That said, the I-35 bridge in Minnesota could have been maintained, but was re-built at ruinous expense. Is the new one now maintained properly? Or does it need less maintenance?
Apparently the old one was built with certain metal plates that were too thin by half, such that had they been of sufficient thickness, the abysmal state of maintenance would not have led to wholesale collapse, and we would today still be using the ill-maintained bridge.
So maybe collapse is a solution, not a problem? Presumably the money to build a new bridge did not come from the same account as what is used or fails to be used for maintaining bridges. Though maybe that account should be drawn down for maintenance, which would seem a radically better use of the money.
The US is in decline. Can it be turned around? Probably not so long as fully half the population is easily persuaded to throw its full-throated support behind an out-and-out grifter for its chief executive office.
Why spend money on a terrestrial telescope when there are significant issues with atmospheric distortion and many other sources of interference?
The US could easily rebuild this old telescope if it wanted to, it just doesn't make sense to do it.
People in past decades said Japan was going to overrun the US. Didn’t happen. China and India are themselves floundering in their own ways - but I suspect it’s simply their population having been out moved by their governments. Further, I don’t see people in foreign nations clamoring to mirror the Chinese systems nor to immigrate there. Theirs isn’t a system with widespread appeal. Corporations are learning doing business in China is more likely to get your business nationalized by the CCP than enriched. And of course Russia would be a laughing stock if it didn’t look like a monkey that had just picked up a fully loaded automatic rifle in a filled room.
I think it’s more that the internet has brought a wide recognition of where humanity really is nowadays. And the autocrats are attacking the world with the internet.
Please stop pushing against stability and towards world war.
I can think of many foreign companies that are doing a massive amount of business in China (VW, GM, Toyota, Starbucks, KFC, McDonalds, Coca Cola, Apple, just to name a few).
I can't think of a single one that's been nationalized.
They get into power and dismantle projects, don't provide enough funds, etc and then point to how bad the project is and say a private profit driven company should do it instead.
Regarding profit-driven companies, I worked for GE's Space Division on a big NASA contract back in the early-to-mid-1980s (and it was a great experience). Unfortunately, the defense side of the division was caught cooking the accounting books and the entire division, defense and civil, was barred from bidding on new government projects. Temporarily, of course, but long enough to result in our facility being dissolved after finishing a couple of smaller commercial projects already in the pipeline. (Coincidentally, one of my friends at GE had a master's in astrophysics and had spent a summer or two at Arecibo.)
At about the same time, Rockwell (I believe was the company) was caught charging defense project cost-overruns to its Shuttle contracts. On the plus side, private-sector personnel don't have that "lazy" gene that public-sector personnel have, so, aside from the cheating left and right, we're better off channeling money to the private sector, who are well-known for the superior quality of their goods and services.
"No, for budgetary reasons."
I'm projecting my own preferences on him, of course, but still. He seemed to be more of a genuine space geek than he turned out to be.
If he really gave a shit about "expanding the light of consciousness into the cosmos", he'd be working on ensuring a viable biosphere locally before blowing billions on dopamine clickfarm. As it stands we don't seem likely to have time to establish self-sufficient off-world human presence before we render Earth unable of sustaining much in the way of life or advanced civilization, and as the (second) richest man on Earth, he is uniquely positioned to have a quantitative impact on that outcome. Everyday he wakes up and chooses not to, and people still think he's anything but a mercurial egomaniacal robber-baron, should be considered a coup for his PR staff.
He's done a lot of good, and could do a lot more, but instead chooses otherwise. It's his money... well, some of it is, anyway. I don't harbor him any ill will for spending it as he sees fit. It's just a bummer, is all.
Rest in peace, friend.
