←back to thread

404 points voxleone | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
allenrb ◴[] No.45661384[source]
There is just so much wrong with this from start to finish. Here are a few things, by no means inclusive:

1. We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting.

2. Nothing based around SLS is remotely serious. The cost and timeline of doing anything with it are unreasonable. It is an absolute dead-end. The SpaceX Super Heavy has been more capable arguably as early as the second flight test and certainly now. They could have built a “dumb” second stage at any time, but aren’t that short-sighted.

3. Blue Origin? I’ve had high hopes for the guys for two decades now. Don’t hold your breath.

4. Anyone else? Really, really don’t hold your breath.

This whole “race to the moon, part II” is almost criminally stupid. Land on the moon when we can accomplish something there, not just to prove we haven’t lost our mojo since Apollo.

replies(37): >>45661569 #>>45661650 #>>45661812 #>>45661864 #>>45662019 #>>45662078 #>>45662268 #>>45662530 #>>45662636 #>>45662805 #>>45662869 #>>45663083 #>>45663232 #>>45663254 #>>45664108 #>>45664333 #>>45664434 #>>45664870 #>>45665102 #>>45665180 #>>45665389 #>>45665607 #>>45665948 #>>45666137 #>>45666225 #>>45666739 #>>45667016 #>>45667353 #>>45667484 #>>45667622 #>>45668139 #>>45668273 #>>45671330 #>>45671920 #>>45674500 #>>45674624 #>>45680644 #
tibbydudeza ◴[] No.45661812[source]
The Chinese is planning a space habitat - the US is aiming for the same - it is rather different from the Apollo objectives.

Mars is out of reach and not feasible.

replies(1): >>45661843 #
thinkingtoilet ◴[] No.45661843[source]
Mars is entirely within reach if we wanted to dedicate the resources to it. If we can get to the moon over 50 years ago, Mars is nothing today. I don't necessarily think it would be worth it given the cost, but it is totally possible if it was a priority.
replies(4): >>45661898 #>>45661909 #>>45662372 #>>45662536 #
underlipton ◴[] No.45662536[source]
Space and the moon were so important that we famously put black female mathematicians on the job in the waning years of Jim Crow. The current admin is dismantling not just so-called DEI, but decades of civil rights protections that ultimately allowed things like SGI's 3D rendering pipeline to exist. This is just one of the myriad ways that America is not in any way serious about a task as monumental as reaching Mars with actual, human astronauts. It would require an intense and extreme dedication to facing factual reality, which we do not seem currently capable of. Rockets do not run on truthiness, they explode on it.
replies(1): >>45663206 #
nxor ◴[] No.45663206{3}[source]
Because the protections get abused. See college admissions.
replies(1): >>45671100 #
underlipton ◴[] No.45671100{4}[source]
Legacy admissions.
replies(1): >>45674060 #
nxor ◴[] No.45674060{5}[source]
Racial quotas pertain to all people of a group. Legacies pertain to a select amount of people of a group. If a black kid in the heart of Chicago attends a bad elementary school, bad middle school, and bad high school, then the system that failed them is that one, not universities that ideally should measure people by their abilities. Disclaimer: I also dislike legacies.
replies(1): >>45676577 #
underlipton ◴[] No.45676577{6}[source]
Legacy admissions policies account for a larger number of admissions and a greater boost than affirmative action policies (which are not racial quotas, which have been illegal since 1978) did. You're clearing space on your hard drive by going after midi files instead of mp4s. AA policies (again, not racial quotas, which haven't existed for half-a-century) had little effect on the admissions of straight white and Asian men (essentially the only demographics not covered under them). They're also currently illegal in college admissions themselves, so there seems to be no good-faith point in harping on them as something that gets "abused" (because they don't, because they literally can't be employed in any sense).

Use your non-sockpuppet, please.

replies(1): >>45676700 #
1. nxor ◴[] No.45676700{7}[source]
Minority enrollment at MIT for the incoming class dropped from 31 percent to just 16, and black students were particularly affected: https://thetech.com/2025/10/03/college-compact-mit

People like you make no sense to me. I am a minority, and don't turn my head from this reality.

replies(1): >>45687881 #
2. underlipton ◴[] No.45687881[source]
The article misrepresents the data, and you're misrepresenting both MIT's policies and the degree to which they reflect on college admissions (even those of top schools) in general.

You're suggesting that the drop reveals a quota, but it really only shows a slight drop from the norm for black students from the period pre-Pandemic (from ~8% to 5%) and a slightly larger drop for Hispanic/Latino students (from ~17% to 11%). Most of the change across the larger timescale has been fewer white students and more Asian students.

Your "abuse" was a handful of years of slightly increased consideration of qualified black applicants post-George Floyd protests, after decades of racial considerations boosting black enrollment by maybe 2% or 3% compared to the most current incoming class's proportion. This boost is slightly higher for Hispanic/Latino applicants, but still not much to consider (insofar as it's roughly equal to the boost in proportion of Asian students).

We'll not talk about the fact that affirmative action is still alive and well in the admissions process, as gender is still a valid consideration.

This is specifically at MIT, which chooses its class from a pool of qualified applicants (which means that, even with the demographic changes, everyone who was there was someone who deserved to be there), without recognition of sports, legacy, and international student interests. This is decidedly not the case elsewhere, where racial consideration had little effect on class composition when compared to the aforementioned.

In short: your grievance is not serious. It's shallow and formed from misconceptions. If you cared about abuse in college admissions, you would accept that legacy and moneyed interests are more of a drag than racial consideration as a remedy to decades of discrimination. The protections were not only valid, but not even given serious consideration until after our most recent reckoning with America's structural racism, and just as quickly torn up at the first opportunity.

https://ir.mit.edu/projects/demographic-dashboard/

https://web.archive.org/web/20240829012444/https://mitadmiss...

https://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/profile/

https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/diversity-or-merit/