I am not a cynic, but a realist. It is easy to do things when you put a ton of money towards the effort so I find this nothing special. Maybe when I was a child these things would fascinate me, but they are just engineering.
So, what would amaze me? Ending homelessness in the United States. Because that takes more than money. I would like to swap the "passion" or engineering for the "compassion" of ending suffering. Very easy to shape and change material things, very hard to change the heart.
The people you want to share your excitement might be suffering under the same separation of wealth that made this landing possible. (Yet there is little talk that they failed to catch the booster and it exploded).
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.
Space is unique in consistently attracting comments like GP's. Literally no other endeavor, no matter how boring or silly, attracts these. Has been so since before the Internet, even.
Even pointing out that this is just private company doing private stuff - so no government money to accuse of being misallocated, which was the only thing that gave those evergreen comments some legitimacy - won't help. I guess it's just inertia now.
At least this is talking about homelessness and not feeding people; the latter was getting too easy to push back on by pointing out just how much space contributed to farming and food security.
i was posting in support of all parties, the nerds and the homeless. i guess space attracts these sorts of comments because of the extreme contrast. on the one hand, going to space takes enormous energy, manpower and money, and its easy to claim misallocation of resources when the extremes are so glaring. its a good opportunity to point these things out when theyre so obvious.
The two big causes of homelessness are substance addiction and craziness. Semaglutide is the first medical intervention that can help to some extent with the desire part of addiction.
Electric brain stimulation is likely able to help with mood disorders. Maybe even OCD and schizophrenia. If nothing else, proper measurements (lots of good data) of both healthy brains and mentally ill brains should help. We've had almost none of that, with EEGs being rather pathetic.
Nobody is going to "solve" homelessness tomorrow or next year. Not the people who think they can just spend more money -- someone's money, not their own, not the people who think charity is the way forward, and not the people who think what is needed is cures.
We can do some almost immediately if we are willing to institutionalize more people but it's not a good or complete solution and we aren't willing to, anyway.
The real improvements are likely to eventually come from things like semaglutide (and more likely more research into the instincts that drive addiction, now that we finally have a molecule that can affect them) and things that both provide data (that we sorely need) and can provide interventions directly in the brain.
Still waiting on the promised $25,000 EV though. If Neuralink is anything like American EVs, psychiatric patients might as well move to China for treatment.
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.
Of course, you should not need to ask, in a better world.
If govt really cared about it, more than that, if (most) PEOPLE really cared about it, it should be top 3 priority of any govt in any country.
- Govt should build massive cheap hotel-type housing spaces (full free) equipped with bare minimum necessities like roof, heating, food, basic healthcare (not million $ free cancer treatment).
- Mandatory drug rehabilitation (if applicable)
- Mandatory job search/placement/training
- Jail with forced-labor for people who put no effort and/or causes disturbance
If your govt has $6M to fund tourism in Egypt, money to fund opera/ in columbia, comic book in peru, then they have money to help homeless people IN the country. No money should go to non-citizens (let alone non-citizens in another country) while citizens of a country go homeless.
I am typing this from the security of my home, without worrying about 0c temp, or food. So it is easy for me to say this but still, I am sorry that you are going through this, and I sincerely wish you the best; that your life turns around, even if just a little, enough to have a roof over your head.
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.
[−]Ginger-Pickles · 2026-11-14 Sat 23:11 UTC ·
link
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.
> Homelessness is largely driven by personal choice
Ha! Really? I am homeless. Disabled with a serious mental illness. I just cannot afford housing anymore. Living out of my minivan.
Not my choice. I do not even have a psychiatrist or therapist anymore.
> There are ample government and private support mechanisms, including housing and food, but most choose not to take advantage.
This is the biggest myth neoliberals tell themselves to feel better. I agev up. Seven years on a section 8 housing list then they just dumped me with no explanation.
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.
I would think that private space exploration frees up all sorts of NASA funding which can be spent on your social improvements of choice, no? Hard for me to see the either-or you're positing. We can have both.
I share your unhappiness with the grifts, including SpaceX's. Then I think of the thousands of lesser, more damaging-in-aggregate ones that I likely have no view into, and it bums me out.
So yeah, what I have left is my child-like "heck yeah rockets!" :) And this one was great.
So, what would amaze me? Ending homelessness in the United States. Because that takes more than money. I would like to swap the "passion" or engineering for the "compassion" of ending suffering. Very easy to shape and change material things, very hard to change the heart.
The people you want to share your excitement might be suffering under the same separation of wealth that made this landing possible. (Yet there is little talk that they failed to catch the booster and it exploded).
Even pointing out that this is just private company doing private stuff - so no government money to accuse of being misallocated, which was the only thing that gave those evergreen comments some legitimacy - won't help. I guess it's just inertia now.
At least this is talking about homelessness and not feeding people; the latter was getting too easy to push back on by pointing out just how much space contributed to farming and food security.
They have at least $3.6 billion from the US to misallocate. Closer to $10 billion.
https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/8a3a5525-3218-a488-db0...
https://lew.am/comparing-subsidies-received-by-spacex-boeing...
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".
Electric brain stimulation is likely able to help with mood disorders. Maybe even OCD and schizophrenia. If nothing else, proper measurements (lots of good data) of both healthy brains and mentally ill brains should help. We've had almost none of that, with EEGs being rather pathetic.
Nobody is going to "solve" homelessness tomorrow or next year. Not the people who think they can just spend more money -- someone's money, not their own, not the people who think charity is the way forward, and not the people who think what is needed is cures.
We can do some almost immediately if we are willing to institutionalize more people but it's not a good or complete solution and we aren't willing to, anyway.
The real improvements are likely to eventually come from things like semaglutide (and more likely more research into the instincts that drive addiction, now that we finally have a molecule that can affect them) and things that both provide data (that we sorely need) and can provide interventions directly in the brain.
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.
But imagine engineering hearts so that we did not have to ask?
If govt really cared about it, more than that, if (most) PEOPLE really cared about it, it should be top 3 priority of any govt in any country.
- Govt should build massive cheap hotel-type housing spaces (full free) equipped with bare minimum necessities like roof, heating, food, basic healthcare (not million $ free cancer treatment).
- Mandatory drug rehabilitation (if applicable)
- Mandatory job search/placement/training
- Jail with forced-labor for people who put no effort and/or causes disturbance
If your govt has $6M to fund tourism in Egypt, money to fund opera/ in columbia, comic book in peru, then they have money to help homeless people IN the country. No money should go to non-citizens (let alone non-citizens in another country) while citizens of a country go homeless.
I am typing this from the security of my home, without worrying about 0c temp, or food. So it is easy for me to say this but still, I am sorry that you are going through this, and I sincerely wish you the best; that your life turns around, even if just a little, enough to have a roof over your head.
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.
There are ample government and private support mechanisms, including housing and food, but most choose not to take advantage.
Ha! Really? I am homeless. Disabled with a serious mental illness. I just cannot afford housing anymore. Living out of my minivan.
Not my choice. I do not even have a psychiatrist or therapist anymore.
> There are ample government and private support mechanisms, including housing and food, but most choose not to take advantage.
This is the biggest myth neoliberals tell themselves to feel better. I agev up. Seven years on a section 8 housing list then they just dumped me with no explanation.
I share your unhappiness with the grifts, including SpaceX's. Then I think of the thousands of lesser, more damaging-in-aggregate ones that I likely have no view into, and it bums me out.
So yeah, what I have left is my child-like "heck yeah rockets!" :) And this one was great.