Virgin Galactic announced that they are opening a spaceport in New Mexico with $225 million in state money. They are also reported by BBC Radio, Forbes, AP and others to have 38,000-40,000 people who have made a deposit. Ned Abel Smith of Virgin Galactic confirms that in fact that 39,000 is just the number of people on their mailing list, not the number of depositers. This is not the first media exaggeration of Virgin Galactic’s prospects. On the other hand, with Virgin Skill’s vendor for Virgin Galactic Quest, Fun Games selling to Liberty Media for $390 million with $13 million in revenue and no profit, maybe Virgin Galactic Quest will be worth more than Virgin Galactic. (BTW, Smith said that they are probably delaying launch of Virgin Galactic Quest until the new year, but it is “ready to go”. They don’t want to crowd their spaceport announcement.) Check out Virgin Galactic’s new logo.
All posts by Sam Dinkin
The Best Way to Be Controversial…
…is to call for an end to controversial debate. I got more calls and letters on this article than I got in a year of previous writing. The responses were polarized. The most controversial item was my list of companies that could succeed if we stop space industry infighting. The list was a mistake–no list can be completely inclusive so better to describe broad categories. I did not intend to exclude companies. Many many companies can prosper in a boom. Not all will be around 25 years from now. IBM is not even in the PC business any more.
Setting aside the list, the correspondence was bi-modal. Half said it’s about time that someone said this. Some of these people had Washington return addresses. The other half said it is brutally repressive to cage the intellectual debate, and counterproductive.
I think there must be some kind of inverse square law that says if you have a political party that represents 50% of the people, it has one opinion, but a splinter interest group that represents 1% of the people has 2500 opinions.
There certainly can be a democratic process to arrive periodically at consensus. I favor a knockout auction where the proponents of a position pay those that disagree with it if they win.
Those who agreed with my article probably would think that just about any civility and unity in the space industry would be better than division and infighting regardless of the message disseminated.
Those who disagreed with my article challenged that there was any way to arrive at a consensus without free and open debate that wouldn’t fatally taint the ultimate message.
I guess I will have to go on being controversial and dividing people.
Bernanke Who?
Alan Blinder, former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, goes into why no one knows or cares about the person taking on most powerful position in the world, the Federal Reserve Board Chairmanship.
Energy Intensity
The amount of energy used in the economy per real dollar of GDP, “Energy Intensity”, has been steadily dropping and is now about half what it was in 1950. So a barrel’s worth of oil in 1950 now stretches to two barrels worth of work.
This is before the coming hybrid capital turnover in the transportation sector to double the efficiency there. So I guess prices will have to nearly double again to curb energy use like the 1970s oil shocks.
Fast Cheap Flu Vaccine
If H5N1 is so lethal, it might be a justifiable move on utilitarian grounds to manufacture and release H5N2 or something so people with partial immunity to the most common variants could obtain partial immunity to H5N1. That would probably not be condoned because the idea of killing tens of thousands to innoculate and thereby protect millions who would otherwise die in an H5N1 pandemic is morally and politically dead on arrival (pun intended). If we can’t stomach 2,000 dead in Iraq, there are many high utility strategies that are not options. This one can be pursued, however, by a determined minority.
Moon War
It would be delightful to have a war on the Moon. It would be a good way to spark development and settle on a sensible property rights regime. I don’t see, however, the Chinese spending $80 billion on the Moon much less $10 trillion or so to plant a base with 5000 km anti-spacecraft range and the techs to operate it. Unless there is an alternative way to get to the Moon than big dumb government programs, I see the Chinese as less likely to lift a finger to take the Moon than Quimoy or Matsu off their coast.
One-Two Bird Flu Punch
The Media and the health authorities talk about “it” mutating as if the viruses were all getting updated by wireless like in I, Robot (sorry for the spoiler). In fact, commencing a pandemic will not make a second ensuing pandemic less likely (although it will empart partial resistance). The birds still all have the flu and if flu can jump species once, it can do it twice with the need for a whole new vaccine (else why wait until it breaks out to produce one?). This is what happened in 1918-1919. It was the second wave of the flu that was the deadly one.
I saw this weird quote from 11/3, Prof. Donald Burke in WSJ (subscription required–search on flu and extinction):
At one extreme the case fatality ratios seen in Southeast Asia could be maintained (57 deaths in 112 cases, about 50% mortality), in which case the human species might face extinction.
Last I checked, you need 100% mortality for extinction and it is pretty hard to spread a virus that is 100% fatal to the entire global population before all the carriers die.
World Bank put an $800 billion price tag on bird flu if a pandemic hits with that being 2% of world GDP. They see SARS style disruption. CIA says world GDP is $55T according to purchasing power parity and 2% of that would be $1.1T.
Story has taken on a life of its own. Out of my league. Now if only they would take aim at heart disease that kills 17 million every year.
Chinese Space Riddle
Rand, Jeff and Dwayne are treating a 40-year delayed entry into the “US-Soviet space race” (or perhaps the Chinese would prefer “space era”) as newsworthy. For its military threat or for its ability to shed light on perceptions and the press. I think the interesting story that no one is telling is why the Chinese mimic the dead end space programs of the US and the USSR. It’s some kind of misguided nostalgia or timewarped hero worship. It is captured well by Ursula Le Guin’s The Telling. What does China think it will get out of a space program other than some more confidence from its neighbors that its missiles can hit their targets? Spinoffs? National prestige? This kind of grand challenge from yesteryear is weird nostalgia like the Space Cowboys movie. (I hinted at this last year, but no one seemed to pick up on it.)
The trick is to harness this misguided lunacy to use it to improve international relations and lower the cost of space access.
I wonder if the same people who discount SpaceShipOne’s and Falcon’s cheap space access are playing up China’s old tired expensive space access as a worrisome game changer. Maybe it’s the same reason we dissed China’s currency policy–to get them to keep doing it to waste their money.
Two Prophetic Items You Might Have Missed
Hoarding Tamiflu
Roche announced today that it is stopping US wholesale shipments of Tamiflu to prevent “hoarding”. Hoarding is exactly what they are doing. The move will shock wholesalers while people buying in advance of avian flu like me are shocking some retailers. Distributers are the last link in the chain. As they process this news, all retailers will begin to restrict access to Tamiflu. Rationing at a below market price results in the drug not going to people who value it most.
Higher prices put Tamiflu out of range of the bulk of the market. The only way they benefit from the higher prices is indirectly through the higher tax revenues from higher profits in the supply chain or increasingly as shareholders. Rationing benefits people who get the ration cards or whatever. There is an ubounded loss in efficiency when some people who want the drug are turned away because they have money, but do not qualify for a ration. An optimal policy might be a tax on emergency use that is distributed to everyone in the country equally. Don’t expect politicians to adopt that one.
Doctors, pharmacists and drug companies clearly know best exactly how much to provide becaue they are so good at economics. And they are prescribing, dispensing and producing Tamiflu for the good of the country. Perhaps I know better how many doctors, pharmacists and drug companies the country should have. I think there should be a medallion system like taxis.
Previous posts: Spanish Flu Published, Flu Update