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2 days agoAhh yes… “Starship.” That piece of crap that has only managed to deliver a flaming banana to the Indian Ocean at mach 10. Once. The rest of the time it breaks up into a debris field before it can even manage that much. Yeah, I’m sure that’ll happen any day now. Right around the same time as FSD that was set to be rolling out about 10 years ago.
But no, let’s rediscover rocket science from first principles because the last 60 years of established doctrine don’t “move fast and break things” enough. Absolute fucking morons.
I’m also reminded of that 1950s slogan of “Energy so cheap you won’t even meter it!” Yeah still waiting on that one too 75 years later.
Ions are great once you’re up in space, provided time isn’t a factor. Unfortunately without investing in launch loops, or space elevators, or orbital rings, or rotavators, or other such technologies, getting out of Earth’s gravity well is the really expensive part that will still require liquid-fueled rockets. But I hard agree: we should be investing in getting out into space (rather than blowing each other up.)
We fight over land and territory. Solution: make it easy to just leave. Go make your own territory. Space provides that opportunity. The problem: then the people that do become ungovernable. They might go out into the black and do fully-automated luxury gay space communism. And we can’t have that.
The Culture Intensifies