Please don't generalise. Chinese EVs are the most advanced in many areas but they are not the most efficient. Quite the opposite actually, they are focusing in other areas including in battery tech that improves safety and charging speed at the expense of weight and charge density. Their designs are not favouring aerodynamics and their push from range is largely the effort of cramming more battery in.

If you look to Europe you'll find plenty of Chinese EVs tested. They barely rank in the top 10 in terms of efficiency. In fact in this market the Tesla 3 comes out very favourably right behind Mercedes.

I hope Americans who assuming the outside world doesn't exist, and people like you who blindly worship the outside world without looking anything up can meet somewhere in the middle and find sanity.

We have infrastructure in place to deal with cars that are unable to use any controls, it's a case that occurs with many cars in an accident. Also the existence of controls does not help. In virtually all modern cars the parking brake system is computer controlled, failure of a computer to respond means you can't simply roll the car on a flatbed as well. Also EVs, flat batteries result in the parking brake engaging there so also non-trivial to deal with - none the less we deal with it just fine.

That's not to say your concerns aren't real, but they are a mixture of managed and low enough risk to not be something to lose sleep over.

I only looked up their names and checked their background on linked in.

Sorry but this has nothing to do with Iran. The trend for wind and solar has been moving this way steady for years before anyone knew where on the map the Strait of Hormuz was. Sure it's not negative, but at best it cements something that that people were already doing.

I expect you to join a meeting at 9am. Since timezones are idiotic I have no idea if this means you'll be asleep, at home, at work, having breakfast, or having dinner with the family. 9am is 9am right? And the social structure we have build to aid a common understanding of when and how people live their lives doesn't matter.

So don't be late.

I'm curious how the certification works. If it is similar to normal tests then the interesting part is the Cybercab may actually also reach it being a local transport vehicle. I get no where near the efficiency rating of my car thanks to spending a lot of times on highways.

That is an incredibly silly generalisation. Yeah some managers are shit and produce inefficiencies, but some managers are the opposite and contribute heavily to successes of projects. Just for fun I had a look at who left. Google's AI results showed 4 people leaving the vehicle division:
1x Chemical Engineer with a history of manufacturing optimisation.
1x Aerospace engineer with a post grad study related to manufacturing.
1x Mechanical engineer with a masters in manufacturing systems (also this guy, Emmanuel Lamacchia, lead multiple wildly successful programs at Tesla including the Model Y program which is Tesla's best selling product)
1x Electrical Engineer with a masters in electrical design.

So yeah let's celebrate getting rid of those "managers" who were holding back the engineers.

On the flip side we just lost a high profile manager where I work, a veteran accountant, with an MBA, and a history working for nothing but consultants. Yeah we were all very fucking happy he's gone.

Don't generalise.