The issue, politically and for the public, is not so much nuclear for space travel, it's launching it into space, IMHO. I don't think anyone cares too much if you say that you will use nukes to accelerate your spaceship to Mars (as long as they can trust that this is indeed what you are doing) until you say that this means you will need to build those nukes on Earth and, especially, to load them onto rockets to launch them into space because what happens if it crashes or explodes?
> Why did he ignore his obligation to build a lunar lander, having been paid to do that?
Didn't know about that. That's good insight.
"An uncrewed test flight was planned for 2025 to demonstrate a successful landing on the Moon which has since been delayed. Following that test, a crewed flight is expected to occur as part of the Artemis III mission, no earlier than mid-2027.[3] NASA later contracted for an upgraded version of Starship HLS to be used on the Artemis IV mission." [1]
To live on Mars requires a level of autonomy and self-sufficiency that I don't think we know how to do.
On the Moon we can learn but we have softer requirements, and we can still have near real time comms. Anything further and it's "you're alone, no-one can help you, no-one will even hear you in case of emergency". Faster transportation isn't going to fundamentally change that unless it's near Star Trek level.
IMHO, the rocket is just a small part of the problem.
Thanks for the insight. I mostly agree but I guess there are many humans on Earth that live without help available within a few hours, for example sailors in international seas.
Even traveling abroad in a developed country carries some risks, if you have some medical issue and are unable to explain yourself because of lack of medical vocabulary, the consequences may be dire.
While true, I think you're underestimating the extra difficultly of space here.
Mars is colder than Antarctica, drier than the Sahara, has an air pressure much much closer to vacuum than it is to even the top of Mt Everest (and a quarter of it condenses each Martian winter), the air it does have is 95% CO2 and 0.174% oxygen, the soil is as polluted as a superfund* cleanup site, the sunlight is at best 50% of the Moon's due to distance from the sun but planet-spanning dust storms can reduce that, because of the lack of free oxygen there's no free ozone layer and combined with the thin atmosphere in general it has higher ionising surface radiation despite the lower sunlight, and the return time to Earth even for nice options like VASIMR** are 39 days in the best launch window.
To give a toy example: If the water supply suffers a catastrophic loss, everyone dies in almost all circumstances before being able to get help (even if we had/when we get working VASIMR solutions at this scale, right now most discussions assume much slower and more delta-v-efficient Hohmann transfer orbits).
Same incident happens on the moon, emergency evacuation or resupply is possible before death by dehydration.
To get back to Earth from Mars with that kind of time constraint, we'd need an engine that can sustain close to 1g acceleration for about 2 days at closest approach; at maximum separation, unless I've messed up the formula, 1g would still take 4.7 days (with mid-point flip for deceleration). Basically, mytailorisrich is correct to describe this as needing "near Star Trek level" tech, because the closest we have to an inertial dampener right now is a very big magnet pushing on the water inside our bodies***.
** Claim I last heard was 39 days for a 200 megawatt reactor "with a power-to-mass density of 1,000 watts per kilogram", the good news is we can almost do that power-to-mass density with PV after accounting for Mars-gets-less-sun: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/10/25/276652...
*** The difficulty of making this useful is comparable to the difficulty of launching a spaceship with a big magnet on the ship that pushes against Earth's own magnetic field.
As I recall from last time I did the maths, if you did it with copper, the copper would boil before you did much useful.
The problem is that open-source projects funded by the taxpayer bring nothing long term to create companies that can compete or generate economic growth or develop future industries. They would be much better off creating a more business friendly environment and supporting private businesses through grants, procurements, etc the way the US are good at.
This comment misses the point and argues against something unrelated. It's fundamentally a data sovereignty and security move, not a commercial one.
It's neither pro or anti business. This or "creating a more business friendly environment" policies is a false dichotomy. That could be done too via other means. It is unrelated. Speaking about this "business friendly" only is either misdirection or myopic.
You seem to be arguing for the sake of argument while avoiding the substance of my point by discarding it as "unrelated" while it is fundamentally on point.
If the aim is indeed sovereignty, data and software (and this is software not data), and in general, then they need an effective and comprehensive plan. I think taxpayer-funded state-developed open-source software brings very little at a high cost and can even be counter-productive. Frankly I think it is apolitical move internal to the French state to keep the gavy train coming to government agencies.
Rather I think the US, and also China that does it even more, are much more effective at this by throwing money at the marketplace to develop a whole ecosystem competitively that can also compete globally. An important thing to note here is that EU rules prevent a lot of state action (for instance they would not be allowed to buy only French cars or do things seen as direct subsidies, etc)
France will continue to fall further behind unless it really gets it act together, which is unlikely TBH.
You're just repeating your assumptions - "taxpayer-funded state-developed is bad", but "marketplace competitively" good. I'm not convinced.
You're not engaging with the sovereignty aspect - "compete globally" isn't the main goal at all as I said above, you're just restating you misconception. And so this part comes across as pure projection:
> You seem to be arguing for the sake of argument while avoiding the substance of my point
Yes in the most basic sense it does since they build their own tool instead of getting a foreign one. To be a little bit provocative I could say that Warsaw Pact countries used to do the same and built plenty of uncompetitive products themselves...
But beyond that it isn't a plan because it does not scale, it does not help the country develop its own industry and economy, it does not help competitiveness, and it is a huge cost for very little. Again, the sovereignty aspect means all of this must be addressed otherwise it is just a stunt and waste of taxpayers' money.
You've got to have a competitive industry to achieve and maintain 'sovereignty' in a broader and positive sense otherwise you end up like the Warsaw Pact or China before it realised that. You might survive but look more and more like North Korea (poor and obsolete but, yes, sovereign).
So yes, taxpayer-funded and state-developed internally in isolation for the sake of it is pretty much universally bad.
Taxpayer-funded is not bad per se, as already said in my previous comment, but here it is indeed more than that, it's the government building random stuff internally for frankly no good reason. Maybe next the government will manufacture its own 'sovereign' pencils as well?
They could have spent the same amount of money supporting small companies to develop similar products and that would have helped creating a competitive 'sovereign' ecosystem and commercial products to sell to everyone at home and also abroad. Much more bang for their buck and long term virtuous circle.
So, again have you got a point to discuss beyond just wanting to argue against me?
Edit:
An example of why competitiveness is important: Arianespace. It's great, Europe has the 'sovereign' ability to launch satelittes. That's useful for government agencies, a niche use-case. But everyone else in Europe who wants to launch a satelitte uses SpaceX because Arianespace is not competitive and is obsolete at this point.
> But beyond that it isn't a plan because it does not scale, it does not help the country develop its own industry and economy, it does not help competitiveness,
"It's not as plan because it doesn't.." (describes thing that isn't a goal of the plan). This is nonsensical. Not even wrong. This is the entire point.
> Again, the sovereignty aspect means all of this (develop its own industry and economy) must be addressed
No, you simply are not understanding "data sovereignty and security" at all.
> a huge cost for very little.
Citation needed. You assume the costs are "huge" and I am not convinced at all - as others have noted there are existing open-source libraries to underpin this now. Likewise the small size of benefits is your unfounded assumption. Security benefits are not measured in money on a stock market.
Many government functions such as standing armies in peacetime are actual "huge costs". But they have benefits not measured in money on a stock market. It's an incorrect framing in that case too.
I quite agree with this, and it goes further than the decision against X with now also the prelimenary decision against Tiktok [1]:
> Today, the European Commission preliminarily found TikTok in breach of the Digital Services Act for its addictive design. This includes features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and its highly personalised recommender system.
Very fuzzy stuff, but luckily:
> TikTok now has the possibility to exercise its right to defence
So it does indeed sound like "we have decided that you are guilty but we'll give you a chance to explain yourself (good luck with that)", or perhaps "any last words?"
"Today, the European Commission preliminarily found TikTok in breach of the Digital Services Act for its addictive design. This includes features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and its highly personalised recommender system."
IMHO it is a very slippery slope to start judging "addictive design" as an offence, especially over such trivial features...
And let big tech keep researching and using hostile psychological patterns in their services? Nobody wants overregulation and over control, but there's gotta be a line somewhere, and when corporations are deliberately exploiting addiction for profits (including with children), we're way past the line in my book
It's not a warrant, it is a summon for interview. That's actually very different: the way you phrased it suggests that there is a warrant for his arrest (mandat d'arrêt)...
They are more popular than ever, actually. Pretty much all those fancy cups and bottles (like Stanley, other brands available) sold to keep your coffee hot/drink cold on the go are vaccum ones. It's just updated and more robust design compared to the older thermos flasks.
I don't know if there is the concept of charity organisation in Germany but I feel this is the sort of thing that ought to be limited to registered charities not to be abused/get out of hand.
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