An estimated 2+ million users by the end of the year is really impressive. Who knows what their breakeven point is given how much they're launching and all the hardware investments, but $3+ billion of revenue this year has to feel good.
For incandescent lightbulbs, his point was that bulbs can burn fast and bright or low and slow, and standardizing on a lifespan of 1000 hours was a sweet spot between performance and longevity. For example, it makes 60W bulbs from different manufacturers more interchangeable and less prone to tricky marketing gimmicks like a "long life" 60W bulb that's dimmer.
Too many people buy big dumb cars. With 0 mass transit, you can do just about everything in a Civic, then rent a Home Depot truck once a year for that one big load of plywood. People buying pristine brodozer pickups that don't fit in their garage and emotional support suv tanks need to be force fed more reasons to not be part of the problem.
On the EV point specifically- big EVs are bad, too. They're still spraying tire particulate, and their high weight is more dangerous for pedestrians, small cars, bikes, kids, etc.
Rocket Lab has a cool niche with this launch. They're sending the customer payload to a 640-kilometer mid-inclination orbit, which would be a little annoying to transfer over to from a general-purpose rideshare mission.
I hear the Xodus has begun and the bird site is slowly being Xpunged
There hasn't been much movement to Mastodon this time compared to when the rate limiting was going on. It looks like there was a decent new user spike yesterday, but the rate limit thing caused a big sustained increase for days.
There are so many ways to dunk on him lately that I don't think there's a need to misrepresent this stuff. I think we can give him some flowers for being neck deep in the Tesla Roadster and SpaceX Falcon 1 design and release processes almost 20 years ago. But, then he did a Pokemon evolution from that baseline crazy to whatever we're seeing now.
There's a lot to dig into here, but I'll just pick out one thing for now:
% of US adults who think private space companies are doing a mostly ____ at each of the following:
Limiting debris in space...: 26% bad job, 21% good job, 53% not sure
For what it's worth, Starlink satellites and most little constellations are being launched to low earth orbit and will deorbit naturally in around 5 years. The same goes for the rocket 2nd stages that launched them.
I'd be on board with deorbit bounties and a system like carbon credits that funds them. Most of what's getting launched shouldn't be a big concern, though.
One of the jobs that I worked for awhile had a bunch of old timers waiting for their pensions to be ready and newer people who only lasted a few years, with basically nobody in between. The old timers seemed weirdly surprised that everyone who didn't have the same heritage/grandfathered in incentives and benefits didn't want to stick around. I got to watch the tail end of the transition from the old engineer-run company that all the old guys talked about, to one run by beancounters who stiffed people on raises, bonuses, and promotions when times were good, and had plenty of layoffs when times dropped to ok. Thanks Jack Welch. I left pretty much right after my 401k match was fully vested.
Banning plastic bags was a battle that went nowhere without a good alternative
What do you mean? By me in Denver, the 10¢ plastic bag fee had hiccups for a week until people remembered to bring their own. Some people still pay for plastic, some stores sell reusable bags by the checkouts for $1, and a lot of people bring their own.
Long term experiments at Lunar and Martian gravity would be really interesting, especially if an early Martian crew might stay for a full 2ish year cycle.
I'm sure the potatoes would appreciate it