I think engines will advance allowing missions that are beyond our reach right now. But, I'm not bullish on large numbers of people spending long periods of time in space happening this century. Perhaps next century if we manage to get on top of all the looming issues and figure out fusion or something...

And, it's tricky because without Starlink early on, no telling what might have happened to poor Ukraine.

But in the final analysis, drone or some other asset, it's the same basic situation. Certainly from a "making yourself a potential military target" POV :(

A lot of us have been questioning the military target thing all along. Particularly because of the whole super giga constellation thing and its potential to wreck LEO.

But as long as Starlink provides military services to whomever, they will remain a military target. That's why it's so risky to mix commercial and military stuff.

Hopefully they might have finally realized that? The world wonders.

I guess I just don't see that much difference.

Starlink provides the comm links to fly drones to their targets. Starlink also provides comm links to direct other assets to their targets.

Well, but couldn't you come up with a scenario where the various comms capabilities delivered by Starlink resulted in some amount of violence and possibly other stuff that wouldn't be that different from what the drones do?

But couldn't that apply to any military application of Starlink involving combat?

I've always wondered if Putey called him late one night to discuss all the folks accidentally falling out of windows and such. And then suddenly Elon had the brainstorm to buy Twitter and step out of the starlink limelight.

Yeah but it's not zero and not insignificant.

It's only zero carbon if you forget to include all the carbon in the lifecycle etc.

>But long story short, nuclear is a better option than coal ESPECIALLY when considering externalized costs.

I would say they are both bad in unique ways.

However low the risk, abandoning a major city is unimaginably bad. The spent fuel management will soak up money that could be spent on better options for 10,000 years or so after we've transitioned to something else.

And the carbon benefit is not a slam dunk. Particularly when you consider those externalized costs.

Oh I'm not saying we should get rid of nuclear. And I think that nuclear is precisely that, a gap filler till we have something better.

But I also think the risk of having to abandon or evacuate a major city is enough to push nuclear over the edge to a "currently necessary 'evil'" as opposed to some techno silver bullet.

Plus managing the spent fuel for the next 10,000 years or so. That's going to hit your bottom line pretty hard without a govt stepping in and pushing that onto future generations to pay for.

Let me ask you this.

If we had to evacuate or abandon a major city because of a nuclear power plant accident, would you still think that nuclear power was worth it?

I'm no fan of coal and I'm a huge, huge fan of clean air regulations and things like carbon/pollution taxes. So, to that extent, I'm in favor of acknowledging the true price of coal as well.

But, once you shut the coal plant down, the vast majority of the long term impact shuts down as well. Not so much with nukes. That stuff hangs around for a very long time and you have to manage it all along the way.

That's why the industry requires such extreme indemnities.

It's sounds like you're still kind of struggling to understand the concept WRT nuclear power. Again, i don't think you'll accept my opinion on the matter so I suggest you really try to understand how they work in the nuclear power cost equation and then we can have a more fruitful discussion on the matter.

How can you say the cost of a cleanup or evacuating a Tokyo or New York is irrelevant?

Those are entirely relevant and were you to include them in the cost structure it would make nuclear power far too expensive to be competitive.

So tell me why the indemnities aren't socializing the costs and privatizing the profit?

I already said why you should find out yourself and you just plowed on with not wanting to know or educate yourself for many many posts.

So why should I do your homework for you?

How can you even make a judgement when you don't even know what they are? No wonder you're a fan of nuclear!

OK.

Well, anywho, look up those indemnities so next time you'll know what you're talking about. Should make for a much more interesting conversation.

LOL. OK. Well at least I'm not the one making a fool of themselves by not knowing what they are talking about.

Good chat!

I'm not an industry insider. Google and wiki are just about all you need to get the high level gist.

Expert is kind of a relative term. I do know how the indemnities work in the nuclear industry.

OK then. Well it was good chatting with you. Definitely check those things out if you want to consider yourself an informed nuclear advocate.

Well. I gotta say. After all this, it still sounds like you don't understand what they are. And it's really not hard at all to find out what they are and how they work.

That's because you refuse to educate yourself on the subject so we can begin an actual debate on the subject of indemnities and how they affect the cost structure of nuclear power.