superstringer

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Date Title Body
1 day 11 hours ago big omission

DEVIN GARDNER... FIRST TEAM WR

Right??????
2 days 5 hours ago yup

i totally agree.



unless a school with REALLY hot chicks comes knocking.

2 days 9 hours ago are you referring to

phineas and ferb????
2 days 15 hours ago full disclosure...

I have been to SpaceX's facility in Hawthorne CA twice, met with Elon briefly, spent much time (business related) with their very impressive President Gwynne Shotwell, met some of the mission management for COTS Demo 1 and Demo 2/3, etc.  But I also have an Aerospace engineering degree from UM, so I'm not a neophyte here.  I have heard first-hand the stories of how OLD ECONOMY relics like Neil Armstrong and plenty of lobbiests (sp? eng. degree here) for Boeing / Lockheed / thousands of entrenced vendors have been trying to undermine SpaceX at every step of the way.

And of course now it's politicized.  Obama killed Constellation in favor of commercial entities, so some on the right side see SpaceX as "Obama's" company.  Some right-of-center folks were actually saying, hey you can't privatize space, you need NASA to do it.  And SpaceX was like -- HUH???  Republicans saying its a BAD thing to privatize???

That's how nuts this is.  "If you're for it, I'm against it."  So if Obama is for it, then....

Put politics aside.  Why is this NOT a good thing?  Srsly.  They are getting it right -- the damn thing works.  As Norm would say, "Pay the man, Shirley."
2 days 19 hours ago you are SO old economy

There is a reason SOME in the industry are not fond of Elon.  HE IS SHATTERING THEIR BUSINESS MODELS.  His public price for a Falcon 9 launch is less than HALF that of his competitors.  Huge companies like Boeing, Lockheed, Arianespace... they can't compete.  He has figured out, you don't need to have their massive budgets and huge number of subcontractors etc.

Know who loves him?  The CUSTOMERS.  People trying to put satellites in orbit -- the users, you and me.  SpaceX is so much cheaper, and now showing it is just as reliable.

Then you say, "The industry was doing just fine before him."  No, it wasn't.  US companies don't even launch commercial satellites anymore.  If you want to launch a satellite (and you're not the Dept of Defense), you HAVE to go to foreigners -- Arianespace, Japan, Russia, etc.  Is that "doing fine"??  And Arianespace, pretty much the only dependable partner ( you want to trust Proton?), charges well over $100M for a launch.  Is that doing "fine"???

Your comments tell me, YOU ARE OLD ECONOMY.  You just don't like that someone has figured out how to do all of this, on shoe-string budget.  Maybe your job is threatened.  Maybe you don't want to admit, all you've believed is now shown to be wrong.  But it is.  Like Neil Armstrong, your comments are just... well... making yourself look foolish.

Truth is, Elon is an economic visionary.  Why did he start SpaceX?  Because HE WANTS TO GO TO MARS.  He needed a cheap rocket... hence, Falcon, Falcon 9, and soon the Falcon Heavy (three Falcon 9s strapped together, essentially, a Falcon 27 if you will).  ALL of this is in furtherance of that plan.  This is a master plan, he's not just saying, oh I can go to the ISS too.

Example.  To make the Dragon crew-worthy, it has to have an escape capacity in case the rocket blows up.  Elon got NASA to pay about $75M for very powerful thrusters on the Dragon (called Super-Draeco's), which are so strong they can burst the Dragon away from the Falcon even during liftoff, in case of trouble.  But if they are strong enough to pull the Dragon away, then they are also strong enough to land it.  Anywhere.  So the same system being funded by NASA as a crew escape system is ALSO the LANDING SYSTEM for landing on hard surface in California... the Moon... Mars... etc.  SpaceX trumpets this.  They have an all-in-one vessel that can land on any hard surface in the solar system.  (Probably Venus is the exception there, for obv reasons.)

 
2 days 19 hours ago i think you missed the point

Government can't afford it, because goverment overpays.  They only think the "NASA way."  Bloated budgets, too much middle-management, and subcontractors in every state to maximize political leverage (which also maximized cost).

Neil Armstrong, first man to walk on the moon and staunch advocate for the Olde Way of doing things, said SpaceX is a mistake because they "dont know what they dont know."

Actually, Neil, you don't know what you don't know.  SpaceX can do it exactly right, but for a tiny percent the cost NASA was spending.  NASA gave SpaceX about $300M... but NASA was spendign $100B on Orion/Ares/Constellation.  You do the math.

Finally, we're getting it right.  Give it to the entrepreneurs and privateers who smell cash (or Mars, in Elon's case) at the end of the rainbow.
2 days 19 hours ago big bux

SpaceX will tell you (as they've told me) that they have run at a profit EVERY YEAR of their existence.

First, they sell commercial launches -- they have a manifest going out about 10 years.  All of Iridium's new fleet will be launched on them, for example.  Argentina's CONAE is using them.  Etc etc.  These customers make ongoing installment payments, and these payments have run ahead of costs.

Second, they have a bunch of investors.  Musk isn't the only one; others have tossed in 9 digits of caysh.  They are all gonna get supermegaultra rich when it goes public someday.  (Which it will.)

Third, merchandising.... all the Lego toys that they are gonna sell... well I just kid about that, but actually, I did tell management they need to look into Lego and toy stores, and it's on their list of to-do's.
1 week 1 day ago STAR CHAMBER!!!!

Committee is the ONLY way to go.  I'm thinking of last year's situation where 11-1 Stanford was in the polls ahead of 11-2 Oregon.  Oregon CRUSHED Stanford 50-something to 30-something.  Oregon had a close loss to USC, whom Stanford barely beat in 3 OT's.  So on a head-to-head, clearly Oregon was the better team than Stanford.  Oregon's lower poll position was due to the fact they had the kajones to schedule LSU ... and get whupped ... whereas Stanford played 4 creampies OOC.

To me, only a Committee can correctly sort out that Oregon, not Stanford, was more deserving of the #4 bid.  And only a Committee might then say, no, neither deserves it -- Oregon deserves it over Stanford, but Oregon had their chance against LSU and got annihilated.  So only a Committee could say, we'd put Boise State or Wisconsin in the #4 spot, based on all those factors.  (To me, with Okie State and Bama in the #2/#3 slots, there was no other obvious #4 given the LSU/Oregon result early in the year; maybe I'm a homer but perhaps Wisconsin sort of proved themselves, although BSU's win over UGa definitely made BSU look good in that slot too.)

The polls failed in getting this right.  And no computer can account for all of those subjective decisions -- you'd never be able to program in every possible scenario.

Every other NCAA championship uses a committee, IIRC.  So there is no reason this should be any different.
1 week 1 day ago there's always hope!!

Hey -- what about Rojo, has he decided yet? I'm still holding my breath....!
1 week 2 days ago life is no accident

That's either (1) meant to tease us endlessly, or (2) a real tidbit of info.  But it's not random -- they didn't just randomly put a face and pose that is totally Denard, with the #1 jersey randomly.
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