this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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GenZedong

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[–] DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml 62 points 10 months ago (2 children)

...some of the best engineers in the world trying to build an impossible thing.

Something tells me that these were not in fact, the best engineers in the world if they knew a project was impossible and tried to make it anyway. I feel like the "best" engineers in the world would try and make things that are actually practical and possible in our reality.

[–] redtea@lemmygrad.ml 44 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Rather than looking at trains and thinking, if we build those we can sell tickets, they looked at shareholders and the government and thought, I bet we could fleece them. We're seeing the military effects of this, too, with neoliberales looking shocked as to why more and more funding doesn't automatically equal more and more armaments. Commodity production detached from anything with the use value that makes the commodity a commodity.

I think the practical is the most important factor, here. It's hard to know how one of the world's richest billionaires can get so deep into a project that has an exchange value but no use value. This is what happens when imperialists dismiss productive capital, and become parasitic on government grants, defrauded shareholders, and asset stripping. It was the same with crypto and nfts.

[–] mughaloid@lemmygrad.ml 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

it is because as Vijay Prashad said US billionaires hid their monies in illicit tax havens in UK and EU. And there is no state control to put those monies back into infrastructure but Elon musk sure have his pet projects like Mars colonization and Hyperloopy , I mean why not Elon and military industrial complex don't get why ordinary people need food and stuff.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Musk's "Mars colonization" project will end up the exact same way as his "hyperloop". One day it will simply and quietly be declared dead and everyone will forget about it. (Meanwhile China and Russia will be building a moon base together.)

[–] mughaloid@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I bet his reusable rocket also doesn't have any future.

[–] Hexbear2@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago

Rockets have always been a dead-end technology. Humanity will never get to the next step in space race, which is economical mineral mining of the asteroid belt, until the world unites and builds a space port in Peru. The very best place to launch is at the equator (fastest angular velocity) at the highest mountain--Basically, somewhere in the Andes. The way to do it is to build a tube up the side of a mountain, make it miles long, and use electromagnetic rails to accelerate the space capsule, it cuts the cost of launch by 99%. This will allow payloads to be launched and for space assembly of larger modules to go do asteroid mining. NASA has known this is the future for decades now, but instead of doing this, we have shitty rocket 1960s technology from Elon Musk. I hate him.

More on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarTram

[–] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Well, to be fair, the hyperloop was in many respects a fraud used to test out technology intended for Mars (like boring). That said, I think Mars is the pie in the sky that Musk will never abandon while he is still pitching projects to rubes because it is so much easier to "postpone" than civilian infrastructure

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 17 points 10 months ago

Thats just self-patting his back lol.