Comments on: SpaceX launches 21 Starlink satellites

By: mkent

mkent — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 06:50:17 +0000

”SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites”

By: Jeff Wright

Jeff Wright — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 23:11:48 +0000

Drat.

By: James Street

James Street — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 17:33:40 +0000

Sundance at The Conservative Treehouse blog has been following the economics of Twitter (now “X”) since Musk bought it. The money from the Tesla stock that Musk sold to buy and operate Twitter runs out this month. If true I wonder what impact that will have on Musk’s other companies.

Some points Sundance has made:

• Elon Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter
• The value of Twitter has dropped to the $15 billion level.
• Almost all of the $30 billion in personal equity Musk put into the company has been lost.
• If the valuation is accurate, Musk personally would have lost around $27.5 billion in this Twitter platform purchase.
• Bottom line, Musk grossly overpaid.
• Ad revenue is just over $1 billion a year.
• Operating expense are $4.5 billion a year.
• Musk was on track to hit a date in/around October of this year where Twitter would be insolvent.
• With $1 billion liquid in the bank, as of June (per Musk), that only gets him to September; by October, he needs another influx of cash, or else.

Source: This article by Sundance and articles linked in it:
Elon Musk Partners with Global Disinformation Index, the Progressive Disinformation Specialists, to Diminish Advertiser Fears
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/08/09/elon-musk-partners-with-global-disinformation-index-the-progressive-disinformation-specialists-to-diminish-advertiser-fears/

By: Nicholas Paizis

Nicholas Paizis — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 14:20:36 +0000

Bob – Are you aware of this?

There is no
climate emergency

https://clintel.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/WCD-version-081423.pdf

By: Andi

Andi — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 14:02:56 +0000

Remember those old commercials where “Brand X” was the inferior product?

By: Ferris

Ferris — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 13:19:11 +0000

Alphabet, X, Meta . . .

With all the completely unneeded and, frankly, ill advised, name changes, perhaps readers here should get ahead of the game and come up with an equally stupid name for Apple. I’ll go first, reflecting on one of Apple’s obsessions:

Emoji

By: wayne

wayne — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 11:52:38 +0000

Personally, I don’t like video served through twitter and have only ever gone there to get Tucker.
(I download practically everything, and these twitter files are in .ts format, which I don’t like. But that having been said, it’s free and my software can grab it, so I can’t complain too much.)

Tangentially–
Let’s talk about how every single advertisement on Rumble is served via Google Adsense.
The more you watch Rumble, the richer Google gets, excuse me, but I don’t call that winning…

By: GeorgeC

GeorgeC — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 08:04:01 +0000

The X video experience has less clutter. If you are not logged in you do not get any links to other content.

By: Richard M

Richard M — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 07:54:57 +0000

Elon tweeted this evening: “Aiming for 10 Falcon flights in a month by end of this year, then 12 per month next year.”

Not everything SpaceX is doing to increase its launch capabilities is visible, but at least two items are: Construction is now visibly underway on the new crew access tower at SLC-40, which when complete will allow SpaceX to launch Crew and Cargo Dragons from that pad, too; and it has acquired the lease on Launch Complex 6 at Vandenberg, and is now in the process of modifying it to begin launch Falcons.

It’s not implausible that they really could hit 120 launches next year.

By: Jeff Wright

Jeff Wright — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 05:54:12 +0000

It will never happen—but I would love to see two Falcons launch in unison…each with a camera on the other to document a side view of an entire flight profile.

We may see something unexpected.

Also…with Falcon using an old Saturn/shuttle pad…you have the inverse of SuperHeavy pads.

39A is so overbuilt and it’s deluge so large…might it assist in reuse of Falcons launched on that pad due to allowing evacuation…over other pads, say?

I want to see an end-of-life core fly horizontal and low…just to see what it could take.

By: Blair Ivey

Blair Ivey — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 04:34:27 +0000

I had thought that only the Twitter logo was changing to X, but I see it is a complete rebranding.

*Sigh*

This is Bond Villain stuff.