• FaceDeer@fedia.io
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    8 months ago

    It sounds like things are going well for this guy and that is great and all, but how much would we honestly expect to hear if it wasn’t going well?

    Given how eager people are to pounce on negative news about anything Elon Musk-related, I expect we would be hearing way, way more about this if it wasn’t going well. “Elon Musk’s Neuralink Damages a Man’s Brain!” and “Elon Musk’s Neuralink Fails!” Headlines and such from every rooftop.

    • BossDj@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Can’t we just fling him into the sun and let someone else take over these companies?

      • JDubbleu@programming.dev
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        8 months ago

        That takes an immense amount of fuel. We orbit the sun at 30 km/s, of which you have to cancel about 24 km/s to actually hit it. This is after escaping Earth’s atmosphere (another 11 km/s of delta V) and effective sphere of influence which takes even more fuel. We could use some gravity assists off the moon and inner planets to get there, but even then it’s not really economical. Our best bet would be to send him out super far using ~9 km/s of dV, and then use a very small amount to cancel out any remaining angular momentum and let him slowly fall into the sun. Unfortunately, as with all efficient space maneuvers, you pay for them in time, and this maneuver would take you 3 years. We’d have to somehow support the little bastard all that time but it might just be doable.

        • Gamoc@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          If we get him outside of the atmosphere and throw him in the direction if the sun, he won’t eventually get caught in it’s gravitational pull?

          • Skua@kbin.social
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            8 months ago

            You can get caught in the sun’s pull by just leaving Earth’s sphere of influence, but remember that all of the planets are already caught in the sun’s pull and have remained distinctly outside of the actual sun for essentially forever

            • Gamoc@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              That’s why I suggested shooting him directly towards it, wouldn’t he just keep going unless he somehow manages to hit something on the way there? Surely he’d end up hitting the sun?

              • Skua@kbin.social
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                8 months ago

                He’d still have the 30 km per second (67,000 mph) of sideways velocity that Earth has when it’s orbiting the sun, and that speed is enough to prevent Earth from ever hitting the sun.

                Orbits aren’t very intuitive; if you want something you launch from Earth to fall straight into the sun, you actually need to fire it directly opposite to the direction that Earth orbits in. So if you imagine Earth orbiting clockwise, you want to shoot the thing counterclockwise. If you do that at the right speed, you counteract all the orbital speed and the thing just falls into the sun.

                If you can speed something up a completely unlimited amount then sure you could aim straight at the sun and just fire it so fast that it hits the sun anyway. It’ll be off-centre a bit but the sun is pretty big. Consider how much of the sky isn’t sun though. If the sun is directly overhead and you shoot straight at the sun, the thing you fired is already going 30 km/s sideways before you even started. We could do the trig to figure out how fast you need to shoot it to still hit the sun anyway but I think the more important part here is getting a feel for the motion involved.

                • Gamoc@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  How about if you leave the earth’s atmosphere first, come to a stop, then fire him/accelerate directly at the sun? Or I guess just leave him there so he falls into it slowly? I’m not trying to be difficult or anything I’m just interested.

                  • Skua@kbin.social
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                    8 months ago

                    Depends on what you mean by the “come to a stop” bit. Stop relative to Earth? You’re still going Earth speeds relative to the sun, which is what you’re trying to hit. It’s like throwing a ball at something while driving past it. If you mean stop relative to the sun then sure, you don’t even need to shoot him towards the sun, he’ll fall right in. The trouble is that stopping relative to the sun is specifically the bit that takes a lot of energy.

      • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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        8 months ago

        Yeah, exactly. People love to amplify any negatives they can find about Musk, it plays to the rage mobs and that translates into clicks and endorphins.

        • Psychodelic@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          It kinda seems like you’re saying it’s a bad thing to report on things he does that are bad simply because there’s an audience that’s interested. But, that’d be kind of a weird take

          • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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            8 months ago

            I’m saying that reporting disproportionately negative news about someone is not going to lead to a realistic view of the world.

            For example, consider Fox News pouncing on every possible headline that could paint Joe Biden in a bad light because Fox viewers already hate Biden and such reports draw engagement as a result. Nor a good thing if your goal is a realistic view of the world, right? Same idea here.

          • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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            8 months ago

            Sure, they should be reported on. The problem is in the focus and bias present in the reporting overall. If all you ever report on are the bad things that could conceivably be linked to a particular person who is popular to hate, the overall result can be an unrealistic portrayal of the world even if each individual story and each individual fact within them is true. History is rife with distortions like that.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      considering that we’re not out of the realm of complications… it’s too soon to know if it’s going well or not.

      there’s a reason most CBI researchers are keeping things as not-implants.

    • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      lol seriously. dude is acting like people cover up bad news about musk. I hate the fucker but if he rolled his eyes at a waitress it would be front page news.