The Earth has 5e24 kg. A 1e4kg rocket going at 7e3m/s is going to cause something around 1e-17m/s change in velocity. And that's considering that Earth receive all the momentum from the rocket's exhaust, what isn't true.
You'll need way too many rockets to cause an even measurable change on Earth's orbit in a million years. Try changing it to a few billions.
for every big, international, well run company this is basically like saying it's next year...
when i worked on marketing for target... they kicked off planning for their 2-day sale 18 months in advance... not sure it was smart, but they did it...
This particular article gets into numbers around water, but also mentions growing fruit such as strawberries which are 92% water. But they claim they can grow 350x per acre what outdoor can do and with 1% the water...
grown indoor or outside... the water in a pound of strawberries is a constant...
currently in CA, an acre of strawberries yields ~60,000 lbs of strawberries per year... 350x that is... 21,000,000 lbs of strawberries per ace...
so per acre, it would require a min of 231,377 gallons just for the fruit alone
currently it takes about 12 gallons of water in CA to yield 1lbs of strawberries, but that's the entire plant, fruit and all... 1 acre uses 720,000 gallons per year...
...to get 21m lbs of strawberries, you need 252m gallons of water
1% of that is 2.5m gallons
2.5m gallons weighs 20,850,000 lbs
21m lbs of strawberries is really just 19,320,000 lbs of water
so 92% of the water consumed in total goes to fruit...
which means they have strawberry plants that require virtually no water
and then you have the inputs... if it costs $40/lb right now... a test acre of strawberries alone... would cost $840,000,000 at their current rate...
and then their best case scenario mentioned would be $1 per pound so... $21m/acre
it currently costs $23,000 per acre in CA to grow 60,000 lbs....
so 350x that... and you're still at $8m an acre
so in their best case scenario... their inputs are still 2.6x today's current costs... startup costs are billions... and water numbers are off...
it would be interesting to see what they're telling investors and what is actually possible given that inputs like water are a constant no matter how a fruit is grown on a per pound basis
I feel a bulk of it is just marketing hype. Certain things don't scale well, but they sure sound good and shine bright. Snow flakes and bad math, Let's IPO and pass it on to retail investors.
Bringing production closer to the point of consumption/end user does indeed make sense. All the inputs in an indoor growing environment definitely twist things up once you really do the math. Vertical outdoor would make more sense. As soon as you incorporate HVAC, lighting, growing media, hydro set up, rent in urban areas, cost of human labor, nutrients, water purification/recycling, genetics, dehumidification if required, pesticides, air filtration, opex, and on it goes...it becomes rather messy and impractical in the short term.
I suppose (thinking on a more macro level than a single org's p&l) there are also opportunity costs to consider.
Arable land that would otherwise be used for (leafy greens in this example) can be repurposed for other crops, preventing further deforestation et al.
Or perhaps this land would be suitable for rewilding - Or, given that farms are likely situated at fairly convenient transit points (which may align with power transfer needs), other industries such as energy could essentially rezone these areas into solar fields.
And the rules didn't just change... people that wanted to make changes had to lobby for years to make it happen... and then it took the right years to make it happen.
I've been a part of this activism in New York State for wine, cideries, and to some extent homebrewing my entire life and belong to a number of organizations to help make it happen.
There's also never a coincidence on timing and the economy. Governments love an excise tax and "sin" products are heavily taxed and a lot stays at the state level to where when the economy is in the dumps... they are much more willing to listen to lobbyists on ways to boost income for the state.
It works every time. In the wake of the "Great Recession," we were able to pass the most amount of pro-winery laws in a generation in New York State, unfortunately, we still came up short for our biggest initiative: WIGS aka Wine in Grocery Stores do to illegal campaign financing from overseas and domestic liquor groups. Albany is still a very dirty space. But prior to the recession, it would cost you $20K to get a license to start a distillery... we got that down to about $600. Wineries can now have 5 outlets or mini-wineries to sell their wine. The list goes on and on and it's had a real impact on jobs in Upstate New York.
You'll notice the big rule change for homebrewing happened in 1978... you had the oil crisis... Carter... inflation... and a Congress that was willing to literally let people start making beer in a super unregulated fashion to eventually boost income for the government... and of course create jobs and all that jazz along the way.
When the economy tanks again, I expect there will be marijuana legalization at the federal level.
If you're curious about the PR machine associated with SpaceX... see Tesla's stock price and news versus the very real and known issues with their debt/liabilities and production.
Do remember that there may be interested parties painting a bleaker "production issues"/ "liabilities" picture than the truth. See e.g. this review [1].
It's not "modern" companies or tech companies... it's the advertisers that run ads on media networks.
I worked as a copywriter for most of my 20s in Manhattan... have a ton of friends at all levels of the business from ad sales to OOH to Facebook.
My friends in TV ad sales always say the same thing when a company or product comes up at a party... "oh, ____ is actually a client of mine, love them, got shit faced the other week at lunch... but I don't buy their product because they're homophobes."
"What?"
"Oh, they're in my Excel sheet of companies that have requested to not be on Bravo... because of the content. too many gay dudes on shows."
I've had plenty of friends that worked in daytime and network ad sales where they literally would get an email with all the "issues" people might have with an upcoming episode of a popular show, when the issues would appear and what slots they can move the commercials into. They then spend the day calling all their advertisers and media buyers so they can go manage expectations and start moving spots around. People have no idea how much deal making has to happen with Fortune 500 company marketing departments and media agencies every time there is something 30% of this country would find offensive such as men kissing... or... men kissing... or someone saying "fuck".
Now, the people at these companies usually aren't actually homophobes... they usually just don't want to anger the far right and the groups that support their beliefs.
Then you get into the creative. I had a very popular underwear company as a client back in the day... part of every shoot was a reminder that we had to play by their rules. If there's a couple in their underwear... they have to both be wearing wedding rings because otherwise Christian groups will complain. This is common in many ads... look for the rings. We even had a Christian football star become a spokesperson for the company... but part of his contract had it so that he couldn't appear in underwear bc of his values and those of his supporters. So we put him in undershirts.
Then you have race and everything else.
But this all comes down to money and those with the money need to start flexing or support other platforms.
"The effect of social transmission on real-world voting was greater than the direct effect of the messages themselves, and nearly all the transmission occurred between ‘close friends’ who were more likely to have a face-to-face relationship. "
So people that already were most likely aligned ideologically.
SolarCity is an albatross of debt around their neck... no surprises. They have to raise debt for a long time just to get financing these obligations. No dog and pony shows, just paper to pay off paper.
