It’s hard to define what “Hexbear” is anymore, with so many of the posts coming from random Lemmy instances. Our brand and subculture are diluted and it shows. A lot more confrontation and friction in threads. So it got me thinking. How can we recapture the authentic sense of what Hexbear is and do something nice for the world as a community?

If you’ve been watching India’s moon mission, you know how happy everyone looks in the footage. They’re so proud of their work and the whole nation is congratulating them. Actually the whole world. It’s a massive publicity boost and unites an otherwise polarised nation. Well what’s stopping us from doing that? Think of all the cool things we could accomplish with a space programme. Designing new rockets, exploring new galaxies, maybe colonising a planet or two as a forum. We would let everyone know what Hexbear represents and could mine asteroids for orbital factories that supply our fleet of ships. One thing we might build is a Dyson Sphere, or maybe even a generation ship to raise the next ten generations of our families together on our way to another solar system. I’m a plant scientist and could probably even grow lettuce in microgravity.

We can do this. I just ask that you trust me and send me the money to do so.

  • Lochat [none/use name]
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    32 years ago

    Dyson sphere? Outdated scifi. How about a Dyson hexagon?

    Also, if a mod doesn’t delete this you’re cowards.

    • happybadger [he/him]OP
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      12 years ago

      This kind of collaborative brainstorming is why it’s such a good idea. NASA has one brain per engineer. We have 20k brains and a couple engineers. There are so many ideas we could feed them. I don’t care what shape the Dyson enclosure is, only that we show the Fediverse that we’re still a forum by enclosing the sun.

  • cynesthesia [any]
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    142 years ago

    I’m concerned about this idea, this seems like a lot of work to do on our own. what about if we piggyback on an existing project? I was thinking star citizen. they’ve been developing for a long time so the game must be both great and close to release. we could all buy in now and then do space things in that game together!

    • happybadger [he/him]OP
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      112 years ago

      It wouldn’t stand out. Reddit already made Dreddit in EVE and it was accidentally wildly successful. We can’t match that level of success in Star Citizen since it’s full of well-established players. Space flight though is an emerging industry. There isn’t even a lunar colony yet, let alone a spaceship capable of FTL travel through the warp. With so many subscribers in c/science I think we could easily achieve that just by starting a megathread.

  • @[email protected]
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    92 years ago

    while I support disassembling earth for resources, let me assure you that your instance’s culture still stands out plenty among all the Reddit clones

    • happybadger [he/him]OP
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      152 years ago

      It stands out amongst them, but what about Lemmygrad? Their memes subcommunity directly appears next to ours in my feed. The only thing differentiates us from them now is that we have a Starfleet and they do not.

  • lib1 [comrade/them]
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    152 years ago

    My pappy† always used to say, “you can’t have a nation without culture, language, and borders”. I think this sort of project could really bring us together by keeping our attention on our ideals for the future. We could call it futurism!

    †My pappy was a fascist if that matters

    • happybadger [he/him]OP
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      112 years ago

      We could go from a simple shitposting forum to the vanguard of humanity. The new cultural blueprint for our species as a multiplanetary civilisation.

    • happybadger [he/him]OP
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      72 years ago

      We would be the most powerful forum in the solar system if we all come together and build the Badger-class Dreadnought. The earth would be forced to go wherever we want.

  • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]
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    22 years ago

    Fill the space balloon with all of our collective semen / whatever the ladies shoot out their pee holes. Just get it all out and be done with it.

    Thank me later, Volcel Police.

    • VOLCEL_POLICE [it/its]B
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      12 years ago

      The VOLCEL POLICE are on the scene! PLEASE KEEP YOUR VITAL ESSENCES TO YOURSELVES AT ALL TIMES.

      نحن شرطة VolCel.بناءا على تعليمات الهيئة لترويج لألعاب الفيديو و النهي عن الجنس نرجوا الإبتعاد عن أي أفكار جنسية و الحفاظ على حيواناتكم المنويَّة حتى يوم الحساب. اتقوا الله، إنك لا تراه لكنه يراك.

      volcel-police

      • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]
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        2 years ago

        Oh, so where the FUCK were YOU last night when I was getting horny about about my Croat gf from 30 years ago??

        Defund the Volcel Police.

        • VOLCEL_POLICE [it/its]B
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          22 years ago

          The VOLCEL POLICE are on the scene! PLEASE KEEP YOUR VITAL ESSENCES TO YOURSELVES AT ALL TIMES.

          نحن شرطة VolCel.بناءا على تعليمات الهيئة لترويج لألعاب الفيديو و النهي عن الجنس نرجوا الإبتعاد عن أي أفكار جنسية و الحفاظ على حيواناتكم المنويَّة حتى يوم الحساب. اتقوا الله، إنك لا تراه لكنه يراك.

          volcel-police

            • VOLCEL_POLICE [it/its]B
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              32 years ago

              The VOLCEL POLICE are on the scene! PLEASE KEEP YOUR VITAL ESSENCES TO YOURSELVES AT ALL TIMES.

              نحن شرطة VolCel.بناءا على تعليمات الهيئة لترويج لألعاب الفيديو و النهي عن الجنس نرجوا الإبتعاد عن أي أفكار جنسية و الحفاظ على حيواناتكم المنويَّة حتى يوم الحساب. اتقوا الله، إنك لا تراه لكنه يراك.

              volcel-police

                • VOLCEL_POLICE [it/its]B
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                  32 years ago

                  The VOLCEL POLICE are on the scene! PLEASE KEEP YOUR VITAL ESSENCES TO YOURSELVES AT ALL TIMES.

                  نحن شرطة VolCel.بناءا على تعليمات الهيئة لترويج لألعاب الفيديو و النهي عن الجنس نرجوا الإبتعاد عن أي أفكار جنسية و الحفاظ على حيواناتكم المنويَّة حتى يوم الحساب. اتقوا الله، إنك لا تراه لكنه يراك.

                  volcel-police

  • HotSoda [love/loves]
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    122 years ago

    I’m down. I don’t hook anymore, but for an endeavor like this maybe retirement isn’t the best option.

  • Bobson_Dugnutt [he/him]
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    112 years ago

    I built a couple of those Estes model rockets when I was a kid, I figure if we just scale it up enough we can get to the moon no problem.

    Step 1 is to get the biggest cardboard tube we can find.

  • riseuppikmin [he/him]
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    2 years ago

    This post made me realize building a space program is the nation level “solution” equivalent of “if we just have a kid it will save our marriage”

  • Awoo [she/her]
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    2 years ago

    I disagree. We should host the Olympics instead.

    This would get especially funny when we get to the part about deciding which countries get to use their flags and which athletes have to enter as independents because of the various atrocities their nations have performed and liberals would mald.

    • happybadger [he/him]OP
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      22 years ago

      Hosting the Olympics would be exclusionary. I can’t run or fence well enough to participate as part of the Hexbear Nation so I’m just left selling hotdogs or delegating where chairs go. With a Starfleet, everyone can participate. We can fly Badger-class fighters in a squadron, haul ore in our Badger-class freighters as a convoy chain, or branch out into the universe on our own in Badger-class generation ships. You give me $50k or whatever you’ve got today and within a year* you could be destroying Neptune with a Badger-class titan. Just for fun with your friends.

  • mayo_cider [he/him]
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    62 years ago

    I used to build bombs from fireworks and chemicals I found in the garage as a kid, I’m pretty sure I can design and build a rocket engine