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I can only despondently imagine China laughing at a glacial Fish & Wildlife service review blocking US space heavy-lift capacity. While they burn all cylinders
by justrealist 3y ago
I can only despondently imagine China laughing at a glacial Fish & Wildlife service review blocking US space heavy-lift capacity. While they burn all cylinders to match SpaceX.
Honestly we deserve to lose at this point.
- foota 3y agoI do think it's a little goofy, but an extra month or so of delay over the FAA review doesn't seem like the end of the world to me. They could have avoided it by not blasting their launch pad to smithereens.
- kiba 3y agoDo you have any evidence to suggests that they are in fact burning all cylinders making dramatic progress? SpaceX is aiming for 114 launches next years and reusing its rockets more. Nobody comes close.
- starbase 3y agowe're a damn sight from losing. space industry is growing, not too late to get in
- echelon 3y agoNobody can compete with SpaceX now without paying an enormous amount. SpaceX is launching with real customers, and it's hard to go from zero to caught up when the competition is so far ahead. You don't fight uphill against a foe that has already won all the government and private contracts.
- mr_toad 3y ago> Nobody can compete with SpaceX now without paying an enormous amount. Well, if by enormous you mean maybe about five billion dollars a year, which isn’t really that much. There are clearly other reasons why nobody is seriously competing with SpaceX.
- echelon 3y ago> There are clearly other reasons why nobody is seriously competing with SpaceX. Such as? Government contracts? A monopoly on aerospace talent? The tremendous lead? Any company trying to catch up will be starting from behind, without customers, and will have to attract talent. All while SpaceX continues to improve their own tech. Is there some other reason?
- idontwantthis 3y agoSpaceX chose regulatory hard-mode when they put their launch pad right next to a wildlife preserve. I’m sure it had a lot of other benefits but they knew what they were getting into.
- uejfiweun 3y agoYeah, can anyone with know-how chime in on this? Why did they choose to do this instead of buying a bunch of desert in Nevada or something? I'm sure there are some very smart technical reasons but I have no clue.
- yokem55 3y agoBecause it would require overland flight of populated areas. That would be even harder to get permission for - especially with a novel and experimental vehicle.
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoThere’s a limited amount of sites available with an eastern shoreline. You can’t launch a prototype heavy launch vehicle over Salt Lake City (though China is notorious for this with their inland launch sites).
- Hayvok 3y agoThe closer to the equator, the better. Also ideally you have several hundred miles of open ocean eastward for crashes/retrievals/landings/etc. That doesn’t leave a ton of options in the continental US - Florida and southern Texas.
- cylinder714 3y agoI'm a bit surprised that Mexico, France (owner of French Guiana, the site of Arianespace launches), or other more equatorial countries haven't offered their coasts to SpaceX. Development could take place there, and government launches would take place at Canaveral and Vandenberg as planned. Then again, the cost of shipping supplies and relocating people to a southern port would be considerable.
- cryptoz 3y agoDeserve to lose the next space race because of a minor delay? Too much hyberbole. Honestly, I'm a huge huge huge Mars fan and spaceflight fan and all-things-space fan but I don't care one inch about the environmental review delays. WTF is the point of going to Mars if we don't even care about the endangered wildlife we're killing on Earth while we go? I mean, yes, some wildlife will die in the human pursuit of spaceflight. It already has, lots of it. Humans too. But at the end of the day, we ought to care. The whole point of going to Mars is to spread life to other words. At the very least we should observe and care about the ways we kill it here especially when in the pursuit of space travel.
- junofan 3y agoI’m a big wildlife person but shorebirds that can’t migrate are fucked regardless. Fragile food supply.
- yokem55 3y agoArguably turning the site into a launch facility preserves the area from even more destructive future development. Cape Canaveral/Kennedy Space Center is some of the last pristine waterfront on the eastern Florida coast. The rocket launches keep most people away, giving more space for wildlife.
- Dalewyn 3y ago>The whole point of going to Mars is to spread life to other words. I sincerely would prefer if we keep our chaotic, destructive, cancerous lifely existence out of the rest of space. The universe would be better off for it. And before the inevitable flaggings and warnings come in: Imagine how peaceful Earth would be without us, or at least not in any significantly influential form. I sincerely would prefer the rest of the universe be peaceful.
- dotnet00 3y agoYou're free to remove your own influence if you feel so strongly about it.
- rockemsockem 3y ago
- almost_usual 3y agoWhy are there so many new militant Elon accounts on HN now? They routinely start flamewars and make low quality comments like this? A week ago someone commented how they were flagging anything that was submitted to HN that painted Elon in a negative way.
- gostsamo 3y agoThey are running away from Twitter. Joke aside, I suspect that those people have always existed, but the debate is more polarized now and many of the people who tended to leave nuanced comments don't bother any more when it comes to Musk articles.
- happytiger 3y agoLooks like an organized campaign. It’s dramatic and noticeable. Probably state actor related as this site is full of influencers and definitely “on the radar.”
- dotnet00 3y agoLike the other poster, I agree that it's likely just because conversations about him have become so polarized. I also often find myself flagging anything related to Musk, I don't even have anything against him, I just find that most of the discussion tends to be totally unproductive, often full of deliberate lies and misinformation. Not much nuance, usually just a mix of blind fanatics who uncritically eat up the most scifi interpretation of anything he says and people pushing the usual tired, countered talking points or misinfo ("fix earth first", "slaves on Mars", "he shutdown Starlink in Ukraine", "he just bought his way into space" and so on).
- guilamu 3y agoI mostly agree with your comment but "he shutdown Starlink in Ukraine" is misinfo? Musk literally say he did it. How is that misinfo? https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/07/elon-musk-ordered-starlink-turned-off-ukraine-offensive-biography https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/07/elon-musk...
- huytersd 3y agoThe Chinese have a single use, low payload rocket and shits on their environment. What’s to laugh about?
- underseacables 3y agoIn all seriousness, this has always been my belief of China's Achilles' heel: the environment. They have allowed heavy industry and many others to pollute without penalty for so long, that I think it will eventually be a significant problem for them. I recognize that they are trying to do some mitigation, but once the "well is poisoned," it can be near impossible to bring it back
- resolutebat 3y agoChina has made significant progress in cleaning up, the sky in Beijing is actually blue these days (sometimes). Now almost all of the world's most polluted cities are in India or Pakistan. https://www.iqair.com/world-most-polluted-cities https://www.iqair.com/world-most-polluted-cities
- happytiger 3y agoThe construction of 106 gigawatts of coal-fired power was approved last year — four times more than in 2021 and the highest amount since 2015 — would like to have a word with you. And China builds more coal powered power plants than the entire rest of the world combined. But go ahead and educate me please. I’m open to changing my mind but I haven’t seen any evidence that shows a material shift. https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/china-coal-plants-climate-goals-carbon https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/china-coal-pla...
- resolutebat 3y agoChina also has more solar power than the rest of the world combined, more wind power than the next 7 countries combined, and is 5 years ahead of schedule on its plan to hit 1200 GW of green power in production. And many of those coal plants are replacing old, heavily polluting ones. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/29/china-wind-solar-power-global-renewable-energy-leader https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/29/china-wind-sol...
- cameldrv 3y agoIt’s a shame that they disturbed a quail nest on their last test flight and may have broken two of their eggs. They should be prohibited from launching. By the way I was just out for brunch this morning and had the most amazing brunch with hash browns with a quail egg on top!
- happytiger 3y agoThere is a need to balance between the need to become an interplanetary species… and… get this… preserve the life support systems of the home planet. You should be a LOT more concerned about cultures that can’t understand that. And honestly, if environmental review to make sure impacts are reasonable is what kills human progress then maybe it wasn’t progress in the first place. Got to take care of your home if you want to have one.