eppo retweeted
China has clearly noted the fact that WW2 didn't end until the combined bombing offensive focused on and destroyed the Axis powers' oil supplies. The war was unwinnable for Germany and Japan from mid 1942 on the basis of industrial production, but both had sufficient raw materials stockpiled to maintain production of weapons until about 1947. But in 1944, their oil supply was finally strangled and their war effort collapsed within months.
China is currently far ahead on industrial production and maximizing the rate of the on-shoring of their energy production.
Today, anyone could shut down the Straits of Malacca. By 2030, China will no longer depend on it. With enough solar power, they can internalize mass production of energy, oil, silicon, metals, and everything else they could possibly need.
The US easily has the financial power to buy all the production of Chinese solar factories and deploy them in the US, to ensure our children have near infinite free energy. But we've decided to privilege the aesthetic value of 200 million acres of featureless lifeless uninhabitable desert over ensuring that American values ensure freedom for humanity in the eternal future light cone.
What's the plan here? Just hand the next millennium to China on a silver platter?
eppo retweeted
Pretty incredible to get this kind of footage from the extreme environment of reentry. Appreciate the transparency--and bringing us space enthusiasts along through the highs and lows of a test program.
Some may focus on the lows, but behind the efforts of Starship--and other programs like New Glenn, Neutron, Vulcan, Terran, Stoke, etc--is a massive space economy taking shape: tens of thousands of jobs, billions in private investment, all aimed at truly opening the last great frontier. When these capabilities arrive, they will spearhead a new era of exploration and discovery--and the lows will become a chapter in a much longer story.
eppo retweeted
Asteroids are nature’s way of asking, “How’s that space program coming along?”
eppo retweeted
The United States is 4% of the world using 15% of its energy to produce 26% of the world's good's and services
I’d much rather run an industrial chaebol/zaibatsu and be worth $100m than run a slop SaaS/ads company and be worth $50bn
At any give time there is a ‘backlog’ of tech where the basic research has been done but commercialization hasn’t yet happened.
Has anyone done a good job of mapping this space? I wonder how our backlog looks compared to past decades.
Crazy how even our densest cities are teeming with plant and animal life. I wonder how long it would take new york to get swallowed by forest
The anthropocene as a mass extinction event is one of the greatest shames on our species, but mother earth is fucking resilient
