SPACE: Rocket Report: Bloomberg calls for SLS cancellation; SpaceX hits century mark.

Meanwhile, a friend writes:

Why this op-Ed now?

I’m sure we’ve all seen the Bloomberg attack on Artemis. Some folks who are concerned about expensive parts of the program like SLS have been praising his piece.

Bloomberg may or may not be wrong, but he has been pro-Dem, anti-Trump, anti-space and pro-China for years.

In 2018 his PAC targeted Dana Rohrabacher (CA), Steve Knight (CA) and John Culberson for elimination. All the most solid space supporters. All China hawks (that may have been his real goal). All friends of ours. He put in over $10m to take out Rohrabacher, who normally raised a few hundred thousand in his campaigns run by his wife, Rhonda.

He even funded ads attacking space spending specifically like this one:

Bloomberg has been a “friend of China” for years. His cringiest moment might have come a couple years ago when he apologized to Beijing over the UK PM calling China “authoritarian.” Bloomberg tweeted, “”Some may have been insulted or offended last night by parts of the speaker’s remarks referencing certain countries and their duly elected leaders … To those of you who were upset and concerned by what the speaker said, you have my apologies.”

Again, not an argument for SLS, but beware messengers with other agendas.

Good point. SLS is stupid and should be canceled, but. . . .

OVERSOLD: Meta-analysis reveals minimal cognitive gains from antipsychotic drugs. “A systematic review and network meta-analysis of 68 studies has found no clear evidence that any specific antipsychotic significantly improves cognitive function in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders compared to placebo.”

We kicked a lot of people — basically, all of them — out of residential facilities on the promise that drugs would fix them. They don’t. Some of that is because patients don’t actually take them consistently. Some of it is because the drugs don’t work.

I DON’T THINK THIS HAS GOTTEN THE ATTENTION IT DESERVES: Will the XAI 19 Day Data Center Miracle Win the Future of AI?

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang knows exactly how long it takes most companies to build an AI data center using Nvidia GPUs. He describes how his Nvidia team worked with xAI and Elon Musk to build a complete AI Data Center with 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs in 19 days. Elon Musk has said it took 122 days from start to finish.

Jensen said this would normally take 4 years. It would take 3 years for the planning and getting the site and permits and then it would take one year to build it and get it working and everyone trained. This means XAI took about 103 days for the planning and other non-GPU planning and other tasks.

The removal of most of the 3 year planning and preparation requires leveraging Elon’s Tesla team and processes they have worked out for factories and the prior setup of 20,000 GPUs used for Grok 2. . . . Tesla can completely design, build and test and certify a car in one hour. Other car companies take a year or more. If xAI has converted the installation, building and testing of a 100k GPU cluster from a 365 days process into a 19 day process and shortened the planing and preparation from 3 years into 100 days then this could be an unbeatable level of speed for xAI and for Tesla AI.

Leftists: “Elon doesn’t do anything he just buys companies.”

I THINK HE’S A PERFECT SPOKESMAN: Usher joins Kamala Harris campaign as concerns over past ties to Diddy resurface. “Social media users expressed discontent with Harris’s choice, highlighting Usher’s ties to Diddy, who was recently arrested on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.”

BY HIGHER EDUCATION STANDARDS THAT COUNTS AS DIVERSE: Democrat professors outnumber Republicans 7 to 1 at U. Florida.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Columbia offers ‘Trans History’ of US by instructor who researched ‘Radical Faeries.’

WELL, DUH: Gallup agrees: People ‘worse off’ under Harris-Biden.

YEP:

It's been a big week for the West. Starship catch. Sinwar gone. Unfortunately Washington gives the impression that its role in events has primarily been to get in the way.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) October 17, 2024

THE DEMOCRATS’ GENDER GAP: “The signs of possible Trump strength among young men are obvious online.”

Related: On the Campaign Trail With Elon Musk: Offering Young Men an American Dream.

Using the sort of rhetoric that he has criticized Democrats for, Musk framed the stakes of November’s election as nothing short of “the fate of Western civilization” and painted a Harris win in apocalyptic terms, predicting runaway crime and illegal immigration.

“It’s nice to watch the ‘Mad Max’ movie,” Musk told the crowd Thursday. “But we don’t want to be in the ‘Mad Max’ movie.”

They cheered.

There he was joking around. But more than that there Musk was carefully explaining himself and his dreams. He talked about a city on Mars and space travel, or, as he said, making “Star Trek” real and building “Star Wars”-like robots.

“Life can’t just be about solving one problem after another, there have to be things that inspire you and that move your heart,” Musk said.

“Build the Warp Drive!” somebody yelled. . . .

The image of the two together worried Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, who is sounding the alarm that Musk’s willingness to campaign for Trump is a real threat to Democrats in the state.

“A lot of surrogates really doesn’t count for much, but Musk, it’s undeniable that he’s successful. He’s the world’s richest man…and he has—he has a brand, and that’s attractive to a demographic that we need to have, to win in Pennsylvania,” he told CNN this week.

Before the show began Thursday, I ran into 19-year-old Owen Young and his 18-year-old brother, Eric. Both live near Ridley High School where Musk held court Thursday. Both work at a hoagie shop, and both dream of bigger things down the road.

“I’ve been following Starship and SpaceX for a long time, since I was in middle school,” said Owen, who wore a SpaceX sweatshirt. “I am very inspired by what he has done so far.”

Eric summoned up his excitement in simpler terms: “It’s Elon frickin’ Musk.”

“He’s gonna be the single biggest pioneer in getting us, you know, to Mars,” Eric added. “He’s gonna get us off world.”

They weren’t the lone fanboys eager for the chance to see Musk in person. Several guys told me that they didn’t consider themselves politically active but jumped at the chance to come to a Musk rally. . . . Yes, Musk has unfathomable wealth. More than that, though, to them, Musk has something more precious: purpose.

For certain young men in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, who feel left behind, that’s the new American dream. Purpose. And Musk is showing them that.

Offer young men the prospect of big achievements and they respond. That’s why the people running our society have been careful not to do that.

YEP:

The problem with relying on "useful fools" is they are fools.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) October 17, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Happy Friday.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Nations pursue sovereign space capabilities fortified by commercial services.

FACES IN THINGS: Eerie Discovery on Mars Looks Exactly Like a Human Face.

AN UNSURPRISING DEVELOPMENT: Increased autism risk linked to Y chromosome, study finds.

CHANGE: Vast Proposes New Space Station for 2028 That Will Grow 2 Modules Per Year Through 2032.

WELL, THAT’S WHAT THEY DO: Gun-Ban Groups Spend Big and Sell Lies To Defeat Pro-Gun Candidates.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Fact Check: The ‘Gun Lobby’ That Democrats Demagogue Against is You.

BIG DEAL, HUNTER BIDEN GETS MORE THAN THAT: A humanoid robot’s painting called ‘AI God’ may sell for over $120,000.

WHEN PUBLIC HEALTH AUTHORITIES BETRAY THE PUBLIC’S TRUST, THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES: US vaccinations fall again as more parents refuse lifesaving shots for kids.

FANCY OUTFITS: NASA Artemis III mission to moon unveils new spacesuit designed by Prada.

IS THERE ANYTHING THEY CAN’T DO? Wegovy, other weight-loss drugs might help with alcoholism, opioid addiction.

SETTLING ALL FAMILY BUSINESS: Morning Greatness: October 7 Mastermind Killed by Israeli Forces.

In the words of Keith Laumer, there’s nothing more peaceful than a dead troublemaker.

ROGER SIMON:

But assuming for the moment the polls and the more reliable prediction markets are correct and she’s a loser, something I heard last night while listening to Tucker Carlson’s interview with Mark Halperin is resonating in a truly spooky, not a fun Haloweenish, manner.

Tucker asked political prognosticator Halperin what it would be like if Kamala loses. He said millions of Democrats would suffer from a psychological collapse that would create the “greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country”. The ramifications of this, including violence, will be all over society for a long time. This is no normal election.

I don’t have the expertise and certainly not the contacts of Halperin, but that has also been my observation. The time between the election and inauguration could well be fraught beyond anything we have seen this century and quite a while before. And it’s not likely to stop at the inauguration. Trump Derangement Syndrome, so manifested by Ms. Harris during the interview, is a profound mental illness not likely to go away with the snap of the finger or anybody’s vote. And with the psychotherapy community so predominantly leftist they are likely to exacerbate the situation more often then help improve it.

Most of our political class is a Cluster B debacle.

THAT SOUNDS LIKE A LIFE WELL-LIVED: Autopsy of 78-year-old man reveals he had three penises.

JOEL KOTKIN: How Harris Obstructed California Home Construction: She says she wants to clear away ‘red tape,’ but as attorney general, she produced a lot of it.

Kamala Harris has a plan to help America’s struggling home buyers by increasing the supply of houses. Her recently released 82-page policy book, “A New Way Forward for the Middle Class,” calls for clearing away the “regulatory burden” and “red tape” that constrains new-home construction. Tim Walz promoted the “three million new houses proposed” under Ms. Harris’s “bold forward plan” during the vice-presidential debate.

Yet like Mrs. Harris’s scripted reversals on fracking, immigration, and Medicare, her push to create more single-family homes contradicts her past positions.

Of course it does.