Astronomy and space exploration

The problem with expanding our spaced based activities /economy is cost per kilogramme to orbit. This is the thing that hasn't really moved on much since the 70's. For heavy lift it's gone backward if anything.
huh, its prolly 100x cheaper.
And this is inflation adjusted (which is inaccurate personally, truer number is prolly adjust to GDP or someit)
rocket-launch-costs-trend.jpg
 
huh, its prolly 100x cheaper.
And this is inflation adjusted (which is inaccurate personally, truer number is prolly adjust to GDP or someit)
rocket-launch-costs-trend.jpg

That's not a great chart, not least because it doesn't support my point. :D

For the US only, this paper suggest $18,500 per kg from the 70's to where we are today at $1,000ish. It's not an unhelpful reduction, and smallsats make those kg's more useful, but it's still far away from being a space faring civilisation.

https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/handle/2346/74082

I'd really like to see cost worldwide per actual kg over time, include launchers outside of the US too and ignore the Shuttle as it has too much pork attached. You can't really get at that data sadly.
 
Not getting the reference, was it something he was in?
He was a Dev on No Mans Sky who promised the moon on a stick....

In that that initial product is far less than promised but a few years down the line it's really good.
How would you know? the only thing he's delivered on is tesla (well not really remember he promised by 2020 when your not using your tesla you can turn it into an autonomous taxi and it could earn you upto $30,000 a year)
Boring company : Autonomous travel underground in pods at up to 150mph - the reality 30mph in a electric taxi in a tunnel with led's
Electric self driving hgv's : Disappeared realised that batteries are really heavy and long distance haulage is totally unsuitable to electric vehicles
Flying electric cars : Someone probably told him go stand near a small helicopter and experience the downwash and you'll realise how stupid your idea is
Tesla solar roof tiles started accepting $1,000 deposits - 2 years later in 2018 still trying to find a material that is a suitable material for a roof - shouldnt he have done that before putting them on sale ?
2017 announces plans to build a high speed underground train from ohare airport to downtown chicago - hows that going Elon
Starlink plans to encircle the globe with 40,000 satellites that will have to be replaced every 3 to 4 years. People are going to have to buy a ground station for about $500 then pay $100 a month about 2x the price of cable so there needs to be enough customers who have no other means of internet apart from satellite to pay for the bandwidth and the building and launching of 40k satellites every 4 years are their enough people in rural areas in rich enough countries to pay for all of this ? plus im worried that starlink will render low earth orbit unusable - see the kessler syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
Dont even get me started on hyperloop :
 
He was a Dev on No Mans Sky who promised the moon on a stick....
OK cheers, I know the thing/meme from 2/3 years ago. but the funny thing was ppl were putting words into his mouth
I remember this Sean multiplayer "dont expect multiplayer, (but laughing) yeah that will be great" == there definitely multiplayer, game launches without multiplayer. ppl like = sean is a liar
the guy got unfairly raked over the coals, that game is an amazing piece of work for the company size, I even watched a video 'sean lied to us' a couple of years ago, and all there points were weak, you could see this guy was a nieve fuck, without much experience, just a wild eyed glee of I can do this (who actually ultimately delivered a better game than promised) he was a not a cunt that took the money and ran, hell the guy delivered in spades. peter molyneux is the guy your thinking of, over promise and not deliver. you can do it first time but when you keep on doing it over and over, then you're like 'Heres my ass trump, fuck me again, why dont you'

your other bullet points? prolly most are correct
but really were they promising 150mph? seems slow doesnt it? 300 maybe, I can believe
tesla solar roofs, yes , that was a crock of shit
um the 1000s of satellites aound us cause of internet is happening (btw 3-4 years is good, let the fuckers crash to earth, we dont need more pollution)
though personally I dont think elon or anyone should have all these satellites up there, because of what davros saiz (I assume, kessler == the cascaded runaway effect)
 
I'd really like to see cost worldwide per actual kg over time, include launchers outside of the US too and ignore the Shuttle as it has too much pork attached. You can't really get at that data sadly.
mate space has pork, you think the shuttle is bad, now pull up a chair and let me tell you about the SLS, this is just how its always been
 
mate space has pork, you think the shuttle is bad, now pull up a chair and let me tell you about the SLS, this is just how its always been

I know. If it at actually launches this year it probably will take average $/kg up to $100,000. :-?
 
I'm distinctly not a member of the Elon fanclub & remain very sceptical about the viability of Starship but gotta give credit for the clearly vast amounts of $$$ being thrown at it & rapid progress they're making recently.

Edit: Also while Branson & Bezos got a bunch of press recently for their incredibly expensive roller coaster rides, the fact that Musk could hop on the next flight to ISS but hasn't is much more impressive IMO.
 
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Im waiting for him to start transporting people on holiday via rocket at a price cheaper than air travel

You'll likely find the next year even more proof that could never happen.

The next few ships might fail to orbit, it'll only be ¾ of an orbit if they don't blow up, the heat shield will probably have all sorts of problems, they'll fail on re-entry, the ship and the booster will land in the sea, nothing will be reflown.

They're making amazing progress!
 
Edit: Also while Branson & Bezos got a bunch of press recently for their incredibly expensive roller coaster rides, the fact that Musk could hop on the next flight to ISS but hasn't is much more impressive IMO.
yes I know /s
Hows that impressive? hes too smart, theres prolly a ~1% chance of dying. Actually I was shocked with bezos doing it TBH, branson wasnt a surprise though as anything to get his name in lights. But unlike Musk neither of these 2 struck me as particularly smart(sure no doubt smarter than me and most folks but not rocket scientists)

The hilarious thing was they werent even the first billionaire space tourist, that was some guy (from texas I think) who went up to the ISS many years ago.
I assume both of their endeavours are gonna fail as in space tourism, I mean who wants to go up for a couple of minutes? A couple of hours, sure thats worth risking your life but a couple of minutes, yeah nah.

Personally I think my feat of being the first person to fart this millennium is more impressive, now that took some planning, I had to go to NZ, to the first place to see the sun up the mountain in the east cape, I had to have a GPS (not common back then) to get the accurate time (the official count was off by like 5 seconds)
And before you say actually the place within NZ is not important as everywhere has the same time zone (or some other country was earlier) well fuck you, thats my story and I'm sticking with it
 
yes I know /s
Hows that impressive? hes too smart, theres prolly a ~1% chance of dying. Actually I was shocked with bezos doing it TBH, branson wasnt a surprise though as anything to get his name in lights. But unlike Musk neither of these 2 struck me as particularly smart(sure no doubt smarter than me and most folks but not rocket scientists)

The hilarious thing was they werent even the first billionaire space tourist, that was some guy (from texas I think) who went up to the ISS many years ago.
I assume both of their endeavours are gonna fail as in space tourism, I mean who wants to go up for a couple of minutes? A couple of hours, sure thats worth risking your life but a couple of minutes, yeah nah.
Yes, I thought that was a bit... lame and overblown. I don't see a future in it, either. Starship at least is supposed to be used for real transportation of people and stuff. The only purpose of those other "toys" is only to offer a few seconds of microgravity and that's it.

Personally I think my feat of being the first person to fart this millennium is more impressive
Excu... you what?!!?! You're a fucking genius!! Your story should be heard by the nations.
 
Hows that impressive?
Emphasis on the fact Spacex has a proper legit orbital crew rocket.

Re the expensive rollercoasters: at low 5-digits pricing I could believe a significant market, at mid-6-digits they're off their fucking rockers.
 
He was a Dev on No Mans Sky who ...
Starlink plans to encircle the globe with 40,000 satellites that will have to be replaced every 3 to 4 years. People are going to have to buy a ground station for about $500 then pay $100 a month about 2x the price of cable so there needs to be enough customers who have no other means of internet apart from satellite to pay for the bandwidth and the building and launching of 40k satellites every 4 years are their enough people in rural areas in rich enough countries to pay for all of this ? plus im worried that starlink will render low earth orbit unusable - see the kessler syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
Dont even get me started on hyperloop :
Allowing people to get high quality internet all over the globe at what is really a reasonable price is pretty awesome. Shotwell deserves large kudos for SpaceX as well. He is undoubtedly a hype man, but SpaceX and starlink are both interesting to me.
 
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It may be high quality internet now but will it be if it gets enough users to make it commercially viable ?
I looked into this before, no it won’t be, it’ll be pretty pisspoor internet, I suppose though they will just have to update their satellites in 5 years time and hope the others come crashing down as planned. I suppose it’s ok atm with just musk and somewhat Amazon, but what happens when there’s over a dozen companies all with 1000s of satellites providing this service, just a disaster wAiting to happen. And with bezos animosity towards musk I wouldn’t be surprised if an ‘accident’ occurs
 
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