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Synthetase

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Historically, soldiers have generally been reluctant to use their weapons. During WWII, around 20% of soldiers actually fired their weapons in combat. Even fewer shot to kill often aiming over the heads of the enemy. This is a form of posturing both to the enemy and their comrades. Through extensive use of conditioning, that rate and lethality of fire was raised during Vietnam and subsequent wars.

Even among tribal societies, warfare is highly ritualized in a manner that does not optimize for maximum lethality. Richard Gabriel, in studies on tribal societies in New Guinea have noted that hunts occurred with accurate feathered. Tellingly, tribal warfare employed featherless arrows. Similarly "counting coup" among American Indians involves touching rather than killing the enemy.

Cold blooded killers have their uses for society, especially in warfare. An excellent book on this subject is On Killing.

Personally, I'm deeply satisfied Elon Musk stood up for first principles reasoning and rejected all the niceties of socially created reality.

I've always hated Ayn Rand's writing but he's probably the closest thing to a Galt-like hero.

Driving back and forth in front of the damn charger speaks for itself.

Straws. You maybe holding some.

EDIT: Two words. Occam's Razor. Your explanation is so tangled that an entire battalion of Viet Cong could hide in it.

I'm aware that many systemic problems require multiple people to resolve as your incredibly insightful comment notes.

This post however, is complaining for the sake of complaining. I for one do not rail against the Second Law of Thermodynamics for destroying my beautiful perpetual motion machine ideas.

Similarly, offering vague pablums on the state of business in Silicon Valley without real solutions is at best indulgent.

It's odd that any mention of Elon Musk colonizing Mars results in rapturous worship.

Other efforts, China in particular, seem to attract scorn. Especially in light of the fact that Elon Musk's original plan was to send a greenhouse with plants to Mars.

Perhaps I over-estimate the HN crowd.

African Americans constitute 15% of America.

White Americans constitute 74% of America.

Thus African Americans are more than twice as likely to live under the poverty line. Those are not I odds I would like to gamble with had I been born black.

You won a lottery when you were born.

Demand is not an issue. There were 12,200 reservations as of July. That's enough to keep busy for the rest this year and into Q2 of next year. If demand were truly an issue, we would see some sort of advertising spend. When was the last time you saw a Tesla TV commercial?

The next six months are critical because it determines whether or not Tesla can be a profitable venture. Can they make a profit with full production? If they have any unforeseen expenditures they are screwed. If there are any recalls, they are screwed. However, I am pretty confident Tesla will be able to pull through given their track record.

We've taken the probe launching approach for the last fifty years. Besides SpaceX, launch tech hasn't really advanced since then which really disproves your thesis.

We must stop our collective procrastination. Human spaceflight is the ultimate forcing function.

You are seriously underestimating Musk's accomplishments. I take issue with your implicit stance that anything involving the government is intrinsically tainted but I will set that aside for now.

The global launch market is well into the billions of dollars . SpaceX has booked over $4billion in revenue for the next 5 years. The majority of that money is __commercial__. They have the cheapest, sturdiest, most advanced technology in that sector. Furthermore, if they manage to lower the price point even further, they will open up a vast market. What happens when it is economically mine an asteroid or immigrate to Mars. They would make Pacific Union look like a tinker toy set.

There is no question Tesla has the best electric cars on the market. Tesla is set to turn a profit next year. This is an market filled with incumbents and where no car company has been IPOed for many decades. They have a 30% margin product which sells out. If their government loan vanished overnight, they would __still__ be able to execute since they have money from licensing their technology to other car companies.

Musk speaks of nothing less than pushing humanity forward toward. That kind of ambition will inevitably intersect with some portion of the public sphere.

SpaceX is innovating off of NASA's inventions so it has a smaller barrier to clear.

NASA is in charge of space exploration and space science with a budget that can really only handle one. In addition, politicians and not engineers run NASA.

I'm surprised someone hasn't converted the large image over to something like the Google Maps navigation UI for better viewing. I guess I'll be attempting that when I get home from work.

The United States Federal Budget is $3.8 trillion dollars. The Apollo program has been the best taxpayer expenditure dollar for dollar of any government program. Computers, fuel cells, CNC machines,... We are tragically underinvesting in space.

I don't have the number in the database off the top of my head but I can say with certainty that the number of business graduates exceeds engineering graduates.

I'd be uncomfortable mixing our numbers with national numbers since our data is skewed toward smaller start-ups. Our data and analysis wasn't perfect but it does reflect the fundamental truth that engineers are more likely to lead companies.

I do think we could have clearer in that regard and that is my oversight.

Hey kthyqn, I put to together the statistics for the white paper. Our data is necessarily skewed and is not a perfect reflection of reality. Our data is comes with several caveats, namely we probably somewhat over represents startups and under represents large companies.

Nevertheless, it is largely a reflection of reality. A study from Harvard Business School was recently released that came to the same conclusion.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020336350457718...

*Looking for correct link, please stand by

EDIT: Linked to the wrong HBS study xD, corrected