I was think it should be taken off this thread and onto it’s own thread. There are other things Elon is doing that that could be commented on here.
(ok someone who knows how to do that please do that)
1 Like
This is subjective to us humans, something like stealing seems objectively immoral due to having negative consequences in our society, same goes with slavery, where there is in fact someone suffering, hence we can conclude it is logically negative in some way and label it immoral.
Consider a society where stealing or slavery is a positive with positive implications and consequences, for both the receiving and target parties, it seems absurd but it is possible. In such a society it would not be immoral and so it’s not a universal truth, unlike a scientific formula or the speed of light. Morality is not universal or objective.
Click the time on the top right of a post and that will let you reply with a new linked topic.
Slavery is a particularly bad example because the US private prisons still practice it through a variety of malicious methods like charging prisoners for their stay, forcing them to work below a rate they could pay for their stay, minimum incarceration agreements with state governments and only providing 500% marked up goods.
edit: somehow skipped that part of your post jb
Which is exactly how I view it.
You say that it’s possible because you have faith that people can engage in any behavior so long as all parties involved are happy about it. Unfortunately, in the long term, everyone reverts to the mean, and societies that depart from ‘ideal’ moralities implode. This is why empires invariably fail; they figure that they have conquered the known world and are so in control that they can do anything. So they do. And they depart from ‘ideal’ morality so far that the society just fails, bit by bit.
This is where the analogy of physics bogs down because we can test physical principles in the blink of an eye, while testing moral principles takes generations.
Note that theft isn’t automatically excluded from ‘ideal’ morality. It may be that theft is a proper and healthy aspect of that morality. I don’t believe that it is, anymore than I believe that gravity suddenly stops at a certain distance, but it’s possible. The important bit is that there is an ‘ideal’ and that we should be applying ourselves to figuring it out.
You’ll notice that I brought up prisons as an example of slavery.
1 Like
I don’t have that much faith in people, people seem to think that capitalism is somehow moral while slavery is not, when in essence they are the same thing. Also I don’t doubt that there are moral laws that are universal to us humans, all I’m saying is that there can be other sentient species that don’t follow our reasoning or social norms, and don’t hold the same moral reasoning. With this possibility moral laws are not universal, or objective, but rather subjective to a species and can not be viewed as physical laws which would hold in any society in this universe.
This discussion seems to be getting somewhat circular again… kinda like tunnels
2 Likes
I tried that once and was transported somewhere with large sand snakes and Saturn’s rings!
I’ll leave it to others.
1 Like
I visited the SpaceX HQ about 2 weeks ago and saw the tube. I thought it was a stage at first but it’s way too small in diameter. It would be an uncomfortable fit for sure, but it was cool to see!
1 Like
I’d love to visit there.
I took some pictures the day the orbcomm stage went up…I’m pretty sure I already posted them here or in the rocket thread though. You can’t really see much of hq and it’s tough to get a private tour because you need to know someone.
1 Like
I was there meeting with the UW team testing yesterday. I do plan on seeing the live stream today!
Here’s some photos of the HQ, the team, and the pod/tube!
And the Falcon 9 rocket monument.
(GO UWS!!!)
EDIT: I’ve put them all (including higher quality images) in this Imgur album instead. Enjoy.
3 Likes
Anyone else celebrate that we are heading to the moon again?
3 Likes
Not really. I see this as a balloon ride across the Serengeti. It has no practical purpose other than making sure that we know how that type of balloon will drift for long periods of time. I’m far more interested in what happens when we land the balloon and start building stuff on the ground. There’s not even a hint of that in this thrill-seeking adventure for a couple of absurdly wealthy people.
Regardless, I’m not much of a fan of pursuing manned space travel. It’s very much a case of putting the cart before the horse. We put robotic explorers on Mars decades ago, and each decade has seen improvements to our robots. In time, we’ll be putting robots designed and built by the likes of Boston Robotics (and perhaps in cooperation with Caterpillar) out there for operations far exceeding the accomplishments of the Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers.
Unlike Sour McSourpuss here, I’m excited for it. Couple reasons: the wealthy have always funded the invention of new rich-people toys that eventually trickle their way into economic feasibility for the common man. While it may or may not happen in my lifetime, if enough time is given to the technology (in this case, manned space travel) it will become far more reasonably priced.
As for practicality? Ehhhh…this trip in particular is nothing special. We’ve done it before, repeatedly. It’s a nice potential stepping stone to actually putting people back on the moon, and possibly even building a lunar base, though. If I had the money, I’d definitely do it, but I also want to live in space permanently, so there’s that.
Getting rich sight seekers to pay for a trip that is mostly a shakedown. Smart man.
How many people would have payed to be riding on the self-driving cars when that got started?
Both robotic and human travel can occur in parallel. We’ve had humans living in LEO since the first space station was habitable. This has led to a lot of important discoveries about how the human body handles space flight and subsequent innovations that provide better quality of life in space (which is important for a human settlement on the moon). The earlier we get more astronauts (and now companies) back into these deeper space missions the better.
It may sound like a joyride, but these wealthy financiers are more than likely putting themselves up as human guinea pigs for conducting experiments which will probably be useful for NASA’s Orion SLS-1 mission.
Humans haven’t been to the moon since 1972. That’s 45 years of wasted potential IMO.
So they say they’re going to launch people to the moon in a year on a rocket they haven’t even launched un-crewed yet.
Seems legit.
I mean, the Falcon 9 Heavy is really just three Falcon 9s tied together. It’s not like there’s a huge amount of brand-new engineering they have to do in the rocket design.