Looks like window seats may be harder to get soon. Last week New Tech Spy said this.
All posts by Sam Dinkin
Texas Space Authority
Bill Hulsey and various other concerned Texans are forming the Texas Space Authority. We meet next week at University of Texas at Austin.
I found a couple of documents about Texas space plans. They are from 2003 and 2004. The Texas 2003-2007 strategic plan is here. Another is a 12 MB spaceport plan file. Email at dinkin@space-shot.com if you want me to share it with you on xdrive.
European Carbon Market Crisis
The carbon emission offset market in Europe is in crisis because of an unexpected 50% price drop in the last couple of weeks. True to Europe, the traders are demanding government intervention to prop up the price(!) of carbon offsets. While it is true that the governments can afford to buy more, why would they want to? The high price of hydrocarbons will curb carbon emissions.
Assuming that the coal/methane/nuclear balance continues to move toward nuclear for electricity, high gasoline prices mean less carbon. So either we will run out of oil or we will have high CO2, not both.
Dyson’s New Sphere
of influence
The most interesting addition to the Space Access crowd was Esther Dyson. Far from the outsider she was pilloried as when she set up Flight School last year, she has a healthy vision for how to take space travel, micro sat’s, space burial and the rest of “New Space” and shape it into a growing large industry.
She mentioned on a panel that she would like to see companies sharing their lists of investors. The purpose is to allow those investors to diversify. She is
“talking her own book” here as she has already invested in XCOR, Space Adventures, Zero G Corporation and Space Services, Inc. I hope that her comment that she liked the Rocketplane presentation translates into some money for them too.
Someone knowledgable about the inner workings of the New Space firms (whom I agree with) assures me that it will take a major cultural shift for these firms to share investor lists. But Dyson by telling everyone at Space Access her goal may encourage other investors to advertise their own interest in space investment diversification.
Dyson got into space because of her family. Her father, Freeman Dyson, designed the Orion spacecraft. Her brother is the historian at Blue Origin.
Following her around was a post-modern experience. She had many suiters and always seemed to have three conversations going at once. It took almost as long to talk to her as it did to talk to Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit. To talk to Glenn I had to fly to Atlanta and drive to Knoxville.
Talking to her was also thoroughly post modern. Conversations with Dyson jumped from electricity to food, to luxury goods reporting. She immediately grasped the concept of the Space-Shot.com game noting the single elimination tournament is a “binary tree”. She pressed me about my electricity auction history asking the single most thoughtful question on that topic I have ever been asked, “if you auction the electricity in advance, how do you assure the spot price is the right price?”
Spot prices in New Jersey are determined by a spot market and many of the large customers have to pay the spot price. In those cases, the forward auction merely determines the cost of the capacity. This piece is critical to why New Jersey and Illinois are different from California’s ill-fated experience with CalPX. Dyson got to live through the California electricity crisis. I bid to run the CalPX and lost. I could have averted that crisis.
Hopefully space in ten years will do as well as the Internet is doing now under her thoughtful guidance or electricity under mine.
Space Settlement Institute Congratulates Space-Shot.com
We just got congratulated by Space Settlement Institute. Download file
We are now accepting Paypal manually. Email paypal purchase requests to paypal@space-shot.com
Here’s my ISDC paper. Download file
Slides. Download file
As long as I’m uploading files, here’s a prediction tutorial. Download file
Open Letter to George Bush
Dear Mr. President,
I want to bring to your attention a major opportunity to get people thinking about the future in the only area of federal activity you threatened a veto: Space. There are new opportunities for ordinary citizens to fly into space. Major industrialists Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen, Elon Musk, George French, John Carmack and Jeff Greason have all started rocket companies to carry ordinary citizens into space for far less than the $20 million price to fly on the Russian Soyuz. You have the potential for a major win here. These industrialists will beat China and NASA back to the Moon. Anyone can buy an entry into a skill game for $3.50 to win a trip to space at my web site http://www.space-shot.com
Take some credit for the good news.
Regards,
Sam Dinkin
CEO
SpaceShot, Inc.
3101 Lating Stream Lane
Austin, TX 78746
(512) 750-1751 Sound
(512) 347-9149 Image
http://www.space-shot.com
dinkin@space-shot.com
Volvo Virgin Galactic Mailing List
is not for sale. Volvo doesn’t rent lists or send out third party solicitations. 135,000 people who registered for a spaceflight giveaway after Super Bowl 2005 I have to contact the hard way about my site, Space-Shot.com.
Organ Sale Ethics is Cultural
In The Ethicist column in the New York Times Magazine last month, Randy Cohen talked about organ transplant sales being unethical:
For a system of acquiring organs to be ethical, it must be equitable, which is not the case when one economic class is exploited (and put at significant medical risk) for the benefit of another. And exploitation it is when the seller is not making a truly voluntary decision but responding to financial desperation.
Is it unethical to hire a maid who is financially desperate? If I had trouble getting a job out of college, I would be financially desperate, but I would be very grateful for the opportunity to sell my labor.
Organs are different than jobs. But the difference is not financial desperation.
Where to Turn for Hard News
From BBC World Service, “Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has confessed to having had an affair with one of his secretaries. BBC British Affairs correspondent reports”
this story. A red letter day for affairs when they get their own correspondent.
Microsoft in Video Ad Acquisition
Microsoft plans to buy Massive Inc. for $300 million +/- $100 million. They do ad placements in video games. More in the Wall Street Journal. In-game ads are expected to triple from $56 million last year to $160 million this year and be $700 million by 2010.