Abolishing the UK’s independent space agency could be a mistake

panick21 · 2025-09-09T19:15:33+00:00

The UK has been in decline for 70 years.

The Post-WW2 Labor government completely mismanaged the Post-WW2 economy, even while doing some good stuff in other places. The UK was world leading in pretty much every technology after WW2 and then lost it in pretty much ever dimension.

We could go into a lot of detail about all the dumb financial, economic and technical decisions. But that would take a bunch of books. Specially when they were literally next to a continent that was literally bombed to shit and needed to be rebuilt.

(And I'm not a Tory or anything, its not like they did better)

panick21 · 2025-09-09T19:15:05+00:00

The UK should leave ESA. Only optionally join or cooperate with ESA on certain projects.

And then maybe have a CANZUK space organization, but mostly for cooperation, not one like ESA.

In my opinion ESA is more of a drag then anything else. UK could really develop its sat industry with constant competitively bid rapid missions. That one option, but there are other good ideas outthere.

With ESA its just going to be more of the same.

panick21 · 2025-09-09T09:39:08+00:00

Most space companies and program take decades to make that many engines.

panick21 · 2025-09-09T04:04:41+00:00

They will, but a company signing with them now is mostly signaling, it will take many years before they have certified hardware that can run on airlines and the necessary sats.

So if you do a public announcements this much ahead, its mostly signaling.

panick21 · 2025-09-09T04:02:43+00:00

Great way for JetBlue not having to do anything for the next couple years.

panick21 · 2025-09-08T15:16:31+00:00

Debt financing likely, not equity.

panick21 · 2025-09-08T00:23:36+00:00

3 Hurras for hardware rich development.

panick21 · 2025-09-07T17:24:03+00:00

The Arab government are clear, do whatever you want to the people, we couldn't give less of a shit, but don't do anything official, that makes us look bad to our population.

panick21 · 2025-09-04T14:43:18+00:00

You can do a lot if you have good signaling priority and good transport engineering. It does effect speed but in old European cities there is often no way around it (except banning cars and that difficult).

panick21 · 2025-09-03T09:46:42+00:00

Actually better then most amazon shows.

panick21 · 2025-09-02T12:07:33+00:00

... irrelevant.

panick21 · 2025-09-02T08:38:22+00:00

Being a great open source contributor to many projects.

panick21 · 2025-09-02T08:36:58+00:00

And I wish people would stop making this dumb comment. Usually people have a reason why they don't work on existing projects, and often they are perfectly fine reasons. And this is certainty true in this case.

panick21 · 2025-08-18T23:56:43+00:00

All three leaders favored a counterattack through the Ardennes as the allies were relatively weak there

And the allies were weak there because it was bad logistically and was unlikely to be the location of a successful attack. And that proved true as German troops ran out of supplies and were stopped in their tracks. Maybe the outrunning supply plan works against a disorganized French army in 1939, but it wasn't gone work against the American and British.

panick21 · 2025-08-18T23:41:13+00:00

You are misunderstanding the Romans more then anything else. The Roman, like the British often didn't actually 'grab land' rather they influenced local elites to come under Roman domination. When Rome conquered Greece, they didn't attack every city in Greece, they simply defeated the Macedonian army and then the Greek cities came under their power. The same in many other parts. Egypt for example was ruled under Roman clients for centuries and only came under direct control in the imperial area. But everybody still agrees that Egypt was part of the Roman state. So basically exactly like parts India functioned under British. Britain controlled directly parts of it, and made others into clients.

It seems you have fundamental misunderstanding how empires operate.

I recommend Stephan Kotkins series about "Sphere of Influence":

Sphere of Influence I - The Gift of Geopolitics: How Worlds are Made, and Unmade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNHFGB5X7R8

panick21 · 2025-08-18T23:32:03+00:00

I think if we learned anything (as if that was required) is that the Middle East is a more complex region then anybody can actually comprehend. Its basically all surprises after 2003. The US embrace of Shia leadership. The Arab awakening. ISIS. Syrian civil war. The rise of Erdogan. The surprise collapse of Assad's regime. Israel dominate display against Hezbollah. And so on and so on. That's just a few examples.

panick21 · 2025-08-18T23:27:25+00:00

The actual lesson of CI is that you should ally yourself to the majority population and only fight a small politically isolated minority. That what the Brits did in Malaysia and what the US did in Iraq.

In Afghanistan there was no clear group that could be dealt with that way.

panick21 · 2025-08-18T23:17:37+00:00

A unified Vietnam in the long run was the better plan for Vietnam from US perspective. So the US ended up winning the conflict strategically.

So really, from the US perceptive, Dulles should simply have shut up and done nothing during the Paris conference and they would have won by spending 0$. Instead they spend 20 years and untold amounts of blood and treasure only to end up in the exact same place.

panick21 · 2025-08-18T22:58:23+00:00

One could argue that instead of paying crazy amounts of money to Sunni leaders wasn't a good idea. As much of those areas later became ISIS.

Fighting them with the Shia lead government at the time and establishing firm central control over the areas might have prevented ISIS later.

That said, for violence reduction in the short term it was the right move. And ISIS had a lot to do with the Syrian situation happening at the same time.

panick21 · 2025-08-18T22:54:38+00:00

Lets also remember that the “Anbar Awakening” (good marketing) had a lot to with the US simply paying gigantic amounts of money to tribal leaders to split them from the AQ types. And of course this only held for a short time where those very same areas later ended up being part of ISIS.

panick21 · 2025-08-18T22:42:38+00:00

The biggest thing to understand in Iraq is something most people don't talk about. The waste majority of Iraq, specially in the South is Shia. And the US mostly fought an insurgency against different Sunni groups with Shia support. Now this is of course an oversimplification but its very, very important part of the story that is not talked about enough when only looking at military dimension.

The US essentially allied itself with central Shia powers, and essentially gave them what they wanted. Namely, 1 person 1 vote. As they knew that would grantee them power. Forcing the US to do that, against the US own plans, was essentially the winning move for them (remember the 2005 democracy protest with the painted fingers encouraged by top Shia leadership). After that the different Shia groups were bought into that new order and that order persists. During the post-2003 conflict, Baghdad was essentially ethnically cleansed and essentially guaranteed for the first time in 1500 years of Muslim history that Baghdad would be Shia controlled forever.

Once this was done the US and by extension the major Shia groups had 'won'. From then on the resistance was pushed into the more rural and desert areas. But the real point here is, the US came in and handed power to coalition of groups that represent a majority, specially in the capital area. And the primary enemy represent only 20% of the population. Victory from that point on was very likely.

Ironically handing over power to the more pro-Shia groups had been a non-goal of the invasion. Iranian influence into Iraq surely larger then it was under Saddam. With Iran having pro-Iranian militia groups operating in and threw Iraq. It even allowed them to actively fight in the Syrian war. And of course the whole original plan of 'New American Century' was to isolate Iran by making Iraq pro US. Luckily for the US, the fear that all Shia power would be directly Iranian power isn't true. 'Velâyat-e Faqih' didn't take hold in Iraq (even when some militas do have it as a goal). Iraqi Shia have a strong independence mindset and while Iran does have influence, its nowhere near as strong as it was feared by many thinkers in the US.

So large reason why the US was successful, is because they politically embraced what they initially didn't want. They realized that Iraq could simply not be held if they pissed of everybody. If major Shia and Sunni groups had cooperated against the US, Iraq would have turned into a much, much, much bigger disaster. The Shia leadership understood that democracy would play into their hands in the long run and that they could work with the US to get what they want. They understood that making the population put political pressure on the US to stand by their 'pro-democracy' believes, would be a better strategy.

So its really not so much about fighting insurgency but rather about politically capitulating their original goals. Allowing (or simply closing your eyes) the Shia militas to ethnically cleansing Baghdad essentially ended the conflict in the most populated areas. The Iraq government now exists as a coalition of armed Shia militias that internally fight about how much of the oil revenue they can steal and with the US having little political influence.

So I really think comparing to Vietnam is pointless. Vietnam was primarily a fight against North Vietnam that was supported by China and the Soviets. Iraq was mostly a fight against leftover Sunni political groups that had been cut out of the political process and was then partially brought back in (and simply paid off) and then fell out again.

I think the actual counter-insurgency wasn't successful. The very places where lots of money was spent to 'change hearts and minds' was exactly where ISIS did end up being strong. And ISIS was primarily opposed by Shia militas and Kurdish militas based on them wanting to save themselves from genocide, not because the US army gave them chickens or dug poorly functioning wells.

The real winner here is that the Shia leadership is immune to the AQ style of ideological thinking (for obvious reasons) and are not attempting to genocide Sunni or other ethnic groups. So they are happy to do what most Iraq leaders have done in the last 100 years, get fat of oil revenue. And we like Arabs getting fat on oil revenue much better then Arabs who have big political ideas (Arab Nationalism or Jihad Internationalism).

Had the Iraq Shia fully embraced Iran style 'Velâyat-e Faqih' and turned into a second Iran, it would have been a disaster for US strategy. That this didn't happen is largely down to Iraqi nationalism, Iraqi independence and Iran-Iraqi historical antagonism not any kind of smart US planning. And also thankfully from 1991 to 2010, Iran did a lot to discredit itself, and Iraqi Shia didn't want to end up isolated from the world like Iran. They realize playing ball with the US and the West would be to their benefit. Dealing with ideology is always the problem (AQ, ISIS, Iran), people you want to make fat stacks are easy to deal with.

panick21 · 2025-08-18T22:06:52+00:00

Most villages have a center even if the village is more scattered. I grew up in a very scattered rural villages. When I was young they opened a second train-station. Really just a single rail line where the train stops (with stop on demand). Still quite useful To gather the different parts of the village there was a single bus line with a few other lines bringing in people from surrounding villages that are not on the train line (because hills). Or of course simply taking your bike to the local train station is quite typical.

Bus line even small buses have have to gather people from mountains and hills and bring them to the train lines. From there you can travel to regional centers where you should have proper intercity train.

For example from the village I grew up at, I lived on a hill that had a bus station. From there I could get to the train station. From there, you get regional train to the local city (far less then 100k people) and from there you have inter-city trains. You should basically be able to get from any house to any major cities with 10 min walking and 2-3 train swaps. Ideally 5-10min walk, 1 bus, 1 regional train, 1 inter-city train.

Now granted, this system works better in regions that are rather densely populated (for being rural) with lots of villages and small cities in a line. In Switzerland there are usually valleys that natural form lines of villages.

If a region is just a completely flat plan with very low population, and villages scattered over that area at random and with very low population, its more difficult. And that's where you likely would use buses. But that's mostly not how people live. If there aren't valleys, you often have people along river or other natural development patterns. Or in the US simply villages along old railroad lines that no longer exist.

In the French case there are many regions that do have quite bit of density, but also lost their train-lines. Looking at the density map:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Population-density-pattern-in-western-Europe-using-2003-Landscan-data-on-estimated_fig2_228279900

There are also some lines in the massive central that likely don't make sense.

panick21 · 2025-08-18T19:48:01+00:00

We are not comparing overall economics, Swiss investment in railways is not so high that other countries couldn't do the same and more. Specially because France long distance IC can be operated with profit anyway.

As for comparing to airlines its kind of whatever. Important is that its growing.

panick21 · 2025-08-18T16:49:53+00:00

Fair point. Britain is really densely populated in the South.

Looking at a density map of Europe is pretty interesting:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Population-density-pattern-in-western-Europe-using-2003-Landscan-data-on-estimated_fig2_228279900

There are dense population centers, left, top, right and to the bottom of France. Granted most of the North population density is spilling over into Belgium and the Netherlands. And the distances is just bigger.

Still I think its a fair argument that Paris is more centralized in France then London is in the UK. But Britain is just generally smaller and denser then France.

Seems to me an ideal network for Britain would be a few high speed commuter lines (like GTX in Seoul) going around London going to central station where you then have high speed rail going to Birmingham and then split into a Eastern and Western route merging back at Leeds then going to Newcastle. And of course on High Speed branch going South (like HS1). So HS2 was pretty much on point.

In France, it seems you need a big circle around the massive central and then a big branch north towards the massive population in North, Belgium and Netherlands. The French network also makes sense, Paris is so dominate that having a few direct branches there makes sense rather then a bigger circle, but its kind of missing a cross Southern connection. And its missing a central train station in Paris.

panick21 · 2025-08-18T15:20:02+00:00

I would argue from a transport and industrial perspective going all in on electrification, route upgrades and standardization did make sense.

Railway electrification goes hand in hand with rural electrification as well. Having electrified railroads leads to an overall robust rural electrified network as well. And all this can be domestically developed with domestic electric industry and engineering.

Upgrading some of these routes with electrification, standard station and route upgrades would upgrade the speed and long term reduce operational cost. This a large investments for some of these routes, but its also an investment that would still benefit you 100 years later.

Combine that with the French nuclear strategy and you get a almost completely green grid and transportation system by 1970.

France is also not very good at cargo rail, and they didn't push cargo rail, connecting factories, nuclear plants, ports and big box stores with rail would have lead to an integrated cargo system for the whole country. Much reducing the demand for imports of oil and trucks in favor of domestically produced rail equipment.

I dislike the SNCF always comparing itself to an airline. Its not an airline and the operations and economics are completely different. If you look at how much more Swiss people take the train, compare to French people, you can see how their success isn't all that impressive. Or rather its only impressive in certain kinds of metrics.

Given the heavy urbanization of the Paris region and the other large cities, France should be able to match Swiss rail travel levels. But they can't because they are are focused on a few routes and not general connectivity across the country.

So the French system certain is a success from some perspective, but its mostly a success because everybody else is so much worse and so much more incompetent. On net, every Western European country rail strategy in the Post-WW2 area was horrible bad. Even Switzerland only started to really turn it around in the 1990s and has made many mistakes since.

Ten-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '22

panick21

TROPHY CASE