Me and four other engineering graduates just sat and watched this around a big TV in my mates apartment in Sydney, and what we saw was an amazing team, delivering amazing engineering results. Just take a win for humanity for once.

Homelessness is largely driven by personal choice and by our desire to not compel the "unhoused" into mental institutions where they'd probably be better served.

There are ample government and private support mechanisms, including housing and food, but most choose not to take advantage.

> Ending homelessness in the United States

You don't need private people/companies or more taxes for that. US has enough resources to do it already. Maybe you should go ask your politicians, better yet, ask your friends/neighbors/yourself if you are ready to take the drastic steps necessary to solve that.

Thank you for for making this comment. It helped me realize in myself what's changed over the last few years.

I grew up reading Zubrin's The Case for Mars, The Martian, and October Sky. I went to space camp at NASA, and as a 14 year old I sent an angry email to NASA when I learned of the early ISS decommission date(they later extended the lifespan several times, and I like to think I was the reason ;) ).

I followed Bigelow Aerospace in the 2000s doing the only interesting commercial work in space, and afterwards became amongst the first online SpaceX fanboys, long before they ever landed a merlin engine.

I studied hard in school with a passion of going to Embry-Riddle to learn to build rockets - though I ultimately chose a software path in life instead, I stayed an enormous space fanboy over the 2010s, frequenting the SpaceX subreddit and catching every launch and landing stream I could live.

I've cried watching so many rocket landings. The spirit of human endeavor is god damn BEAUTIFUL to me.

I want to point my finger and say that everything else changed. The Internet became what it is. Elon Musk showed his true colors. Software Engineering became middle management.

But the truth is that I've changed.

I care about the people wealth disparity hurts more than I do about us getting our perfect vision of the future now now NOW.

The faster we pump this machine, the louder the Earth is SCREAMING.

The world is on fire, and we're covering it in data centers with the goal of building artificial machines for strip-mining humanity of the very competency in engineering that has given us so much joy.

We're caught up in a race to the bottom and without diverting our path I have to wonder if this starship landing will be one of the last great human-driven engineering achievements before we lose the ability to do so ourselves.

I don't think the answer is to swap the passion for engineering with compassion, as I think they can both live happily together, but I hear where that desire is coming from.

It's coming from a place of love.

And when the last tree has fallen, we may find that we cannot eat money.

May love fill this place.

ofc a comment like that would get downvoted by investors and technologists, but yes i agree, if you have enough imagination and money, almost anything in engineering is eventually possible. that same imagination and money is rarely spent on making the experience of living beings who are suffering nicer. but we dont live in a 1D world and all people need a win, engineering nerds included.

Semaglutide will likely help on the homelessness front, both directly and by helping us understand deep drives better in general.

Musk's Neuralink is ironically likely to help on the psychiatric disorder side.

Just Send More Money™ is not likely to help (as you recognize). Neither is "compassion".

The implied claim being "datacenters are evil"?!

That ship has sailed since the V2 rocket.

I believe it was Trump and Elon Musk falling out over the "Big Beautiful Bill". A lot of people then campaigned for to get the job anyway, and he did.

After Artemis II, there was a moderately hilarious congressional hearing in which the Republicans insisted on giving NASA more money, the Democrats insisted on giving even more money than that, and Isaacman trying to say "we're good".

(I believe NASA got the more money.)

And NASA is working on it again! Isaacman talked about it in a recent interview with Everyday Astronaut.

I think the concept for the Alpha Centauri probes uses solar sails and externally fired lasers[1]. The exo-planet viewer concept also proposes solar sails.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2069_Alpha_Centauri_mission

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_gravitational_lens

Coming up next:

"They'll never be able to re-use the ship"

"They can re-use it, but it's not economical".

Thank you for the well thought out reply. I will try to do better to understand the larger technological breakthroughs of space flight as a key development in how things modernize on earth itself

Elon Musk is not the person building any of it. Not EVs, Space Flight or mind-machine interfaces.

He is reckless and ignorant and yes it works for some of his stuff and it doesn't work for others.

His ignorance alone in DOGE probably killed children and humans. Don't get me wrong, US of America doesn't has to pay for aid around the planet even if they contribute massivly to climate change and consumes a lot of resources importet around the planet, but his abrupt cancelation and involvment in USAID killed chilrden and humans.

Do we also ignore everything else if you list up things which are only positive? Like Boring company? Solar city? Buying Twitter and manipulating democracy around the planet? Doing an Ad tour in front of the White House and disrespecting anyone else who can't buy themselves next to Trump?

These people are completely useless. They would never come out of the cave or the forest. They'd sit in the village they were born in forever never knowing what is beyond the horizon. Never tasting the fruits of the universe forever content with only what they can see only to be wiped out by a random virus or errant rock from the sky. I am so so thankful for the engineers, scientists, and literally every junior dev at SpaceX right now.

> since so many things have some connection back to the space program, including ironically the very device you’re using to express your opinion.

Well there you go. I did not know that. And yet, instead of saying, "The space program is useful because of X and Y, it's pretty cool actually, I recommend book Z about it.", I get replies that I am a lost cause who doesn't respect scientists.

Unreal. I could have a more balanced conversation with a Muslim imam about religious beliefs.

So we did the moon landing btw.

Shouldn't you be able to articulate a proper answer without any issues?

Is it an engineering feat? Yes.

But i would bet James Webb Telescope and Moon landing were a lot bigger?!