There is no benefit, and significant risk, in lying about that (it's an easily disproven claim if they're lying).
I don't trust them because I like them. I trust them because being truthful is in their best interest (and I trust they will always act in their own interest).
It is not in their best interest, since it's obvious that for at least a decade, blatantly lying and even being caught lying has no impact on their so-called credibility.
Lying about this does improve morale among troops and citizens, and gives them some form of early justification.
So no. They do benefit from lying about this.
They why haven't they done that in any previous round of attacks? The risk of loosing credibility and giving Iran the opportunity for a propaganda win significantly outweighs any benefit to lying about this.
This letter is a public part of the negotiation process. It shouldn't be surprising that they are primarily using arguments that are, at least on the face, "patriotic".
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
They are capable of hitting aerial targets as well. They have recently been deployed by the US Navy as a cheaper way to counter cheap aerial drones launched by Iranian proxies (~$100k Hellfire vs a ~$1m SM2).
The top-heavy design didn't help things either. I'll be shocked if they don't go three-for-three on landing sideways given IM3 has the same tall design.
> At his press conference earlier today, Altemus defended the design, saying the spacecraft doesn’t have a high center of gravity because most of its cargo attaches to the base of the vehicle. He said there were no plans for a radical rethink of his company's design.
(We see this in returning F9 first stages, as well.)
Just wait for SpaceX to start trying to land starships on the moon. Also vertically. Also doomed to tip over whenever the surface is slightly out of spec.
We can send small probes to image the moon in incredibly high resolution. It's a big place I'm sure there is a perfectly flat rock somewhere they can use.
Have you ever seen a perfectly flat rock anywhere on earth? One capable of supporting a large rocket? Also, the moon doesn't have the various navigation systems (GPS/radar) that is used when bringing rocket stages back the pad.
SpaceX has repeatedly and reliably landed vertical stacks. On any body. Out of the engineering problems inherent to HLS, sticking the landing isn’t material because for them, for that team, it isn't as novel a problem as e.g. in-orbit refuelling or getting Raptors to relight on the Moon.
Put another way, just because SpaceX has done it doesn't mean the same problem carries the same risk for a team like IM's.
A moving barge with a known flat surface of a known hardness and stability is a whole different category of difficult than doing the same thing on naturally occurring terrain with unknown voids, hardness, roughness and consistency.
They also have the atmosphere, with drag that will make all velocities trend towards zero. Don’t have that on the moon, gotta do it all with fuel. More than half of the energy she’s by the returning falcon is aerobraking.
Yes, the moon has substantially less gravity but it’s also exponentially harder to get the fuel there.
Lol. SpaceX has landed on prepared surfaces, concrete pads on land or on large barges. They literally have a big X to mark the target. Let's see them land on some random beach, an uneven surface that may or may not subside. But that is still peanuts comparted to the moon's surface.
> that is still peanuts comparted to the moon's surface
Sure. I'm not trivialising the problem in an absolute sense. Just going from floating barge or chopsticks to Moon is a simpler set of problems than reïnventing the sort of translational velocity and attitude control needed to get to first base.
For selecting and touching down on an unprepared surface, rockets are not the stepping stone. Start with helicopters. It is the same problem: can I land there and what will happen when I put weight on the surface. Try programing a large helicopter to identify and land on a random chunk of rocky terrain. It is not easy. And the bigger/taller the craft, the more difficult it becomes. Then add a 10-second time limit.
> You say this based on your history of landing rockets on the moon?
Actually, mini propulsive landers in lunar regolith stimulant. Yes. In atmosphere and with Earth gravity, both of which make it more annoying and more difficult.
For any of these landings, it's a problem of 3d positional/velocity precision. SpaceX has prove that they can reliably land on a target, usually within meters, with negligibly delta velocity on contact.
In other words, they've proven they have the control systems in place for placing a craft at a precise location, with a precise velocity. What requirement do you see outside of this that are far outside of placement and velocity? Autonomous mapping and adjustments for approach maybe?
Let's not assume they're going to try to use their current earthly landing legs.
> land on some random beach,
They did this I believe two starships ago, when they landed in the ocean. Came to zero xyz velocity some target distance above the water, and hovered for a bit. Unfortunately, the surface tension of the sea couldn't support the weight once they lowered for touchdown.
Which is not the future. Optical/lidar/positioning radio is the future, to make it closed loop (NASA’s Laser Retroreflector Array for high, lidar/optical for low altitudes).
> On a very highly engineered landing surface.
As I mentioned, we shouldn't assume the earthy landing legs are used. That would be a very silly assumption.
From what I can extract from your comment, you believe that the positioning system and landing legs are the issue, rather than the control systems. I suspect both are somewhat related: positioning system to place it over predictable regolith with some, yet-undeveloped, landing legs that need to work at 1/6th gravity.
I'm of the opinion that it's possible/solvable, as is NASA. It would be helpful if you would answer why you think it's not possible: what requirement do you see that make positioning and landing on regolith unachievable for SpaceX?
It may be possible. It may also be that the regolith is too fluffy in that area to support such a large structure without a pad. I don't believe we know.
Athena had multiple laser altimeters on board: they failed to get a fix, perhaps because of the weird surface.
It's my opinion that this isn't something that's easy to do, even for a company that has landed on Earth.
i think this becomes somewhat less of an issue once SpaceX gets Starship fulfilling contracts at scale. they're limited in width by the max payload faring width for Falcon 9, which is like half that of starship. add to that an exec claimed it's tall but not necessarily top-heavy as mass isn't evenly distributed throughout.
Scott Manley posted an interesting video including some interviews and technical details on XB-1 (as well as some time in the XB-1 simulator near the end of the video).
> After 14 games of 4+ hours each It had gone from being a dead draw with him a big favourite in tie breaks to all over in a few seconds.
_Very_ casual chess follower here. Why was Ding a big favorite in the tie breaks? My takeaway from the match was that Ding seemed to always be worse on time, so wouldn't a shorter time control favor Gukesh?
The World Chess Championship uses rapid and blitz matches (much shorter time controls) for tie breaks. Gukesh is 46th in the world in rapid, and 82nd in blitz. Ding is 2nd and 6th.
Ding is rated over 100 points higher in rapid than Gukesh. The choice to spend time early was a choice by Ding and Ding's team. Ding is better at faster time controls than Gukesh, Gukesh was better prepared.
UHG had $22B in profits last year. They did it in part by having the highest claim denial rate of any major insurer, and things like (allegedly) using an AI based claim evaluation tool with a 90% error rate. UHG also includes other "middleman" companies that are purely extractive, like Optum.
"Profiteering" doesn't seem like that tough a claim to make here...
Yea... "complicated resource allocation issues" is a really, really charitable way of describing "massively profiting from denial of health care, leading to the suffering and death of one's customers."
I'm actually kind of pleasantly surprised at the raw "FAFO" comments we're seeing. I was truly expecting the mainstream media to circle the wagons and treat this thing like a hero-has-died tragedy, with "respect the dead" and thoughts and prayers and everything, but the public's cynicism actually seems to be overtaking all the corporate whitewashing. This was a truly evil person, and although nobody should call for someone to die, one is allowed to "read an obituary with great pleasure," as the saying goes.
Considering insurance companies are bound by Medical Loss Ratio rules, if they approved all those claims, all it would do is cause everyone's premiums to skyrocket.
With revenue of $372B that is a profit margin of 5.9%. Which is frankly terrible.
I suppose ideally they would have 0% margin, but 5.9% is a shitty business to be in. The owners could just buy treasuries and get 4.5% with no work and no risk.
Where are you seeing that the UHG executive team still held their meeting the same day? Everything I've read said they cancelled it.
"Thompson, 50, led UnitedHealthcare, the largest private health insurer in the U.S. He was on the way to UnitedHealth Group’s investor day set for Wednesday at 8 a.m. ET at the Hilton, the NYPD said. The company canceled that event after the shooting."
Yeah, as a resident of NY apple country (I'm ~20 minutes from Beak & Skiff, frequently voted one of the best orchards in the country), SnapDragon is the way to go.
I don't trust them because I like them. I trust them because being truthful is in their best interest (and I trust they will always act in their own interest).
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