I was digging through the archives looking for my first Veteran’s Day post in 2001, and I ran across this fisking of an op-ed on space policy from The Economist. It holds up pretty well, I think. I wish that they had followed my advice then. We’d be a lot further ahead.
Category Archives: Economics
Less Warming
When it means “more fear.”
I think/hope that the climate grift is on its last legs.
A Fifty-Year Mortgage?
In this scenario, which is basically almost an interest-only loan, you don’t really own your home; you’re just renting it from the bank.
Orion
I’m not sure — he’s sometimes subtle — but one gets the impression that he doesn’t like it.
Bill Gates
Why he (finally) turned on the climate alarmists and said it isn’t an apocalypse.
I don’t know why anyone ever took him seriously on the subject in the first place. Just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you’re smart.
It Begins
Duffy wants to recompete HLS.
[Wednesday-morning update]
One of the reasons that we have made so little progress in space for the past half century is that Congress decided that NASA had to have its own space transportation, regardless of how terrible it is at it.
— Rand Simberg (@Simberg_Space) October 21, 2025
Delete unnecessary parts and processes ==> If Starship can land 100 T of stuff on the Moon, or fly >10 T to and from the Moon from LEO without refueling, all other parts of the NASA so-called "architecture" are unnecessary, regardless of how many tens of billions of dollars have… https://t.co/Gna5xuX9GO
— Casey Handmer (@CJHandmer) October 21, 2025
There have been many dud NASA administrators, some of which looked good on paper (e.g., Dick Truly). Webb was a lawyer, but even he had experience in the aviation industry. What are Duffy's qualifications? You need to at least know which end the fire comes out of.
— Rand Simberg (@Simberg_Space) October 22, 2025
[Early-afternoon update]
Bob Zimmerman is not impressed.
Cutting The Gordian Knot
Lockmart is starting to look to reusability and other launch vehicles than SLS for Orion.
NASA may want to have it for its precious astronauts, but at some point it will be embarrassing when Starship is putting up dozens of people at a fraction of the cost.
College Professors
…largely only teach the left-wing view of controversial issues:
“‘Personally, I thought we’d find some imbalance, some activist teaching,’ co-author Jon Shields, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, told The College Fix. ‘I just didn’t expect it to be the norm in the cases we studied. That was genuinely surprising to me.’
Sadly, it’s not surprising to me at all. It’s a large part of why the country is such a disaster.
The Climate Hysteria
Are we at a turning point?
We can hope.
Data Centers
Why they will be built in space:
Here's an argument why data centers will be built in space instead of on the ground. Projected by 2040, $700B/year of costs due to environmental, regulatory, and delay costs for building data centers on Earth. Compare this to decreasing launch costs (not shown here) to predict…
— Phil Metzger (@DrPhiltill) September 10, 2025