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Man if this actually starts to happen it's a good time to be a welder, concrete worker, or any general contractor or tradesman in Louisiana. Coastal Louisiana i
by chasd00 2mo ago
Man if this actually starts to happen it's a good time to be a welder, concrete worker, or any general contractor or tradesman in Louisiana. Coastal Louisiana is some of the poorest areas in the US even more so than the valley in Texas where Starbase Texas is located. Probably 10-20 years worth of solid work building out that site.
- swingandamiss 2mo agoA lot of good, hard working people in that area that would love to have these jobs open up.
- ActorNightly 2mo ago[flagged]
- pinkmuffinere 2mo agosomewhat topical video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3dSjY4j7Ak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3dSjY4j7Ak tl;dw -- louisiana has a ton of natural resources and wonderful harbors, but has allowed corporations to get away with almost anything without paying their fair share of taxes, cleaning up their waste, or generally being held accountable. And likely related, there is a long history of rampant corruption in the area. With sea levels rising and cancerous pollution filling densely populated areas, life in Louisiana has generally become very difficult :(
- gammarator 2mo agoThe book “Strangers in Their Own Land” covers similar ground.
- pstuart 2mo ago> but has allowed corporations to get away with almost anything without paying their fair share of taxes No doubt one of the more compelling reasons for SpaceX to do it there (along with their given reasoning).
- jpleyden98 2mo agoI haven't had time to watch the video but my understanding was a lot of the Louisiana coast have big problems with rising sea levels and much of it in the process of falling underwater. Perhaps it's relatively trivial to reinforce the coast for the forseeable I don't know. The plans for the site involve extracting significant amounts of natural gas to make methane to burn for the rocket fuel. If they hit the launch levels they suggest (thousands of launches per year), this is not a small amount of greenhouse gases they'll be emitting which of course helps accelerate melting of the ice caps and rising sea levels, which could threaten the very site they've built it on.
- timschmidt 2mo agoThey're also the folks working on the largest co2 -> methane converters in the world. Because that's how they'll need to make fuel on Mars, and no one else on earth wants to fund an expensive technology to replace an inexpensive gas pumped from the ground. By definition, these reactors will have to be capable of producing enough fuel for a rocket in order to be fit for purpose. That opens the door for carbon neutral operation. It's tough to imagine a greener rocket than a fully reusable one that's carbon neutral running on methane. Sure beats spewing hypergolics or solid rocket fuels.
- tantalor 2mo agoReminds me of Africa in terms of resource exploitation and lack of re-investment.
- gchamonlive 2mo agoWhat are the chances they'll employ cheap labor they can just use as election fodder for stealing hard-working american jobs? Either that or pay decent wages for American workers that'll drive up construction prices and worsen the inflation which is already crazy due to these criminal tariffs.
- timschmidt 2mo agoITAR requires them to employ US citizens.
- rayiner 2mo agoITAR proves it’s possible to have immigration enforcement.
- throwaway2037 2mo agoTo be clear, ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) restricts certain roles to "US persons". This is a weird term in US immigration/nationality law. A permanent resident (green-card holder) is classified as a "US person". As a result, SpaceX can employ non-US citizens for ITAR regulated roles.
- inemesitaffia 2mo agoSpaceX avoids hiring foreigners . Just like some companies/facilities only hire cleared people. Even though it may not be required.
- jtbayly 2mo agoSo no matter what they do, you blame them? If they pay not enough, they are bad, if they pay enough, they are also bad. Ok.
- gchamonlive 2mo agoThey put themselves in that situation, the US admin, not me. I'm just commenting. Or is any of what I said wrong? I mean there's something called ITAR that requires American workers, but that doesn't mean the impact on inflation isn't real
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- sigmoid10 2mo agoIf the figures in this announcement hold up, they're gonna spend like $20k per resident of LA. That's insane.
- ryandvm 2mo agoLol. I can't imaging the figures from a Musk venture not holding up.
- maxlin 2mo agoMany said that about Starlink too. Impossible to send so many rockets up. Till it isn't.
- estearum 2mo agoCould you find a source of someone saying this?
- TMWNN 2mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W676Kk9LSYw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W676Kk9LSYw
- estearum 2mo agoDid you watch the video? This person didn't say it was impossible to launch enough satellites for Starlink. He said the Falcon 1 launch price of $5MM was unrealistic, which ended up being correct. At the time, Falcon 1 was supposed to launch 600kg for $5MM. It ended up launching 420kg for $9MM. $8k/kg to $21k/kg. Now obviously there's always a lot of doubt and skepticism around SpaceX, but you can just say "people said this would be really hard but they did it." Or you can say "Musk set a goal to 4x performance and got to an also-remarkable 3x" or whatever. Even in this video, the smug Ariane guy heaps a decent amount of praise upon SpaceX and what they've achieved. He just said a $5MM launch will not be one of those things, and he was correct.
- whyage 2mo agoAre "3,000 new jobs" enough to make a dent though?
- chasd00 2mo agoit doesn't fix everything wrong in the state but it's > 0. There's a lot of additional economic activity that comes with the construction too. Restaurants get busier, Walmart gets busier, lots of auto repair/servicing will be needed etc. Som e people will move for construction and end up staying there. It can be a shock to the local communities though but i think the positives still outweigh the negatives.
- rtkwe 2mo agoThe biggest issue is these kinds of construction jobs are temporary. It's similar to but not quite as bad as datacenters where you get a very short term influx of skilled highly paid labor but those jobs don't stick around after the construction is over. Starbase will require more people on site at least.
- chasd00 2mo agoyeah but that site is huge, that's a multi-decade construction project.
- oceanplexian 2mo agoThe construction is temporary but what are the economic impacts of having a fully operational spaceport that launches 20,000% more tonnage to orbit than the Florida Space Coast? Probably a great deal of long term economic impact.
- Noaidi 2mo agoYou mean the negative economic impacts?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- mrtksn 2mo agoUnless of course Musk decides to use the opportunity to advertise Optimus, be it with actually AI able to do it or teleoperator do it.
- VanTheBrand 2mo agoOptimus would have to work well enough in the near future for that not gonna happen
- nodesocket 2mo agoOptimus ins’t gonna be a master welder, electrician, HVAC technician, general contractor anytime soon.
- bdamm 2mo agoDebatable. Optimus will be programmed by watching thousands of YouTube videos and by indexing the entire NEC. It is entirely possible that a single Optimus can be a master welder, electrician, and HVAC technician. What Optimus can't do is take responsibility for the completion of the work as being done to code. Nor is it clear how much Optimus will cost to buy or operate. Underestimating humanoid capabilities is a mistake; the real challenge will be the economics and the flow of responsibility. But imagine a future where every structure built has a pov video documenting its construction. I don't like the implication for the trades any more than I like the implication of Claude for putting me out of work either.
- dmitriy_ko 2mo agoLatest LLMs that have good visual understanding (Gemini and GPT) are able to tell if construction work is up to code. You can give it a picture of electrical wiring, plumbing, framing and it will tell you if it's up to code with very good accuracy.
- imtringued 2mo agoOk, but if you think that's true, then it would be a huge mistake to put Optimus on two legs instead of a boom lift.
- utopiah 2mo agoHmmm is it though? Quite a few articles like https://futurism.com/future-society/elon-musk-stiffing-contractors-on-huge-bills https://futurism.com/future-society/elon-musk-stiffing-contr... make me think they better ask to be paid upfront.
- s1artibartfast 2mo agoWhile workers are rarely paid up front, two week pay interval is pretty common
- bix6 2mo agodid we read the same article? The link above says nothing about pay period but does list hundreds of millions unpaid.
- fastball 2mo agohundreds of millions unpaid and zero investigative journalism to try to get at the truth, besides "liens filed therefore Elon Musk is a cheapskate".
- bix6 2mo agoSo you think multiple contractors in multiple states are just filing liens for fun?
- s1artibartfast 2mo agoAnything at scale will have payment disputes. Did the work happen, was it for contract, did it run over? These types of questions are extremely common
- bix6 2mo agoRight so the article says they aren’t paying but should be. Do you have evidence to suggest otherwise?
- chews 2mo agoIs it a good time though? - Their Texas suppliers have been chasing payment and Greg Abbott rolled over and let Elon get their property without payment. Not the only Tesla/SpaceX vendor not being paid either. https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/cars/tesla/tesla-cybertruck-production-is-now-officially-a-hostage-situation-45135946 https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/cars/tesla/tesla-cybertruc...
- vessenes 2mo agoThat…is the opposite of the facts reported in that story you linked.
- porridgeraisin 2mo agoArticles are mostly a prompt for people
- aksss 2mo agoIncremental domestic capital investment, good. The level of cynicism, shit-talking, and schadenfreude wish-casting in response to this is crazy. Start cheering on successes. Resist the deconstructionist mindset.
- officeplant 2mo ago>Start cheering on successes. Sure, when success stops being the environmental destruction of every area he sets up shop in for SpaceX launches.
- inglor_cz 2mo agoIs it realistic to demand a spaceport with no environmental impact from anyone, SpaceX or not? Current launch technology inevitably produces a lot of heat and noise and we don't have any rocket model that wouldn't at least rarely fail (and explode). That said, extant Cape Canaveral does not seem to be lifeless. Lots of birds. IDK how the precise species composition has changed since 1960, but nature as a whole is a lot more resilient than people seem to think.
- rayiner 2mo agoYeah that’s just a fig leaf. I bet you can’t even name all the other places that have launch sites.
- Zigurd 2mo agoGo Solar City! Wait...
- thegrim33 2mo agoThe doomerism has two primary sources: 1) Political - The ideology/party spreading the doomerism promotes that they're the ones that can "fix it", if only you vote for them. 2) Adversarial countries, primarily China - Using the internet to convince members of western civilization to hate their civilization, hate their economic system, hate their history, hate their compatriots, adopt a no motivation defeatist attitude, etc., etc., and they can get our population to destroy itself from within without having to go to war with us. Reject the doomerism, reject the negativity. Build. Invent. Create. Do your part to contribute to your civilization, to contribute to humanity, to move us forwards.
- notesinthefield 2mo agoI live around a lot of those people in SW Ohio who find themselves traveling to states like Louisiana for welding, electrical and general contracting work because the expertise isnt there. I have to imagine much of the same will happen and if anything they might reap rewards following construction. Regardless I would assume little to no relevant expertise exists there at the moment.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoOne thing about construction trades is that they will hire apprentices. Someone needs to do the grunt work, and they learn on the job (or in class if they are union) and eventually become productive or wash out.
- swozey 2mo agoThese guys have been popping up on my instagram bragging about how much money they're making building DCs and any argument they get between their "Im making $350k/week, what're you getting, lib?!" is defended with "Well all your instagram comments are stored in datacenters, and you didn't cry then!" They have no idea what they're actually building, of course. I just love the comparison of a webhost/telco pop to Manhattan sized gigadcs that require nuclear power plants or blasting gas furnaces.
- throwaway2037 2mo ago> even more so than the valley in Texas where Starbase Texas is located. Are you saying that Brownsville, Texas (closest city to Starbase Texas) is poor? Not at all.
- inemesitaffia 2mo agoThe county was one of the poorest in Texas