Not even remotely possible in a practical sense, for so many reasons. Summed up by it wasn't designed for it. Radiation, fuel consumption required for the delta V, supply vehicle capabilities, generation of space debris, regulatory compliance, design lifetime, etc.
If it was practical, they'd be doing it instead of Artemis.
Ok, so just consider a world where jobs paid no money. How many people do you think would have a job? 10% of the amount now? 1%?
Even if there are some very rare individuals that go to work primarily for companionship or for personal fulfillment that doesn't mean it's even worth bringing up in a discussion like this
This is a bit of a misdirection because it equates jobs, which are work done for someone else, with all work. I am sure that the majority of people would still do something that can be considered work in a world without jobs.
It's obvious that few people are going to subordinate themselves in a world where they don't get paid for doing so, and if they did it would look more like volunteer associations (only emergency response involves much hierarchy, most volunteers are only loosely associated with the org, individuals choose which shifts to turn up to, local leaders are elected and view it as a burden rather than a privilege) and less like work (you don't get to choose anything).
Edit: I should add that I'm in no way against jobs, I just think that people who are doing largely unproductive work for free are still working, even though it'd be better for everyone if they were getting paid to do something more useful.
Alcohol is hands down terrible for the body. I'm becoming more and more convinced from scientific studies and my own observations that no amount, not even one glass of wine a night, is physically beneficial.
It's the psychological benefits outlined here that are much harder to persuade away - mediator of anxiety, social lubricant, escape into a little bit of fun. Nonetheless, for me, the physical toll is just not worth it anymore.
Marijuana is even more difficult to dissuade. There is a physical toll to excessive smoking, but it's much less pronounced than alcohol, and seems largely non-existent when consumed in moderation, the equivalent of a glass of wine a day. The only inarguable cost is the time one isn't sober and able to be socially/economically/physically productive.
Nonetheless this loss of time, too, seems more and more valuable to me, and my marijuana intake is naturally declining.
As time goes on the statistics on alcohol consumption and substance addiction make more and more sense to me: a third of Americans don't drink AT ALL, most drink less than a glass a week, and most drug addicts naturally quit without intervention. Most of us come to the truth eventually, it seems.
Alcohol is not a great choice for moderating anxiety because it grants a short term benefit but a long term detriment (it actually raises anxiety levels for a day or two after you drink).
If you need a substance to "take the edge off" - situational use of prescription pharmaceuticals like the benzos is a lot easier on the body and the mind. Note I say situational, in my experience doctors routinely over-prescribe and a daily benzo habit could lead to addiction and outcomes that are as bad or worse than binge drinking.
That said I feel that the social benefits of alcohol are hugely undervalued by a lot of people who are stuck in a downward spiral where they lack social skills, they lack a broad range of social opportunities in which to develop those skills, the two problems reinforce each other and the most interesting things and people in life pretty much pass them by. There are a lot of these guys out there, they are tedious to be around, they don't get invited to much of anything, and they probably don't realize how much they're missing. Yeah alcohol is not healthy but it's not healthy to be isolated and alone either, as long as you don't have an addictive personality and you know when to stop, you should probably be having a drink here and there (and buying them for other people!) as a social lubricant.
Just do a google scholar search for "marijuana lung damage" or similar and you will find that there is no clear evidence (yet) for correlation between consumption and lung cancer. There is convincing evidence for significant effects related to inhaling smoke - all the usual ones you'll also find with elevated PM2.5 levels such as emphysema, asthma, chronic cough, bronchial inflammation, etc.
You will find disturbing (and growing) evidence linking marijuana use and heart health. Turns out regularly raising your heart rate and dropping blood pressure increases a host of risks for those susceptible to cardiac issues. On the order of 30% more risk for daily smokers.
No doubt inhaling smoke is bad for you, but vaping a couple of times a week is definitely in the noise. You likely have more lung damage and risk to your heart from cooking food in your kitchen without proper ventilation (virtually 90% of homes). If you're smoking a joint a day then the scientific data should give you pause, assuming you're optimizing your life choices for health.
Back to my original point - the equivalent to a joint a day would be several glasses of alcohol a day, and the health impacts are not even comparable (alcohol consumption is far worse overall).
I don't think anyone there are many people that think drinking is physically beneficial. It kind of misses the point. No one thinks watching movies is physically beneficial, but they still do it.
This is a really good comment that touches on some thoughts I’ve been pondering for awhile now.
In psychology, there is a concept of “culture-bound disorders”. Traditionally, these seem to be very unusual disorders that are extremely common in some cultures but not in WEIRD cultures. I think maybe the psychologists are getting this backwards; maybe some of the proper disorders in the DSM are actually culture-bound to WEIRD culture, and I think the specific way PTSD is normally described may be one of these. This isn’t to say that other cultures don’t have stress reactions, but they have different stress reactions that crystallize in forms that are more “normal” to their cultures, the way textbook PTSD is effectively “normal” to our culture. I’ve read about cases where well-meaning Western counselors show up to natural disasters expecting the survivors to have textbook PTSD symptoms. At first, people hear these counselors asking about PTSD symptoms and are genuinely confused, but apparently with enough contact, the suggestion from an authoritative sounding western medical practitioner implying that this is how they should be feeling in that situation can end up inducing those very symptoms.
> I think the specific way PTSD is normally described may be one of these
I'm not sure I understand: Are you saying that there is research that says PTSD is WEIRD? Or is this your idea?
One common feature of Western culture, or at least US culture, is to play down PTSD (and other psychological conditions). Suicide rates among veterans is sky-high, in part because PTSD is treated as dubious. Let's be careful about what we say.
Broader culture plays down all the atrocities and sheer waste of war for its own psycological purposes. Treating PTSD as dubious is simply collateral damage when it comes to pretending that war means anything but exploding living humans over dirt / oil / religion / money / power.
There's a common thread in the comment you're replying to and another comment made by the same author, in which they appear to quietly suggest that perhaps it's just TBIs and sleep deprivation. I get the sense it's a theme.
> One common feature of Western culture, or at least US culture, is to play down PTSD
> I'm not sure I understand: Are you saying that there is research that says PTSD is WEIRD? Or is this your idea?
I’m saying that the specific features and symptoms are not necessarily universal across cultures and that we don’t have anything close to a full understanding of the underlying psychology. All people react to stress, but the specific ways they react to stress might be more culturally bound than we expect. It’s hard to tell because our understanding of PTSD is almost entirely based on cases observed inside of WEIRD cultures.
> One common feature of Western culture, or at least US culture, is to play down PTSD (and other psychological conditions).
This was obviously very much the case for some time. I think we’ve made some laudable efforts to improve on this in recent years.
> Suicide rates among veterans is sky-high, in part because PTSD is treated as dubious.
I agree that veteran suicide is a major problem. I also agree with the desire to avoid stigma. That’s actually why I am skeptical about the impulse to address veteran mental health, for lack of a better terminology, almost entirely within a medical and clinical frame. That carries the implication that our culture is completely healthy and it’s only our returning warriors who are sick and mentally unwell. On the contrary, I think our culture is deeply sick and atomized, and that our warriors are more alienated from civil society than ever before.
It’s not just arrogant but outright laughable to assume we have all of this figured out. If we had it all figured out, we would have solved the problem.
> Let's be careful about what we say.
I am. Let’s be careful about making a good faith effort to actually understand and respond to what’s being said instead of misrepresenting it and trying to shut down the conversation.
It's really hard to read this comment as anything but a quiet suggestion that perhaps PTSD is a result of mental health workers and not the result of trauma. What seems far more likely is that people trapped in cultures that have not really developed a strong mental health response (e.g., 20th century America) have few if any resources available to help people with their literally invisible condition, and they have been trained through stigma and other "culture-bound" behaviours to keep their problems to themselves and show that stiff upper lip.
> It's really hard to read this comment as anything but a quiet suggestion that perhaps PTSD is a result of mental health workers and not the result of trauma.
I’m sorry you struggled and ultimately failed to understand what I was saying, because I actually clarified this specific point:
> This isn’t to say that other cultures don’t have stress reactions, but they have different stress reactions that crystallize in forms that are more “normal” to their cultures, the way textbook PTSD is effectively “normal” to our culture.
Google Earth resolution? You'd need satellites in low orbit around that planet.
For taking images from earth, the resolution would depend on the size and distance of the planet. Within a couple hundred light-years a $10b starshade spacecraft may be able to get a 30px by 30px optical image.
The physics are pretty limiting.
(this is all from memory, I worked as an engineer at an astrophysics institute for 8 yrs, but left that job almost two years ago, so the raw numbers are a bit rusty)
All valid points, but I wonder if you've overshot your response to this (very slight) increase of risk to your personal safety.
The statistical safety of aviation is the best it has ever been - 2023 set yet another record low for commercial aviation deaths and injuries. Your automobile trip to the grocery store is far riskier.
I think the critical thing to think about is the derivative of risk. How is risk changing over time.
We are in a trend where risk is increasing.
Boeing is a major institution responsible for building critical defense and civil technology. With many jobs on the line as well.
People need to be held accountable, and we need a culture that allows people to speak up earlier and more often. Otherwise this will continue to happen and not just at Boeing but across many more critical sectors of our society.
Is there any data supporting this? From what I can tell, the trend from both IATA [0] and ASN [1][2] data appears to be down. Any small YoY increase [3] in 2020 being attributable to PS752 shot down by Iran and an Embraer EMB-120RT shot down over Somalia. This downward trend seems to go for fatal and non-fatal accidents.
I completely agree with the need for oversight in this situation where corners appear to be cut and the FAA seems to be abdicating responsibility, but changing personal behavior requires some real data which I simply don't see.
Agreed! You don't see the data because it's not there. That was my point in response to the original comment - even with these dramatic high-profile examples, not only is commercial aviation orders of magnitude safer vs traveling by car, but it continues to improve. Meanwhile traffic safety has stagnated and by some metrics is getting worse.
Miketery isn't trying to rationally adjust their risk profile based on available statistics. They are trying to punish Boeing for being a corrupt institution that corrupts other institutions.
It doesn't matter how good the safety numbers are if any player is able to cheat and blame their safety problems on someone else.
>Your automobile trip to the grocery store is far riskier.
I feel it's important to provide complete information. Flying is safer per mile traveled than driving. Driving is safer on a per-trip basis.
So if you compare your trip to the grocery store to your flight to visit extended family, the trip to your grocery store is safer. But if you compare 10,000 miles of driving back and forth to the grocery store over many trips vs a single 10,000 mile flight, the flight is safer.
You can’t make this blanket statement and I would bet on average it’s the opposite still.
- Flying in the US is on average ~750x safer per mile than driving according to 2000-2010 data (it’s likely even larger a difference in the modern era).
- I would venture to guess that most US flights are in the 1000-2000 mile range and most US car trips are easily more than the equivalent 2-3 miles.
- Most fatalities from flying occur during takeoff and landing, so longer flights are actually safer per mile. Relating this back to the thread, the risk of catastrophic failure from your choice (or non-choice) of airframe only really affects the off-ground danger and not the higher danger you face on a taxiway/runway.
- All of these numbers are based purely on fatalities but I’m guessing your definition of “safety” includes being maimed or otherwise seriously injured. You have several orders of magnitude higher chance of being seriously injured in a car crash compared to flying since accidents in aviation are much more likely to end in death.
Depending on how you slice this problem, you will get a different result.
If you slice it up per mile traveled, airplanes win.
If you slice it up per trip taken, driving wins.
If you slice it up per hour spent traveling, driving and flying are about the same. (according to the book Freakonomics)
Flying is very safe. The statement "flying is safer than driving" is industry propaganda to help appease fears of flying. They cherry-picked the statistic that made them look best and flooded the whole world with it.
If you had a magic genie and you made your one wish to replace all passenger vehicle trips with commercial airline flights, including quick trips to the grocery store, you would kill a lot of extra people.
Not sure what your comment really adds except a thinly veiled attack on my ability to empathize. Of course reasonable people desire increased safety all around. My point is that even with this disaster (in which nobody was harmed), aviation safety is the best it's ever been and is continuing to improve.
Again, I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about ways to improve or hold Boeing accountable. But it's not a rational reaction to stop flying due to this incident.
It's not a rational reaction to stop flying on 737 Max, despite the daily news headlines in the New York Times over the last 3 days.
Or, it is a perfectly rational reaction for many people, it's just your theory of rationalism—based on coarse-grained probability of an event ("airlines are safer than ever"), rather than Expected Value or something else—is limited and unrealistic. Like, maybe there's some fancy Nash Equilibrium psycho economic rationality in which the empirically observed behavior is actually rational.
The only sensible financial reaction is to save, save, save for a down payment well in excess of 20%. Just an extra 5% will save you roughly $150k On a 600k home over the course of a 30-yr 6.9% mortgage (the current rate).
Problem is that most people will never be able to achieve this - the average down payment for first home buyers is less than 10%.
Truly hate to say it but people will need to get used to buying homes much later in life.
With more collusion occurring in rental markets, home owners are able to extract more wealth from those that do not own homes. Unless something changes in supply (of which current owners will not want) then 'get used to not buying homes' is really what's being said.
I hear you, it's not a good place to be in (I've been renting my whole adult life). If people can't or are unwilling to swallow that bitter pill, perhaps major shifts are coming.
You can get there with social housing through either:
- the Singapore model, rent-to-own via the government
- the Japanese model, housing is a depreciating asset
- the Vienna model, ubiquitous social housing up to mid-tier of the market
Personally I feel like renting or owning a house should be a choice of features, not of financial benefit. Buying a house should be about being able to make it your own (moving walls, redoing the garden, building a shed). On a 5, 15, 30, 60 year timeline, owning and renting a house should come out to the same financial net outcome.
The way to get there is murky to me. I have far too little understanding of the deeper effects government policies have on the real estate market to make even the roughest guess.
Here in Houston, a city with a medium cost-of-living, the cheapest house that you can get that's in livable condition and isn't outrageously far from where the jobs are is something like $300k. 20% of that is $60k.
For us techies or others with a Well-Paying Job™, saving $60k is not a big deal.
For pretty much everyone else, saving $60k is a huge feat, even after removing all unnecessary expenses. (Why should "they" have to ride the struggle bus when we techies can blow $18 on lattes and avo toast or whatever's hype these days while still hitting these savings goals?)
And when they finally do that 15 years later or whatever, they're competing against the Well-Paying Job™ folks who are rolling equity from the sale of their starter home and putting down all-cash offers.
By saying "people will need to get used to buying homes much later in life," what you're essentially proposing is class-redlining the poors (many of whom come from families that were historically-discriminated against home ownership, either directly or indirectly) out of home ownership. I'm going to assume that this isn't what you intended by writing that, but that's how it comes off.
> (Why should "they" have to ride the struggle bus when we techies can blow $18 on lattes and avo toast or whatever's hype these days while still hitting these savings goals?)
Can you define what techies should be able to buy compared to “them”?
Of course, if rates are low and money is cheap, max out the loan. But one of the key points of the article was that interest rates are not going to fall for a long time and when they do, house prices will resume their ascent.
If that’s true it’s truly unfortunate the because there’s a sense of stability and security that comes with buying, and younger people tend to be among those who need that most.
I bought right before the interest rate shot back up with a ~5% down payment, and the past few years of ownership have improved my mental state substantially. You don’t know how much stress is caused by having that potential rent hike (and associated potential apartment hunt and move required to keep housing costs within reason) that comes with lease renewal looming on the horizon until it’s not there anymore.
It's vexing to me that so many seem to refuse to believe that stability is important to mental health (for at least some of us), and then wonder why young people are exhibiting ever greater mental health issues. I think only psychopaths are "happy" with the current state of things. Sadly, our institutions seem purpose-built to select them as our leaders.
Depends on how much renting is. Waiting for a higher down payment while paying more to rent doesn't necessarily work out better.
Additionally having an emergency fund afterwards is super important.
Finally since prepayment penalties aren't a thing the difference between paying extra principal early on and a bigger down payment is mostly PMI. (And the interest on the payments until you make them)
I think you overestimate the power of a nuclear weapon, or even dozens of them. It would take hundreds of targeted strikes to disable a nuclear-armed adversary. Having fewer nuclear weapons only means your major cities, military bases, and industrial assets will be leveled while the majority of your adversary's capabilities remain intact.
Nukes are less directly damaging than people think, but the knock on effects are much worse.
If your goal is simply to destroy a country as a functioning power you don’t need to kill every single person. Nuke a handful of major ports and you massively harm the US economy without killing that many people. Add major cities and things get really bad at even a dozen nukes. Sure, we would nuke the fuck out of anyone that launched such an attack but that doesn’t allow us to ignore such attacks.
Sure, I didn't intend to downplay the seriousness of nuclear war. It would be horrific and damaging to an extent never seen before.
My point was just that the logic of having only a few nukes while everyone else has many more doesn't work. China has 145 cities that have more than 1 million people. You wouldn't be a serious threat to their industrial base with only a few nukes, and so the effect of your deterrence would be minimal.
My guess is an 10MT H-bomb could kill ~20 million people by aiming at Suzhou despite the city only having 6.7 million people. Honestly to cripple China with minimal nukes 2-3 Starfish Prime style Nuclear electromagnetic pulses could disable most of their east coast before you target individual cities.
Also, responding in kind to a limited nuclear exchange may be appropriate if you think an adversary still has a large stockpile. There is a lot of uncertainty involved.
I'm not sure any country is fielding 10 megaton monsters anymore. Maybe Russia has a few. The biggest weapon in the USA's inventory is "only" 1.2 megatons and that has to be dropped by an airplane so it's not going to have much chance of landing on Shanghai. Most weapons now are an order of magnitude smaller (hundreds of kilotons), with a high degree of accuracy ("circular error probable") obviating the need for extreme yield.
Nukemap is rather optimistic, you aren’t getting the kind of medical attention to give people who got a 500rem dose a 50/50 shot of survival after a nuclear bombing. It also ignores fallout, secondary fires, etc.
Hard to say what hypothetical countries arsenals actually look like. The B-41 was supposedly 5.2 megatons of TNT per tonne of bomb designed in the late 1950’s. At 5 tons each a non reusable falcon 9 could get ~4 different 25 Mt bombs to LEO and possibly more on a ballistic trajectory. So it’s not like monsters don’t fit on rockets, saturation bombing is just more effective.
And I've thought that meanwhile it would be enough to soften up the target with an EMP, or few of them, by detonating the nukes in the high atmosphere, or slightly above that? AND THEN INVADE! YEEHAAW!
Pretending that counterforce is "disarming" is cute, but the public understanding of nuclear weapons as being countervalue is the more realistic view of what counterforce will actually do. And countervalue does indeed just need a few dozen weapons as city sizes are approximately powerlaws, so there just isn't that many large ones to hit.
Maybe not here in the US - we only have 10 cities with more than 1 million people. But China has 145 cities >1m. We would not be a threat to their industrial base with only a dozen nukes.
Yes, a dozen nukes would cause many billions, perhaps even trillions in damage and horrific loss of life, but China would still have 125 other cities to keep their war machine moving. Deterrence through countervalue threats is great, but once that trigger has been pulled you still have the rest of the war to fight.
If it was practical, they'd be doing it instead of Artemis.