The individual Falcon turn-around is slow (months of refurb), and the record half-month ones swapped some engines. B1067's 30-reuse is a ship of Theseus rebuilt over 4+ years.
Feh, swapping engine is not an option for the first few initial Mars trips, unless its payload also contains engines (can't imagine the scissor-lift payload either that needs to go with).
The head of SDI formed the Mars Society with Zubrin. He was originally going to run SpaceX as Chief Engineer (cite: Liftoff) but he instead got appointed NASA admin and directed the first few $billion to a zero-experience SpaceX. This same SDI head then formed something called SDA in 2017 under Trump which is the platform for Golden Dome, or "the SDI 2.0".
This is a multi-trillion dollar program which only Musk has been awarded contracts (as of Nov 2025) and involves the total weaponization of space.
The US space industry isn't that big. The same people are all over the place and many have been in the industry for many, many decades and had many positions. And many of the people interested in Mars are also interested in space in general and in military space in general, this isn't surprising.
When SpaceX got started, clearly with the focus on Mars he tried to pick up well known experts. Griffin among them, again this isn't surprising. And when SpaceX did that it was not at all clear that Griffin would be able to be NASA Administrator. And because Griffin as a very opinionated person he didn't get along super well with Musk and instead went to In-Q-Tel. But he knew that SpaceX was serious and Musk had the financed to put more money into SpaceX then most other companies.
Also you will see the Griffin was also at Orbital Sciences as CEO. So he had some links to both competitors in the COTS competition and likely knew or worked with many others over his career.
And if you do the research on COTS instead of just saying 'directed the first few $billion to a zero-experience SpaceX' is just a major oversimplification. COTS started by other people inside NASA who were sick of the old practices.
The first round of COTS were selected May 2006. SpaceX launched the first Falcon 1 in March 24, 2006. So during COTS SpaceX was not some 'nobody' company, NASA was aware of them and while today 'private company close to launching Orbital rocket' isn't impressive anymore, back then it was very much so. SpaceX had done more already then many other companies in the competition.
Also, if you know anything about NASA processes, the Administrator can not just 'pick' whoever he wants. There is process that is guided by lots of requirements and so on. Unless you have any actual evidence that this process was somehow corrupt and that Griffin conspired to give money to SpaceX above everybody, then you better show some evidence for that. And 'worked for few month with Musk' isn't evidence. And in fact SpaceX was selected because many of the NASA people who did the selection were impressed with SpaceX as many have talked about in interviews over the years.
Given that SpaceX was selected and was successful, its hard to argue that NASA made the wrong choice. NASA selected 3, SpaceX, Kistler and Orbital, and 2 of those were successful. So it seems the program wasn't run by idiots.
Literally the whole 'evidence' for 'theory' is Mike Griffin likes missile defense and he has been in the Space industry for many, many decades and knows everybody. That's it, that's your evidence. Griffin and others like him never made secret of what they wanted. That doesn't mean that when he worked at NASA missile defense was the only thing he ever thought about and that all his actions at NASA were only with the singular goal of missile defense.
If you want to make the argument that orbital missile defense is a bad idea, that's fine, you don't need need to make up a bunch of conspiracy theory where non exists. You just make yourself look silly.
Actually I recall their were a number of anomalies with Griffin's contracts at NASA. It was widely reported he was chasing away the bigger companies from the COTS program he formed. Saying himself that he assigned the decision-making to Doc Horowitz... Mike Griffin, Doc Horowitz and Elon Musk were close friends and the most prominent founding members of the Mars Society other than Zubrin. In the end all the money went to Griffin's own small company Orbital and Musk's newfound SpaceX.
It was well known in those circles that Mars Society leadership was from Team B and Citizens' Advisory Council (which were the two groups that originally conceived Reagan's SDI, the Golden Dome predecessor). Max Hunter was the force behind reusable rockets with the DC-X. As mentioned, Griffin was effectively SpaceX's early chief engineer leading the guys he poached from the nearby McDonald Douglass Huntington Beach DC-X site (Chris Thompson, Tim Buzza, John Garvey, etc..) The other half of the DC-X team went to Blue Origin of course.
Funny how well the Mars mania took hold and people forget this basic history. It's the only way to make heads or tails of what's going on with Elon these days. He truly believes in SDI, but God help us all if he's in charge of it. It was recently reported he wanted to make Golden Dome a subscription service!
>> I have several hundred [four leaf clovers]. I even have a few five-leaf clovers and a couple of sixers!
That doesn't fit the ratios in my experience.. I find about 1 five-leaf for every 5 four-leafers. They should have nearly 100 five leafers, not merely "a few".
The link suggests that we expect to see 100:1 four-leaf to six-leaf ratio, but in that one patch I found about a 4:1 ratio. I think it is very plausible that different lineages and/or different environmental conditions could cause wildly varying numbers.
We’re starting with the “Quad” tile — a 4 Tx × 4 Rx SDR designed for arraying — and expect to ship the first units toward the end of this year. They're actually quite capable as a standalone SDR. A Quad can interface directly with a Raspberry Pi 5, and we’ve built a combined enclosure for the SDR + Pi setup. You can run SDR software locally on the Pi or stream IQ samples over gigabit Ethernet to a remote PC.
Software support includes GNU Radio, Pothos SDR, and just about any tool compatible with SoapySDR. We’re also doing some fun demos, like visualizing Wi-Fi signal sources in real time ("Wi-Fi camera") and performing mm-scale 3D localization—a prerequisite for the automatic array calibration.
Larger arrays are assembled by simply tiling these Quads into an aluminum/PCB lattice framework, enabling anything from compact 4-antenna MIMO nodes up to 240-element lunar-bounce arrays. The goal is to have full phased-array capability by March 2026.
The broader vision behind open.space
is to make advanced RF and space-communications hardware open and accessible—so anyone can experiment with technologies once limited to national labs: moon-bounce (EME) links, satellite reception, terrestrial RF imaging.
Happy to answer questions here.
One thing I'm excited about getting working is mobile moon bounce!
Great question, the latest version has Tx RHCP, and then Rx either LHCP or RHCP controlled with RF switches (in each antenna). This allows point to point links (where the Tx pol and Rx pol should be the same), or "bounce links" where the circular polarization flips with the bounce. I should note RHCP Rx has a bit worse noise figure (LNA is different) but good enough for any line of sight.
There are ten 640 MSPS ADCs (I+Q per channel and a cal path, per 4-antenna PCB tile). These are custom MASH ΣΔ designs built from discrete diff pair transistors (cost about $0.08 each) and do noise shaping/decimation to get a clean 50 MHz of baseband bandwidth. The 8x DACs are also ΣΔ, using the LVDS pins of the FPGA and some modulating DSP. Mixers are MAX2850/1, LNA are custom design based on Infineon transistor, and RFPA is a Skyworks part meant for WiFi (have iterated on a few model numbers).
> “Giorgio Licciardi, an expert on collecting hyperspectral data from orbit at the Italian Space Agency, in Rome, says the technology even detects buried anti-tank mines. (Soil on top of them is typically drier.)”
Maybe in a controlled setting they can detect mines, but there are plenty of other reasons for dry soil, i.e. hard to detect consistently without false positives. For tank camouflage that's all you need, something that blends in with false positives.
I'm already imaging the integrated helmet AR HUD, with a (remote-operated) switch that just appends "in the style of Pyro's hallucinations in Team Fortress 2" to the prompt for the transformer sitting between your eyes and the helmet cams...
> IIRC, the Bradley got armour because it looked too much like a tank and that made it a more valuable target.
They have meaningful armor because they're actually IFVs (Infantry Fighting Vehicles), not plain APCs, they're designed so the soldiers can fight from inside them, which is hard to do from inside Swiss cheese.
> Isn’t targeting APCs considered a faux pas in war, a little less bad than hitting an ambulance, but still not nice?
No, there's no military on Earth that's going to let the enemy peacefully transport their soldiers around in APCs if they can help it.
SMS was more reliable for delivery with poor cellular connections, and many people learned to use it for that reason. The US (had) many rural areas with poor reception. So maybe that plays into it?
That theory would seem disproved by Mexico which is also pretty rural, but I believe their cell infrastructure sprung up pretty quickly and later than the US so "old school" sms didn't get the same traction.
Giving LLM the ability to query other services like Google should solve much of this. For example ChatGPT can be initialized to be told it can output commands like "QUERY_GOOGLE:What is the current time?" and get Google's response, which it can incorporate. You can actually do this yourself and prove it works by performing the Google search for ChatGPT.
You have to understand that after the cultural revolution, most all Chinese understand that internal rebellion can be very bad (leading to mass famine and death). Hence they largely support strong government regulation, even on speech. Americans think individual independence is a noble "Western value" because the Revolutionary War worked out fine for us. But these experiences each lead to biased extrapolations from the past. For the future, the specific conditions matter for individualism versus collectivism.. on which is the better path.
Arguably a more Chinese-style philosophy is prudent now as the world becomes a smaller place. Chinese people have sustained for thousands of years on the same land, without needing to rely on continuously invading new territory. Now the whole Earth is settled, we need to learn how to live together. Not that China is perfect, but we certainly have much to teach each other, and the Chinese have been the better listener so far.
That ignores the massive expansion into Central Asia (Tibet, Turkestan, Badhkashan, Altai), Mongolia, Borneo, the Yenisei Basin, Yunnan, Kachin, the Miao/Viet/Tai/Hmong frontier, and Formosa/Taiwan that the Qing Dynasty (which itself is Manchu, not Han) lead. Modern China is very much a reflection of that mass expansion.
Also, Chinese are not homogenous. Ignoring the 20th century Han social construct, there have always been distinct ethnic and cultural differences among differing "Chinese" ethnic groups like Cantonese, Teochew, Hokkien, Hakka, Guangzhong, etc that were erased during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Except CCP/PRC resolved 12/14 land border disputes inherited from ROC, most of which involved ceding more territory during settlement. That's the opposite of expansion, and TBF hard to find another country that has voluntarily ceded more land under bilateral negotiations. PRC territory literally contracted under westphalian framework that these narratives are measured against.
No offense but I think you are completely ignoring the intent of my comment. I am not talking about post-Xinhai Revolution China. I am just showing that the idea of stable singular borders within the modern concept of "China" are a newish construct - new in the sense that it's not some 2,000 year old history but a result of the expansion that the Qing Dynasty, and that the idea of a singular "Han" or Putonghua speaking ethnicity are a social construct that was developed in the 20th century.
Also, if you want to go the route that you are arguing, then there's a reason why Mongolia, Tibet, East Turkestan, etc fought for differing levels of sovereignity in post-Xinhai China, or that ethnic Manchus made a faustian pact with the Japanese occupation to create Manchuko. Ironically, Mao and Zhou Enlai were much more open to minorities compared to post-1980s PRC politicans.
But then again, why am I arguing with a sock puppet account based on your comment history. Either you are a very hypernationalistic commentator, or an astroturfer at worst. @Dang, thoughts about the paradox of tolerance?
Within "core" China yes, but that was questionable tbh. Most borders for nations before the 19th century are more hypothetical than reality. Without innovations like the telegraph, railroad, canned goods, etc, power projection outside of a core area was heavily hypothetical.
Hell, at one point in the late 18th and early 19th century, the village my family is from would have technically been Qing AND Sikh AND Dogra. Borders are artificial constructs that have historically been more fantasy than reality (at least until the late 19th to mid 20th century)
I don't really find their modern day philosophy (in terms of a society/country) all that enlightening. The earth is full so we should tolerate governments like the CCP/CPC? China's style of government is dysfunctional and dystopian, not prudent.
From my viewpoint China never expanded not because they were chill people, they could not even repel foreign invaders, let alone expand an empire.
Totally agree we should work together on this planet, but with a dictator like Xi in power that wont happen.
> The earth is full so we should tolerate governments like the CCP/CPC?
Careful with that kind of rhetorics. The world may start asking the same question regarding the 15% of world's population who act like they are the enlightened masters of the world questioning whether they should "tolerate" something on the other side of the globe.
Even now there isn't much tolerance towards American or French governments, who actually do evil shit far from their national borders.
> Totally agree we should work together on this planet, but with a dictator like Xi in power that wont happen.
Meh, how about instead each of us minds our OWN business? There is no way one can be actually responsible about things one is not accountable for.
Afghanistan is a perfect illustration of that - not just recent evacuation while leaving a shit ton of modern weapons, but all the way back to the days when the US had been nurturing mujahideen to create problems for the Soviet Union, which gave the rise of what we now know as islamic fundamentalist extremism (Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS and such)
> Chinese culture has sustained for thousands of years on the same land, without needing to rely on invading new territory.
You should probably brush up on your asian history - there was incredible amount of conquest wars in what became modern China with casualties rivaled only by ww1/2
I very much prefer living in a country where I can go where I want without asking to government or say almost what I want without risking to go an education camp. So no thank you, current chinese is not my way and never will.
It's ironic to criticize the way the Chinese handled terrorism concerns against Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, when the US War on Terror didn't just dehumanize and supress American Muslims-- it killed about 1 million people across the globe.
This is a case of "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"
We can all criticize Xinjiang, but not to justify cultural superiority, if anything it works the other way.
Where did I say my culture is superior? I'm talking about individual freedom and my preference about it, nothing else. I prefer to be a free individual.
So please don't change topic.
"Genghis Khan himself was technically not ethnic Han, but he and mainly his successors saw themselves as legitimate Chinese emperors by establishing the Yuan Dynasty."
I guess you can try to argue some kind of blood purity, but I suspect you'll find yourself in bad company rather quickly on that one...
Just to be clear, and correct me if I'm wrong: is your argument that because China's acquisition of territory amounts to a small percentage of their previous territory in quantity, that it is not something serious?
Does that mean that the China's intended colonization of Taiwan (in China's constitution), of which its territory is approximately 0.4% the size of China's current territory, would not be something serious?
I'd appreciate a bit of clarity on exactly what you're arguing here.
I find this perspective pretty amusing. The United States is in fact more than 3 times older than China (i.e. the PRC). The idea that modern China is wise because its ancestors were ruled by Chinese emperors seems to me basically the same as saying the west is wise because its ancestors ruled by Roman emperors. But I guess historical myths and culture are quite powerful ideas for many people.
This is the same logic hawkish American Republicans use when they say they are defending Western Values against the Chinese. What are those values? Where do they come from? Most rural Americans from Alabama who say these things haven't been to England or Germany, and if they did, they sure wouldn't recognize "their culture". Heck, they don't even need to travel to Europe.. try NYC!
Five surveys of Chinese citizens, netizens, and elites help illuminate the attitudes that the Chinese government grapples with in managing international security policy. The results suggest that Chinese attitudes are more hawkish than dovish and that younger Chinese, while perhaps not more nationalist in identity, may be more hawkish in their foreign policy beliefs than older generations.
The Europeans are not obsessed with taking down China, nor are Europeans ardent individualists as Americans are. Chinese and America have a bigger cultural gap than Europe and China in this respect.
As a Chinese-speaking European, I'm getting the impression that you're using faraway places you know little about as convenient projection surfaces for an ideal contrast with the things you dislike about America.
Dislike of America's recent history of conquest turns thousands of years of warfare on what is now Chinese territory into thousands of years of living on the same land without any invasions.
Dislike of American individualism turns Europeans into... I'm actually not sure whether you associate any specific qualities with not being ardent individualists.
Anyways, I'm quite annoyed by this, so consider yourself officially taken down.
Of course generalizing like this about groups is a cloudy lens at best but it's the premise of OP and may predict voted policy of respective countries.
