Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Common Sense Skeptic" channel.

@illsaveus Your very right on all that, but do try and remember that Elon has also lucked into a couple of things where he was blessed with some superb engineers. He's also one of the best ever marketers of other peoples technology. First at PayPal - his code might have sucked and they wanted nothing to do with him but he was smart enough to make money out of it. Second with Tesla - his input to the car and development is a joke. I'm an aerospace engineer who works in industrial control and safety systems. Anyone who understands even the basics of vision guided systems knows how full of shite the driverless car stuff was. Have you notice that not even Uber mentions that stuff anymore. Third with SpaceX where he got blessed with Gwynne Shotwell and her team on the Falcon series. Yes they've had issues, but when you compare them to Boeing Starliner or SLS they actually have things that work including a man rated rocket. Yes I have seen some of the criticism of Gwynne Shotwell regarding some of her comments, but if you actually listen to what she's said there's no issue except for who she works for. As far as Starship and Starlink go. They are both Elon fantasies that will end in tears. Just like the hyper-inflated ridiculous valuations of Tesla shares will end in tears. Its one of those things with Elon Musk, at times you need to untangle some of the things he's into from the garbage he claims. If Jeff Bezos asked me the quickest way to go to the moon. I'd tell him to buy that chunk of SpaceX with the Falcons. Use Falcon Heavy to launch an Earth-Lunar transfer vehicle, a Lunar orbit transfer station and a Lunar lander. Use Dragon to take the crew up & down. Development time 2-3 years. Its call breaking the problem into manageable chunks. But then Elon isn't into manageable chunks he's into fantasy ships to Mars.
1
@anirudhmitra4232 I don't know who "spacefanboy" is or what he's claiming. At its most basic the idea of us becoming an "interplanetary species" within this solar system its pretty ridiculous as there's so few places with even the right gravity for our bodies to function properly. It doesn't matter if you believe in god or mother nature our bodies work best in 1g and 14.7psi of air that's about 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen. The moment you start getting away from that human bodies don't do so well. Remember above a certain height on Mt Everest you start to die no matter how well conditioned you are. Its not fundamentally wrong to think we'll live on other planets, but the proponents overlook so many basic facts. Its easy to do and we've all done it at some point, but then you also need listen to people who have expertise and experience, which so many of the clowns these days just won't do. Back around 2000 I got into an argument with a friend who was at NASA on the ISS construction. Like many others I wanted it finished so we could get on with stuff. When we'd been in college in the late 80s we all expected to build the next space station in the 90s and be back on the moon circa 2001. Then we got the rudest wakeup when Challenger blew up one morning. So by the year 2000 a lot of us just wanted the ISS finished so we could get on with stuff. At that time I wanted to go into fixing satellites. Instead of just dumping them when they ran out of fuel I wanted to refuel them. I was was just 1 of 100s wanting to do that. This friend of mine just slapped me down with the fact of the basic fuel and life support requirements for a mission like that. Her and others at NASA were tired of complaints on how long the ISS was taking. She'd had enough at that stage and told me to do some basic math or never bother her again. SHE WAS RIGHT and I apologised when I worked out what she and others at NASA already knew. There were a bunch of technologies that weren't ready and most still aren't ready. There were decisions made way back in the 1970s before me and my friend were even out of grade school, let alone out of college, that have had some very negative consequences we are still living with. Its one thing I do agree with the Angry Astronaut about. Right after Apollo we were betrayed. Some stupid decisions were made and the big aerospace companies stepped in and started milking NASA by the billion. I honestly don't know how far we'd be if smarter decisions had been made. I like to think we'd at least have a lunar base but can't say for certain because its just damn difficult. I heard claims just last week on one podcast about plans for being on Mars by the mid 80s, Saturn by the 90s and Alpha Centauri by 2000. It was just a ridiculous and stupid remark and yet its the sort of stuff people latch onto. Its very frustrating being an engineer these days because there are so many people saying things in bad faith. The person who made the claims about Mars in the 80s,... etc is doing a book promotion tour. He's not saying these things because they are true he's saying these things to get people to buy his book. And that's so common with so many people. They are trying to sell something.
1
@camhunt7310 Fair arguments but the biggest by far is serviceability. If a cable gets broken or cut then it can be replaced. It might not be easy but it can be fixed. I am an aerospace engineer and once a satellite is launched that's it. It flies and works or it fails. Other than the space stations the only object ever put in space that was serviced or repaired was Hubble.
1
Aerospace Engineer: YES because as usual you lawyers will want to stick you noses where they DO NOT BELONG and screw everything up. Isn't it enough that you lawyers have screwed up EVERY legal system in the world with garbage, nonsense and endless circular verbal wankfests. Why can't we hold political leaders like Donald Trump. Bibi Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin,... accountable? LAWYERS Why can't we control the money in politics that's made Western Democracy so dysfunctional? LAWYERS Why can't we make any progress on issues with basic justice and climate change? LAWYERS When you lawyers get your own house in order we might be interested in what you have to say.
1
@declanashmore Exactly - it wouldn't matter because either way there'd be a hoard of lawyers scrambling to argue it out and see how much money they could screw out of the mess they'd create. That's not to say all lawyers are money driven greedy sociopaths but I did hear once that the Grand Canyon was NOT formed by the erosion of the Colorado River. It was created when a lawyer dropped a quarter down a rabbit hole. Bizarrely he didn't dig it out to get the quarter back. He dug it out so he could serve the rabbit papers.
1
@commonsenseskeptic Great point. I did aerospace engineering at U. Illinois where Eberhard went and from an engineering point Musk is a clown. BUT he's also a clown who can identify technology that he can exploit. Occasionally he picks a real genuine winner like he did it at Paypal, did it with SpaceX and did it with Tesla. I know you don't think too highly of Gwynne Shotwell because she works for Elon and a couple of her comments have been Elon like. You pointed out that she made a comment about that rockets won't be considered truly reusable until we can use them like aeroplanes. You were quite right that's totally unrealistic for the types of rockets now in use, but did you know that XCOR built a rocket powered aircraft for the proposed rocket racing league that flew 7 times in one day. I think XCOR was a company a smarter version of Jeff Bezos should have bought for the expertise and experience. So going back to Gwynne Shotwell's comment. Its easy to read it (as her being part of Elon enterprises) as "this is what we'll be doing next week" except she doesn't promise that she's just pointing out what it would mean to be truly reusable. Further if I was grading SpaceX I'd give them a C or C+. They have built Falcon up to man rated and they have got Crew Dragon working. They are resupplying the ISS and swapping crews at the ISS. BUT in reality they have taken 20years to do an upgraded version of Apollo. Is it better than Apollo? ABSOLUTELY. Its reusable carries and extra body and compared to Soyuz at $90M USD per seat to $70M USD for 4 seats its a massive saving in cost. But Falcon is still only a C+ at best. Its got some innovation but its not ground breaking. HOWEVER compare to everyone else is magic. Sierra and others have been doing development for decades, promising the universe and going not much of anywhere. If you consider how much money Boeing has had spoon fed to them by congress they should have, built a moon base, landed on Mars and be ready for the first manned mission to Jupiter by now. On the normal A to F scale Boeing are somewhere south of G. The only reason they might get an F- is that at least the last attempt at Starliner wasn't a complete failure. Don't get me started on SLS, that's going to go down as one of the worst conceived and managed engineering projects in history. The idea of reusing space shuttle tech was sound but NOTHING after that point was sound, sensible, rational, logical, reasonable, justifiable or much anything else.
1
@commonsenseskeptic If you want to do a debunk of Jeff Bezos claim of moving all of the heavy industry like iron ore processing into Low Earth Orbit. LET ME KNOW. FYI - I met Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17) in 2002 and he told me to look at Helium-3. I wanted to discuss satellite servicing and he said no the majors wont let you and go look at He-3. He-3 meant mining on the moon so being Australian I went off to our mining industry for some experience building and operating mines. By chance we were in the process of building lots of new mines to feed the Chinese beast. I have worked in iron ore and metallurgical coal and NOBODY is ever taking that stuff into low earth orbit unless they develop Star Trek matter transportation. Just go and do the basic high school level science math and calculate the kinetic energy of 2 billion tons of iron at 7kilometers per second. Then compare that much energy to Hiroshima and work out how much energy you need to BURN OFF in the upper atmosphere bringing that much down from LEO. Yes it will freak you out, but not as much as some other stuff.
1
@ytzmark Its worse from my perspective because it does detract from those successes. Instead of being able to celebrate the achievements we are being distracted with garbage. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️
1
@individual1-floridaman491 My father was a maths science teacher. I'd love to tell your kids that the future of engineering is bright but we are at on hell of a crossroads. There was a recent comment on the ABC Drum (I think it was Colin Barnett) and what was said was "we have to stop listening to the economists and lawyers and start listening to the engineers and scientists" I found it a great comment but NOBODY has run with it. Sure both parties are spruiking up manufacturing and technology after almost 2 decades of preaching how manufacturing was a "sunset industry" because we were shifting into a "service based economy." When they announced the Australian Space Agency they held meetings in the capital cities to find out what we should be doing. The mantra was "we are hear to listen" and for every suggestion and proposal we got told "NO we aren't that kind of agency. We're here to promote space industry." I was at the meeting in Melbourne and a professor from Monash stood up at one point and pointed out that EVERY student of his had left Australia for work and then asked what this new agency would do. The answer was straight out of "Yes Minister" and giant long word salad of we don't care because we are not here to do anything other than tell everyone how fantastic we are. They put out a roadmap that actually was pretty good. Its maybe the one thing they ever did right. It was all about the future space industries Australia could benefit from. The single biggest thing identified was advanced space based water management for our agriculture sector but such systems would not be available until the mid 2030s. Considering the droughts and water issues we have my answer to that was why wait 15 years and just get on with it. So I wrote a space program based around delivering that water management. the program was named "Dyaramak" which is an Aboriginal name for the Sacred Kingfisher. In Polynesian culture its a water spirit so I figured it kind of suited. When you consider that both our agricultural sector (at over $155Billion per annum with over 300,000 jobs) and our tourism sector (at over $65Billion per annum with over 550,000 jobs) that a program with its prime mission of delivering the next generation of space based land & water management would have a justifiable business case. WRONG. I took that to both the Libs and Labour and BOTH told me to go away while one handed $7 Billion to the Airforce for a space program and the other one cheered. For $7 Billion there is no plan, no budget and will do nothing for the 850,000 Australians who require our land, forests, rivers and oceans for their jobs. I asked for $720 million over 6 years to lay the foundation that would help protect all those jobs and all the economic benefit that came with it. I'm planning to bash both parties with it again shortly just to see if I can startle them into some action.
1
@jdoe9518 And you clearly have no idea DlCKHEAD. Go take your conspiracy BS and get lost. And yeah I have heard all the conspiracy BS about government weather control. I read about that nonsense back in the 90s. It was garbage then and its still garbage now.
1
@kwyj No Johnson never did say anything apart from "Don't waste the money on a replacement shuttle. Give it to me and leave us alone to get the job done." Its a stack of questions I have had for 35+ years. "What did he know?" "What did they work out?" I can't conceive that KJ was just mouthing off. Go watch any of the vids about his life. Yeah sure he occasionally shook the establishment with radical designs (P-38, U-2, SR-71), BUT HE DELIVERED and they WORKED. 🤷‍♂🤷‍♂🤷‍♀🤷‍♀
1
@LennyAllen-cp9cl This is in reply to your Mars & Earth atmosphere comment. Yes Mars has an atmosphere but it is completely different to Earth's. The surface air pressure of Mars is 0.00628atm so there might be an atmosphere but there's so little its hard to do anything with it. parachutes only work enough to slow down from very high speed. That little helicopter they tried was on the very limit of actually working. Quoting Wikipedia on Mars under the topic of "Atmosphere": "The highest atmospheric density on Mars is equal to that found 35 kilometres (22 mi) above Earth's surface." The density of Mars atmosphere is a tiny fraction of Earths and all the equations for lift and drag have the same basic formula of 1/2 x the coefficient x the gas density x times velocity squared. Lift = 1/2.Cf.ρ.V² Drag = 1/2.Cd.ρ.V² So when ρ is so low you either have to be very light, very large wings or going incredibly fast. Mars atmosphere is so low there's almost nothing to generate lift or drag with. It will make getting off the surface a lot easier, but not much else.
1
@LennyAllen-cp9cl And one other thing. Can you and every other unqualified person please STOP repeating the PR blurbs for various technologies as if they are undisputable facts when they ARE YET TO BE PROVEN. Maybe and possibly ARE NOT the same as "Look at these results." Its actually very frustrating having to explain again and again and again ... and 1000 more times that what you are hearing the media is mostly PR aimed at fundraising or lobbying rather than reporting news or facts. I don't mind people asking questions and having discussions and I will take the time to answer peoples legitimate questions as best I can. Its taken me time to read your replies and answer them. Please show me some respect for my qualifications and experience because it gets damn annoying when people start preaching PR fundraising nonsense as if its undeniable fact.
1
@commonsenseskeptic Fair call. I put together a proposal for the Australian Space Agency and I contacted him via LinkedIn. It was only a few conversations because I was interested in the reusable rocket engines. It didn't go far as he'd not only left XCOR but put it all behind him. Its why I see this as a shame because what he did achieve with the Rocket Racer was pretty extraordinary. If you are interested I'll give you 3 Space subjects below. Pick 1, pick none pick all 3 - your choice.
1
@commonsenseskeptic Case 1 of Space BS: Mining Asteroids Part 1 - Logistics. Other than the fact nobody has ever brought back to Earth any more than a few grams of space dust there's the simple task of logistics. Most people have no idea how much stuff we actually dig up each year and turn into cars, boats, planes and all the other toys our society wants. Just so you know current world production of iron ore is just over 3,000,000,000 or a 3,000 Mta (million tons per annum) of which China does 1,200 Mta and Australia 825 Mta which accounts for 2/3rds of world supply. According to Forbes: "16 Psyche—a 140-mile-wide/226-kilometer-wide asteroid—could contain a core of iron, nickel and gold worth $10,000 quadrillion." Other than the logistics and for the sake of math we assume that only 50% of that value is iron. At $100 USD per ton of iron ore that's something like 100 Quadrillion tons equivalent of iron ore. When we only need 3 Trillion tons a year a 100 Quadrillion tons is 33,000 years worth. Even if someone at Forbes got there comma in the wrong place and its only $10 Quadrillion in value not 10,000 then its only 100 trillion tons or 33 YEARS of iron ore. Australia has a single deposit called Yandi creek. Its a part of the earth that split open at some point way way back in time and a pile of magma flowed out and formed an ore body that winds it way over 150km across the Australian outback. Its 100s of meters wide and 100s of meters deep. Yandi has more than a century's worth of iron ore and its just one of our major iron ore reserves and NOBODY needs to fly million of kilometers across space to get it. Plus we ALREADY have the train lines and ports to get it out to the rest of the world. Plus NOBODY needs a space suit costing millions for their PPE.
1
@commonsenseskeptic Case 3 of Space BS: Star Wars - the Ronald Regan Type. Just a week ago an Australian journalist warned that we need these new AUKUS submarines because China was building a new high tech military including SPACE LASERS. Only a week before that at a military conference and trade show the head of Australia's military space program said "they were looking at satellite soft kill systems" So you know I did my degree in aerospace in the late 80s when Ronnie Brainspace Reagan was spending huge on space lasers and anything else anyone could suggest that might knock an ICBM out. Other than all the ridiculously hard classes in math, aerodynamics, propulsion,... etc the hardest class I had was one of my electives. Most people did orbital mechanics but a few of us did "Space Craft Dynamics" because we thought controlling how space craft flew about would be "cool." We were so very very wrong. 3/4 of the class were post grads and they struggled. Its applied maths at a level that is staggering high. BUT, One of those post graduates was easily the smartest engineering mathematician I have ever seen and that includes the guys who were doing the funky Computational Fluid Dynamics on the Cray Supercomputer. His specialty was being able to get a space craft turn, point and track WITHOUT wobbling. ALL spacecraft FLEX when they roll, pitch, and yaw or are under thrust and that flexing results in wobbling. Most of the time that's irrelevant, but if you are trying to hit an ICBM that's several 100km (at best) to several 1,000km away with a speed differential measured in kilometers per second its required to point very accurately. Laser, microwave of projectile is irrelevant - you have to point accurately. This postgrad worked out how to cancel out wobbles with counter moves. Don't aske me to explain that math its on the verge of insane. Its involves simultaneous partial differential equations in 3-D polar coordinates with transformations into the cartesian Roll/Pitch/Yaw/translate of the vehicle. Then it has the anti-wobble dynamics on top of that, which is another set of 3-D simultaneous partial differential equations. Yes I spent 4 months in a class with the one guy and his professor who could make space based weapons POINT well enough to be on the fringe of feasible, but even after that there's some very basic problems. ISSUE 1 - Space Lasers. Despite the fact we might be able to make a space laser point where it needs to point and we might even be able to give it enough power to do something at range, there's 2 very simple counters to a space laser. 1) be shiny because light reflects off shiny surfaces. 2) roll slowly because lasers need time to burn through which means they need to be very much on the same spot NOT just on target. ISSUE 2 - Microwave & EM interference with onboard electronics. Despite how snazzy this sounds people forget that space is already an environment needing lost of shielding from EM and other radiation. So trying to punch through with Microwaves or EM is like trying to punch through a tank with a bow and arrow. ISSUE 3 - Hard Kill also known as the dumbest thing anyone can do. Yeah not going to happen unless you want to make Space unusable for everyone for decades. Been tried and can work but also has disastrous consequences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome#Anti-satellite_missile_tests
1
Case 4 of Space BS: Off World Heavy Industry a Jeff Bezos favorite. Yeah good old jeff sayin he wants to move things like iron smelting off world where there's unlimited solar power and nobody has to worry about pollution. Remember the Tom Price mine a mentioned a couple of chapters back?? 20Mta (million tons per annum) is a great easy number to use because thanks to the Space Shuttle it makes the math so easy an economist could get it. Reasonable quality iron ore is about 60-65% iron content. Good quality is around 70% really high grades are above that. 70% makes the math easy because 70% of 20 is 14. The Space Shuttle could take off with a payload of 30tons, but it could only land with 14tons of payload. So it doesn't matter how many flights it takes to get the the 20Mta from a mine like Tom Price up to a processing facility in LEO (low earth orbit) its how many it takes to get the 14 Million tons back down. 14,000,000 tons divided by 14 tons per flight = 1,000,000 flights. Now sure we could have something 10 times better or even 100 times better than a space shuttle but that's irrelevant because even at 100 times better than a Space Shuttle its still 10,000 flights or about 200 flights per week and considering in 30 years the Space Shuttle only did 135 flights that's kind of difficult. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE. Tom Price is 20 Mta and Australia exports over 820 Mta so Tom Price rounds to about 1/41st of Australia's output. So those 10,000 flights with the imaginary super shuttle is actually about 410,000 flights and the rest of the world almost quadruples that number. Cos trying to bring back around 2 Billion tons of iron isn't easy. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE. If you do the kinetic energy calculation of 2 Billion tons of processed iron in orbit doing 7.5 kilometers per second. Its 5.625 x 10E16 Joules or the equivalent of around 950 of the Hiroshima bomb. To Bring that back down all that Kinetic Energy has to be dissipated. That's currently done with Air Friction and its burned off as HEAT. Yeah Jeff Bezos idea to save the planet from CO2 Emissions from iron ore production is to take iron production off planet and then effectively NUKE the upper atmosphere on a daily basis. Yeah - Sorry Mr. Bezos but that's NOT going to work.
1
@commonsenseskeptic Case 5 of Space BS: Terraforming Mars. Back in college we had an alum who worked at NASA one day give a guest lecture on terraforming Mars. We were pumped and then he dumped on us some reality. He introduced us to what I now call "planetary mechanics" which is basically calculating how much stuff is present. Making a planet actually work is what I call "planetary dynamics" and involves making things like gas cycles, water cycles and ocean currents work so that life can be supported. Thankfully planetary mechanics is math anyone can understand. One thing that is very easy is to take the surface area of a planet in km² and then simply say the first km of atmosphere above the surface is the same number by km³. Yes you can calculate the volume of 2 spheres 1 with a radius 1km larger than the other and get an answer that's less 1% different. But the real point is to give people an idea of what is the volume of the gas that is in that 1km just above the surface. So Mars where one of your favorite clowns Elon Musk wants to go has a surface area of 144,370,000 km² That volume 1 km above the surface of Mars is 144,370,000 km³. 1 m³ of Earth Standard air is 1.2kg so 1km³ is just 9 zeros on that for kilos or 6 for tons. Either way 144,370,000 km³ of Earth Standard Air is 173,244,000,000,000 tons. So if Elon wants to terraform mars he's gonna need 173 Trillion tons of air and that's only for the first kilometer. Who knows what he will need if someone wants to climb up over the edge of Valles Marineris? I actually had one clown claim Elon would only need the Oxygen and none of the Nitrogen so I asked where Elon was going to get 36.4 Trillion tons of oxygen? I'm still waiting.
1
@commonsenseskeptic I hope you like those 5 things. There are more and they aren't hard to find because as you keep showing time and again the basic math does not lie. Sure there are those who yell what about this or what about that and it might move the goal posts, BUT IT NEVER changes the outcome. Best to you. I love the channel. Keep doing what you are doing.
1
@timothyblazer1749 have you listened to any of Jonathon Trent's vids. He's quite likely the worlds best at these complex biological systems people are trying to develop. Having listened to him and chatted via LinkedIn I think the breakthrough IF IT COMES will be with systems that are not designed to be 100% self supporting, but simpler systems that can do what's needed. Sort unrelated are the vertical farming systems people have developed. They aren't meant to replace bulk farming and provide everything humanity needs, but they DO THE JOB they are designed for. When you consider what they tried to do with Biodome it was always going to fail. 🤷‍♀🤷‍♂🤷‍♀🤷‍♂ (edit) But it is good to here that someone else has picked it up and is making progress.
1
@timothyblazer1749 I'm actually Australian but went to college in America on a sports scholarship and did aerospace engineering. One of my class mates is very high up in the ISS program. About 20 years ago she told me that NOBODY was going beyond LEO until 2 problems were solved - Life Support and Propulsion. In the last 20 years neither of those problems has been solved. YES ABSOLUETLY there have been people working their asses off working on these problems but none of it is ready to be used. One of the tragic outcomes of the shuttle and ISS programs was they starved other programs of resources of which the biggest resource was money, but it also starved those projects of people. Yes both the shuttle and ISS have been incredible technical achievements. They actually made a reusable spaceplane work. They made, launched and assembled an incredibly complex machine weighing hundreds of tons IN SPACE. BUT AT THE SAME TIME they starved other projects and that's hindered manned space flight. FYI - I met Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17) back in 2002 and he told me to check out Helium-3. He was trying to get a mine built on the Moon. So I went off to the Australian mining sector to learn how mines got built and how they operated. Right now I have more practical hands on experience building and operating mines in remote places than all of NASA combined. Do you know it still comes back to the same 2 questions, but they're phrased differently? Transportation and Supplies (food, water, fuel, spare parts,....). The biggest 3 tasks are: 1) Getting people, their food, and what they need to and from the mines. People need food and water and a place to sleep. They also shit, shower and shave and all that has to be dealt with. 2) Getting the product from the mines. That might mean a few kilograms (like for gold) or millions of tons like iron ore. Either way it has to be done or what's the purpose of having the mine. 3) Maintenance as in how to you keep several billion dollars of stuff working in the middle of a hostile environment and there's not many places more hostile than the Australian desert. A lot of people think I have wasted my time. I haven't. When I ask them how are you going to do A, B, C,... none of them have answers because they've never asked the questions. They all assume its been done. This is the problem with people like Angry and Elon Musk and so many others. Their hearts are in the right place, but they all assume that some of the very basic things have been done and they haven't. All these clowns talking about mining asteroids have never been near a mine site. I can tell that immediately. I have the papers from a NASA conference (~180pages) on Moon operations and it had 1 and a bit pages on maintenance because they think maintenance will be done using remote robotics. THAT'S GARBAGE. If you ever want to be called an idiot just tell anyone who's ever done maintenance on a mine site that it can be done by remote controlled robots.
1
@wyrmofvt You pretty much have it nutted out, because it comes down to some very basic numbers and basic reality. I got bluntly put in my place about 20 years ago by a former classmate who was working on the ISS construction She's now a senior ISS manager and basically without her signature your stuff isn't going to the ISS. I had put it to her, as others had that we should use Shuttle-C and just get all the stuff up there. The whole thing was just dragging out and the shuttle itself was incredibly inefficient for bulk hardware launching. Just pack all the truss modules into 1 launch. She pointed out that I had no idea of the logistics involved in each of those modules and bluntly told me to shut it until I knew what I was talking about. I argued back that while the ISS plodded on we weren't moving forward with manned exploration. We'd been in college when Challenger happened. Up until that morning we all EXPECTED to build Space Station Freedom by the mid 90s and back on the moon circa 2001. That argument was happening circa 2002 and we weren't close to finishing the ISS and people were getting frustrated at the lack of progress. Then she hit me with the slap of slaps. Nobody was going anywhere until we solved the propulsion and life support issues. When I asked what? She said do the basic math and then ask how you get that done. The Apollo LM had 75 hours for 2 men of life support. That's 150 mh (man hours) of life support. A 4 man 14 day (as was the plan at one point) is 4 x 24 x 14 = 1344 mh (basically 9x) That can be basically halved with 3 man 10day lunar surface is 3 x 24 x 10 = 720mh. Irrespective of crew and duration, how do you get that much stuff there just to keep them alive. All that oxygen, food, CO2 filters, waste handling,... has to be lifted off mother earth, flown across the 384,400km gap and landed there on the moon AND THAT'S before you even begin to deal with anything else. Its part of why the Russian lunar program failed. The basic numbers drove them to the N-1 which was too complicated to work. This is what Elon Musk and his cadre of clowns don't get. Just the basics of keeping people alive is a giant task. Adding that 1 extra person and/or staying that bit longer can double that task in a blink and that compounds into a whole pile of other logistics issues which themselves keep compounding the problem. It was a blunt lesson I got from that classmate and yeah it sucked, but I needed it then and a lot of other people need it now.
1
@wyrmofvt On that ag issue its all a matter of what you are producing from that land. If its for direct human consumption its one set of numbers and if its for animal feed its another. There's actually a great lesson in complex systems and compounding effects and consequences regarding the Colorado River right now. The river plan that was put in place 100+years ago DELIBERATELY overestimated the amount of water available, because that was what certain politicians wanted. That was compounded with a "use it or lose it" clause. So a lot of farmers need to use their water allocation or lose it. Many grow alfalfa for animal feed BECAUSE its a high water usage crop. If they change to low water crops they can lose their water allocations. So the land and water usage issue is way more complex than most people realise and the causes of that complexity are some really basic stupid decisions. The bigger problem is that people are looking at the problem as "what do I lose" (as in my water rights) instead of "what do we gain" which is food (as in that stuff we all need to survive). And so you know water and land mismanagement is a major problem EVERYWHERE. Where China grows most of its food is where they have major climate change issues. They have also damaged or destroyed over 20,000 rivers and waterways. Or you can look at what the Russians did to the Aral Sea. Or you can come here to Australia and see what we have done with cotton, rice and nut farming.
1
Not all crypto is a scam Some of them are Ponzi schemes, while others are just simply fraud,
1
@FilipCordas WTF are you kidding? Sure Stock exchanges are dodgy and get manipulated all the time, but at least there are rules for stock exchanges and every so often the regulators actually punish someone who breaks those rules. Crypto has NO standards, NO rules, NO regulations, NO governance, NO oversight, NO protections from scammers, NO enforcement agencies, AND MOST OF ALL NOTHING backing it up or anything else resembling basic common sense. Like SBF its was a 16,000,000,000% scam from the very beginning.
1
@FilipCordas Berkshire Hathaway has NEVER done anything with Crypto. Both Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger have made no secret they think Crypto is garbage and explained why. GO WATCH THE 3rd PART Its towards the end.
1
There's also Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, who called Bitcoin "hyped up fraud" Its in parts 3 just after Buffet and Munger.
1
@FilipCordas It wasn't a billion you IDl0T and Nubank IS NOT A CRYPTO. You people are so ignorant. Its no wonder you get taken by scammers.
1
I am an aerospace engineer and I can explain in detail all the stuff that they have simply not bothered to think about. Its not simply Musk or his fanbots, NASA aren't exactly innocent. There's a staggering amount og science fiction PR garbage in the space industry at the moment. Back in 2002 I met Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17) and at that time he was talking up the Helium-3 opportunity on the moon. As an Australian at that stage there was no easy way into NASA or even their programs. So an independent project with credibility was possible. At that time Australia was just starting a mining construction boom to feed the Chinese beast. It took a couple of years but I snuck my way into remote mine site construction and the analogies to setting up anything on the moon become fairly obvious after some time doing that work. 1) EVERYTHING needs to be thought ahead. When you are in the middle of the desert nothign is just down the road because the road is 1500km long. Prior to that time I worked in our manufacturing sector and 90% of everything was at worst an hour away. On a remote mine site, even if airplanes come regularly you have to consider everything is at least 3 days away. Its a giant non-stop logistical exercise that never ends. 2) Everything you take for granted in a city like water and power has to be treated very seriously. Most people never consider what happens when they flush the toilet. On a mine site that's a serious consideration along with all other waste. Most of all the food has to be trucked or flown in, then stored, then cooked, then eaten and then cleaned up. Humans eat, shit, pee and breath. Spaceship earth is great for cleaning our mess and we take that for granted. 3) Mine sites are primarily dirt and rock crushing & grinding plants. That means wear and tear on everything. I got hold of the papers for a NASA conference on the moon (well over 200 pages). The total commentary on maintenance was less than 1-1/2 pages, 1/2 of which was a diagram and all they said was we'll do it with robots. That told me that NONE OF THEM had ever spent any time on a mine site. When I see clowns talking about mining asteroids I can tell NONE OF THEM had ever spent time on a mine site. When I hear Jeff Bezos talking about taking all the iron ore processing off planet I know he's not done any of the basic math hon that.
1
@commonsenseskeptic To both you and Mr. Clem the word "engineer" is NOT protected under any law anywhere the sam eas words like doctor and dentist are. I can't explain the history across the world but I can explain what happened in Australia. I started in Mech. Eng at RMIT (Melbourne Australia) in 1983. On day 1 we had the Institute of Engineers Australia talk to us about becoming student members. During that they discussed a couple of legal issues. They went all through the subject of people using the word "engineer." At some point in Australian History just before or just after WW2 several professions were offered the right to claim exclusive legal use of the word that labels their profession. I know of 3, accountants, architects and engineers. Engineers and Accountants opted out because it would take about 50 years to completely retire out all the unqualified people already calling themselves engineer or accountant. The Architects said yes and they'd deal with the unqualified. The institutes for engineers and accountants opted for post graduate certifications and we now have the legal terms "chartered accountant" and "chartered engineer." It usually requires 4 years of practice after graduation to be come eligible to get chartered. I don't know the exact process because for engineers These days anyone can draw a house or building up in CAD or on paper and submit it to planning authorities. They can do it for other people and charge money. BUT if they use the word "architect" to describe themselves in any way and they are NOT degree qualified they can get charged with fraud. For accountants and engineers there are certain specific tasks where being a "chartered accountant" or "chartered engineer" is required. In engineering the only 2 places I know it matters are for civil engineers doing structural work and electrical for power grid/distribution, and then only the civil structural where there's actual legal requirements. Civil Structural engineers get licensed, but then they are the guys who say the bridges and buildings wont collapse. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️ An odd area where I know the word "engineer" is strictly controlled is in aircraft maintenance. We call aircraft mechanics LAME (pronounced lay-mee) for Licensed Mechanical Airframe Engineer. They are NOT degree qualified. They are the aircraft equivalent of a motor mechanic. So the word engineer is not a controlled word and that's common. I know it sucks but Elon is free like any other person to declare himself an engineer. I totally effing hate it, but that's how it is. Great vid.
1
@commonsenseskeptic We now have terms like "registered professional engineer" BUT NONE of it means squat. So long as LAWYERS & PR protect the CEOs and their sneaky slimy disgusting economists, accountants and HR - the QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE of engineers wont matter. Boeing Max-8 should have FINALLY changed things and been the end of fake and false engineering practices. It certainly should have ended interference from the uneducated over the educated. They killed over 300 people for money and so far NOBODY has been held accountable. Elon will never be held to account for his bad engineering. He could stack 100 dumb fanbots into Starship tomorrow, light the fuse and blow them into confetti without any worry. Kyle Rittenhouse shot 2 people and it was FILMED. The whole world saw it and in any other place EXCEPT America he'd be in jail. When powerful people with vested interests are involved CEOs KNOW they can get away with stuff. There are too many powerful people with money in Tesla. For sure as you pointed out in another vid its monstrously over valued. Its insane how overvalued it is. That doesn't matter squat. Until Elon does something they can't ignore he's free do to whatever he likes. I'm not certain of your qualifications but your clearly smart enough to understand that.
1
@commonsenseskeptic I know its a year late but you haven't been totally clean with the issues of NASA, Falcon and Soyuz. *YES you are absolutely right SpaceX was late delivering Crew Dragon, and that Starship is a disaster in the making, but: You didn't put Falcon and Crew Dragon in perspective against other programs. Look at how many other projects that were put forward NONE of which delivered anything. Boeing in particular has so far TOTALLY FAILED with Starliner and Starliner is costed at millions more per launch. You did put up the costs of Shuttle but didn't mention that if even 5 of those American crews had been done using the Space Shuttle that would have cost over $2.2 Billion. I did my degree in aerospace and along with my class mates watched our dreams go up with Challenger in January 1986. I was in a minority but was further disheartened when NASA announced a replacement (Endeavour). I agreed with Kelly Johnson (lead engineer for the SR-71) who said that money needed to go to a replacement and with his background should have been listened to. IMHO I think Gwynne Shotwell and the Space X team that works on the Falcon series including Crew Dragon have done an incredible job DESPITE the presence of Elon Musk. This is even more evident when compared against Boeing's Starliner and the Ares/Constellation and SLS programs none of which have yet successfully flown. In fact it might be a good question to where they might be IF Elon Musk wasn't sapping them of resources on his fantasy clown stupidity of Starship. Yeah mate IMHO Starship will be a bigger failure than the Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle was an incredible technical achievement in that they made a reusable space plane work, BUT it was a total failure in how much it cost in resources (both financial and manpower) and STARVED other programs of those resources. What's Starship doing at the moment? I know you have done vids on other parts of Musk's space programs but if you want some technical input on doing any more I'd be happy to help.
1