This Test Shows Why Tesla Autopilot Crashes Keep Happening - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/this-test-shows-why-tesla-autopilot-crashes-keep-happen-1826810902 <comment><USER2> > Tesla has always been clear that Autopilot doesn't make the car impervious > to all accidents

This makes it sound like the problem is that there are edge cases that aren't handled. In reality, the test shows that Autopilot is only designed to handle the special case of lane keeping and following the car in front of you, but is too simplistic to actually handle the general case of driving the car. It's a very advanced cruise control, not a self-driving system that still has kinks to work out.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's clear the Tesla is dealing with this as a PR/marketing problem, but the fail miserably even at that.

If you think it's a PR/marketing problem and the system operates as it should, then stop calling it Autopilot and stop advertising cars with full autopilot capabilities __*

 __* "Theoretically the hardware should be enough to enable full auto pilot some time in the future. At the moment use this other Autopilot, which is not really autopilot. Btw we made this really cool autopilot video, but it's not the Autopilot you have in your car."

<comment><USER4> The marketing problem is lay people thinking that aircraft autopilots are magical self flying machines when they often require the pilot to provide corrective input, especially during "autoland."

If you think Tesla Autopilot needs another name, stop operating on mystical beliefs like Rei-Ki and magical self-flying autopilot and learn what any aircraft autopilot is actually capable of.

<comment><USER5> An aircraft does not require any corrective inputs during autoland, in fact it is the opposite; inputing any control action will abort the autoland.

It just needs the pilots to make a land / no-land decision at the specified altitude. Can they see the runway lights within the specified distance and is the crosswind-component within the acceptable range? If they choose to continue the landing then they don't touch the controls.

Imagine you're coming in to a wet runway with 20kt crosswind and one engine inoperative. Sounds like a nightmare; but in that case autoland will do a better and more consistent landing than most pilots. Can we say that about car self-driving systems yet?

<comment><USER4> Here's a discussion of flying a plane on a Cat III ILS autoland: [https://youtu.be/UO2K4-zRubA](https://youtu.be/UO2K4-zRubA)

Note all the crosschecking between the human operators and the two autopilots. Mentour speaks almost exclusively about flying the Boeing 737, a very reliable aircraft. Even on this aircraft the human pilots are ready to take over from the autopilot at a moment's notice.

Here is an auto land using Cat III ILS in an Airbus 320, with the humans invigilating at all times, ready to go around if anything appears off nominal [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSNE3SmYA-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSNE3SmYA-8)

So to a naive observer, it may appear that you are correct: planes can land themselves without intervention. But that is only true for airport, aircraft and conditions qualified for Cat III approaches (i.e.: ideal conditions) and remain that way throughout the procedure. If the airport, aircraft or environment are not qualified for Cat III approach, you don't get this ultra- precise auto land capability. If anything goes wrong with any equipment during approach, you don't get the auto land capability (and indeed a go-around is required).

If there is anything outside spec (e.g.: aircraft manoeuvring on the taxiway can distort the ILS beam, thus Low Visibility Procedures), things will go wrong and the pilot needs to intervene.

At no point is it safe for a pilot to let the plane do the flying and sit back to have a cup of tea. The captain and first officer have their assigned tasks: be ready to land the plane and be ready to go around (respectively). Intervention is required from time to time, so they need to be ready to intervene every time.

Cars do not have the option of "going around". Every action has the potential to cause fatality within seconds. There's even less room for inattentiveness when using a car on autopilot.

The OP suggested that autopilot should be able to drive the car without any human intervention, but they have confused autopilot with autonomous driving, probably because of the "auto" prefix, yet they've never been confused about an automobile requiring constant human attention.

It's clear that Tesla have a PR/marketing problem, when the population is happy to drive an auto with auto, but can't differentiate between autopilot and autonomous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> King-Aaron I can understand Tesla's position in saying that the driver should still be aware of their surroundings. _But_. Avoiding stationary objects should be the first objective of a system like this in my opinion, especially if the object is directly in the projected path the vehicle is travelling in.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but such systems won't work at all if they don't ignore such stationary objects as bridge abutments. And they lack the angular resolution to determine whether stuff is directly ahead, or off to one side. Plus the fact that roads curve.

Or, as in the Thatcham Research video, stuff that's hidden by a leading vehicle. I always make an effort to know what vehicles far ahead are doing. If necessary, I shift off lane occasionally to check for hidden stuff. And when I'm behind large vehicles, I don't follow so closely that I can't see what's ahead.

But if you're going to do all that, why use Autopilot?

<comment><USER7> >And they lack the angular resolution to determine whether stuff is directly ahead, or off to one side.

Sounds like my Grandma. For her safety, and everyone else's, she doesn't drive any more.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like me without my glasses. But then, I don't drive without my glasses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Autopilot-bashing articles are becoming more and more popular as people love to gawk at accidents. I believe a lot of the comments on these threads are no more than online rubbernecking.

When these things pop up, I'd love to know the answers to some of these questions.

1\. What is the rate of accidents for Tesla drivers with and without Autopilot on similar driving terrain.

2\. How 'correctable' are these flaws in Autopilot? I doubt someone is programming in what to do in every situation. Is the solution to twiddle with some weights and pray your ML pipeline spits out a better version? I'm guessing the true answer lies in the middle, but I don't have the technical background to know for sure.

3\. I see a lot of references to Waymo leading the pack of would-be self driving vehicles. What is it that Waymo has done that makes their self-driving tech so much better?

4\. Are we okay with accepting the costs of self driving cars given their potential in the future? Most major transport-related revolutions have come with a significant human cost at the outset as the early adopters accept a large amount of risk to push the technology forward. With time and usage, things stabilize and become safer. Flying was quite dangerous early on, too.

<comment><USER9> I'll try to answer as best as I can.

1\. Your question seems mostly answered in this recent article [https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-safety- statistic...](https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-safety-statistics/)

2\. I don't know much about architecture / model used by Tesla. I don't have open access to the accident's details. It is challenging for most people to publicly and answer your question based on facts. Sorry!

3\. Again, I would say only very limited number of people have a clear vision about what's the current status. Some claim it is hard for Tesla to manufacture and design cars, solar panels, batteries and designing an autopilot at the same time. It requires a very broad diversity of skills that may be hard to steer and build from the ground up.

4\. Fair enough, point taken. My personal complain is not about the technology in general but about Tesla's marketing. I hope the first planes were not claiming to be safer. The Titanic did though :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems to me the kids who program these toys have never driven anything other than the RC model they built to get this job. And, of course, it drives fine on the toy "roads" they set up on the carpet in the living room. Real world, not so much.

<comment><USER11> From a recent article[0]:

> _When a car is moving at low speeds, slamming on the brakes isn 't a big > risk. A car traveling at 20mph can afford to wait until an object is quite > close before slamming on the brakes, making unnecessary stops unlikely. > Short stopping distances also mean that a car slamming on the brakes at > 20mph is unlikely to get rear-ended.

But the calculation changes for a car traveling at 70mph. In this case, preventing a crash requires slamming on the brakes while the car is still far away from a potential obstacle. That makes it more likely that the car will misunderstand the situation—for example, wrongly interpreting an object that's merely near the road as being in the road. Sudden braking at high speed can startle the driver, leading to erratic driving behavior. And it also creates a danger that the car behind won't stop in time, leading to a rear-end collision._

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17274179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17274179)

<comment><USER12> So instead of "startling the driver", who's supposed to be paying careful attention to what's going on, the algorithm chooses to plow into the stationary object?

I suspect _that_ might _also_ "startle the driver"...

<comment><USER13> The algorithm has been designed to ignore stationary objects because the algorithm and associated hardware is incapable of determining which stationary objects are actually in the path of the vehicle. Regardless of whether the car slammed on the brakes or blared a klaxon there are so many false positives that to do otherwise would make it useless.

So of course the only sensible thing to do is release a product that happily accelerates into the back of a bright red emergency vehicle with flashing lights. Or into a stationary concrete barrier. Or into the side of a massive tractor-trailer.

I mean, who wants to bother with false positives?

<comment><USER12> What's the old gag?

"You deliver a project 85% correct at university, you get a high distinction. You deliver a project 15% wrong at work, you get fired."

Who are these people?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Computers have one huge advantage over humans: they can process a lot of information very quickly.

Humans have one huge advantage over computers: we pattern-match instinctually, building mental models of our surroundings.

Tesla is taking advantage of the first fact, but by avoiding LIDAR, they're falling victim to the second fact.

We humans don't have LIDAR, so it makes sense that a car without LIDAR should be able to match us, but we have brains and visual systems that far exceed anything available today or at any point in the near future when it comes to pattern-matching.

40,100 vehicle deaths in 2017 in the US, most of them the result of distracted driving. It's a shame that Tesla's system performs worst at exactly the point that humans need the most help.

<comment><USER15> LIDAR is certainly useful in building up point clouds, especially when coupled with RADAR, however the devil always lies in the details

LIDAR is higher resolution than radar, but often slower - counterintuitive to be sure, but such is the case - i.e. this large volume of data can lag reality by some small delta, and at 60MPH, that can add up.

Uber does use LIDAR and RADAR, however the informed external commentary I've seen, admittedly guesswork based on the NTSB reports seems to indicate it was a fusion error behind the AZ fatality. Sensor fusion is a beastly complex problem on top of miserable calibration exercises :-(

More importantly, AI only exists in the minds of marketers, media, and the improperly informed. This is all just pattern recognition - we're a ways off from having a system understand that if an occluding obstacle moves out of the way, then high priority previous unknown information now exposed needs to be checked. I'm sure such tests will get hardwired into current systems, however the system is then limited by what does get hardwired into it. At the end of the day a visual system, no matter how sophisticated is still only a visual system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In that video, does the Tesla try to brake, and brake hard?

This seems to be the case -- if you watch the video the Tesla is at a full stop about 10 feet after the car, implying it must have hit the brakes hard way beforehand.

In that case, I don't blame Telsa for crashing -- you literally are baiting it into the crash a la a bull with a flag. You make it follow one car, prevent it from changing lanes, and then have an obstacle parked in the middle of the lane.

I'm all for getting Tesla to be safer. The accident count has gotten way too high. But this seems to be a test that is rigged, and Tesla did break.

<comment><USER17> >In that case, I don't blame Telsa for crashing -- you literally are baiting it into the crash a la a bull with a flag. You make it follow one car, prevent it from changing lanes, and then have an obstacle parked in the middle of the lane.

This situation is pretty common on the road. And a lot of humans who aren't paying attention get caught by it.

But it's not impossible to avoid, you have to be watching ahead of the car in front of you. And if you can't see in front of the car in front of you, you gotta have a lot more space so you can break in tiime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So...why is it that the default autopilot behavior isn't to slow down drastically if the driver doesn't initiate manual control fast enough?

<comment><USER19> I don't think you understand. The Tesla autopilot there thinks it's doing a great job because it thinks there's just an empty lane ahead of it (it's model of the world is basically that all stationary things are just pictures on the ground).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Autopilot is currently an aspirational name. Perhaps the name should be changed.

</comment><comment><USER21> So, why do non-autopilot crashes keep happening?

<comment><USER13> Same reason the autopilot crashes happen: Driver isn't paying attention.

Problem is that the autopilot system makes it harder for the driver to pay attention.

<comment><USER21> Does it really?

<comment><USER22> Yes. Think about it this way: if having Autopilot on requires the same amount of attention/effort as having it off, then there would essentially be no point to the system whatsoever. The entire idea is that the system takes over some of the driving tasks to make the experience more pleasant, just like how regular cruise control is convenient because it frees you from having to pay attention to maintaining the car's speed by pressing the accelerator pedal.

The question is, does it reduce the amount of attention paid to a significant enough degree that it's dangerous? Consider subways -- most of them have automatic train control systems in place that could effectively drive the trains automatically. However, operators are still required to control the speed, largely because it keeps them engaged.

Give an operator nothing to do, and they won't pay attention -- this is basic human psychology (look up "Vigilance Tasks" if you're interested in further reading).

<comment><USER21> A lot of the attention you pay during normal driving is on mundane things like making tiny adjustments to stay within the lines. By removing that requirement you have more attention to put towards useful things.

<comment><USER12> Yeah - but that's most likely to be your phone, or the argument you had at work with your boss, or wondering why your partner didn't talk much this morning... I strongly doubt any "freed up attention" is getting redirected into driving-safety related "useful things".

<comment><USER4> This is where we separate the good drivers from the accidents waiting to happen. The good drivers will be watching the five or more cars ahead in all lanes to catch any unexpected braking or lane changes, and watching passing vehicles for indications of being exit-darters (those drivers who are so keen to catch the exit they will drive at high speed in the passing lane, then madly swerve through the slow lanes to get to their exit).

The accidents will instead get caught up in that antivaxxer Facebook debate on their phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The video seems ludicrous. They fail to show that same test with a Tesla in autopilot crashing into the back of a car in manual mode. I doubt a manual driver would be able to ovoid that rear-end accident. I could be wrong, but they should demonstrate it with scientific results and facts instead of making fear-mongering promotional videos.

<comment><USER11> Given the Model 3's poor stopping distance, you may unfortunately be correct that even an aware driver couldn't stop in that space.

      Car           distance (feet)
      Model 3(orig) 152
      Model 3 (new) 133
      F-150         129
      Model X       127
      Camry Hybrid  125
      F-150 Lariat  119
      Model S       118
      Porsche P.GTS 110 - Panamera
      Chrysler 300S 109

<comment><USER14> After Consumer Reports highlighted this, Tesla issued an OTA update, so that now the Model 3 stops in a reasonable distance consistently.

<comment><USER11> Yes, this is noted in the chart:

      Model 3 (new) 133</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Anonymous Bitcoin Lottery - <AUTHOR> https://www.btc-l.com

<comment><USER2> > Currently the lottery has a 25% cut of the total amount in the lottery. This > is used to pay for development, server costs and maintainence. Eventually, > my goal is to decrease the fee to as small as possible to allow for the > largest winning. This will take place when the development stops (meaning > there are no features to be added) and/or the lotteries take place more > often.

I find this to be backwards, you are effectively punishing your early adopters. It seems to make much more sense to make the cut lower (or zero) now, and increase it later when you have more users.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like your idea. I will cut the fees to something like 1% to pay for the transaction fees

<comment><USER3> It's a good idea but any cut above this will make the lottery very expensive. National lotteries can pay out 50% because they have a monopoly and the remainder usually goes towards a community project.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will probably increase fees (nothing to exorbitant) to covers costs if this takes off. I don't think it will require to much to run unless it becomes insanely popular. At that time, I will open up more lotteries for different payout ranges to make it more beneficial for costs.

<comment><USER4> Just a note, your site now says there is a 1% cut on one page [about] and a 25% cut on another page [how it works].

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, fixed

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And the winner is... Anonymous Coward 961! Who is absolutely not the operator's secret alter-identity! Now if you'll excuse me, this yacht won't buy itself.

I don't know whether this is actually a scam, but you need to put a considerable amount of work to make into making it _not_ look like one. As it is, I see: disposable identity, Bitcoin, and a straightforward opportunity to steal without getting caught.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, you could just watch who the payment is made out to and verify if the owner is the winner. I could show the selection method of the winner and show that it is a random generator that grabs the winner. Either way, its still a gamble. If you don't trust the site (or me) then you won't trust any of the code I post to show the random selection of the user.

<comment><USER6> See my post lower-down: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5566144>

<comment><AUTHOR> Replied to the one below in more detail, problem still relies on you believing that I am using the code I show to make the calculation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are already at least hundreds of bitcoin lotteries and casinos, most of which are probably scams (see bitcointalk.org forums). How do you plan to differentiate?

<comment><USER8> Why differentiate? Scams are apparently more profitable, or else these bitcoin lotteries would be running legit instead.

<comment><USER9> there is one problem. you usually cant run a lottery, unless you are government, or a government affiliated company

<comment><USER10> That's a rather theoretical problem, isn't it?

<comment><USER6> No, it's LEGAL problem. Another profitable enterprise is to take up drug smuggling -- it pays fairly well (so I am told) but being illegal is a bit of a problem for most people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been working on a BTC Raffle site also although I'm targeting lower fees and plan on making it provably fair.

Good job.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have dropped the fees to help early adopters. If you are interested in how this works, send me an email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd say to add some more instructions, especially on the play page. E.g., "send X bitcoins to this address to play in this game", etc.

Also on the front have a live "paid out today" widget.

<comment><USER12> Actually under the paid out today number you could have a little hyper link that says "verify" and links to the blockchain showing the actual payouts. It might give you some legitimacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Please check the legal implications of this. I know that you can't run a lottery in the UK unless you're a charity.

</comment><comment><USER14> You should make this provably fair...

<comment><USER15> [http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/11722/a-lottery-...](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/11722/a-lottery- that-you-can-be-convinced-that-it-is-fair)

<comment><AUTHOR> If I could prove the fairness (paying out to the winner) without compromising anything, I would. If you know of a way, I would be more than willing to do so.

<comment><USER6> Here is a simple algorithm that gives you the basic ideas. A different bitcoin wallet is set up for each day's lottery. The total number of bitcoins received can be seen in the blockchain. A source of entropy is chosen which can easily be verified but cannot be controlled or predicted before a date after the cutoff for that day's lottery, for instance, use the NYSE stock market closing price. A hash of that is divided by the number of bitcoins received in the lottery (plus an overhead for the small percentage that funds running the lottery) to determine the winner.

Anyone entering can confirm that that their contribution was a certain percentage of the total funds received and that they had that same percentage of the chance for winning: even if the operator of the lottery wanted to be malicious they couldn't do so without making it obvious to anyone who checked.

There are some additional details that would matter, if you wanted to implement this seriously you may contact me separately for a discussion of some of those details.

<comment><AUTHOR> I already have some of this implemented but, picking a random winner based off of an outside source (provable by providing the algorithm) is only trust worthy if you trust the author posting the correct algorithm. You would still have to trust that I was using the code I said I was using.

I may be understanding you wrong, and if I am please let me know. I would love to make this 100% fullproof and trustworthy.

<comment><USER6> Publish the algorithm. Anyone who wants to check can run it themselves!

For this to work, ALL of the data needed to run the algorithm and determine the winner must be data that is outside the control of the contest organizer (or published before the contest begins) and publicly available. The algorithm I described should meet this criteria.

Assume you have published (before the contest starts) that the lottery itself takes a 1% cut, and that all funds should be deposited to a particular Bitcoin wallet. Anyone who is suspicious of you (or just very careful) can inspect the blockchain to see the total number of bitcoins received before the contest cutoff time (call it "N"). They can find the closing price of the NYSE and run it through the hash function to find the random input (call it "R"). Then they can perform "X = (N mod R)" and count through the transactions until they find the one that added the "X'th" bitcoin to the wallet. If that was their transaction then they know to expect to receive "0.99*N" bitcoins. Like I said before, for rigorous use, the algorithm needs some details and a little improvement, but this demonstrates the existence of algorithms that allow any participant in the lottery can verify that the lottery is fair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> v-1971 Here is an alternate algorithm, based on mcherm's suggestion. Choose a publicly available number, such as NYSE closing price, that is not revealed until after the lottery closes. The hash of this is the target. The exact format of what is hashed is announced in advance.

All purchasers' bitcoin addresses are posted publicly, in the order they come in. They are salted with the ticket number, i.e. mybitcoinaddress-001 represents the first ticket I bought. All of these addresses (including salt) are hashed. The one that is closest to the target is the winner. Closeness can be measured as integers (absolute value) with ties possible but extremely unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm curious--how many here would work on this kind of project? I'd love to from an engineering point of view. It would be quite fun.

However, I suspect it will be a net detriment to its typical user, and don't see any real benefits to counteract that, so would have trouble working on such a thing due to the moral issues. People who like to gamble and are able to do so responsibly already have plenty of easy outlets in which to indulge their hobby. It seems to me that this service will disproportionally attract people who have a gambling problem, and I'd feel quite troubled helping with that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to send out an update on the site. Fixed quite a few issues today. Thanks for the help everyone. One of the big things was changing the fee to 1% to help pay any transaction fees and make sure early adopters win almost all of the lottery. Another was the incorrect display of # of tickets purchased and amount of bitcoin in the pool. This has been fixed with no loss of data and there is now more bitcoin showing up in the pool.

</comment><comment><USER17> I couldn't figure out how long the current lottery was going to run. I didn't see what the target # of tickets sold was for this first round, so I didn't know what the estimated date of the first drawing was.

<comment><AUTHOR> The target is 1BTC in the pool, I have posted under the lottery table when a winner will be selected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> On your lottery page, I initially thought the addresses listed in the grid were the ones to send bitcoins to. You should really consider laying out that page differently to avoid confusion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to hear suggestions.

<comment><USER18> The problem I think is that the bitcoin address to send money to looks like its part of the table header description. So you naturally gloss over it and focus your attention on the table data.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have given it some whitespace and put a true header on the table.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really cool! Can you give a rough sketch of the aritechure?

Are you using an API for do you code right to the bitcoin protocol?

<comment><AUTHOR> I run bitcoind --daemon and use the bitcoin API through JSON RPC. So, the website connects to the server and pretty much has complete access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like SatoshiDice more.

It's "provably trustworthy" and you can adjust price multiplier from 1.004x to 64000.000x.

</comment><comment><USER20> How poetic.

<comment><USER21> The implementation is really simple. Buy 1 BTC at current prices. Wait a year. Now your 1 BTC is either worth 1000x as much (with low probability) or nothing (with high probability). Instant lottery!</comment></comment>


The SpaceX Starship is a big deal - <AUTHOR> https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/the-spacex-starship-is-a-very-big-deal/ <comment><USER2> > If each Starship manages 300 flights per year, each carrying 150 T of cargo, > then we are talking a yearly incremental cargo capacity growth of 22 million > tonnes to orbit.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade)

> One proposed sunshade would be composed of 16 trillion small disks at the > Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point, 1.5 million kilometers above Earth. Each disk > is proposed to have a 0.6-meter diameter and a thickness of about 5 > micrometers. The mass of each disk would be about a gram, adding up to a > total of almost 20 million tonnes.[3] Such a group of small sunshades that > blocks 2% of the sunlight, deflecting it off into space, would be enough to > halt global warming, giving us ample time to cut our emissions back on > earth.

<comment><USER3> A sunshade seems like a horrible idea. There are obvious implications from the increased motivation to use fossil fuels. Biodiversity will continue to plummet until there is an ecological collapse. The people with the keys to enable or disable the shade will be influenced by short term profit. Then once fossil fuels are gone there will be a giant energy crisis. Buying time is good only if that time is properly paid for. And there is the risk of unintended consequences.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences)

<comment><USER4> Are you really going to link to wikipedia's unintended consequences page? How about the unintended consequences of historical emissions - we have already put enough in the atmosphere to devastate Shanghai, Miami, Manhattan, and all of the coastal nations of the world. Are we going to throw up our hands and take a potentially life-saving, civilization-saving tool off the table? Species -- those are already dying off hugely, if anything the sunshade will slow this decimation by slowing warming.

Also, how do you imagine that Elon Musk is somehow going to elongate our usage of fossil fuels? Elon Musk has done more for EVs than any single person in human history, and you claim he's going to do something which will extend fossil fuel use?

Your post just doesn't add up, it sounds like you want further warming to occur?

<comment><USER3> Your post doesn't add up. You start by pointing out the unintended consequences of burning fossil fuels, then continue to say that we should pursue solutions that allow us to continue burning fossil fuels sans serious short term repercussions. I think continuing to kick the can without proper longview regulation is only putting money in the disaster bank.

<comment><USER5> This mindset is a huge reason why so many people are skeptical of the climate change movement.

It's not that climate change isn't real, or even a question of whether human activity is the root cause. But faced with a _solution_ which doesn't require massive societal change of a particular sort, the solution is rejected out of hand.

Just because it doesn't force a specific set of political changes which up until now have been punctuated by the threat of nothing less than Armageddon,... we cannot actually _reject_ a cheap solution that takes Armageddon off the table, just because it may make the other goals harder to accomplish.

It is morally unacceptable to let the Earth burn rather than be left to solve issues of pollution and clean energy _independent_ of the almost unfathomable toll of a 3°C future. That to me is frankly an untenable position when you contemplate the actual number of lives in the balance.

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry but you and many other posters are missing two key and obvious things.

1\. The single cheapest and quickest way to make a difference is to - en-masse - moderate our behaviours. But guess what? People are so wedded to their monster-truck-driving, plastic-consumable-disposing, distance-product- shipping, holiday-air-travelling lifestyles that they won't (on the whole) bear even the slightest personal "burden". The relatively moderate costs associated with behaviour-modifying policies (eg a carbon price), are vehemently and successfully opposed (or neutered) by governments all over the world. And the reason they are free to do so is because there's no political cost to doing so. Given all that, why on earth would anyone think it's going to be politically acceptable to fund even costlier and potentially fraught geo-engineering responses?

2\. Shades will do nothing at all for the ongoing acidification of the oceans and the consequent marine species destruction.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's simple, or easy, or inexpensive even, to achieve an _en- masse change in global behavior_. To me that seems like the most difficult, most expensive, and most costly way to try to solve the problem. Asking the world to "just consume less" is a very nice way of asking the world to enter a global depression. If the only answer is massively moderated consumption, the direct result is actually a lot of pain and suffering and destitution.

I am very much a technology optimist. I believe that technology is the route to providing sustainable solutions across the board in energy, transportation, agriculture, and materials. Even more, I believe that the _only_ solution is for technology advances to make the _sustainable_ solution to be the _preferred_ solution. When going green is also cheaper, faster, better, then everyone goes green by default.

The role of government here is to align incentives and subsidize market-driven R&D efforts which result in technologically superior products that also happen to be sustainable which can win in a competitive marketplace on their own merits. The perfect example of this is EVs. EVs will totally supplant new ICE vehicle sales in the next couple decades because they will ultimately be a better vehicle in every possible metric.

I think we are seeing the same effects in terms of renewable energy that can now compete on cost even without subsidies, and we are in the beginning stages of where we need to go with agriculture (I'm sure actually much progress has been made, but I'm less familiar with that tech).

From a materials science perspective, we need better alternatives for clothing fibers, and better alternatives for plastics in our products and packaging. Cotton is biodegradable but takes far too much water to produce -- possibly something that further genetic modifications to cotton could reduce. Plastic blends in textiles are great for performance, but end up as microplastic in our waterways and oceans. The alternative isn't that everyone is going to switch to hemp. The alternative must be a better material developed that provides superior performance, longevity, texture, carbon footprint, and ultimately clean disposal or recyclability. Government's role is to align incentives for this R&D to occur by taxing externalities or subsidizing new products that present lower externalities.

As to the queston of controlling the effects of increased CO2, one of which is global warming, and another of which is ocean acidification, I think we will come to a point where we need ways to effectively reduce atmospheric CO2 independently of efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, and technology will ultimately afford us that.

I think it's an open question whether the timescale over which atmospheric CO2 may ever be brought back below, e.g. 300ppm, will require engineering a more direct solution to both ocean acidification, and global warming. Even if tomorrow anthropogenic CO2 emissions dropped to zero, how long would that even take? Solar shields and atmospheric CO2 extraction are technologies that warrant future research and discussion.

<comment><USER7> It is easy -- tax the pollutants and ban greenwashing marketing/lobbying. I am not the first to propose this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/bxgd5p/single_mo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/bxgd5p/single_most_important_stat_on_the_planet_alarm_as/eq6bvl0/)

The real obstacle is the confusion in the public opinion spurred by big oil marketing and lobbying. It's really hard to find quality information online, but it exists since many years and it's pushed down on purpose by interest groups. Here is an example:

Exxon, a big oil corporation, had accurate predictive models of climate change, agreeing with scientific consensus, already in 1982 and confirmed "it will cause dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050". [https://twitter.com/i/status/1187719206562910209](https://twitter.com/i/status/1187719206562910209)

Shortly after Exxon began to deny global warming and started "greenwashing" marketing campaigns, which today show up directly in the news articles on global warming, e.g., in The New York Times: [https://twitter.com/status/1187435336185581570](https://twitter.com/status/1187435336185581570)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> to me, it's the Raptor engine that is the big deal. And within the Raptor, it's the alloy developed on the oxidizer side pre-burner that's the big deal. I wish i could have been there the moment that alloy was conceived and the moment it past the first round of testing. I would have poured so much tequila it would have had a budget impact.

<comment><USER9> It's the whole architecture: a two-stage, rapidly reusable rocket with as much cargo capacity as anything to ever fly. And just as important for interplanetary flight: The upper stage is refuelable and is integrated with the passenger compartment and has a large delta-v capability as well as aerobraking/capture/entry.

It really breaks basically every human spaceflight architecture. It's a two element architecture (with common propulsion, simplifying development for the booster) that accomplishes every goal of virtually every other interplanetary human spaceflight architecture conceived. This simple architecture (while avoiding the huge penalties of single-stage vehicles) means that it can be developed extremely cheaply.

It really is a gamechanger in spaceflight. All of spaceflight.

400 satellites per launch? For maybe an incremental price of about $40 million near-term and $4 million long-term? That's, um, $10,000 per satellite. That breaks every model of space development.

And it's not like all of this was unforeseeable. Even Werner Von Braun proposed refueling-dependent human spaceflight architectures in the 1940s (in his fictional book about exploring Mars) that would enable low cost. But for historical reasons, human spaceflight took another path.

<comment><USER8> yeah, you're absolutely correct. It's the whole package. I want to know what went so right at SpaceX though.

from wikipedia "In late 2001, Mueller began developing a liquid-fueled rocket engine in his garage and later moved his project to a friend's warehouse in 2002.[1] His design was the largest amateur liquid-fuel rocket engine, weighing 80 lb (36 kg) and producing 13,000 lbf (58 kN) of thrust.[1] His work caught the attention of Elon Musk, PayPal co-founder and CEO of Tesla Motors, and in 2002 Mueller joined Musk as a founding employee of SpaceX."

that's a hell of a lucky find by Musk and a hell of a roll of the dice by Mueller. Around the same time is when Shotwell joined, she's equally incredible but in a different way. i don't now how Musk found her.

Even then, what followed has been black swan territory. Every major development announcement at SpaceX is met with "you're crazy" and laughter from the industry and yet, a few years down the road, there it is working. Again, i really want to know what went so right.

<comment><USER10> The path taken in the 1950s for spaceflight was dictated by its funding source -- missile development. Missiles were optimized for high performance and were single use devices.

Even when dedicated non-military rockets began to appear, e.g. the Ariane range and the Space Shuttle, they had dependencies on legacy infrastructure that was originally designed for strategic weapons (i.e. it was intended to work at peak performance, just once). The payloads evolved to reflect the launch system constraints, so very expensive, one-of-a-kind comsats and earth resources satellites, each of them a bespoke design (or at most one of a dozen or so).

SpaceX isn't building missiles; it's optimizing for reliability and cost (which means reusability). More like airliners than missiles. This doesn't mean low performance (the efficiency and power density of a modern civil airliner turbofan would have been a jaw-dropper to 1940s military aviation engineers) but it _does_ mean the performance goals are different.

I am still extremely skeptical that Heavy/Starship will facilitate a Mars colony ... but that's because I'm skeptical about the economics and practicalities of building an off-planet colony when the externalities we normally take for granted (like a compatible biosphere) aren't available and nobody's really done the necessary R&D work on self-contained biospheres -- even the ISS is effectively an open-loop system dependent on constant resupply. (Biology and ecology are much harder than they look to a naive outsider.)

<comment><USER11> I have the same doubts. I think it'll inevitably happen, eventually, but the timeline may be wayyy longer than people seem to think.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a small settlement for research or something in my lifetime. Maybe something like what we have in Antarctica.

<comment><USER10> We really, _really_ need a second run at Biosphere 2, only this time integrating what the failures of the first run taught us. (Only 25 years ago, with no serious follow-up!)

The next step would then be something like a Bigelow B330 module in LEO, which is close enough to get the astronauts home from in a hurry if something goes badly wrong.

(These steps can be commenced with current tech: Heavy/Starship not required.)

Step 3 would be a bigger test hab out beyond the Van Allen belts, preferably a couple of habs revolving around a hub to provide centrifugal "gravity" at Lunar or Martian levels. Goal is to test systems for use on planetary surfaces exposed to cosmic/solar radiation (because outside our atmosphere). Starship is probably mandatory for this phase, because it's a lot more massive and a lot further away. Alternatively: conduct this experiment on the Lunar surface, once astronaut return capability is available (but why waste expensive reaction mass if you can simulate a gravity well?)

Without a lot of R&D work under these conditions, a closed-circuit life support system for Mars is a huge safety risk for the astronauts who set it up (and who are too far away to rush home in a hurry if it goes badly).

And without closed-loop life support, a Mars "colony" is no more a colony than an Antarctic research station reliant on resupply for everything except air and water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The lunar mission profiled in there takes 15 tanker launches, which is a lot.

As for in-situ resource utilization, how about this: Apollo astronauts found nearly 40% iron ore in some areas of lunar regolith. That may be unusually high, but you can do magnetic separation, then pass hydrogen gas through the ore to get iron and water. Crack the water molecules, recycle the hydrogen, and then use the oxygen to refuel "starships", where it accounts for 4/5 of the propellant mass. In the meantime you get iron by the hundreds of tons on La Luna that you can use to make pressure tanks to store that oxygen, live in, etc.

(It's been a long trope in sci-fi and speculation that a lunar economy would be an aluminium economy, and that people who seek iron will go for the asteroids, but it is very easy to get iron + oxygen as described on the moon, it is much harder to reduce other common metals on the moon.)

Here is the mass driver that Gerard K. O'Neill told you about, available off the shelf:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58MmOpSm4LY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58MmOpSm4LY)

That can send a 10kg projectile at 2.5 km/s which can get to the Earth-Moon L1 or L2 points.

If you can increase the velocity to 3.1 km/s you could graze the Earth's atmosphere and deliver oxygen and other materials to LEO. Either way you need something that can soak up excess momentum at the end, but you could greatly reduce the need for tanker launches.

<comment><USER13> Pure iron is a poor material. You would want some carbon to turn it in to steel, and that would have to come from another process.

<comment><USER12> If your space economy is driven my methane (e.g. the Starship fuel) you could ship methane to the moon, separate the carbon from the hydrogen, recycle the hydrogen and mix the carbon in with the iron. Mild steel might have 0.1% carbon so you get a multiplication ratio in the 100's.

The main trouble is you also want to build up a carbon stock for biological applications... But it is the nitrogen stock that I haven't figured out.

<comment><USER14> Ship some hydrazine along with the methane?

<comment><USER12> Or maybe just ammonia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if we will revive O'Neill's idea of putting a mass driver on the Moon.

That would potentially enable getting mass (like water or lunar regolith) into space (alas from the Moon, not Earth) at even lower cost than Starship.

Recommended related link: [http://ssi.org/ssi-supermodels-part-2-make-your- own-ssi-mass...](http://ssi.org/ssi-supermodels-part-2-make-your-own-ssi-mass- driver/)

<comment><USER16> The big limitation for constructing something like that is setting up a manufacturing industry on the Moon: even with Starship, a mass driver requires far more processed material (mainly refined metals) than can be practically shipped up from Earth. The tipping point for a Lunar mass driver will be when we've created enough of an industry on the Moon to construct it out of local materials.

<comment><USER17> Obviously complicated metallurgical alloying processes takes a lot of baseline, but fabricating pure metallic elements might be tractable. And I was under the impression that pure aluminum and magnesium were actually pretty useful structural elements if you don't have to worry about oxidation?

<comment><USER18> They're useful structural elements even in the presence of oxygen. In fact they're better than steel because they form their own protective coating that doesn't flake off and expose fresh metal underneath.

The moon has other challenges, like the slow day/night cycle, radiation, and the damn dust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _Starship is a devastatingly powerful space access and logistical transport mechanism that will instantly crush the relevance of every other rocket ever built._

If I am a launch provider other than SpaceX, I'm out of business in probably 3-5 years.

<comment><USER20> Don't forget that China is launching more rockets into space than the US in 2018, and is close to be the same in 2019: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_in_spaceflight#By_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_in_spaceflight#By_country)

SpaceX still has about 10 launches officially scheduled in 2019, but I'd be surprised if they launch half of it. And in total, for SpaceX, this represents less launches than in 2018, not to mention some of these are test launches and others serve their own Satellite venture.

Does this mean that the market is contracting? Is there less money in space launches?

I personnally find this fact more disturbing; SpaceX is a very successful venture, but the US is second in terms of launches anyway (of which SpaceX represents only about 50%) behind China, and I feel like 2019 will be a small year. Their last launch was 84 days ago (!! [https://spacexnow.com/stats.php#Turn_Arounds](https://spacexnow.com/stats.php#Turn_Arounds) ), and the back order sheet is not gigantic either.

<comment><USER21> Why does launch count matter?

<comment><USER22> Should we tell him that Russia has been outpacing us in launches per year for pretty much the entire existence of space travel?

[https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Number-of-launches- per-y...](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Number-of-launches-per-year-ref- DISCOS_fig4_266556917)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Starship is not just a huge fuel tank and some kick ass engines, it's also a > reusable honest-to-god Mars landing system for >100T payloads that doesn't > require any parachutes. This is a big deal.

No parachutes, landing cushions, skyscranes, or other crazy ideas. Just a big fat cross section to slow it down.

<comment><USER24> Starship still needs to fire rockets in order to land. I would say it's a crazier idea than the ones you have mentioned. The previous solutions you have listed were used precisely because they were less crazy ideas.

<comment><USER25> Curiosity used aerobraking, parachutes AND a skycrane to land. There's a great video here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki_Af_o9Q9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki_Af_o9Q9s)

Previous solutions weren't used because they were less crazy, but because they were more mass efficient for "small" payload sizes.

<comment><USER24> I think we have been desensitized by all these SpaceX rocket landings. Propulsive landing is not as easy as it seems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> >Mars city building is about robots building potato farming robots and humans facilitating a nearly-automated industrial stack.

Who's going to build these robots? This sounds like something I would really enjoy working on.

<comment><USER27> You might have second thoughts when you read about working conditions at SpaceX and Tesla. It's a job I'd love to do and I have enormous respect for Elon Musk, but I have no desire to work for him.

<comment><USER28> Yes but so far, Musk has been saying SpaceX plans to let other companies build most of the stuff needed to live on Mars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> > It turns out that landing on Mars is really hard. Of 17 attempted landings, > only 8 have been successful, all built by JPL.

This is practically offtopic, but this is technically incorrect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_3)

> ...the Mars 3 lander became the first spacecraft to attain a soft landing on > Mars, on 2 December 1971. It failed 20 seconds after landing...

<comment><USER24> I mean, the whole statement is not correct. Sure JPL manufactured some things but it also acts just like NASA, managing the Mars projects. Most of the spacecraft I would say were manufactured in partnership with other industry aerospace companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There seems to be a lot of wishful thinking in this article? You don't get the Berlin airlift unless someone is willing to pay for it, and that only happened in an emergency.

Getting into communication satellites is smart and sounds like it will be big business, but it only goes so far in increasing demand. It should be great in remote and rural areas, but most cities already have Internet.

<comment><USER30> According to the ITC, only 11.9% of the world has "Fixed broadband" aka wired internet. 30.1% in developed nations. There's a big gap, especially when the world catches up in a few years.

<comment><USER29> Good to know, but it might not be the most relevant metric? In many places, wired phone service got bypassed by cell phone service. I'd guess a lot more people have cell phones and are usually in cell phone range, so what we really want to know is coverage, cost, and quality of the data services that people already use to access the Internet, and how big a role satellite service would play in improving that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> SpaceX is just a phenomenal venture. It's inspiring. I cannot imagine how someone could think of starting a space company.

<comment><USER2> There is a saying "the first trillion of personal wealth will be made in space". Musk seem to be on the way there.

Why you "can't imagine" if there is a seeming counterexample - a successful rocket company?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> _Starship is a cargo conveyor system. The Starship is comparable in complexity to a 737, and so it's not unthinkable to have a construction rate of 500 /year. If each Starship manages 300 flights per year, each carrying 150 T of cargo, then we are talking a yearly incremental cargo capacity growth of 22 million tonnes to orbit. At this point, the most meaningful constraint on launch capacity might be launch pad construction rate._

This made me think of this shot in Star Trek: Into Darkness

[https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/127311/why-is-a- mo...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/127311/why-is-a-model-of-the- secret-starship-in-plain-view)

<comment><USER33> why?

<comment><USER32> It's that tracking shot where it starts with spaceships we're familiar with in our own "timeline" like the Space Shuttle and works up to larger and larger vessels, including Enterprise. Suppose having the ability to ferry more and more cargo to low earth orbit means we can start creating much larger structures in space?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > With an eventual flight rate of once per day per Starship,

Gwynne Shotwell said that their business plan for using Starship to compete with long-distance airliners involved making about a dozen trips per day per Starship.

<comment><USER2> > about a dozen trips per day per Starship

Gagarin flew for around 108 minutes, so orbital velocity allows longest trip between two points on Earth in about 54 minutes. Shorter trips could be less, but liftoff-landing take roughly a fixed amount of time.

Twelve trips per day is 2 hours per trip. Taking 40 minutes of flight, there are 1 hour 20 minutes to get onboard, to get off board, to handle luggage (if needed?), to refuel and check systems. Wonder how does it look from airlines operation prospective.

<comment><USER35> Do all orbital flights take off in the same direction due to the rotation of the Earth?

<comment><USER36> "Most" would be more accurate.

Flights that want to orbit over the poles take off aiming perpendicular to the rotation instead. A few satellites have been launched backwards intentionally.

<comment><USER37> I think sun synchronous orbits are retrograde

P2P sub orbital hops are either direction, 30-40 minutes, maybe 25 for shorter trips like London to New York.

<comment><USER36> Agreed that P2P sub orbital hops are any direction.

Low sun synchronous orbits are approximately the same as polar oribts, more perpendicular than retrograde. I'm not sure if we use high sun synchronous orbits for anything?

<comment><USER37> Sun sync is approx 98.7 degrees at 800km - so slightly retrograde (prograde being 0-90)

Majority of LEO sats are sun sync

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm surprised there's no mention of Kessler Syndrome[1]. Launching, possibly multiple, high volume satellite networks is worrisome to me. Is the increase in number of satellites negated by the reduced launch debris from using reusable rockets?

Is there an implication that an increase in global cargo capacity also increases our ability to "launch" debris reduction/removal efforts?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome)

<comment><USER39> There is not a mention of that because the author knows what he is talking about - [https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/25/space- debris-p...](https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/25/space-debris- probably-not-coming-to-a-backyard-near-you/)

<comment><USER38> Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> >Next, let's consider Mars. Mars is the underlying design case for the Starship, although Starships that go to Mars will probably be of a customized nature. While the Moon takes about 3 days to get to, Mars takes 4-10 months. Launch windows to Mars only open every 2 years, so even if Elon has 1000 Starships ready to go, they can only go every 2 years.

and here i think Musk genius of targeting Mars instead of Moon shows again. Moon business case wouldn't support, while Mars does support the nuclear powered ships. The Starship is of the size to allow sufficient shielding for propulsion reactor. To avoid the "once in 2 years launch window" limitation an additional 3km/s delta-V is needed, and nuclear will get you that and would speed-up the flight in the standard window. Cutting some time from 3 days for Moon isn't really worth the nuclear hassle, cutting half from months long jorneys to Mars and ability to launch practically anytime - that changes everything for Mars. Stacking several Starships - lower ones with reactors, the upper - with people, one can decrease the amount/weight for the shielding. Going ionic thrust propulsion powered by the reactors one can get even faster. All this tech - nuclear propulsion and ionic thrust - had been tried already, so i think it is no less doable for SpaceX than the Raptor with its hot oxygen resistant superallow.

</comment><comment><USER41> > _Indeed, the marginal cost per flight could fall to $5m or below, reducing > launch costs to the neighborhood of $35 /kg, or 1000x less than Shuttle._

The keyword here is "marginal". You can achieve the $35/kg if you only account for the fuel. In other words, the entire rocket must be retrieved intact and launched again with no maintenance whatsoever.

In reality, this will never happen and most likely the cost will be a few hundred dollars per kilogram. For Falcon 9, this number is still above $2000/kg, but even that is way better than other existing launch systems.

<comment><USER2> > In reality, this will never happen and most likely the cost will be a few > hundred dollars per kilogram.

SpaceX has a history of proving skeptics wrong :) . You didn't elaborate why your opinion is better than those skeptics'.

<comment><USER41> Well, it's not about my opinion. The cost of launching 1kg to LEO on Falcon 9 is $2700 which is a far cry from $35.

Please note that $2700/kg is still great since older launch systems cost about $5k-$10k/kg. We are still talking about a factor of 2-4, not 100.

<comment><USER2> > Well, it's not about my opinion.

It is. You're making statement about the future - what SpaceX will achieve or demonstrate - as if it's a fact. There are plenty of people who disagree with this statement, who have another opinion about the future and who will point out that SpaceX did several times something what was considered at least unlikely.

> Please note that $2700/kg is still great

When Proton launcher debuted on world market in 1990-s, the price (not cost) for a launch was about 30 millions, which, given payload about 20 tons to LEO, gives price per kg of about 1500 dollars. $2700/kg isn't bad, but isn't record-shattering either. As for costs - as opposed to price - of Falcon-9, we may have only estimation.

Two orders of magnitude difference won't likely be achieved immediately, but the potential is here. See the evolution of airlines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I hope SpaceX figures out how to make hydrogen more feasible than methane if they plan to scale up to such high emission levels. I know why hydrogen is not used today. Primarily because of the cryogenic storage requirements in the rocket itself and the requirement to have much larger tanks. Also because of heat problems in the combustion chamber. There are a handful of other reasons but really, the human race should be able to overcome them.

<comment><USER43> Don't forget the impact of hydrogen on metals: turn everything brittle. For a company founded on reusable componentry, Hyrdogen in your turbopumps, fuel chambers, combustion chambers etc. is kind of a deal breaker.

<comment><USER44> The SSME (now the RS-25 engine) seems to handle the H2 just fine.

<comment><USER28> They only flew each Shuttle an average of 34 times, with months of refurbishing between flights. SpaceX wants to fly each engine hundreds or even thousands of times, with turnaround less than a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is far from something I know anything about, but is it really plausible that the Starship is the same complexity as a 737?

<comment><USER46> My very backseat driver feeling is a Starship is lower complexity?

<comment><USER45> Really? The 737 is from the 60s.

<comment><USER47> Spaceships are surprisingly simple. Starship has much fewer control surfaces, for example.

It does have a lot more engines though, and these Raptor engines aren't trivial, so I'm not sure it's actually true.

<comment><USER48> As far as I know liquid propellant rocket engines are notoriously complex, and operate under even more extreme conditions than modern airplane engines

<comment><USER47> Don't underestimate how complicated modern high bypass turbofan jet engines are. Way more R&D money had gone into the latest designs than went into e.g. the Raptor engine.

A crazy random fact is that there are entire turbine parts that are a single molecule, yet are bigger around than you are tall.

<comment><USER46> Single molecule _thin_? Or is it something polymer like? That's intriguing.

<comment><USER47> No, the entire thing is a single large molecule, despite however many kilograms it weighs.

<comment><USER46> Intrigued! (I thought some plastics, polyethylene for instance was always single molecule, but it's seems I'm mistaken.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Before colonizing Mars, colonize Antarctica. Antarctica is an overwhelmingly better place to live, and to move to, than Mars, on any axis you can name. Actually has air. Has lots of surface water. Has gravity. Is warmer! A flight there or back costs N thousands of times less, and you can get there in a day, not 4-10 months.

That's not to say Antarctica is an appealing place to colonize. It's much, much worse than almost any other place on earth. But it's way better than Mars.

Even the cloud tops of Venus are way better than Mars. But Antarctica is a way better place to be than Venus, too.

Central Australia or the Taklamakan desert would be a picnic compared to Antarctica.

Instead of making self-replicating potato-farming robots for Mars, make some for Earth, first. Turn them loose in a desert somewhere: Antarctica, the Sahara, Wrangel Island, or central Australia. I guarantee overwhelmingly better chances for success at any of those places than on Mars. If it would be too hard to do at any of those places, then it will be impossible on Mars.

BFStarship has an interesting value proposition for something. Almost anything is a better choice than Mars missions. Delivering milk is a better value proposition. Blockade busting is a better value proposition. Launching communication satellite swarms looks like a good idea, but a viable use for the next dozen vehicles is harder to guess. A space elevator would use up a lot of launches, but that begs the question.

Asteroid mining actually seems kind of plausible, in principle, but only if you have something to build out of it, there, like an interstellar generation ship. Nobody has any expectations for those to produce any value.

</comment><comment><USER50> How much of the worlds fuel would be used doing hundreds or thousands Of launches a year

<comment><USER17> according to this [1] the US consumes ~8E6 million cubic feet of methane a year

which is ~ 2.3E11 cubic meters

which is ~ 1.5E11 kg of methane

1% of that would be 1.5E9 kg

total fuel load of starship+super heavy nominally 4.5E6 kg

just the methane is about 30% of that, so 1.4E6 kg

so 1% of the total methane consumption of just the US is about a thousand flights a year. As other people have said, minimal.

[1] [https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3035us2a.htm](https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3035us2a.htm)

<comment><USER50> Thank you very much for the response. I assumed it would be way more.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, it's one of the reasons why reusability is so important. When you don't have to rebuild the rocket each time it gets a lot cheaper to use than current intuition would suggest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Since we are at the dawn of the space era, I have always wondered if earth mass loss due to massive space exploration will become a problem.

</comment><comment><USER52> Lets not get ahead of ourselves. The ship hasn't flown once. Also, there is an design issue with the Starship, there is absolutely no redundancy with the fins on the ship. If any of the fins aren't working as planned, prepare for a disaster.

<comment><USER36> By the same logic there is a design error with a boeing 747, if even one wing falls off everyone dies.

A wing's controls failing (on either vessel) might be recoverable depending on the details/if the other control surfaces can compensate...

<comment><USER52> It hasn't even flown yet. How can you compare an unproven rocket to a Boeing 747, which has millions of hours of proven flight hours on it with something that has none? I realize that the 747 has had failures over the time too, but I'd happily get on a Boeing 747 but would not get on a Spaceship until it's been flown several, if not 100's of times (without incident, as can be said for the 747).

<comment><USER9> Because of engineering and analysis.

I don't know where the anti-science "it's impossible to speak meaningfully about anything in the future that hasn't yet been built" idea came from in Internet rhetoric, but it's absolutely ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Space-X has to deal with a PR problem right now. Boeing is going to launch their crewed capsule in December.[1] Space-X isn't ready yet.

[1] [https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/crew/index.html](https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/crew/index.html)

<comment> Tuna-Fish Boeing is doing BOE-OFT, or their uncrewed flight test. SpaceX has already done this. (It was the flight with the earth plushie.)

Currently, SpaceX needs to do an in-flight abort, and Boeing needs to do an uncrewed test flight before they can fly crew. Which will be first to the ISS with crew is still up in the air.</comment></comment>


The Most Detailed Image of Our Galaxy Ever Taken - <AUTHOR> http://bmgoau.nfshost.com/milkyway_spitzer_zoom/spitzer.html <comment><USER2> If you zoom in (and give it a sec) it'll load the high-res version.

Just remember, every point of light is a star. And then remember, there are as many galaxies in the universe as points of light in that picture.

Now go watch Pale Blue Dot on youtube.

<comment><USER3> As Carl Sagan would say, "billions of billions".

Also this quote from the book "Pale Blue Dot" is equally amazing: <http://vimeo.com/2822787>

The original "Pale Blue Dot": <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M>

<comment><USER4> Thanks for that.

 _"How perilous our infancy. How humble our beginnings."_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As much as I'd give anything to be in deep space exploring the galaxy, the universe is a creepy looking place. You know the feeling when you're noclipping in a game? I imagine it would be weird like that.

<comment><USER6> Would you really give anything? Because it's possible. We could do it.

There just aren't enough people yet that are willing to give enough to do it.

<comment><USER7> Most people today are interesting in 'exploring' exceptionally populated areas of the planet that they've heard to be great places of interest. While these places are fascinating, it is hardly 'exploring'.

I hope that within my lifetime we will be able to convert enough of these people to want to explore places like the moon and Mars. Before long, we'll have people demanding we explore Alpha Centauri and going out with a battering-ram to see if we can find life in the universe rather than playing with a ham-radio to see if the neighbours are in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _That's_ the most detailed? Google Sky has about 2x the magnification of a random, boring spot I picked, and _much_ higher on interesting locations. Maybe there's some small spot which goes to 8x, but otherwise I think they've been beat.

(comparison: both scale roughly 2x on each level. linked: 9 levels. Google: 10 levels before informing of no more data, many boring locations go higher. Apparently, I found one of the least interesting sections to try first.)

<comment><USER9> Maybe this is a single composite take from the same satellite, not an agglomeration of many photos from different locations and times? I'm not sure.

<comment><USER8> It's definitely more consistent... and more blue.

Not saying it's not neat, and it appears to be quicker than Sky. Just that it's kinda lame if that really _is_ the highest density.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How are these images created? We can't have space probes that have covered a significant distance from earth yet (or can we??), so I suppose essentially they must all be "as seen from earth"?

<comment><USER11> Yep, as seen from here. The denser parts are looking towards the center of the galaxy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone else tried to find the supermassive black hole ? :)

<comment><USER13> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duoHtJpo4GY>

<comment><USER14> Submitted: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1390960>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can someone clarify if the colours visible in the image are an artifact of instrument used for capturing the image? Or are they natural colours of stars?

<comment><USER16> Judging from the name of the image, it was taken by Spitzer, which is an Infrared telescope [1]. The colors you see in this image do not represent visible light.

[1] <http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Are these all true colors? Seems like a lot of red and yellow floating around? Or maybe thats just the way the galaxy is, I'm no expert.

<comment><USER18> As I responded to a similar question, I believe that these images are created through a composite of Spitzer images taken at different wavelengths, where the colours have been added artificially. There's more information here: <http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080605.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> on a related note: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVjF_7ensg>

</comment><comment><USER19> Does anybody know approximately where our solar system is in that picture?

It's about 75% from the center of the galaxy, but would it be on the left side or the right side?

(I know I won't be able to SEE it, but it just sort of feels good to be able to look at a picture like this and imagine a "YOU ARE HERE" arrow.)

<comment><USER20> Um, the picture was taken from Earth orbit. You will NOT find the solar system in this image.

<comment><USER19> Facepalm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It would be great to have the same image but with labels for all the stars. It looks certainly great, but I would really like to click on certain points and get more information. Like what's the difference between a red, blue and green star here.

</comment><comment><USER22> Amazing. Is Sol visible in that image?

<comment><USER23> Of course not. These images are taken FROM Sol. How could it be there?

<comment><USER22> Oh. Duh. Thanks. I guess the framing of the image gave me the (unconsidered, of course) impression that it was an outside view of the galaxy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hey, I can see my house from here!</comment>


Show HN: A Y Combinator for Objective-C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jballanc/objc-ycomb <comment><USER2> That's cool, but it's actually possible to use recursive blocks directly if you simply declare the block as a __block variable. This works perfectly fine:

      __block void (^myBlock);
      myBlock = ^{ myBlock(); };
      myBlock();

The only thing you have to watch out for is when the block gets copied prior to its invocation (e.g. if you pass it to some function that does a Block_copy on it). In that case you have to first copy the block yourself and update your block variable:

      __block void (^myBlock);
      myBlock = [^{ myBlock(); } copy];
      someFunctionThatCopiesTheBlock(myBlock);

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh, I was wondering when someone would bring this up. For most cases, this also works. I will say that I've seen cases where this technique hasn't worked, but those were all far, far more complex than most any Obj-C programmer will ever need to worry about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This has to be the most unboring README file I ever read. The fun.m and nofun.m have a nice touch too.

<comment><USER4> I really appreciate the overview that author gave in readme. Quite often links to seemingly interesting github projects are submitted, but I am unable to figure out the 'really cool' parts. Explanation adds much value to playing with the project.</comment></comment>


IRS ruling allows 401(k) student loan benefits - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/irs-ruling-allows-401k-student-loan-benefits-2018-08-27 <comment><AUTHOR> Making it easier to repay student loans with other people's money will surely fix the student loan crisis.

How could it possibly make it worse?

Sigh.

<comment><USER2> I don't see this decision using "other people's money" to repay student loans.

From what I read in the article, the employee would earn match benefits up-to- but-not-exceeding normal limits for money they put in towards their student debt and 401K retirement.

e.g. Employee A has no student debt and contributes $5,000 to their employer's 401k program - qualifying them for a $5,000 employer match to their retirement.

Employee B has student debt and contributes $4000 to their student debt payment and $1,000 towards their employer's 401k program - qualifying them for a $5,000 employer match to their retirement.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was my reading too.

I'm just assuming this is going to be a standard benefit pretty fast. And now instead of saving for retirement at a youn age (compound interest is a very powerful thing) and instead use this benefit to pay off their loan.

But I worry people will just interpret this as 'your job will help pay off your loans' and this be willing to take on more/bigger loans than they would otherwise.

So now they're on the hook for more and don't get the retirement benefit they could have elected for.

It can be used well, I worry it won't be.</comment></comment></comment>


Help rebuild Christchurch - <AUTHOR> http://99designs.com/christchurch

<comment><USER2> Thank you 99designs! Very generous.

I live 20km west of Christchurch city and was fortunate to escape largely unaffected. My heart goes out to those that have lost Family, Friends, Homes and Businesses. The last week has been a surreal experience for myself and everyone here.

It is a case of the haves and the have nots at the moment. There are still 20,000 homes without electricity tonight and 30% of the city remains without water and sewer. It's an incredibly weird and helpless feeling with many suburbs getting back to (relative) normality while other suburbs towards the east have been devastated. Everyone is on edge, each aftershock brings back memories of Tuesdays quake and for a split second everyone wonders if it could be another big one.

From my perspective it has been fascinating watching the web and social media play a key role following the disaster. Immediately after the earthquake the news spread fast via twitter as you would expect. Photos and youtube videos of the carnage were being broadcast around the world within minutes. It has been described as one of the most documented disasters in history. You can look back at the first tweets using google realtime search <http://goo.gl/40djD>

Txt messages and Facebook were the two best ways to immediately check on family and friends, I can't imagine what it would have been like before these services. Knowing that your loved ones are ok within minutes is incredibly relieving. I could instantly inform my friends from all around the world that I was ok with a quick status update. And for those without internet access, their Friends who had made contact could post on that persons wall letting everyone know that they were ok.

Facebook Groups have been a great tool to inform and mobilise various volunteer groups. Canterbury universities student volunteer army is the best example. Thousands of students were mobilsed through facebook and they have been helping to clear silt away from properties. Silt is a fine sand that bubbles out of the ground as a result of liquefaction. <http://www.facebook.com/StudentVolunteerArmy>

New Zealand developers have also volunteered their support with a number of excellent websites popping up in the days following the quake.

<http://www.quakeescape.org.nz> <http://www.trademe.co.nz/christchurch- earthquake-support> <http://eq.org.nz> [http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/christchurch_earthquake...](http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/christchurch_earthquake.html)

Also worth mentioning, a group of New Zealand developers have launched <http://www.appappeal.co.nz> to raise funds. I'm sure your support and tweets would be greatly appreciated.

It's late here, Hopefully I'll do a more comprehensive (and edited) blog post at a later date. Thanks for your support.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know that we're doing a fundraiser at 99designs to help those affected by the earthquake in Christchurch.

We'll be donating 100% of our profits from today to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal.

<comment><USER3> that's pretty smart of you :)

economics of a fundraising, random numbers but you can scale them up or down easily.

assuming you usually have $10k daily profits, and today you got even only $15k that's still 5.000$ / 50$ (average profit for you on a $500 project or whatever is an average project) = 100 new people that'll try you out. So total cost = $10k with no other costs (a part from fixed ones: hosting & support)

If just half of these 100 people will do another project on average in their lifetime cycle you already have covered your costs and make some good profits (100 / 2 * 500$ = $25k)

Without even counting all the free press! let's say $10 CPM and 200k people reached, that's a nice $2k of bonus

<comment><AUTHOR> This isn't about that.

A few of the guys on the 99 team are from New Zealand and their friends and family have been affected by this. It's a pretty big deal for us.

<comment><USER4> For the record, I think what your company is doing is outstanding. It's going to cost an absolute fortune to help rebuild the city and every single last dollar counts. I think you deserve every ounce of publicity you get from this regardless of your motivations for lauching this fundraiser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> while i applaud your charity efforts, i want to let all those non-designers understand how design contest driven sites like 99designs hurt the design industry as a whole.

to put it in perspective for programmers, it's like submitting a completed project (or at least a functional beta) with no guarantee of payment. it's up to the client to pick the best "code" and all the others lose their time/money.

for more info on how this is hurting designers: <http://www.no-spec.com/>

<comment><USER6> Nobody forces anyone to enter those contents. Get over with it.

<comment><USER5> i'm only here to educate others on the business model and to stick up for the health of my industry.

<comment><USER7> I don't think you're educating anyone. It's a free market, what's the problem with buying a Corolla over a BMW? Everyone and their mother (including mine) have a website now. 95% of those people don't need a professional design which is why sites like 99designs work.

<comment><USER5> i don't feel your analogy works at all. if only 1 out of 20 designers (i'm just guessing at the average number of submitted concepts per contest) are getting paid for their work they are submitting, then 19 are losing out: it's called spec work.

cheap is not spec.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> great initiative !</comment>


Scikit-Learn's Defaults Are Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://ryxcommar.com/2019/08/30/scikit-learns-defaults-are-wrong <comment><USER2> > You can't do machine learning in Python without [scikit-learn]

Aside from hand-rolling the algorithm of your choice:

import statsmodels</comment>


Ask HN: How do you decide when to move jobs? - <AUTHOR> I can't decide if I should leave my current job or not.  Every couple of weeks I go back and forth trying to come up with what to do. Thing is, I quite like my job and the people there are friendly, the work is straightforward and generally ok.  If I had to list pro's and con's here's what they'd be:
Pros:
Friendly, small team
Starting to get more responsibility & control over my project
Easy & low stress
Cons:
I've been here 6 months and already stopped learning new things at work (no foreseeable change either)
Much lower than average compensation ($95k for 10 years experience, zero equity, bad healthcare & low vacation days)
Ease of job makes me worry about losing my edge
----
The job is based in San Francisco at a "startup" with about 40 staff members and high profits.
So HN, how would you decide?
PS. Sorry about throwaway, I know quite a few people on HN with my main account... <comment><USER2> First of all, take a weekend, go to some state park within easy driving distance of San Francisco, and spend the weekend hiking around the mountains by yourself. Have this question in the back of your mind, but don't deliberately dwell on it.

When you get back, flip a coin: heads you stay, tails you move on. You have your hand over the coin and are about to remove your hand... and in your gut, there will be a split second where you can sense your hope for either heads or tails.

Then ignore the actual coin toss, and do what your gut told you.

If it were me, I'd look for another job, but YMMV.

<comment><AUTHOR> You know, we actually went away for a long weekend recently and talked about this very thing but couldn't come up with a decision.

I like the coin toss idea, I'm going to try it tonight!

Why exactly would you look for another job?

<comment><USER2> You describe your job as easy, and that you've stopped learning new things already. For me, that would be a dealbreaker.

I personally quit a job that was at least sort of along the lines you described, to go to graduate school. I'm now a math professor. Best decision of my life.

That said, if it were me, I would look carefully before leaping (which I'm guessing you've done thoroughly already).

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Don't depend on your job to "teach" you new things.

2\. Many times the uncool things pay the bills. Dwell on your personal commitments that require money. (Expenses, responsibilities (kids, parents etc)) and see if the risk is worth it. From what you wrote, I'm assuming that the present job is stable.

3\. Get a realistic view of your job prospects in the area. Suppose you get a higher paying job, how long can they afford your "high" salary. You don't want to get into a situation where you get into a new job and get laid off after a couple of months due to recession.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Of course not! I do a lot of work on things in my spare time - some of that work actually led to this job. But when you're at a place 8+ hours per day, you might as well be learning and growing.

2\. Correct, the job is quite stable and all our bills are easily covered. Part of my concern is I'm not making the most of my earning potential for things like savings and retirement and side business/projects.

3\. I'm in San Francisco and have literally been contacted by recruiters 2-3 times a week since I arrived here 7 months ago. I don't think finding a new job is an issue. I agree that I'd have to be very careful not to join a sinking ship!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having recently done this a few weeks ago, I can say it was the best thing to have happened to me in the last couple of years. Every job I've gone to was a step up from where I was (responsibility wise). I have never taken a job as a lateral move. I've only jumped ship when the opportunity was better for my career.

I knew I needed a change when I found myself installing RPMs all day. Not many people are fortunate to be in an environment where they can make recommendation or changes within an organization. When I asked if I could automate some tasks, I was greeted with a roundabout explanation on why we don't automate things. That's when I knew I had to get out. Other sysadmins were "happy" with their job. I guess for some folks, a 9-5 job is all they care for.

Me? I worry about what will happen years from now. If I'm 50 and need to find a job, can I market myself against someone who is younger? If I don't build my skillset now, I'm at a disadvantage many years from now. So to answer your question, when my job becomes so easy that I don't learn anything new or I'm not afraid of an upcoming task, that's when I know I need to question myself. If I'm not challenged, then what's the point of staying?

For some, it's a paycheck and a means to pay bills and raise their family. I'm in the same boat, but I also have to look at it in terms of how can i grow as a person both professional and personally. Nothing worse than waking up in the mornig and dreading to go into work. I can happily say I dont have that feeling anymore.

</comment><comment><USER5> Talk to your boss (manager, CTO, etc...) first! You have nothing to lose by doing this. Be completely honest with them about your feelings, but phrase things in positive ways. Don't say you "already stopped learning new things", but tell them you "have a lot more to offer and ready for more challenges".

Do you know nothing cool is coming down the pipeline for the foreseeable future? Show initiative and tell them all of the things that you genuinely love about the company and how you like it there. Don't put them on the defensive or focus on the negatives. During that conversation discuss the current positives and the future positives with you as an engaged employee with more responsibility.

You have absolutely nothing to lose if you are on the fence with your decision. If they react poorly you know what you need to do. If they react positively you may have a long-term happy future there.

<comment><USER6> I fully agree with this approach. I'd still give some it some time to see if things can happen. If they're good they should find something to challenge you. Maybe find a side project that's challenging?

I recently changed jobs from a company after a year. They were incredible well known and respected, but I wasn't going to get anywhere. I waited for a year because many business believe it takes nearly a year to get in the groove of a position, not sure if that's entirely true but it's commonly accepted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This might sound weird, but test yourself in the morning. Do you wake up ready to get to work? Or does the thought of it keep you in bed for another hour after the initial alarm goes off? Seriously, that is how I know I like what I am doing. Do keep in mind that there are always the bad days, so do several self 'tests'.

For me, personally, the lack of learning or something challenging would be the deal breaker.

PS - And since you are near/in SF, take another posters advice and do some hiking in desolation wilderness near Tahoe's south shore. Mt. Tallac makes a great day trip and it's easy to get to with a fantastic view. (Contrary to the name, it is beautiful.)

</comment><comment><USER8> It's rare to find a place to work at that you actually enjoy and like the people. You'll probably find every other job you get you will compare to your current one and realise that no matter how much money you're earning if your employer or team are rubbish it won't justify the cash.

Have you thought asking for a pay rise instead of considering to leave?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, and that's what worries me. Part of me knows I should be earning more and doing more interesting things but I am concerned about leaving a decent team for the unknown.

I've been considering asking for a pay rise, yes. Although I'm unsure if they'd be able to even match the market average as that'd be a big jump in both pay and benefits I guess. I always think through what my desired outcome would be before going into meetings like that. In this case, I think what I desire would be too much. Add to that the fact that my boss has pointedly told the team that he hates the 'mercenary' types around SV who are only in it for the money...

<comment><USER9> What are the barriers? This also might help you to think throught.

> Growth/Learning: If you had N+1 (degrees, title, experience) what would you > be doing different at this company? Would advancement hurt the team dynamic > or is it just the inertia of the system (no excuse to promote). What if your > team added +1 people, would that have any effect on you/your prospects? > Good/bad/indifferent

>Pay. This is also worth thinking about. What are the barriers to market pay? Do they have some-reason (stong brand, etc) or is it tactical (cash management)? Why so stingy with option/ect? How old the company is and what its brand/risk profile are are worth considering (when doing the grass is greener, both sides compare). Did you get a raw deal (because you got hired at a low rate with x% raise) or is everybody on the same bare-bones diet?

The more difficult case is when there is a team they just want to stay the same. everyone is paid the same. and everyone else but you is happy. If its a heterodox mix of pay, its easier to at least "true-up" to market. If its a heterodox mix of experience, consider saturday night live -- at some stage almost everyone moves on -- but the younger folks get a lot of exposure and skill, until they too have their fill.

Most managers won't rock the boat unless its a mission critical situation. But if you have a plan, it helps: why it makes sense you should get N+1 more $ and how PQR will make XYZ more productive and any gap ABC will be filled by LMNO...etc...no brain damage or political/ capital/blood being spilled: That helps them a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm just curious what type of dev work you're doing, why did you take such below market pay without any equity? that's low for most types of dev with equity for someone with ten years experience

</comment><comment><USER11> I think the fact that you even wrote this post and are questioning staying at this "startup" means it's time for you to move on. Look at what is important to you and go follow that.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're probably right. I just don't like to leave without considering all the options first.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note: I say "startup" because they're backed by a much larger company and only describe themselves as a startup when it is beneficial to do so</comment>