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While I obviously agree with you, I find it noteworthy how a whole generation still marks it as a milestone in their lives. And some of their children still fall for it. I've recently met a 24 y.o. PhD (in a non-space area) absolutely enthralled by the Apollo program, which, for all its...

Generally speaking, you have to wait for the death of the founder and then the retirement of his lieutenants. I'd say Musk has at least 10 years and his lieutenants a further 20. This gets you to 2055 minimum. If so, we'll yet see men in on Mars. Edit: fixed my grammar. Certainly don't...

It's a great article, save for Eric's politics defending Boeing and the previous administration. These people were stranded. Their ride was no good. If my car were to break down in the highway, I would be rescued by police, a tow truck, Uber, a good samaritan, or even a nice-looking serial...

Eric, I no longer visit Ars but I do appreciate your tweets about your Ars articles, and you write such good content I come by and read them.

Wikipedia has an article that explains Canadian society decades ago vs. now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-trust_and_low-trust_societies

It was interesting to see the pictures of the cheering Blue Origin workers towards the end of the telecast. They look different

Well, that explains it all.

Good thinking.

Yeah. Is this whole article a CA, IL problem? Here in TN I've never seen a Supercharger with a missing cable.

The Sacketts were middle-class retirees wanting to build a home in a 2/3rds on an acre lot across the street from preexisting waterfront homes. This is what I call "2nd row", i.e., a poverty home, as these things go. The Feds barged in after they were fully permitted and argued their...

Manley's comments are more even than Berger's —unsurprisingly—, and, like Berger's, 100% rational, especially compared to most of the comments here.

These nations have been independent for 60 years. Two generations already. Have they no agency?

Given the foreseeable connectivity and latency issues with this dodo, chances are, embassies will install the government-imposed IRIS service and keep it as backup, and use a cheap Starlink subscription for their day to day. Same principle applies to SOLAS, disasters, and other emergency services.

So, I happen to have thousands of hours of Iridium use. Yes, latency is an issue, as is losing sat view. You can only have perfect sat view if your Iridium antenna has a completely unobstructed view of the sky, 360°. Some people are lucky to have their Iridium antenna atop the Burk Khalifa...

Isaacman, who is 40 years old, only came into substantial cash when his company went public in 2020. Isaacman is only worth a couple of billion. Isaacman is a customer of SpaceX, and is probably not a material shareholder. SpaceX is worth north of 200 billion.

Ahh, but you forget. Elon Musk was a mere millionaire, having only sold a partial interest in PayPal. And in 2009, Musk spent his very last million to keep up SpaceX afloat, after it thrice failed to reach orbit. No billionaires were harmed in the building of SpaceX.

No worries. The most recent 4 Galileo (GPS) sats are up there now courtesy of SpaceX. And the most recent 2 ESA science probes, too. Just like the truly mission-critical European sat communications of 2035 will rely on Starlink to avoid Sovereign data loss and latency, a few Sovereign birds...

Heh. 290 sats vs somewhere between 12,000 and 24,000 for 2030 Starlink. Lose sight of the one sat above you for a few arcminutes and here's your packet loss/retransmit. And the backhaul orbital planes in «medium-Earth orbit [to] several thousand miles» Hello Latency my old friend Europeans...

Bingo. What the Feds' posturing does is ensure that down the line, US military and intelligence will eventually be prosecuted by US enemies. It's all fun and games until some US drone lieutenant who mistakenly bombed a family in Afghanistan gets arrested 10 years from now while visiting...

Cummins never accepted guilt. I hypothesize the software was installed at the factory, enabled the trucks to meet regulations, the Feds didn’t like it, and the Feds extorted a fine.