• bolexforsoup
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    1 month ago

    I’m sure there are plenty of people who started at SpaceX before we all truly knew the monster musk is. Also, the work they are doing is incredibly important. It’s hard to give that up. It shouldn’t be this hard to empathize with people

    • skyspydude1@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Knowing many people who’ve worked for him, you have about 6 months at a MuskCo brand company max before you really know what a piece of shit he is, and either a.) leave ASAP, b.) convince yourself it won’t be so bad and hang on for ~2 years, or c.) fall into the cult of personality and believe that Daddy Elon loves his little proles and cares very much about all the hard work you’re doing [EMPLOYEE NUMBER HERE].

      The absolute last stop on the “Musk is Tony Stark but IRL epic gamer Redditor and likes weed and Rick and Morty!” train was when he called that cave diver a pedophile. It was apparent well before then, but anyone acting like they had no idea what a piece of shit he was after that either didn’t hear about it, or was willfully ignorant because they wanted to continue pretending that basing their entire personality around a billionaire wasn’t a terrible idea.

    • Peppycito@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      I thought that spacex was “incredibly important” once. Now I realize it’s a fast track to a more fucked earth. By the time we get to “planet B” “planet A” is going to be a fiery ball of shit.

      • bolexforsoup
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        1 month ago

        I’m not saying SpaceX isn’t without valid critiques, but if you don’t see the value of reusable rockets and can’t even give them credit for spearheading that, I’m not sure what else to say. Make no mistake I think Elon Musk is a bigoted piece of shit, but I can also acknowledge that SpaceX has done important work

        • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          Yes, the rocket is reusable. The fuel is not, and by lowering the cost per kg of space freight, it has driven more usage of rockets. Which use non-renewable fuel at astounding rates and make huge emissions for a minor payload total.

          We’re seeing extreme temperatures and unseasonal weather events already - James Webb is cool and the ISS does need service missions but Starlink is just more orbital trash waiting to happen.

          • bolexforsoup
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            1 month ago

            Rocket launches are not why climate change is occurring.

            • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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              1 month ago

              It’s not helping. We aren’t going to get a “deus ex machina” moment on righting damage done to the environment. Yes focus on the bigger goals and pollution sources, but this is a trend in the wrong way to enlarge Elon’s money pile.

              • bolexforsoup
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                1 month ago

                You’re missing the forest for the trees and way over estimating how much pollution rocket launches put out.

                We have to leave the planet, which means we need to practice so to speak, and those rockets are the only way we are going to get out there right now. The pollution produced by them is well worth it.

                • laurelraven
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                  1 month ago

                  We need to leave the planet? For where?

                  For a planet that’s completely incapable of sustaining life?

                  Do you realize that it’ll take many, many orders of magnitude more resources, time, and effort to make literally any other celestial body within several years of space flight of us capable of sustaining life than it will be to fix the habitable planet we have right here?

                  We’re not getting off this rock without stabilizing it enough to sustain us long-term first. And by then, we won’t need to leave. Either way, though, evacuating isn’t a viable solution.

                  And if you don’t believe me, go talk to some biologists.

                  • bolexforsoup
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                    1 month ago

                    Gotta do it eventually dude or this will be our grave.

                    It’s strange to me that you can have the foresight to see the existential threat that is climate change, but not the risk of having all of our eggs in one basket.

                    You’ve also moved the goalposts. Your original argument was that they pollute so much and use so many finite resources that they’re bad. Is this no longer your argument?

                    You’re never going to convince me that space exploration is something we should stop.

          • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Starlink will never be orbital trash in any meaningful way. If everything failed today, they’d all deorbit within 5 years. It’s only in higher orbits where shit gets stuck for decades or hundreds of years.

            • Peppycito@sh.itjust.works
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              1 month ago

              Starlink will never be orbital trash in any meaningful way

              You’re right. They’ll be atmospheric pollution. That’s what “burn up on reentry” means.

              • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                Well in that case, 100% of things that we’ve launched into space are either

                1: Space trash

                2: Atmospheric Trash

                3: Ocean Trash

                Except for the 1st stages of F9 and it’s fairings, and one or two first stages of some other small start ups.

                Edit: sorry and the shuttle. In retrospect with the amount of refurbishment it required it wasn’t really “reusable” per say, but it did avoid being ocean trash.

                • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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                  1 month ago

                  That does seem to be the point this thread is making: Going to space is really bad for Earth’s environment. SpaceX and starlink are just accelerating that.

          • Peppycito@sh.itjust.works
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            1 month ago

            I’d like to see what people’s reactions would be if we put all the 6,219 starlink satellites in a pile on the ground and lit them on fire. Would they say “fuck yeah! Fast internet!” or would they say “are you out of your mind?”

            And they plan on having 12,000 or something each lasting about 5 years.

        • Peppycito@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          Do you know what all those puffy clouds coming out of the engines at engine cut off and start up are? Kerosene or methane and oxygen. Do you know what injecting methane and kerosene into the upper atmosphere does to the planet? No, no one does because it wasn’t ever a problem when there were 5 launches a year. Now that there’s 5 launches a month we’re getting to the find out stage.

          Same with starlink. What does aerosolized aluminum (and whatever else is “just burning up” on reentry) do to the upper atmosphere? When there were one or two satellites a year how would you know? Now that there’s several a month (20 in the last launch that didn’t make it up) we’ll find out.

          I’m going to go out on a limb and say none of that will prove beneficial to life on earth. But yeah, the rocket is pretty cool.