https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/09/01/spacex-rocket-and-isra...

That was a full size rocket on a real mission with the $200M payload on board during the static fire, which is ostensibly worse. The payload was not integrated yet in Blue Origin’s case.

That's where you're missing the point. Smart watches have become popular because of the fitness component, and have also shown great versatility beyond that, including invoking a voice assistant and screening notifications.

I haven't taken my phone off silent in years, I will only have my watch on vibrate and a select few apps filtered to send notifications to my phone. The rest are not of immediate consequence, so I don't get them "in real time". Plus, if the watch is off my wrist, it vibrates my desk just like a phone. Notifications are dismissed automatically after a timeout, or a button to dismiss.

I find my glasses come off for far more serious activities than my watch. I never intended for my watch to be a phone replacement where I can respond to messages, but it's sure good at letting me know a message needs my attention.

A few things a watch offers you while lifting, specifically:

- rep counting

- heart rate monitoring

- music, without a phone, by pairing a BT headset directly to the watch

A few more things smart watches are great at:

- forget your wallet in the car? Contactless payments. Or, buy a bottle of water in the middle of a run or bike.

- sleep tracking

- leave your phone in your pocket more and enjoy life

- don't even bring your phone on a run, built in GPS tracks for you

- don't even bring your phone on a bike, same reason

- built in topo maps for hiking

When you think about it, smart watches are /far/ more useful than they seem because of all the tech and sensors packed into a device that (potentially) lasts days at a time. And I think most people get that, which is why smart watches are already a huge industry.

https://www.engineerbetter.com/blog/yubikey-static-secret/

I did not know of this game at the time, but I did hear from people that it was basically Mastermind with words (although I have not played that). The inspiration was a teacher of mine who used to work as a nuclear technician and when he had the graveyard shift, he would play the game with the other technician on duty over the phone.

So why is NASA wasting billions to make a rocket, something we've known how to do reliability for more than 50 years? The reason is simple - politics. NASA is a political agency. They suffer from the same short-sighted, narrow focus thinking that a lot of other areas in policy live with. This is what hamstrings NASA the most, the constant change in directive, especially with regards to human spaceflight.

There are commercial alternatives that can already provide heavy lift capability, or at the very least are well positioned to take $1-3B and get one with even heavier capabilities flying. NASA is far too risk adverse these days to be building a rocket or a crew vehicle. They figured this out for commercial crew, why can't they figure it out for other architectures? Imagine NASA being able to cut the $2.5B/year line item that SLS has ballooned to and redirect that to other human spaceflight goals. Leaving commercial companies to build does not mean NASA is entirely removed from the process, for example ULA/SpaceX have been heavily reliant on knowledge transfer and oversight from NASA on their path towards commercial crew.

Honestly, having just graduated from a top aerospace/electrical engineering school and having experience in the industry myself, this is why you see the top talent going to places like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and a whole host of other commercial companies. These companies have a clear vision that NASA lacks. The NASA centers recent graduates gravitate towards are Caltech/JPL and APL/Goddard because they operate (almost) entirely independently from the rest of bureaucratic monster with serious research and a get-it-done attitude. A lot of the work at other facilities is farmed out to commercial companies, leaving a lot of NASA people in oversight/paperwork heavy jobs. This is not a blanket statement, but there is certainly a lot of "one technician doing the work and 5 engineers watching him" going on.

So if you follow the idea that NASA belongs at the forefront of research, what type of work do they do? Well, they are research heavy and build only the most advanced tech as a result. They research Mars and build rovers/architecture to further that research and get humans there. They conduct research on the ISS to further medicine for people back on Earth and learn about long term "0g" exposure. They research deepspace travel and build lunar gateways and architecture to support that. They build drones to go to Titan, build probes to fly by outer planets, etc. And then, they pay a commercial company to fly it for them (just because NASA did the bulk of the research that enables current rockets to be so successful does NOT mean they have to continue being the one making the rocket. Yes SLS has Boeing as a primary contractor, but the point is it's branded as a NASA rocket).

I stated it the way I did to point out that happiness is not linked to consumption in the sense that more consumption does not always equate to more happiness. On the flip side, I was also not referring to a reduction of consumption to the point that it influences one's quality of life. Personally, over the last few months I've noticed some purchases I made in the past that I didn't need or didn't use enough to make it worth it, or where I could have used something I already had on-hand. I use that as a learning opportunity, to adjust my mindset into the future by creating a couple of simple guidelines before making semi-major purchases (did I sleep on it, did I do adequate research into pros/cons/alternatives without going crazy, etc).

Quite to the contrary of what you are saying, I find a reduction of purchases in this way will positively contribute to my quality of life, both in the present and in the future with increased savings rate and decreased clutter. I'd much rather live in a place where I wasn't looking at stuff I don't use and feeling bad about it. I think you falsely equated my statement and this idea about reduction with the millennial's definition of minimalism. That carries a smug connotation, I'm just talking about mindfulness that fits seamlessly into place with your current lifestyle. I even tried not to take a stance on the issue, and only stated that consumption is both the products you buy and the ways you go about doing things, not that anyone who consumes above X amount is evil.

- 40% for paper

- 60-74% for steel and tin cans

- 33% for plastics

- 30% for glass

- 5% for aluminum cans

These numbers appear to be referencing the generation of new products using recycled vs new materials, but do they fail to take in to account the cost of actually getting those recycled materials (ie going from trash to the recycled paper pulp)?

I always thought the 3 R's are in the order they are for a reason.

Reduce - first step realize that happiness is not automatically linked to consumption. This is harder than it seems because this extends beyond product consumption to other forms of material consumption like traveling by plane or car (IC vs EV vs hybrid is a whole other debate)

Reuse - once you have something, get the full use out of it, and try to repurpose it for other uses too if possible.

Recycle - once you have used something to the point that can no longer serve it's purpose adequately because it's worn out, place it or parts of it in a recycling bin if possible.

What this article and discussion has prompted me to do is research further into which parts of something deserve to be placed in the recycle bin (whether or not there is an established way to recycle them, ie plastics) and if certain reduction techniques aren't all they're cracked up to be (reusable straws and shopping bags)

Reference: https://www.ct.gov/deep/cwp/view.asp?a=2714&q=440320