Oh god. If I spent enough time digging through my ancient Slashdot posts, somewhere back there there are posts of me going, "While I loved the strategy behind Falcon 9, I'm really not keen on this plan to make Starship out of huge carbon fibre tanks, that sounds like a really failure-prone solution..." I'm glad they only spent like a year on that idea before deciding it was dumb; somewhere back there there's also a bunch of posts of me cheering their switch to steel ;) . SpaceX still keep having random COPV problems (most of which they don't even make themselves). Not too encouraging for the notion of the cold gas thruster add-on to the Roadster, where the plan is to replace the back seat with COPVs, so you have a COPV right behind your head.

Electron has been getting by on CF, and honestly I'm impressed, but they've also been only working with very small launch vehicles thusfar. We'll see how neutron goes...

About "paying customers" - It is interesting to contemplate how the GP's viewpoint is basically anti-oligarchical. He's OK with the disaster because of who was on the sub. If it had been normal people on that submarine, if the tickets were $80 and his mother was thinking of taking the plunge, he would take a much different stance.

A submarine imploding generally doesn't impact bystanders. A plane falling out of the sky very much can.

I'll admit, I'm not sure if the people on the sub were or weren't on the Forbes list. But I feel confident in saying they also "had people", and those people didn't prevent them from climbing into the vessel.

I only wish he could have found a way to get more of the Forbes list onboard. Aren't there a whole hundred of them? We're going to need a bigger carbon-fiber submarine for this job...

Mostly I feel bad for that kid that didn't want to go on the ride but was cajoled into it anyway.

Garbage regulations like IP create these behemoths. If you want freedom, stop regulating monopolies into existence.

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.

Statism creates billionaires.

MidJourney was the first sizable AI company to become profitable, having done so back in 2022.

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.

If we want billionaires to pay their fair share, we should start by eliminating some of the tax loopholes that allow them to avoid paying the taxes that less wealthy people have to pay.

These loopholes are many, they favor the ultra wealthy, they absolutely can be eliminated, and doing so is far less problematic than this wealth tax proposal.

The proposal here was not for the government to BUY the stocks, just like anyone else. It was for the government to TAKE the stocks. For free. In return for nothing.

And, regardless, the key difference between capitalism and socialism (in this context) is who owns the means of production: private citizens, or the government? Once the government owns the means of production (whether they bought it or seized it), then that qualifies as socialism.

This slider isn't exactly boolean. It is totally possible for the government to own some of the means of production, without owning all of it. That just means that we have a mix of socialism and capitalism going on.