4 ms·

Obviously it's pointless to try to make any reasoned arguments. These people don't care, they just want to destroy for the sake of it. In the past I wondered h

Obviously it's pointless to try to make any reasoned arguments. These people don't care, they just want to destroy for the sake of it. In the past I wondered how great civilizations collapse and how this could happen. It is just becoming clearer and clearer every day.

nine_zeros 2y ago
Yep. History of humanity is littered with stories of super powers crumbling under their own foolishness. Very strange to actively witness the death.
munchler 2y ago
True, but you'd think that Musk, given his background and aspirations, would have greater appreciation for the JWST.
- georgemcbay 2y ago
  According to Sam Altman "Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it", this (and a lot of Elon's actions, see for example the Thailand cave incident) seems to perfectly fit that assessment. [and to be clear, my quoting of Sam Altman is not meant to be taken as an endorsement of Sam Altman, but I suspect he has decent insight into Elon]
  - munchler 2y ago
    That is interesting, and pathological if true. Thank you for the insight.
- verytrivial 2y ago
  That Musk is dead.
  - lamontcg 2y ago
    Doubt he ever really existed, he was just better at keeping his psychopathy under wraps.
- doctorwho42 2y ago
  What background? Buying other people's dreams and aspirations (aka their companies, their ideas, and their motivation)? This isn't shocking but rage inducing.... We spent forever building this thing and successfully getting it up and operational... I know people who have worked on this... Elon musk isn't even a real physicist, he is a business and hype man that is able to get young engineers with dreams of contributing to a great dream to work for him with a terrible work-life balance.
- dr_dshiv 2y ago
  The assumption is that there is a way to do JWST at far less money at far greater scale. Apply same logic to everything. It won’t always hold. Those places become mistakes to be fixed. Elon and Trump might be evil. But I don’t really believe in evil. And I keep underestimating both of them. It’s no longer a matter of choice; but if there is a positive possibility, I like to imagine it and make it a plausible pathway. Tons of bad things can happen; is there a path where the current direction could be very very good?
  - peterlada 2y ago
    No.
    - dr_dshiv 2y ago
      Just with regards to space-tech: clearly there will be huge advances in the next few years. Government will become vastly more efficient. And for a left field example: I suspect that the next few years will see a rapid advancement in the science of solar radiation management, aka geoengineering. This was never going to happen with status quo leadership. But the fact is that we will not stop using fossil fuels in the next couple decades. So we clearly need to minimize the known risk of climate change, (even for the unknown risks of geoengineering). It costs about $10b to put enough calcium carbonate or sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to achieve heat balance and stop runaway climate change effects. Can’t have Florida flood, right? Beyond that, there is a genuine likelihood that there will be a better economy and less war. I’m not claiming this is the most likely outcome. But there is a reasonable chance that the next few years will work out really, really well.
      - andyjsong 2y ago
        If you think there is a chance we're going to start deploying stratospheric aerosol injection, might as well get good at it, if you want to help scale up deployments: https://makesunsets.com/products/join-the-next-balloon-launch-and-cool-the-planet https://makesunsets.com/products/join-the-next-balloon-launc...
      - 2y ago
- bdangubic 2y ago
  he is not profiting from it so…
- Rebelgecko 2y ago
  JWST launched on an Ariane
malshe 2y ago
I think "Why Nations Fail" is highly relevant in the current context.
knowitnone 2y ago
Then tell me how you have gained from the this telescope or even how it has furthered NASA's knowledge of the universe?
- AlecSchueler 2y ago
  Are you kidding? There have been so many discussions about the JWST's output on HN that if you haven't already heard the answers to your questions then you must have been actively ignoring them. In any case it's partly aan impossible question at this stage because it hasn't been up so long. A lot of the research that came out of Hubble took years to complete and the datasets there were much much smaller.
- stonogo 2y ago
  There's a section about this on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Scientific_results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Sci... But I suspect you're not asking the question because you want to know the answer.
guywithahat 2y ago
I think someone like Musk would care deeply about our future in space. I’ve worked on NASA projects and they’ll assemble a massive team, always larger than needed, to build and engineer something, and then nobody ever gets laid off when it’s done. Some move to other projects but many sit on their hands doing nothing. I’d bet you could cut 20% of funding and have the telescope run better than before because nobody is standing around looking for work
- stonogo 2y ago
  NASA does not directly operate JWST anyway (AURA does that via STScI), but the idea that NASA is bloated and Northrop/Ball/L3Harris are not is hilarious. If you know of people getting paid to 'sit on their hands' at NASA, you should report that to the OIG: https://oigforms.nasa.gov/wp_cyberhotline.html https://oigforms.nasa.gov/wp_cyberhotline.html Slashing the budget is not the correct way to combat waste. Accountability is. Otherwise a bad manager might claw back that 20% by firing whoever the top earners are, leaving nobody but the hand-sitters to run the show. It's pretty clear that Musk is focused on whatever the Twitter equivalent of sound bites are, and not on any actual mission execution issues. His team has already had to come crawling back to previously-fired staff a couple times at this point. I acknowledge that accountability is harder than running around with a loudspeaker and a machete, but that's a pretty bad reason not to even try.
  - guywithahat 2y ago
    JWST is part of NASA, they surely hire out contractors but those contractors would still report to NASA and probably work in a NASA building. I'm not sure what your point is. And I'm just reporting on my personal experience. A common joke is if you don't want to learn new skills or contribute, you get sent to safety. Nobody is ever fired, and people are given fake tasks to go around and look like they're working. Saying we need to review accountability before layoffs in an organization that doesn't respond to market pressure is a great way to hire an accountability team and then never do layoffs, thus resulting in a larger staff and budget. That's exactly how NASA has operated for decades, and it's not working. > It's pretty clear that Musk is focused on whatever the Twitter equivalent of sound bites are, and not on any actual mission execution issues I don't know what you mean by this but you sound like a very politically misinformed person. I'm guessing you use a lot of reddit?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

nine_zeros 2y ago

Yep. History of humanity is littered with stories of super powers crumbling under their own foolishness. Very strange to actively witness the death.

munchler 2y ago

True, but you'd think that Musk, given his background and aspirations, would have greater appreciation for the JWST.

georgemcbay 2y ago
According to Sam Altman "Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it", this (and a lot of Elon's actions, see for example the Thailand cave incident) seems to perfectly fit that assessment. [and to be clear, my quoting of Sam Altman is not meant to be taken as an endorsement of Sam Altman, but I suspect he has decent insight into Elon]
- munchler 2y ago
  That is interesting, and pathological if true. Thank you for the insight.
verytrivial 2y ago
That Musk is dead.
- lamontcg 2y ago
  Doubt he ever really existed, he was just better at keeping his psychopathy under wraps.
doctorwho42 2y ago
What background? Buying other people's dreams and aspirations (aka their companies, their ideas, and their motivation)? This isn't shocking but rage inducing.... We spent forever building this thing and successfully getting it up and operational... I know people who have worked on this... Elon musk isn't even a real physicist, he is a business and hype man that is able to get young engineers with dreams of contributing to a great dream to work for him with a terrible work-life balance.
dr_dshiv 2y ago
The assumption is that there is a way to do JWST at far less money at far greater scale. Apply same logic to everything. It won’t always hold. Those places become mistakes to be fixed. Elon and Trump might be evil. But I don’t really believe in evil. And I keep underestimating both of them. It’s no longer a matter of choice; but if there is a positive possibility, I like to imagine it and make it a plausible pathway. Tons of bad things can happen; is there a path where the current direction could be very very good?
- peterlada 2y ago
  No.
  - dr_dshiv 2y ago
    Just with regards to space-tech: clearly there will be huge advances in the next few years. Government will become vastly more efficient. And for a left field example: I suspect that the next few years will see a rapid advancement in the science of solar radiation management, aka geoengineering. This was never going to happen with status quo leadership. But the fact is that we will not stop using fossil fuels in the next couple decades. So we clearly need to minimize the known risk of climate change, (even for the unknown risks of geoengineering). It costs about $10b to put enough calcium carbonate or sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to achieve heat balance and stop runaway climate change effects. Can’t have Florida flood, right? Beyond that, there is a genuine likelihood that there will be a better economy and less war. I’m not claiming this is the most likely outcome. But there is a reasonable chance that the next few years will work out really, really well.
    - andyjsong 2y ago
      If you think there is a chance we're going to start deploying stratospheric aerosol injection, might as well get good at it, if you want to help scale up deployments: https://makesunsets.com/products/join-the-next-balloon-launch-and-cool-the-planet https://makesunsets.com/products/join-the-next-balloon-launc...
    - 2y ago
bdangubic 2y ago
he is not profiting from it so…
Rebelgecko 2y ago
JWST launched on an Ariane

malshe 2y ago

I think "Why Nations Fail" is highly relevant in the current context.

knowitnone 2y ago

Then tell me how you have gained from the this telescope or even how it has furthered NASA's knowledge of the universe?

AlecSchueler 2y ago
Are you kidding? There have been so many discussions about the JWST's output on HN that if you haven't already heard the answers to your questions then you must have been actively ignoring them. In any case it's partly aan impossible question at this stage because it hasn't been up so long. A lot of the research that came out of Hubble took years to complete and the datasets there were much much smaller.
stonogo 2y ago
There's a section about this on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Scientific_results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Sci... But I suspect you're not asking the question because you want to know the answer.

guywithahat 2y ago

I think someone like Musk would care deeply about our future in space. I’ve worked on NASA projects and they’ll assemble a massive team, always larger than needed, to build and engineer something, and then nobody ever gets laid off when it’s done. Some move to other projects but many sit on their hands doing nothing. I’d bet you could cut 20% of funding and have the telescope run better than before because nobody is standing around looking for work

stonogo 2y ago
NASA does not directly operate JWST anyway (AURA does that via STScI), but the idea that NASA is bloated and Northrop/Ball/L3Harris are not is hilarious. If you know of people getting paid to 'sit on their hands' at NASA, you should report that to the OIG: https://oigforms.nasa.gov/wp_cyberhotline.html https://oigforms.nasa.gov/wp_cyberhotline.html Slashing the budget is not the correct way to combat waste. Accountability is. Otherwise a bad manager might claw back that 20% by firing whoever the top earners are, leaving nobody but the hand-sitters to run the show. It's pretty clear that Musk is focused on whatever the Twitter equivalent of sound bites are, and not on any actual mission execution issues. His team has already had to come crawling back to previously-fired staff a couple times at this point. I acknowledge that accountability is harder than running around with a loudspeaker and a machete, but that's a pretty bad reason not to even try.
- guywithahat 2y ago
  JWST is part of NASA, they surely hire out contractors but those contractors would still report to NASA and probably work in a NASA building. I'm not sure what your point is. And I'm just reporting on my personal experience. A common joke is if you don't want to learn new skills or contribute, you get sent to safety. Nobody is ever fired, and people are given fake tasks to go around and look like they're working. Saying we need to review accountability before layoffs in an organization that doesn't respond to market pressure is a great way to hire an accountability team and then never do layoffs, thus resulting in a larger staff and budget. That's exactly how NASA has operated for decades, and it's not working. > It's pretty clear that Musk is focused on whatever the Twitter equivalent of sound bites are, and not on any actual mission execution issues I don't know what you mean by this but you sound like a very politically misinformed person. I'm guessing you use a lot of reddit?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]