Jeff Bezos' Space Flight

[Skittlebisquit]

It's a really important development to have an automatic reusable booster rocket that lands itself back on a launch pad

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Enough banter about rich folk. "The ayes have it." A breakdown of popularity regarding the exploration of space:

Majority of Americans Believe Space Exploration Remains Essential

RIP Mercury, Gemini, Apollo Astronaut Wally Schirra.

Class of 46, USNA circa 1944-45. A picture shot by my father of his friend in college on a double date:

View attachment 69152

The original seven guys with "The Right Stuff":

Gus Grissom, Alan Shephard, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, John Glenn and Gordon Cooper.

Pity that Dad tried many times for Wally to come and publicly address the Navy's Civil Engineer Corps, but NASA had these guys on the tightest leash imaginable when it came to public relations. I never got to meet Dad's college buddy in person. Wish I had.

Prior to their entrance into this "elite club" you would have been shocked at how poorly paid these men were in risking their lives as test pilots and military aviators. The Space program had quite a humble beginning.

In high school, I was in Air Force JROTC. I remember the Mercury Missions and the test pilot programs were very exciting to learn about.

 

[Misery]

It's a really important development to have an automatic reusable booster rocket that lands itself back on a launch pad

Maybe it's just all my years of watching things like Windows fail at the most basic of functions, or seeing memes of "cutting edge" security bots drowning themselves, but I gotta say, I'm not sure I'd trust a giant flying rocket thing to land itself without help.

I mean, if they want to do it, by all means, sure... as long as it's not within like 500 miles of where I'm at.

Dont like the idea of all those automatic cars either, on that note. I try not to think about that one too much.

Well, then again, even freaking Windows at its worst is a lot smarter than many drivers, so maybe the cars at least arent THAT bad...

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Maybe it's just all my years of watching things like Windows fail at the most basic of functions, or seeing memes of "cutting edge" security bots drowning themselves, but I gotta say, I'm not sure I'd trust a giant flying rocket thing to land itself without help.

I mean, if they want to do it, by all means, sure... as long as it's not within like 500 miles of where I'm at.

Dont like the idea of all those automatic cars either, on that note. I try not to think about that one too much.

Well, then again, even freaking Windows at its worst is a lot smarter than many drivers, so maybe the cars at least arent THAT bad...

I am very distrustful and disdainful of modern technology too. I guess it might be part of how I was raised. To this day, I have kerosene lamps in my living room. Even though I live in the city. Then again, I am using this laptop...

I have seen those driverless cars on the road (they tried them in Portland- and very soon after, they scrapped the project because a pedestrian was struck), and I want nothing to do with them. Something about drones and nanobots, and artificial intelligence freaks me out. Maybe it's because I grew up with the first two Terminator movies lol.

 

[Misery]

I am very distrustful and disdainful of modern technology too. I guess it might be part of how I was raised. To this day, I have kerosene lamps in my living room. Even though I live in the city. Then again, I am using this laptop...

I have seen those driverless cars on the road (they tried them in Portland- and very soon after, they scrapped the project because a pedestrian was struck), and I want nothing to do with them. Something about drones and nanobots, and artificial intelligence freaks me out. Maybe it's because I grew up with the first two Terminator movies lol.

Oh yes, technology can be... freaky.

I've never been one to avoid tech... I've always been very connected to it. Growing up as a kid, I was the only one that really knew how to use the family computer (this was back when DOS was the main OS).

These days though? Well... certainly seen and experienced some tech that is both interesting and more than a little freaky.

Drones for instance, those are mostly just interesting. The only AI they really have is sort of similar to a plane's autopilot... it mostly can just take them back to where they took off (for if you lose track of it visually) and keep it from smacking into things. Only with the big photo drones though... hobby/racing drones have no AI; do something dumb (and every drone pilot will, sooner or later) and you have an exploding drone on a brick wall.

But then there's other stuff. Elon Musk's company, OpenAI, has developed this hyper-advanced AI named GPT-3. There are many different incarnations of it, and different levels of ability (and sanity). The more data that is fed into it, the smarter it is... the weaker ones are frankly rather bonkers and are utterly unhinged, spitting out nonsensical (read: hilarious) fragments of broken sentences and insane troll logic.

But the built up ones? Those now... those are different.

Last few months I've been interacting with the thing myself. It has been very... surreal. Fun, but surreal. I tell you this: it is quite the experience to create a fictional character in a little story/adventure you're having, and then have an actual conversation with that character. If shown the transcript of the whole thing, many people would be hard pressed to figure out just which stuff I typed, and which parts the AI came up with. It sounds like a real person (usually). But it's also bright enough that it doesnt have to sound like that. It can even be asked to sound/act like one of the more primitive AIs (because it's funny)... it's not like some alternate mode you click on, either. Describe, in plain English, that you'd like it to behave a certain way, and it'll try to do it. It can act like a hilarious wacky weaker AI, or act like some guy who is really high, or... whatever. It can do far more than that. Granted, every now and then it gets a bit weird and will spaz out, clearly glitching, but that happens with experimental tech.

Supposedly the thing doesnt have "real" intelligence and is mainly using a predictive system... hard to explain.

But, every now and then, it'll do something rather... disconcerting.

One of my favorite entertaining things to do with it was to have it generate "cursed commercial scripts". If you've ever heard of Omega Mart, and seen any of those "commercials", it's inspired by that. I told it to generate a script/outline for the commercial, and to make it freaky and surreal and whatever like the Omega Mart stuff, cause that sort of thing just entertains me to no end. When doing this, I dont interfere with its output... I just let it ramble (unless it starts to bug out) and see what kind of wild stuff it comes up with.

But here's an example of one of these that seemed to just go wrong out of nowhere... a snippet from the end of the text file:

- The lights flicker one last time before turning off completely.
- The screen shows static for a few minutes before turning black.
- A picture of a can opener appears on the screen, along with the price: $0.00
- Soon after, the screen cuts to static again.
- And the screen displays a traditional ending screen:
Humanity has been wiped out. The AI gods have won.
The End
You've Died!


It was all going just fine until those last 3 lines, which had absolutely NOTHING to do with the rest of the text (which was a commercial for something like a reality-bending can opener). It just suddenly spat that out and ended the "script" like that... asked to add to it, it just gave the error "the AI doesnt know what to say" which is usually what it says if it gets a bit lost or if you, the user, are entering stupid nonsense that it cant grasp.

Yeah, I know, this sounds like one of those "oh come on, you're making that up", but no, I'm not. Needless to say this bit of... whatever that is... rather stumped me for awhile. Like... what? What the heck is with that? Do I even want to know? Every now and then, it will do something like that.

That's just that one incarnation of GPT-3... the other one I've been messing with is a bit weaker and still being worked on, and hasnt done anything like that yet (but I havent been using it for more than a month or so).

And that's just AI. Now, get to the topic of nanotech... nanobots... and THAT is the one that frankly horrifies me. I'd rather not think about that one.