prayer letter printing/mailing

Bash Ars Scholae Palatinae
20y
1,191

Freedom of speech does not include the right:

• To incite imminent lawless action.
  Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).
• To make or distribute obscene materials.
  Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957).
• To burn draft cards as an anti-war protest.
  United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968).
• To permit students to print articles in a school newspaper over the objections of the school administration. Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988).
• Of students to make an obscene speech at a school-sponsored event. Bethel School District #43 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986).
• Of students to advocate illegal drug use at a school-sponsored event.
  Morse v. Frederick, U.S. (2007).

What Does Free Speech Mean?
Among other cherished values, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech. Learn about what this means.
www.uscourts.gov

Somehow, those incidents sum it up for Biden's time in office — absent, late, and blowing off the press.

“Nyah nyah nyah” has been the winner’s instinctive reflex, ever since we were all eight years old.

It’s human nature. And yet - and yet. This heavy-handed, partisan response to a major victory, carries a risk that this amazing realignment — MAGA and MAHA — will squander the greatest political opportunity of our lifetimes.

It is also strategically unwise. A good friend, who comes from the same world I do, said recently that he too is concerned that MAGA in triumph is “spiking the football’. //

If MAGA/MAHA did this — that is, walked with maturity and grace through this historic, unprecedented, transpartisan open door — it would revitalize and transform the Republican party, making the MAGA/MAHA movement into a big, unbeatable tent whose mission is to promote core American principles. This mission could replace the always-marginal, always-vulnerable status of the Republican party, which has devolved (as has the DNC) into a checklist of ever more extreme policy itemizations.

The Starship launch system is about to reach a tipping point, Gwynne Shotwell said, as it moves from an experimental rocket toward operational missions.

"We just passed 400 launches on Falcon, and I would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years," Shotwell said at the Baron Investment Conference in New York City. "We want to fly it a lot."

That lofty goal seems aspirational, not just because of the hardware challenges but also due to the ground systems (SpaceX currently has just one operational launch tower) as well as the difficulty of supplying that much liquid oxygen and methane for such a high flight rate. However, it's worth noting that SpaceX will launch Starship four times this year, twice the number of Falcon Heavy missions. An acceleration of Starship is highly likely. //

"Starship obsoletes Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule," she said. "Now, we are not shutting down Dragon, and we are not shutting down Falcon. We'll be flying that for six to eight more years, but ultimately, people are going to want to fly on Starship. It's bigger. It's more comfortable. It will be less expensive. And we will have flown it so many more times.". //

As Starlink has come online, it has significantly increased the valuation of the privately held company. A decade ago, SpaceX was valued at about $12 billion, and this grew to $36 billion in 2020. Most recently, the company was valued at about $255 billion. //

DDopson Ars Tribunus Militum
22y
2,397
Subscriptor++
daddyboomalati said:
Can someone unpack this for me? I cannot understand how a massive rocket is a better choice than the Falcon 9 for medium-weight payloads. My only thought is that it delivers multiple satellites at once. I do it all the time in Kerbal Space Program, but is this a thing in real life, or an eventual likelihood?
It's simpler than that. Starship costs less to launch than F9.

Each F9 launch expends a second stage that costs roughly $20M to fabricate. They do recover the $40M booster and the $6M fairings, but they have to fabricate a new second stage for every launch. And that second stage consumes one Merlin engine, but that's only a relatively small fraction of the stage's cost, on account of SpaceX's spectacular efficiency at manufacturing rocket engines for <$1M, literally hundreds of times cheaper than, eg, the RS-25 engines NASA buys.

The cost to fuel a Starship is on the order of a few million, possibly in the $2M or $3M ballpark (this was estimated in a prior thread), probably more when including their current fueling logistics costs, possibly a bit less at scale when they are manufacturing their own LOX and can amortize various bits of fueling infra over a consistent level of demand.

Ground logistics add additional costs (control center staff, ground crew, amortized share of launch complex, etc), but these are hard to estimate. Dividing the entire Boca Chica facility cost over ~5 test launches would produce an unfavorable number, but that's silly. The ground facilities should amortize fairly well as the launch cadence increases. And this stuff is probably mostly comparable between the two platforms.

Sticking with relatively conservative numbers, I expect their all-up internal marginal cost per Starship launch to be well under $10M per flight, much less than the cost of fabricating a new F9 second stage.

Launching Starship is thus cheaper than launching F9.

Now that's an internal cost that we may never learn with precision, and SpaceX will make a business decision about what price to charge to their customers. They may create very attractive rates for rideshares. They will likely maintain high prices for "white glove" launch contracts that include significant payload preparation and other services, especially DoD and NASA, which already typically pay more per F9 launch contract than the sticker price on the website for "just a launch". //

Republicans should celebrate their wins, but they shouldn’t get too comfortable. The voters who flipped to the GOP in 2024 weren’t signing a lifelong contract; they were making a statement. If Republicans want to keep these gains, they’ll need to deliver. That means focusing on policies that help working families and avoiding the same trap Democrats fell into—listening to the loudest voices instead of the largest groups. //

ConservativeInMinnesota
19 minutes ago
Democrat’s policies drove minorities to finally challenge the narrative they had for decades. If Trump’s presidency improves their lives that narrative will be shattered.

If Republicans after Trump continue to show minorities their lives are better under Republicans they’ll know it isn’t just Trump. If we make that transition the Dems become the new Whigs.

NASA spent millions on DEI and ‘Environmental Justice’ grants while laying off real scientists doing actual research and innovation. //

In an exclusive report, the UK Daily Mail says NASA staffers want President-Elect Donald Trump’s co-chair of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk to ‘clean house’, as insiders reveal the agency squandered millions of taxpayer money on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. //

Paula | November 18, 2024 at 1:19 pm
Democrats fear Elon Musk. And for good reason. He’s half Einstein and half honey badger.