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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 6th, 2023

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  • Who’s buying satellites?

    SpaceX is putting up satellites for SpaceX, they’re the manufacturer and operator…

    It’s definitely in their best interest to keep them working as long as possible.

    That said, they’re high end communications devices, very fancy routers essentially. And like all computer technology, these things become obsolete quickly. So even if they could last 20 years, you wouldn’t want them even 10 years from now. 100 GB/s speeds might be great now, but 10 years down the road 10 TB/s could be the norm, so at that point why are you still trying to provide service with ancient hardware 100x slower than it should be.




  • I’m not a fan of the use of glue in the joycon sides and the fact that the color strips under the controllers are hiding screws.

    I’m not even surprised when I find screws under stickers or rubber pads anymore, it’s become all too common. And like a dad, at this point it doesn’t make me angry, just disappointed.

    It does tell me a lot about what to expect from the manufacturer though. Anyone who actively hides their screws is no longer on my side, they’ve just branded themselves as an adversary. At that point I know I’ll be better off buying 3rd party replacement parts, I know to ignore any “recommendations” from the company.


  • Great video. That’s a disappointing outcome though.

    It was interesting to hear though that Nintendo hasn’t made any replacement parts available for the original switch, despite the fact that New York State apparently requires this by law.

    I wonder if they’ll be forced to comply with that at some point. There are probably other jurisdictions that require this or that will require this soon. I’d love to see some pressure applied to companies that don’t make replacement parts available.


  • It’s wild to me that you think that the US government would do a worse job of running SpaceX and Starlink than Elon Musk.

    Two things. First, I’m not suggesting the US couldn’t run SpaceX given the appropriate funding. I’m suggesting the US won’t run spaceX. Trump will figure out how to deprive it of all funding, or appoint some lackey as a director to totally disassemble it. Do you honestly have any doubt that’s exactly how it would go down?

    Second, It’s wild to me that you think that the SpaceX is run by Elon Musk. Go look up who the CEO is.


  • The article is not far off from the mob mentality in this thread. It makes one good point, that one oligarch should not be in control of a global communications network, but it fails to notice that this move would take the power from one wealthy individual and hand it over to another, who now holds all the power.

    And let’s be clear, if we nationalized, Trump would ruin SpaceX, run it right into the ground like every company he’s ever touched. Starship would never be finished, despite being within sight of the rocketry holy grail, reusable rockets. Washington would take control of starlink, which would probably be good, except it gives trump control over a communication system, which is a terrible idea. But it wouldn’t last long, because when we mismanage and underfund SpaceX and it crumbles, we’ll have no way to replace starlink sats and the whole network will disappear.

    Nationalisation is SpaceX is a dumb idea because people aren’t really thinking it all through. The outcome would be a lot worse for everyone, especially with a vindictive president that would like nothing more than to seize the assets of his opponents and liquidate them into his own coffers.







  • I mean you have to realize how important it will be to have fully reusable rockets and a significantly reduced price to get to space. The goal with starship is to reduce the cost of getting to orbit by at least an order of magnitude (but possibly much more than that). When that starts to happen it’ll allow for new and exciting things to happen in space.

    First, we can go back to the moon and to Mars, we can explore again. But more than that, it will make some new things possible. It will eventually become feasible for resource extraction and manufacturing to move to space. That would mean processes that produce harmful waste don’t have to happen on our planet. Mining asteroids would mean again, minimal ecological impact compared to mining a mountain on Earth. And of course creating industry in space is the first step towards a future where people actually live in space, the first step towards humanity getting a real foothold off of earth.

    But you literally can’t get to any of those possibilities without reusable rockets first, it’s just not feasible.


  • This is the thing, NASA is underfunded as it is, if we nationalized SpaceX, we wouldn’t actually continue to fund it appropriately and it would simply die. Actually, with trump at the helm, nationalizing it would mean Trump immediately liquidating it. SpaceX is definitely the most successful rocket company in the US. It would be an awful shame for the space industry and for humanity’s future in space.

    I hate musk as much as the next guy, but I think the success of spaceX is undeniable. Their success with reusable rockets is not just impressive, it’s ground breaking and important. Developing a fully reusable rocket is probably the most important challenge humans are working on in this era, and I only know of three companies attempting to do it. I don’t want to kill the company that’s furthest along.



  • Wait, what makes this a confirmation? Just cause Elon said it? I mean we all suspected it, that’s exactly what I’d expect from Trump. But Elon saying something doesn’t make it a fact, the dude loves to shit talk people and he’s never needed proof before…

    So I’m going to go out on a limb and say Elon doesn’t actually know any more than the rest of us. And it also doesn’t really matter either way, Trump was a rapist before and a rapist after.