Not just for business. All foreigners in China must register their stay with the local police. Large hotels handle the registration automatically through their electronic reporting systems. However, if you’re staying at a friend’s home or another private residence, you need to go to the local police station and register in person.
Wrong. People that live here (in the EU) need to register. I can stay with friends abroad for some time without having to tell the government, as long as I don't take up residency.
I am talking about non-EU citizens who enter some of EU countries. No matter if they stay at the hotel or privately at relatives or friends they will be registered or must register at the police.
The problem with voice control is that it requires you to know (or guess) a lot about the thing you're trying to control. When it malfunctions, it takes more, not less, attention than a touchscreen.
I've driven Teslas for seven years, and I still have no ^%$#^ing idea what I can and can't do with voice control.
That's going to work great when you are driving home in the rain from a dentist visit and cannot get it to understand when you say "turn on windshield wipers".
Imagine if a round-trip flight from the US to Europe didn’t cost $500, but only $5, unbelievable, right? This is exactly what Starship will do to space travel. Many things we see in sci-fi, like lunar and Martian cities or orbital cruise ships, could soon become reality.
Personally, I can’t wait to see a massive, kilometer-wide telescope in space or nestled in a crater on the Moon. We might finally figure out dark matter, dark energy, anti-gravity.
It's just an outlandish overly optimistic mishmash of different concepts.
Let's start with your analogy:
> Imagine if a round-trip flight from the US to Europe didn’t cost $500, but only $5, unbelievable, right?
If you mean to use this to explain that what today costs X will in the future cost 0.01X, you're probably right.
But a more accurate analogy is "Imagine if a round-trip flight from the US to Europe didn't cost $50,000,000, but only $500,000, unbelievable, right?"
Same ratios, but deeply different implications.
Today, the idea of setting up a continuously settled Mars colony - hell even a Moon colony - is unfeasibly expensive. It's ACHIEVABLE - we have the technology and the money - but it would cost an intolerable percentage of the GDP of the world to accomplish.
A 100x reduction in costs means that it becomes a fundable endeavour that countries like the US could still justify.
We're still talking about generations - maybe a century - away from someone being able to just pop over to Mars for a summer vacation, the way that a college student could to do today with an intercontinental flight.
> Many things we see in sci-fi, like lunar and Martian cities or orbital cruise ships, could soon become reality.
For a very generous definition of soon and for a highly implausible definition of what a "cruise ship" is - it'll never be as accessible to the average person as earth cruise ships. Not as long as you keep using rockets.
Regardless of reusability, there are realities of fixed FOSSIL FUEL costs associated with getting into gravity. They're not cheap, and they're not frivolous. If you want to be able get things into orbit as cheap as you're suggesting, you need to start investing in a space elevator, which noone is right now.
> Personally, I can’t wait to see a massive, kilometer-wide telescope in space
Cool, yeah, that's true, that becomes more available.
> or nestled in a crater on the Moon.
..why?
> We might finally figure out dark matter, dark energy, anti-gravity.
And the final cherry on the cake. Humanity becoming inter-planetary is important on a macro scale. And trying to go further and further into space will INCENTIVISE research into these concepts.
But in no way does getting to orbit cheaper make it easier to figure out any of these concepts. There's nothing we can do from Mars or on the way to Mars in terms of this science that we can't do from Earth.
> A 100x reduction in costs means that it becomes a fundable endeavour that countries like the US could still justify.
Don't forget the dynamics. Costs of all such projects drop further when early steps become affordable. Like, with 100x reduction on the sticker price, US might feel Mars colony is still too expensive a project, but 100x reduction on trying out some adjacent space tech may just be in range of NASA budget or some private interest. Steps get made, iterated on, making next steps cheaper and more likely to happen. Derisking compounds.
I do agree it'd still be a decades long project at least (with a settlement established early on; it's the tail end that will drag on).
>> or nestled in a crater on the Moon.
>..why?
Having some gravity and hard surface to build on simplifies engineering challenges, particularly on large scales, as in free space, tension becomes a big issue. And, perhaps more importantly, the Moon would shield the telescope from all the electromagnetic noise produced on Earth, and also by the Sun.
Shielding from the sun only happens when it's dark on that side of the moon. So half the month, effectively. But shielding from Earth can be constant, thanks to tidal locking. Particularly nice for really big radio telescopes.
> Regardless of reusability, there are realities of fixed FOSSIL FUEL costs associated with getting into gravity. They're not cheap, and they're not frivolous.
I hope you don't mean hydrogen and methane. Those are downright easy to make without fossil fuels. And kerosene isn't all that hard.
Many YC founders did the same thing. They worked on their own startups with no salary under a student visa, and applied for H1B/O1 visas once they got funding. Is this illegal?
Yes, working on a startup without pay under a student visa (such as F-1) can be legally problematic. While student visas allow some employment (like CPT or OPT for F-1 students), “self-employment” is generally restricted, especially if it involves day-to-day work or responsibilities without proper authorization. Founders may violate visa terms if their role in the startup constitutes “unauthorized employment,” even if unpaid.
For H-1B or O-1 visa applicants, founders need to prove an employer-employee relationship with their startup and show funding or sufficient structure, which complicates the path from student visas.
Sources:
• USCIS Policy Manual on Employment for F-1 Students
• 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(f)
SpaceX's contracts were absolutely subsidies - the contracted Falcon 1 tests and the resulting Falcon 9 contracts were an expensive moonshot for the USG at first - but even if you discount them, Tesla absolutely hoovered up subsidies like the EV tax credits.
From Wiki [1]:
SpaceX spent its own capital to develop and fly its previous launcher, Falcon 1, with no pre-arranged sales of launch services. SpaceX developed Falcon 9 with private capital as well, but did have pre-arranged commitments by NASA to purchase several operational flights once specific capabilities were demonstrated.
Customers: DARPA, DARPA, DOD/NASA, mass simulator (instead of the intended payload after the first three launches), Malaysia (the intended payload of the fourth flight).
"pre-arranged commitments by NASA to purchase several operational flights" is a subsidy, as were the milestone payments along the way.
I'm a huge SpaceX fan, but let's not pretend they could've done this alone. They very nearly went bankrupt on Falcon 1, per Musk - https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/29/elon-musk-9-years-ago-spacex... - and had they needed to self-fund those launches/payloads entirely they would not have survived. It's a beautiful example of how powerful public/private partnerships can be.
I have no complaints here. It's a good use of subsidies. Government should use subsidies for this sort of purpose.
I just take issue with pretending they aren't subsidies, and incorrect assertions NASA/government had little/nothing to do with their success.
I'm an enormous fan of SpaceX - you could probably have heard me scream a mile away when they caught the booster last month - and have a personal dislike for Musk since the Twitter acquisition and his hypocrisy there. Nothing in this thread from my end criticizes SpaceX for being subsidized. In fact, I'm all for it.
Would you call all options and futures subsidies? Are airlines subsidizing oil companies when they purchase oil futures in order to hedge their oil costs?
There is no indication that these commitments were underpriced by the government, so to call them subsidies is at best baseless misinformation.
> Are airlines subsidizing oil companies when they purchase oil futures in order to hedge their oil costs?
No; both parties in the deal have successfully accomplished their respective roles repeatedly before. The airline isn't doing anything new; the oil company isn't doing anything new.
(And they both absolutely get subsidized!)
> There is no indication that these commitments were underpriced by the government...
They got paid for a launch of an untested platform and a student-built payload, regardless of success, in hopes it would result in a good tested platform. What else do you call it?
No question that NASA was pivotal to SpaceX’s success, especially COTS program. However that wasn’t subsides. They only got paid when they could deliver. Had they fail to launch Falcon 9 or cargo Dragon they would have gotten no dimes from NASA.
You can argue that all government contracts are a different form of subsidy, but in common parlance people do not use the term subsidy when describing government contracts.
A government contract paying to send up student payloads on an untested in-development launcher with no requirement for a successful launch (and there were three failures) is absolutely a subsidy.
That contract financed tiny part Falcon 1 and was likely given to the government for an extremely cheap price. Yes, you can call that a subsidy but its one of very few things you can really call that for SpaceX.
Right, however it is customary to ascribe accomplishments to the person making the work possible rather than those who execute it. The same engineers won’t do as much anywhere else.
In the space industry, the US is so much ahead of everyone else. SpaceX is the long pole in the tent, but there are many other startups doing cool stuff.
They also use forced labor. I’m guessing the missing part of the article about “semi managed” explains how modern tech platforms and an innovative business model lets them undercut Amazon.
"Reuters couldn't determine for every lien whether outstanding bills were owed by SpaceX or by one of its contractors who commissioned work or materials on its behalf."
