by moojacob 8 hours ago
Didn’t read the full article but it starts with
> The jet was perhaps the pinnacle of American engineering excellence. Its retirement signals an end to an era of American culture—and ambition.
End of American ambition? SpaceX landing is rockets… today! That’s apples to apples also, both aerospace. In other fields we have literally taught computers how to talk.
The Atlantic writes for its owners as well as its readership, both of whom consider it unsavoury to compliment their homeland without adding multiple caveats.
Considering who the current face of the country is and how we are acting on the world stage, it’s the least they can do.
This is why the right gets away with saying liberals hate America. Because as long as there is anything to criticize about America (which there always will be), some people simply cannot make a single truly positive statement about America, or even things that happened in or came from America.
Slate is even worse than The Atlantic in this regard.
> This is why the right gets away with saying liberals hate America.
This is a form of victim blaming. The right side of American politics gets away with it not because the left complains, but because the right doesn’t get punished at the polls for doing it.
They don’t get punished at the polls because people accept, or are at least willing to entertain the implication, that the left wing dislikes America. And what sense does it make to vote for an unpatriotic politician? Would you want to work for a CEO who publicly disdains the company? (Gil Amelio’s infamous quote about steering the sinking Apple ship comes to mind.)
As long as the Democratic base insists on caveating every American achievement with the Omnicause, it will keep playing into the Gingrichian rhetoric.
I looked up Gil Amelio’s “infamous” quote and it doesn’t seem incorrect given what Apple was going through at the time. Steve Jobs had just sold 1.5 million shares of Apple stock and tanked the stock, would you accuse Steve Jobs of hating Apple?
Toxic positivity is when you can’t criticize something even when it deserves criticism. Is America full of brilliant people? Yes. Is it in a steep decline at the moment? Also yes. Apple thrived because Steve Jobs did a coup and steered the ship. America needs the same, but not from an incompetent nincompoop like the current moron.
Finally the explanation for why the Trump campaign slogan "Keep America Great" resonated so well against that kind of opposition backdrop.
How is this kind of ritual flagellation supposed to mitigate Trump though?
Ironically, it's this ritual self-flagellation that helped elect Trump.
Normies lost faith in the media partly because they were seen as not really loving America. And if you don't trust the media, then it's a lot easier to believe Trump's lies.
> Normies lost faith in the media partly because they were seen as not really loving America.
I would argue they lost faith because the media constantly lies and distorts the truth to promote the ideology of capital. They are elite and disconnected, absolutely, just not in a left wing way, but a corpo-capitalist way (which only looks “left” if you’re to the right of capital).
I agree with you, and I would have expected Ian Bogost to take a more holistic view.
Talking about why, for example, Boeing never build a larger passenger airplane, or why the Concorde is no longer flying, would actually make for an interesting analysis of technology and business.
Why did the progression from the Wright brothers to the 747 not continue for the next fifty years? The answer has to do with physics and economics rather than lack of American ambition or excellence.
> Boeing never build a larger passenger airplane
1. there wasn't demand for one - airliner designs are driven by the customers
2. the airport terminals would have to be rebuilt
3. the runways would have to be redone to support the weight
> why the Concorde is no longer flying
It lost prodigious amounts of money on every flight. The Concorde was a prestige project, not a practical one.
> Why did the progression from the Wright brothers to the 747 not continue for the next fifty years?
The 747 is far more technologically primitive than today's airliners. Take a good close look at the wing shape of the two, for starters.
And that's my point: Your answers are far more interesting than Ian Bogost's throwaway assertion that America just wasn't ambitious enough and that aircraft engineering peaked with the 747.
You could say that engineering excellence at GE (and competition with RR and P&W) led to ETOPS which made it less attractive to simply build larger airplanes with 3+ engines. Why send one 747 per day when you can send multiple A330s or 767s, accommodating more schedules?
I find the whole thing a little odd. The 747 seems to be a great aircraft. It's also a quad jet and the change in regulations for ETOPS makes twinjets a no brainer for reducing cost. There's no reason to hurry and up and get rid of them, many will continue in cargo service for many years. But there isn't any reason to build big quad jets any longer
We might still reach a point in a few decades where capacity constraints at major airports make larger quadjets economically viable again. That was the thesis behind the Airbus A380, and it didn't work. But is it possible that they weren't so much wrong as just too early?
"Didn't work" meaning did not result in 5,000 orders. The aircraft in use by the middle east and asian airlines (and Qantas) are doing fine. They are also less economic than the modern 2 engine widebodies, despite being more economic than a 747 on the same route, with higher comfort levels and less intrusive engine noise.
They just didn't turn out to fit the emerging economics of flight. They "work" fine.
I think what they mean is the A380 never made airbus any money. It makes plenty of money for many airlines
I think they mean work out for airbus. Financially was a huge program disaster. It sold half the number of airframes needed for cost break even in nominal value, before accounting for the cost of capital. This also doesnt account for billions in illegal EU government subsidies.
America is currently leading the way in both commercial aerospace and AI simultaneously. This feels like a decade old article.
[dead]
We've given up on the next generation of technology and choose to wallow in sweet hydrocarbons.
Glad to see your sentiment. I’m so tired of the reflexive self flagellation of a lot of Americans. It’s often based in ignorance.
It is very tiring. I get why Europeans might enjoy taking shots at us (though at one point I'd have said it was more of a good natured ribbing, given that Europe's history is also many Americans' history), and I fully understand the armies of bots spreading invective ... but the constant dogging on America by our own citizens is sad. I'm sure a lot of this outcome is intentional, but nobody fights back.
America is many things, has done many things. Some great, some not so much. Americans themselves should at least be honest about seeing the good parts even if nobody else will admit it. And if we're going to keep progressing forward we need people to be on board in good faith.
/soapbox rant over
Not American but I feel the sentiment. I'm planning to change nationality soon as 'my' own country is also on the same right-wing conservative track. I'm not interested in making things better anymore. I just want to break with them forever. They deserve no more admiration or loyalty.
I don't believe in national pride or even of sports teams. My loyalty is always conditional, as long as my ethics align.
I can imagine some Americans feel that way too.
Yes, some people have that viewpoint. Very transactional. I think there was a time when I might have agreed. But as I have gotten older I've gained more of an appreciation for shared mythology and how it promotes social cohesion.
Historically in many places religion has been a primary source of shared mythology. In America, despite prominent Christian religions, a strong historical shared mythology has been of our own founding. It does not matter that it is myth, it matters that it is shared.
What I want is when an American citizen goes into that theater at the US House of Representatives before the tour and watches the short film about the founding of the country, they should come out of it damn near shedding tears of pride in how great we are. Bullshit or not, the American Creed is a source of unity. That is failing, and I am sad to see it.
When everyone becomes strictly transactional, society has failed.
To me it's really because they have broken that promise. Governments take advantage of that cohesion. It's not really because of the transactionality to my benefit but just because what they stand for is a net negative for society and the world.
Consider the military. Few wars are actually worth giving one's life for. Since 1945 basically none. If the Communists had won in Vietnam nothing would have happened to America. Iraq was based on false pretenses, Afghanistan accomplished absolutely nothing. My own country was part of some of these misguided adventures and has some of its own wars where it definitely was the evil aggressor.
Or think of the Nazis who exploited the very concept of this nationalism to destroy half the world.
So no. I do think it helps social cohesion but when a state is using that cohesion for evil it does not deserve to be followed.
I think we should outgrow this petty follow the leader attitude and think for ourselves.
Agreed. A lot of my countrymen have forgotten that America generally kicks ass, it's sad to see.
The most interesting thing about SpaceX is how it convinced a lot of otherwise sober people that data centers in space was a $50 septillion addressable market. You might laugh and think I’m joking but a lot of people seriously fell for the nonsense in the public filing, which should’ve been a one way ticket to SEC jail.
When the first transcontinental railroad was proposed and being built, it was beset with controversy and skepticism.
But when it opened, it exceeded the wildest expectations of its most optimistic boosters. It transformed the country overnight.
A similar thing happened with the first transatlantic cable.
Transcontinental railroads weren't fighting against physics.
There's a reason people are pretty sure it won't work and it's not the difficulty of getting them into space or maintening them space or generally protecting them from space. Of course, those are all considerations as well. No, it's the cooling.
https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horri...
The Union Pacific Railroad (the eastern half of the transcontinental railroad) also caused the financial crisis of 1873 (due to construction costs and various corruption and bribery around financing them). It then went bankrupt in 1893.
So, yes, it transformed the country. That didn't necessarily benefit the stockholders and bondholders.
1. It finished the railroad in 1869. 1873 was four years later. 1893 was 24 years later - a generation.
2. Check out "Nothing Like It in the World" by Ambrose.
Let’s revisit this comment in 5 years. I’m not convinced HN critics know more about this than SpaceX does.
What I find silly is the certainty that critics have that SpaceX will fail.
No one can predict the future, and it's absolutely possible that orbital datacenters will fail (either for technology or business reasons).
But:
1. Without a time machine, we cannot be certain.
2. If forced to choose, I would rather root for their success and be wrong than root for their failure and be right.
What I find silly is the certainty that critics have that SpaceX will fail.
When I started my own business, everyone thought it was doomed to failure. Friends, enemies, acquaintances, all of them.
Except my dad. He believed in me, though he had no idea what I was doing.
Musk is in good company with the crazy people who build the first tunnel under the Thames, the nuts who laid the first transatlantic people, the morons who dug the Panama Canal, and the fools who built the first transcontinental railroad.
Me, I bought me some SPCX.
A bit strange that you started you comment with the exact same sentence as the previous commenter.
They're just quoting it but typo'ed the >
I was confused at first too.
Yup. I've done that before.
Unless SpaceX knows something about thermodynamics that no one else knows, we can be pretty fucking sure that they have an incompetent mouthpiece or they are committing securities fraud.
I'm not sure I get it. Obviously, computers can work in space--a Starlink satellite is basically a computer with a radio attached. Satellites use radiators for cooling without violating any laws of physics.
I assume you think that SpaceX will never be able to build/deploy a radiator big enough? But that's not a physics/thermodynamics question, that's an engineering question. And I think SpaceX has some pretty good engineers.
Help me out and tell me how you can be so sure it will never work.
You could also launch people from LA to NYC via rockets instead of using airplanes without violating any laws of physics. But we don’t, because we have airplanes already. What problem are data centers in space solving? Cooling is probably the hardest issue to deal with for data centers, so why would you give up convective cooling you get for free on Earth?
I don’t know why you’re jumping from starlink to data centers in space. The utility of satellite internet has been known for decades before Starlink came around.
That's a different argument.
You agree that space data centers are physically possible, but you just don't think they will be economical (i.e., cheaper than terrestrial data centers). Is that right?
I don't know if they will be economical. But that will depend on a whole bunch of questions that nobody knows the answer to: How will the demand for AI grow? How much will opposition to terrestrial data centers increase the price? How cheaply can SpaceX launch mass? How cheaply can SpaceX build data center satelliters?
Maybe you know all those answers. If so, I envy your stock portfolio.