impartial_fanboy [he/him]

It was the NIF two years ago but it’s also not going to be generating power ever, it was just a demonstration/proof of concept.

Yes, Boeing made the first stage of the Saturn V.

‘Defense contractor’ and ‘small’ are oxymorons. The old guard, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocketdyne, etc. all got used to cost-plus contracts and so geared their production assuming they’d always have them. Now they’re big mad that SpaceX and others are upstaging them in cost, performance and scale because, surprise surprise, decades of no accountability doesn’t foster competence.

Rocket production has always been a public/private partnership, the only difference is SpaceX takes commercial customers too, not just governments (or companies who basically are part of their government).

5v5. All the most toxic games are 5v5, whether its CSGO or League etc. I can’t stand them. Though the real problem is automated matchmaking and lack of server browsers, most other pvp games have ways of mitigating the toxicity but 5v5’s really just encourage it full tilt.

I really wish larger team based esport games were the ones that took off, but alas.

The bigger problem is what it doesn’t say, like about anything about the board of directors or shareholders. I don’t think it would help much unless they’re also familiar with Chinese labor law.

This all comes with the caveat of it being a translation but I really don’t think it says what you think it does.

Section I just say the employees are informed of and get a performative say in what the company was already planning on doing, not that they get an actual say in that plan. Section II is only about working conditions and not about the nature of the work itself, if it should be done, how best to do it, etc. Section III also is only about contract points which deal with remuneration and not with the actual business of the company. This part of Section IV;

Electing or dismissing employee directors and employee supervisors

Is suspiciously worded and makes me think that it really only means their direct managers and department heads, which of course is an improvement but they aren’t voting on whether major shareholders get a seat on the board of directors or not. Even if it did include the regular C suite, it absolutely does not include members of the company appointed by the party/state.

Some of the better seeming parts have no teeth.

electing employee representatives to meetings of creditors and creditors’ committees of the enterprise subject to bankruptcy proceedings in accordance with the law

Just says they get to show up to the meeting, not that they actually have any say in that meeting. Especially the last part of section IV.

and recommending or electing management personnel of the enterprise as authorized

Is super weasel wordy. This could be satisfied just by acknowledging the recommendation of the assembly, it doesn’t actually require the company to follow that recommendation.

Section V also has no teeth. There is no mention whatsoever of the makeup of the board of directors or what say shareholders have. Which leads me to believe that this is whole thing is just designed to appease workers and not actually provide workplace democracy. To be clear, it is a potentially a step in the right direction if it is given teeth but as it stands it is absolutely just as ‘class collaborationist’ as Germany’s.

Of course all of this ignores the corrupting and profit maximizing nature of modern corporations which is not changed one iota just by changing who can vote for who is in charge (as evidenced by large co-ops like Mondragon) especially since they still have to compete against corporations who absolutely will cut every corner and cheat to get ahead.

Edit: I forgot how to format

Guess I’ll be the Lib.

How is this any different than the German codetermination system? Honestly it seems like they’re just copying it, though it does apply to small businesses too. Which is cool but I wouldn’t call it workplace democracy.

If you have enough emails from your job you could fine-tune one of the models on them and it would probably do pretty okay. It’d be really cheap cus it’s not that much data, assuming you don’t have the hardware to do it yourself.

I know you’re just making a comparison but if you actually paid off the national debt you would destroy the dollar.

Which you actually don’t want to do unless there’s a viable alternative, which there isn’t atm.

Really their wealth should be appropriated to build sustainable infrastructure across the globe so we can survive the catastrophe they’ve created without mass death (or minimize it as much as possible). But if you have the political will to do that then you might as well just push the communism button.

But it was clear by then that it wasn’t going to overtake the US economically like was feared earlier. If it was clearly seen that the USSR was beating the US economically it would give lie to the whole system.

This isn’t going to happen with China, unless their economy fundamentally changes.

Look I’m not saying it’s a desirable position but I don’t think misrepresenting the situation is helpful either.

US literally forgot how to make rockets when their looted nazis died off and spend 10 years having to beg Russia for a lift.

The ISS was complete so there was no more use for the shuttle other than bleeding money. Obviously the geopolitical situation allowed for them to use the cheap option, they are capitalists after all. But obviously those 90+ y/o nazi engineers were the real reason.

China is steadily keeping its announced terms for everything and basically caught up to NASA in 15 years of what NASA spent 70 to do.

CNSA has been around for 30 years and NASA for 66. It’s also much easier to catch up (which they haven’t) than to develop initially especially since they were cooperating until 2011. I wish China was putting more effort into their own version of Starship (Long March 9) but at least as of last year they don’t intend to have it ready and fully reusable before 2040.

In the meantime US is defunding their one somewhat working agency and are throwing insane amount of cash to the Musk grift.

They’re defunding planetary science, not Artemis really. Which is bad obviously but SpaceX is certainly less of a grift than Lockheed Martin or Boeing so I’m not sure where you would put that money instead.

Seeing things like OP and believing USA over China is just utter stupidity.

The OP is about JPL, the division actually being affected by the cuts. Again, they don’t make rockets. CNSA says 2030 for the moon but it will be on Long March 10 (i.e. not reusable). NASA says 2026 (which admittedly will probably slip to 2027/2028) but it requires Starship to work. If China manages to get there first it would be impressive and a welcome surprise but they would be unable to sustain a presence there (just as the US was) without a fully reusuable superheavy vehicle.

This is good actually

You’re kind of right, it will (hopefully) force JPL to get its shit together when it comes to project management but more importantly, JPL doesn’t make rockets.

Sorry to burst your bubble but unless something major happens, the US is going to be the only one capable of projecting any power into space. China is good at playing catch-up but even their plans talk about a having a domestic fully reusable superheavy lift rocket in the 2040’s, which could obviously be accelerated somewhat if circumstances demand but we’re not talking about a Moon race type situation here. SpaceX/NASA are the only players here right now.

Again, none of this disagrees with what I wrote. You aren’t going to see any breakthroughs soon, either from NASA or SpaceX.

I mean … you’re disagreeing with what you wrote so I don’t know what to tell you.

To begrudgingly defend SpaceX here, if Starship actually works as advertised it actually is a game changer. Their intended launch cadence makes things like Skyhooks a realistic consideration which in turn would make Sci-Fi levels of interplanetary activity possible. Even the semi-reusable Falcon 9 has made a big difference in the launch market, for better or worse, Starlink and the other satellite constellations would not have been anywhere near the realm of profitability without it.

Solid rockets cannot be throttled, and if it explodes, there’s no way to abort the crew safely.

For the Shuttle yeah but Orion has launch abort capability. I agree they shouldn’t be used on principle but SLS is a jobs program that happens to build rockets, not the other way around.

I hate to bring this up, but SpaceX (and I’m not giving Elon any credit here) as a private space company has done more significant advances than NASA has done in a long time.

Most of the fundamental technology breakthroughs were achieved by NASA in the 90’s but due to various issues, the space shuttle being the obvious one (thanks Nixon/Agnew), they were not followed up on. Also NASA has worked very closely with SpaceX essentially from the beginning, just another case of the government selling off technology to a private company because it’s the only way things change in this country.

NASA has no spacecrafts right now!

NASA has never built rockets or passenger carrying spacecraft. They have always contracted them out, yes even the Saturn V, with NASA oversight/management. Also you literally bring up Artemis so not sure what you’re talking about.

using the same Solid Rocket Boosters (the very same defective booster design that caused the Challenger explosion)

You’ll notice how they haven’t had an accident since either but you can literally thank Obama for SLS.

At least SpaceX is trying something new with their Raptor engines.

Which itself is based on old Soviet and Aerojet Rocketdyne designs. Just like how Starship’s design is inspired by the N1.

I’m not denying that there are some cool satellites and telescopes and stuff, but the heavy engineering that is going to blow everyone’s minds by achieving some incredible breakthroughs is not there anymore.

It was never there. Apollo only got funded as a way to ‘peacefully’ develop ICBM and related technologies. If China manages to land on the Moon before the US does again then perhaps there might be a similar program for Mars or an effort to industrialize LEO but while China is making progress in space they don’t seem to be making it a priority and I would be genuinely surprised if they manage to make it to the Moon before the US/SpaceX does.

Edit: Also even if China did manage to somehow beat the US to the moon they don’t have a fully reusable superheavy rocket (even their plans talk about the 2040’s) so it would be a significant but ultimately very temporary victory.

So, hows privatizing the space sector going for you, America?

Well JPL has always been this way but go off. This is essentially punishment for their (mis)handling of the Psyche mission and other recent bureaucratic fuck ups. Obviously since those who did the fucking up are in charge of budget allocation, the workers take the brunt of it but its not as gloom and doom as it seems.

Really they should just cancel SLS and nationalize SpaceX but Elon would have to do something unforgivable for them to actually do it.

Just one more lane!

but calling it “social murder” to have a train line is a big stretch here.

Nah. They explicitly cheaped out on grade separating the line, only doing the absolute bare minimum. They have the highest per mile death rate of all 821 railroads in the country. What is that other than social murder?

which is why you’re going to see a lot of Brightline trains flexing on and pixelating drivers in FL

They’re already up to 100. Love when a company gets away with social murder, but I guess the PR is bad enough they’re trying to fix the most egregious grade crossings. Fortunately Brightline West is fully grade-separated so it shouldn’t be an issue.

But yeah especially if Amtrak or whoever started doing overnight sleeper trains for those upgraded 8-12 hour, 1000-1500 mile trips (even just to 120mph) I think they’d really be able to really put a dent into number of flights between the cities even though it’s not ‘traditionally’ viable.

I thought CAHSR’s top speed was 220?

So the top sustained speed for CAHSR will probably stay at 220mph, which it has to do a lot of due to the reduced speeds in SF and LA (I think they’re limiting it to 110mph but it could go up to 125mph before having to get reclassed), but the trainsets are mandated to be able to go at least 242mph.

I also thought the average speed of Brightline West was meant to be substantially lower

Brightline West will be quite a bit slower than CAHSR due to the lower top speed (186mph) and much steeper grades (up to 5%) but it will still be faster than the Acela which will top out at 160mph (currently 150mph). CAHSR average speed is pushing 200mph and Brightline West is pushing 150mph.

it’s more expensive per mile than tunnels IIRC

Well it depends on exactly where but part of the reason the tunnels are so expensive, aside from being insanely long, is that they have to tolerate the trains going at 220mph in them due to the Prop 1A requirement for LA-SF to be under 2 hours and 40 minutes.

I also suspect that Nevada is much less aggressive about ecological impact surveys than CA.

I don’t think they even had to do a full EIR since it’s entirely in the median of the 15 except for the end stations. They’re supposedly building 3 wildlife crossings at various points on the alignment but we’ll see if they actually do.

Gods, I hope you’re wrong about CAHSR privatization, though.

I meant more just the technology and know-how of how to build it, not the actual tracks. I doubt they could sell them even if they wanted to but I’m fairly certain the Tier III tracks (220mph) legally forbid freight trains.

This is a decidedly okay thing. Not the best option obviously but considering the state of other high speed rail projects, this is actually a very encouraging step.

So for everyone who thinks it’s gonna be a boondoggle, this is just about the easiest build alignment for the potential ridership in the country. The single biggest difference between this and CAHSR is that Brightline doesn’t need to dig a single tunnel, unlike the 60+ miles of tunnels required to get to LA and SF which is where the real expense is. They also aren’t pushing the speed too hard, only 186mph top speed (CAHSR is 242mph) but they will be using the same signalling tech as CAHSR so they can interline whenever the LA section gets built so they can go to LA Union Station if Metrolink hasn’t electrified by then.

It also will provide a very obvious example of just how much better trains are than driving or flying. It will literally zoom past everyone driving on the 15, showing up 20 minutes before is playing it safe–not 2 hours like the airport. And hopefully it will provide enough support to actually fund/finish the LA section of CAHSR since Bakersfield-Anaheim is almost half the total project cost.

As far as I see it CAHSR is at the stage where it’s doing the typical thing the US government does when it develops something at great expense (yeah I know its not unique), then it gives it to private businesses for cheap/free. Obviously it’s a nonideal situation but it gives (real) High Speed Rail a chance of actually becoming widespread in this shitty country (most of) us live in, barring a literal revolution.

Was it better than Oppenheimer? Because I can’t believe that trash was critically acclaimed, well I can but I don’t want to.