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@geneva_convenience It’s exactly the same that also happened several years ago between the US and the EU concerning civil planes. Here Boeing and Airbus compete against each other - and the US had the assumption, that the EU subsidized Airbus so that Boeing couldn’t compete. Because of that the US thought about tariffs that would have countered this.

@yogthos @gomp It’s the capitalist textbook example, to conquer a market by undercutting prices and to crush competition in that market that cannot compete - and to later increase prices when there is no more competition. You can see this all over the world, not only with China and EVs, but also for example with Uber and the taxi business or Europe with their food exports to poorer countries outside the EU.

@yogthos @geneva_convenience These tariff rates are calculated on a per manufacturer basis based on the subsidiaries that these manufacturers receive from their country. So it just restores the competition.

@schizoidman AliExpress already has got 2TB SD cards for 5 dollars, I guess soon you will be able to buy 4 TB from there for the same price as well 😁

(Never ever buy them from there!)

@yogthos And then the upper stage blew up, creating a debris field of more than 700 objects that now threatens satellites in the same orbit:
reuters.com/technology/space/c…

China has a really bad track record with their stages. They have launch sites where they drop the first stages on land - sometimes hitting or almost hitting villages (which is really bad as many of these stages use toxic propellants). Their upper stages re-enter the atmosphere in an uncontrolled way (most other rocket launchers do this in a controlled way and let them re-enter at “Point Nemo”).

@davel @merde Europe has got several fusion test plants: euro-fusion.org/

@IllNess @Grass My X230 is now more than 10 years old. At some point in time I will need to replace it. Then a Framework device would be the best choice - but only when they improve the keyboard or there are third party keyboards that better match my needs.

@IllNess @schizoidman I’m looking forward to alternate keyboards. When I tested a Framework device, I had the impression that the keyboard had been a linear one. I made the experience, that I need a tactile keyboard.

@Hirom With “offsite” I mean either a different cloud provider or own hardware (if you hold your regular data at some cloud provider, like in this case).

@Moonrise2473 Regardless of one thinks about “cloud” solutions, this is a good example, why you always should have an offsite backup.

@yogthos Well, I’ve got the opinion, that infrastructure shouldn’t be operated for profit, so I’ve got no problem with investing a lot of money in advance. My points are meant from a technical standpoint. And when I refer to the costs, then I mean this in a way that I’ve got the opinion that the money should be invested in other stuff as well.

@yogthos I’m not living in the US, neither I’m a fan of most of their politics. So I definitely won’t defend them.

@yogthos Which people said that about high speed rail? The country I’m living in has got high speed rail since the 90s. See also Japan or France (and some other countries).

@yogthos I now had more time to look into the article. The whole article is focused solely on the electromagnet technology. From here it refers to some other technology that uses electromagnet acceleration like Musk’s fever dream “Hyperloop” and sea carrier catapults while in the end making a reference to orbital launch costs.

Thing is: It simply doesn’t make sense. Neither in point-to-point transportation nor in space launch activities this would work out, since you could reach only a single orbital plane or flight direction. To reach more than one point or orbit, you would need to have a lot of these systems, which then would result in really high operational costs.

However, this technology is fine for a highly improved land based transportation method, especially for China, which is the forth biggest country (behind Russia, Canada and the USA).

@yogthos The articles ends in “While SpaceX’s reusable rockets have slashed satellite launch costs to US$3,000/kg, some scientists have estimated that an electromagnetic space launch system could drive those costs down to a mere US$60/kg.”

This is a comparison to a launch into an orbit.

@yogthos I’m a space nerd, so I’m always happy to see advancements in this area. I’m no “the west is the best” guy. I’m also a fan of the Indian space program. They achieve great stuff with an astonishing low budget. And I really hope that they will launch people into space in a not so distant future.

Also I think that it is a real shame, that there is this aggressive competition in space. I would love to see all the nations cooperate in a common space program, like it had already been done, when the ISS had been built.

China is launching a lot of rockets into space. They only should stop their launches from Jiuquan, Xichang or Taiyuan, since from there they have to drop their first stages onto land in areas where people live.

@goatsarah BTW: This sounds like a super sized “Spinlaunch” in my ears - which also has got a lot of technical difficulties.

@yogthos Well, this whole article sounds like a lot of propaganda without any real facts to me.

@yogthos So the system just accelerates to Mach 1.6, then the system had to use its own fuel to speed up to just Mach 7. But Mach 7 is just a fraction of the needed velocity to get into orbit. Mach 7 is around 8,500 km/h. But you need 25,000 km/h to stay in orbit. So you need an additional stage to accelerate to that speed. And that stage would had to be expendable, otherwise you couldn’t carry enough payload.

Still you can only reach a single orbit. To reach another orbital plane, you then would had to use a lot of additional propellant to perform a dogleg maneuver to switch to a different plane.

BTW: This whole idea reminds me of SpinLaunch. Prototypes are already built by the U.S. based company with the same name. They want to accelerate small launchers in a vacuum chamber, so that in the end they can carry up to 300kg in a low earth orbit.

@yogthos I don’t need that video for that. I’m interested in that topic for many years, means that I know enough physics to understand the problems behind that. I’m able to use the appropriate formulas for stuff like acceleration. Also I know how to perform proper research. And with this I don’t mean “Youtube”.