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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • Same. When my dad turned retirement age I would make absolutely sure every waiter and cashier knew he was a senior. I’d loudly ask if his senior discount had been applied. Ah, the sweetest of petty revenges.

    (Karmic backlash: my kid has always been tall and strong for his age. I lost out on years worth of “kids for free” discounts. The ONE time I tried to eek him under an age limit he quite expertly shut down any shenanigans by stating his birth date, age to the day, and a proclamation that he would be ordering from the non-kid menu anyway, so it didn’t matter. He had just turned 6.)





  • Data was artificial and autonomous. The Dr originally wasn’t autonomous, it could be argued he’s just part of the ship, but the holo emitter changed that. I’m amazed the Daystrom institute let him keep it, but since it’s apparently his, and that makes him autonomous, I would argue he’s just like Data (minus the permanent corporeality of course). I suppose there’s a question about ownership given his origins as a Starfleet asset, but since he can be replaced with a copy of the original program, there’s no real material loss in letting him leave the ship.











  • Just to add some context: the entire space shuttle program, over its entire life from 1972 to 2010, was reportedly 200 Billion.

    In 2010, the yearly U.S. military budget was ~650 billion. And they killed the shuttle for being too expensive because that wasn’t spread over enough lunches. (meaning it cost 1.6Billion per launch).

    In 2024, even adjusted for inflation, Starliner has already blown past 1.6 Billion per launch (total cost is about 5.8 Billion)

    Only Crew Dragon, at 2.4 Billion, has reached parity with what the shuttle cost per launch (inflation adjusted). (Dragon 1, which flew 23 cargo missions, was drastically cheaper).

    And both of these are dramatically simpler designs than the space shuttle was.

    So it appears that the trajectory is correct, space travel is getting cheaper, but it took a shitload of work to get there, and that’s building on top of what the Shuttle program taught us.