I’d be curious about stats on downvoting as well. Anecdotally, downvote frequency seems to vary by community. Personally, I don’t downvote for differences of opinion, and instead withhold upvotes, with downvotes reserved for blatantly toxic behavior. The etiquette across Lemmy seems varied, though.

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

Well, we’ve had gay bears for quite some time, actually.

I would’ve been inclined to agree with you as of 10 minutes ago, until I read this Wikipedia article saying Starship refueling will require 10 or more launches. Damn, that means at least $1b to leave LEO assuming each launch is around $100m, so not really all that much cheaper than expendable stages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Propellant_Transfer_Demonstration

I had assumed the propellant would be a single additional launch, but this Wikipedia article says 10. $1B+ to leave LEO definitely makes the narrative that Starship is going to revolutionize space travel sound like a load of bullshit, unless there are realistic plans I am not aware of to reduce the number of launches significantly.

Edit:

This article has more details. It takes 7.5 tanker launches to fill a Starship, but Elon insists 4 should be enough for the Moon, whereas NASA estimates up to 16 due to boil off.

It really sounds like Elon has been overselling the value of Starship, but the saddest part is that other reusable rockets in development will likely have the same problem.

Edit 2:

Even if starship just becomes a heavy launch to LEO vehicles

This seems plausible, whereas Starship shuttling between Earth and Mars to “build a colony” does not. More like Starship is a shuttle to LEO and then something like the Hermes spacecraft in The Martian that remains in space and uses ion drive would be what actually transfers humans to Mars orbit, with perhaps Starship also doing the shuttling between the surface and low orbit. It seems we are a really long way off from what The Martian depicts, though it’s possible the first human may step foot on Mars in the next couple decades.

It makes sense to distrust the American for-profit healthcare system where treatments that might work don’t get funded if they can’t be patented and monetized. Cancer is also a huge cash cow.

At the same time, taking unproven treatments is a risk. My father had stage 3 cancer and tried alternative treatments while getting periodic PET scans. When nothing decreased the tumor size, he finally got chemo and radiation. He’s still kicking almost 20 years later, but the radiation caused a lot of issues. He’s lucky it didn’t metastasize.