Veedrac

21 ms·

151.
by Veedrac 2y ago
I'm not claiming $5m launch will happen. I claimed it could happen. It is in fact a coherent possibility. Heck, self-driving also, I took a Waymo just a few days ago. There's a big difference between doubting a specific company
152.
by Veedrac 2y ago
I'm not claiming this is a good idea today, nor claiming Starship looks to hit its cost goals any time soon, but I would note that COTS hardware works fine in LEO. SpaceX's Dragon is all COTS, using radiation tolerance rather than
153.
by Veedrac 2y ago
Starship launches are not currently any price. The stated long run goal was $2-3m, per Elon Musk, and if you put aside practicalities like limits on how big the market is, and then not having a robust heatshield design yet, it's fundam
154.
by Veedrac 2y ago
Starship is aiming for a low-single-digit-millions launch cost.
155.
by Veedrac 2y ago
It's one of those ‘Is a space elevator a good idea?’ vibe questions. In theory, sure, inevitably civilization does this in passing if it continues on pace for another hundred or so years, because at minimum at some point you've al
156.
by Veedrac 2y ago
But this only matters if SpaceX had any chance of a reversed decision from that court, which to my eyes they simply didn't. X is not going less deep in the hole by posting a bunch of confidential court orders.
157.
by Veedrac 2y ago
SpaceX's Starlink assets were frozen before X was banned.
158.
by Veedrac 2y ago
This didn't seem possible to me? SpaceX's assets weren't frozen because SpaceX did anything wrong, they were frozen to penalize the majority stakeholder. Said stakeholder has at this point approximately zero chance of an amic
159.
by Veedrac 2y ago
What motive does SpaceX have to block X though Starlink? Their assets are frozen, they're operating in Brazil for free.
160.
by Veedrac 2y ago
Nothing excites and excuses a journalist with opinions more than a volatile stock. Doesn't matter what your opinion is, there's always a change that proves it. Even better: any rapidly changing stock value has to be volatile, so
161.
by Veedrac 2y ago
2019 was half a decade ago. You can tell solar+storage is cheaper than anything else except conditionally wind at least in the US because people have stopped building new generation capacity for anything else.
162.
by Veedrac 2y ago
Yes, I agreed already. Putting aside all the important differences it's the same thing.
163.
by Veedrac 2y ago
This feels like a month later repeat of https://www.economist.com/business/2024/06/17/chinas-giant-s... , which I first learnt about through a response in Asia Times, https://asiatimes.com&#x2F
164.
by Veedrac 2y ago
Traditional surface roads in cities: * Take surface space that can be better used for walkable densification, or are already taken by roads. * Produce significant atmospheric and noise pollution, even from EVs. * Conflict at cross-traffic,
165.
by Veedrac 2y ago
Except for all the significant differences, yes.
166.
by Veedrac 2y ago
I said the fire safety comparisons were reasonable and don't think, nor did I state, that the article was actively bad there. My pushback here was to the HN comment claiming the risk was much worse than the historic comparisons, which
167.
by Veedrac 2y ago
Thanks. I haven't found better information, I think it's likely all the best details would be buried in formal filings that are more effortful to dig up and dig through. I wouldn't expect detailed breakdowns though, Boring Co
168.
by Veedrac 2y ago
Loop has smaller but more numerous stations, because it can have smaller and more numerous stations. With trains every station along a route adds considerable delay for every passenger, exacerbated by the slow stopping speeds of rail. This
169.
by Veedrac 2y ago
As far as I'm aware LVCC cost $53m, which includes tunnels and stations. Where did you get $106m?
170.
by Veedrac 2y ago
Yes I mentioned spacing them out, it doesn't change the point.
171.
by Veedrac 2y ago
And why would you ever stack them like a fence? Go ~2 deep, ~2 wide, and cover ~7x as many routes. Depth is more for avoiding intersections between cross-traffic than for lack of space.
172.
by Veedrac 2y ago
Why would every level have easy and uniform connections to every other level? They are transport connections, not destinations. And 26 levels? Why would you ever need that much capacity?
173.
by Veedrac 2y ago
Note that 2350m is 6 minute headway at a 17mph average subway speed, which isn't at all crazy for a subway. A single-tunnel Boring Loop isn't competing against the 10th busiest subway, though. Even if Boring Loop were competing ag
174.
by Veedrac 2y ago
> more expensive and slower to build per km than the channel tunnel Channel Tunnel: ~$22B / 31mi ~ $700m/mi LVCC: $47m / 1.7mi ~ $28m/mi ??
175.
by Veedrac 2y ago
It seems unreasonable to claim that Boring Company has failed when they were founded in 2017, won their first contract in 2019 which was executed to requirements and multiples cheaper than the competing bid, and Vegas Loop was approved in i
176.
by Veedrac 2y ago
Compare it to Europe, same deal, the large constants are just slightly less large.
177.
by Veedrac 2y ago
How hard it is to extinguish is vastly, vastly less important than ‘does it stop people safely escaping’ and ‘does it overwhelm the safety equipment’. It is obvious that having a huge goods fire from a commercial truck that shuts down peopl
178.
by Veedrac 2y ago
> The LVCC so far is more expensive, slower to build [than subway] This is just factually false. LVCC was something like 4x cheaper than its competing non-subway bid and something like 20-30x cheaper than just the amortized cost per mile
179.
by Veedrac 2y ago
Really weird article. Starting with the whole claim that the tunnel built is the Las Vegas Loop (actually known by LVCC) which is the same as the 93 stop full rollout (actually known as Vegas Loop); they are connected but the terminology wa
180.
by Veedrac 2y ago
IMO this is the least convincing part of the benchmark though, since it's uninterpretable without an optimal baseline. You don't know how much of this is because of Spice and how much is because of how the task scales. (This is ac

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