Actually defunding the police turned out to be something that didn't happen, at least from the democrats (who are still blamed for it). The main defunding was from the republican leadership in the house who insisted on reducing the budget or multiple federal law enforcement agencies, such as FBI and ATF. The republicans defunded the police.
But the effective outcome of all the sound and fury is that police enforcement seems way way down. I can't understand why they allow so many drivers to go around with expired license plates and worse (no plates, hand written plates, etc). They just don't stop them any more. There was a claim that laws about safe pursuit were a reason to not stop them, then they reversed the laws, still happening). I'm very ticked about it.
What does the Congress have to do with police forces?
What do FBI and ATF have to do with traffic enforcement?
Actual police (one that enforces traffic laws) had actually been defunded and by democrats:
The problem with the wings is they generate lift during launch and that will screw up the rocket, thus the fairing. I thought there was no known solution for that.
It seems like you could mitigate that by designing the wing such that when mounted the angle of attack is 0 and thus no lift is generated. Obviously the wing would still have an effect when the booster changes orientation or in cases of high winds. I'm not remotely qualified to calculate the scale of those forces but I don't see why any of that would be a guaranteed showstopper given a booster with enough thrust vectoring capability.
I want to live long enough to see a viable test of larger spaceships that could send humans to Mars. I really want to live long enough to discover evidence of at least microbial life elsewhere in the solar system - Mars seems like the obvious place we can reach with a good chance for it be possible. I know there's amazingly water vapor around Europa, that's so much more remote.
I think about 30 years should lead to more exploration of Mars, and maybe multiple landers andn robots getting there from here, maybe even a return trip. (human travel to Mars feels so far out, even if Starship works out in the next 10 years).
I don't think you can just copy SpaceX's falcon 9 reusibility and landing just by wanting to do it. Even once you've got the basic system it takes years and years of iteration to make it better step by step. Only one company in the west has really done any of that, and if spacex wasn't around no one would believe it could be done.
I'm sure it can be done eventually by China though, they are just as smart as anyone else. Can they organize their scientific and engineering forces as well? Knowing it can be done is a huge help.
They've got a multiple PRC commercial companies with successfuly reusable tests. We'll know more in next few years. TLDR is state level "direction" to pursue reusable lauch + mega constellations only started last few years (probably saw value in UKR war). I think SpaceX tech is probably easier to copy vs military, once idea proven to work as you said, PRC pretty good at iterating and replicating, and scaling, provided there's reason for it, i.e. no idea how much payload demand outside of megaconstellations. US uniquely advantaged because they work with a lot of developed countries with their own launch needs that US provides. Some initial estimates for PRC mega constellation(s) is IIRC putting up 1500 before 2030, and 13000-26000 by 2035 to show the projected launch curve. Which TBF is like 30-40 rocket tier of demand. Question is if they find something to justify spamming magnitude more launch capabilities, and pertinent to this article, if they did, it's probably going to be weaponinizing space.
That's true, the ussr did some impressive things, and the millions of deaths they suffered fighting the germans in ww2 can't be forgotten, along with the impact of their weakening of the german forces over time.
Some people do honestly believe that because god is on 'our' side, the us and constitution were divinely motivated and everything in it was coming from god somehow. All the horrible justifications are still being made today about that stuff.
Drones and missiles will be perhaps the most important. One day it will be military robots. And guess who can makes the mass quantities of drones and missiles.
The USA would fight a standoff siege war with China, not a close in war when drones come into play. As to missiles, that's why the USA has developed the (chinese siege weapon named) Rapid Dragon system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system)
I mean the discussion here is specifically referring to the drone China accells at (quadrocopter) versus the USA such as RQ-4s. So I am referring to what the discussion is talking about.
> So I am referring to what the discussion is talking about.
That is why I am asking. Because it definietly sounds like you think the discussion is about quadrocopters and not say China building many WZ-7 Soaring Dragons.
Is it possible that when the others said that china will build many drones they meant the second kind and not some toy copters? Because that would make their comments make sense.
That wouldn't make sense as China is seen as a uniquely strong powerhouse in the toy drones, but not uniquely stronger the larger unmanned drones such as Reapers.
Yeah, but if they do it 10 years from now, it could well be different. Thus the very interesting book, "2034: A Novel of the Next World War", 2022,
by Elliot Ackerman (Author), Admiral James Stavridis USN (Author).
The interesting thing was about how India had also advanced in those 10 years from now.
Great observation. I have this idea (apparently semi-obvious based on this discussion) that if there is a future war with China (sure hope we can avoid it), in terms of production and technology, the US is in Germany's position and China is in the place of the US in WW2 parlance.
There are the obvious parallels where the US has great advanced technology, China can sure make things in mass quantities; also they have plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists and can figure out anything. Some obvous differences are the US has been where people from the world flee to, to get freedom and liberty; now we are in a serious period of retrenchment though, with certain (ahem) groups wanting to restrict the books in the library if they are idealogically unacceptable and also anti-science and anti-education etc going along with that. China is not the place you want to go to if you are going to introduce heterodoxical ideas.
There are also all the echos of the '20s and '30s in our current times in the US and the world, groups of countries pushing different ideas and coming together in blocks. We have instant communication, nukes make everything even more serious than that time. The new ascendant anti-democratic countries want their shot at power and riches too.
One other factor that may help the U.S. is that America will have an easier time getting access to some resources as production ramps up than China given our excellent geographic position and China's lack of a blue water navy that can cut off American supply lines. However, while America's navy may get pushed back from the first island chain, there are several other chokepoints it can use to stop materials from coming in to China by sea (which is one of the only cost-effective ways to ship the amount of mass needed to produce war materiel at scale), and many of China's neighbors are not friendly to the CCP and not liable to support shipments of material to support a war through their territory even if it is economical to do so.
But the effective outcome of all the sound and fury is that police enforcement seems way way down. I can't understand why they allow so many drivers to go around with expired license plates and worse (no plates, hand written plates, etc). They just don't stop them any more. There was a claim that laws about safe pursuit were a reason to not stop them, then they reversed the laws, still happening). I'm very ticked about it.