Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, War Commentary

First Look

82 Comments

Jeff Foust (who also has a summary of the current political state of play over at The Space Review today) has some initial budget numbers:

That building block approach includes heavy-lift launch vehicle R&D, “vigorous” technology development work in areas like automated rendezvous and docking and propellant transfer, and a “steady stream of precursor robotic exploration missions”.

For those who foolishly think that this new direction is the “end of human spaceflight” or even “the end of human spaceflight beyond LEO,” what do they think that those precursors are for? Not to mention the tech development work?

I guess, to them, that if you’re not repeating the folly of Apollo, you’re not doing “real” human spaceflight.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s the OMB document (doesn’t look like a permalink, though):

NASA’s Constellation program – based largely on existing technologies – was based on a vision of returning astronauts back to the Moon by 2020. However, the program was over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies. Using a broad range of criteria an independent review panel determined that even if fully funded, NASA’s program to repeat many of the achievements of the Apollo era, 50 years later, was the least attractive approach to space exploration as compared to potential alternatives. Furthermore, NASA’s attempts to pursue its moon goals, while inadequate to that task, had drawn funding away from other NASA programs, including robotic space exploration, science, and Earth observations. The President’s Budget cancels Constellation and replaces it with a bold new approach that invests in the building blocks of a more capable approach to space exploration.

Killing off a dead end and reinvesting in something that actually has a hope of achieving the goals. Gosh, what a concept.

One thing that’s not clear yet, absent more perusal. When they say cancel Constellation, does that include Orion? Not that I’d cry, but I’m curious. Orion’s requirements, after all, are integral with the Constellation architecture, which is clearly dead now, so the program will need some rethinking regardless.

And is this just the opening position in a budget battle with Congress, with it and perhaps some kind of heavy lifter as bargaining chips?

[Update a few minutes later]

Bobby Block has more analysis over at The Write Stuff:

The flagship enterprise will be developing on-orbit refueling and automated approaches and docking technologies.

…Lots of parallels are being drawn with how the federal government used mail contracts to develop the aviation industry.

So far, I’m liking pretty much everything I’m seeing.

[Update mid morning PST]

Clark Lindsey has some notes from the announcement. This is a huge breath of fresh air, at least so far. Which is not to say it’s perfect, but it can be a long way from that and still a huge improvement over the previous plans.

[Update a couple minutes later]

A summary from George Herbert, over at the Arocket list:

Well, it’s out. As predicted, wth some additional benefits.

Constellation outright cancelled, message from the top on down.

$2.5 B of the new $6 B funding over 5 years (beyond flat) is in Earth Observation science missions. Major (claimed) focus on technologies for affordable long term human exploration of the solar system, including orbital demonstrations of propellant tank farm and orbital propellant transfers, automated rendezvous and docking (presumably, of human-sized vehicles, and vehicles far from earth), closed loop ECLSS, a new first stage booster engine (presumably big enough for a HLV), I think I saw mention of deep space propulsion. [all of the things that Mike Griffin starved to feed Apollo on Steroids — rs]

They’re explicitly stepping away from a roadmap, and onto the technology base that most of us long term experienced enthusiasts have been pushing for.

If I had to summarize my first impressions, especially of Bolden’s statement –

“We were doing Flags and Footprints. The President and I don’t want to do that. We want to colonize space for real. We’re going to do the foundations for that now.”

I assume that last is a summary of Bolden’s statement, not a quote.

Whether or not they follow through, this is (IMNSHO) the most visionary space policy that the nation has ever had. Now to see how badly Congress screws it up.

[Another update]

The thing that amazes me is that when I read comments from those defending Ares, and Constellation, and NASA, at places like Space Politics and The Write Stuff, is that they are entirely devoid of facts and logic. These people live in some bizarre alternate reality in which NASA didn’t kill fourteen astronauts at the cost of hundred of billions of dollars, Lockheed Martin has ever sent someone into space, SpaceX has achieved nothing, etc. In Senator Shelby’s case, I can understand that he is completely motivated to lie or delude himself about such things by what he perceives to be his political interest, but I can’t figure out what drives the irrationality of others with no dog in the fight except apparent blind NASA worship.

[Update a few minutes later]

I have some more thoughts on Ares, astronauts and safety.

And if you missed my post on Obama’s conservative (even if inadvertent) space policy, it’s here.

[Update a few minutes later]

If your only template for a “successful” human spaceflight program is Apollo (big rocket, firm deadline, big bucks, a few NASA astronauts walking on some planet), then I can see why you’d be disappointed when instead the program is for enabling lots of destinations, by lots of people, with no specific deadline or destination. These are the same people who would apparently say that Lewis and Clark was “real exploration of the west,” and all those miners and trappers wandering around were just hobbyists. And that the government should have built its own heavy-lift railroad instead of giving land grants.

[Afternoon update]

Buzz likes it. No one would know the folly of repeating Apollo better than him.

[Update a while later]

More thoughts from Michael Mealing.

[Update a few minutes later]

With regard to the knee-jerk irrational complaints from many, this reminds me very much of six years ago, when the Vision for Space Exploration was announced. Many “progressive” and pro-space bloggers opposed it, even though they admitted to liking the idea. Why? Because it was proposed by the BusHitler, so there was obviously a catch, and he was up to no good. I’m seeing a lot of the same kind of partisan nonsense in opposition to this. This is the most truly visionary space policy ever (and that includes the Apollo speech), yet a lot of people are cavilling about it because it was proposed by Barack Obama. This is stupid.

Business, Economics, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Why Go Out To Eat?

15 Comments

Some thoughts.

Looking back, I used to go out primarily for entertainment value. I enjoyed being in a fancy space, developing a rapport with the wait staff, people watching, and dressing up for the occasion.

Me?

I hate that. It has a very low entertainment/annoyance ratio to me (I hate getting dressed up, for one thing).

I don’t go out to eat, generally, unless there is some compelling reason, because I don’t intrinsically enjoy it. I think that restaurants are intrinsically overpriced (not relative to their costs of doing business, but relative to their value to me compared to cooking at home), I don’t know for sure what’s in the food, and can’t get it exactly the way I like it, the portions are too large, particularly on the carbs (again, for economic reasons), and I really don’t enjoy other people serving or waiting on me, particularly when a tip is expected. I really prefer to do it myself (I have the same annoyance with luggage in hotels).

To me the only reasons to go out to eat are a) to eat something that I couldn’t make myself due to lack of time or ingredients (which is why I almost never go to a steak house), b) as a social occasion with others or c) I’m travelling away from home and have no other choice. But it’s not something about which I ever think, “Boy, I’d sure like to go out to eat in some fancy restaurant.”

[Update a few minutes later]

The very first commenter over at Al Dente has another big reason I don’t like going out:

Too many restaurant owners think that noise = fun, and they actively try to keep the noise level over 90 db. I hate big chain restaurants with concrete walls and floors that have conversations bouncing and echoing off them until they turn into a cacophonous din. I have gotten up with my wife and left restaurants before ordering because the noise was too oppressive. And just for the record, some music enhances the meal (Frank & Dino at an Italian place, etc.), and some music ruins it (I don’t want to have to shout to my dining companions to be heard over the latest blaring hip hop hit). The nadir had to be when I took my wife to a little bar/restaurant in Dallas for an after theater drink, and we were seated beneath a speaker that was blaring some rap song that sounded like a Tourette’s patient giving X-rated how-to instructions to an apprentice rapist.

Particularly when I’m out with friends, trying to have a conversation, I like to be able to hear them and talk to them without shouting. Planet Hollywood? Please. There is absolutely nothing about a place like that to appeal to me, and if I’m with other people who want to go, I do my best to dissuade.

I guess this gets into a broader issue. I am not a “party” person. Which is not to say that I’m not social, or that I don’t enjoy the company of others. I enjoy nothing better than getting together with a bunch of interesting people, but the point of getting together is to discuss interesting things, not to be pummelled with mindless noise shoulder-to-shoulder with a throng. This was true for me even in college. I’ve always hated that. But I have enough problems with going out to eat without having to be assaulted with noise. I don’t understand the attitude that “more volume” equals “more fun.” But apparently for many people, it is, or the places wouldn’t inflict on them what is to me a punishment.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Lessons In Health Care

1 Comment

…from the Edinburgh zoo:

…it is a self-evident truth that all animals are created equal and endowed by their creator with unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But it takes little thought to know that of these three rights, that to life must be primary, for without it the others are null and void. It is perfectly obvious that you can’t be free or pursue happiness if you’re dead.

This surely means that, if you are an animal lover, you should try to reduce any animal that you see in the wild at once to captivity, at least of the Edinburgh Zoo variety. Failure to do so is de facto condemning that animal to an early grave. The animal will be better fed, have fewer parasites, and be sheltered from the bad weather if you capture him. Above all, he, or it, will have much better health care than in the wild. Indeed, in the wild animals are even worse off than Americans without health insurance.

Dry humor is the best kind.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

No More Moon

57 Comments

At least by NASA, if the Orlando Sentinel has it right:

When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies needed to take humans back to the moon.

There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation program at all.

In their place, according to White House insiders, agency officials, industry executives and congressional sources familiar with Obama’s long-awaited plans for the space agency, NASA will look at developing a new “heavy-lift” rocket that one day will take humans and robots to explore beyond low Earth orbit. But that day will be years — possibly even a decade or more — away.

In the meantime, the White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects — principally, researching and monitoring climate change — and on a new technology research and development program that will one day make human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system possible.

There will also be funding for private companies to develop capsules and rockets that can be used as space taxis to take astronauts on fixed-price contracts to and from the International Space Station — a major change in the way the agency has done business for the past 50 years.

As the article notes, there will be a battle royale with people on the Hill like Shelby, but it’s hard for me to see how the program will survive if the White House sticks to its guns. On the other hand, this is not a White House known for sticking to its guns.

Anyway, if that’s the new plan, it actually has a lot better prospects for getting us back to the moon than Constellation ever did, and much more affordably.

[Update a while later]

Clark Lindsey makes a good point on the politics:

Regarding the resistance in Congress to cancellation of Ares I, I’d bet the administration would love that fight. With deficits a huge concern in the general public, the killing of a giant boondoggle government rocket project is exactly the sort of symbolic act that the administration would be happy to see receive a lot of attention. The fact that most of that resistance comes from a handful of Republicans in Alabama and Texas would only highlight the irony of a situation where the President will be fighting conservatives to kill a government program and use private sector services instead.

When it comes to pork, there don’t seem to be any “conservatives.”

[Update a couple minutes later]

Keith Cowing feels cheated (again):

NASA has just spent more than half a decade telling Americans that we are all going back to the Moon – and why. In the process, billions of dollars have been spent. Children have grown up being told this again and again – just like my generation heard in the 1960s. Now this is being taken away from them. I can only imagine how my generation would have reacted. It is one thing to alter a plan, change rockets, etc. But it is quite another to abandon the plan altogether.

The ISS has great potential – much of it yet to be realized. But much of that untapped potential was preparing humans to go out into the solar system. Now those destinations have evaporated and have been replaced with the elusive and ill-defined “Flexible Path”.

How is NASA going to explain this about face? Answer – they won’t – because they can’t. They are incapable of admitting mistakes or even stating the obvious. What I really want to see is how NASA attempts to explain this bait and switch to all of the students it has sought to inspire since the VSE was announced. A “Summer of Innovation” centered around a stale and contracting space program seems somewhat contradictory to me.

How will NASA – and the White House – explain the use of vast sums of taxpayer money to bail out the decisions of incompetent financial institutions on Wall Street and yet not be able to find a paltry fraction of that amount to bail out the future of space exploration that future Americans will benefit from – and participate in.

Shrug.

He apparently had far too much faith that anything was going to come of this. I was somewhat hopeful right after the announcement, but once ESAS came out, I knew that the program was doomed to failure. We’ve wasted billions and years more, but at least we’re going to stop the bleeding now. I’m much more encouraged about our prospects to get to the moon now than I have been in five years.

[Early afternoon update]

Bill Posey has fired off a foolish response:

“This Administration has thrown hundreds of billions of dollars into a failed stimulus bill, but when it comes to keeping America first in space his ‘plan’ is to cancel the development of America’s next human space vehicle, outsource our good-paying Shuttle jobs to the Russians, place all of our hopes on a yet unproven commercial adventure, rush/force the transition to yet unproven commercial alternatives, and shifts money from human space flight to global warming research.

“Until we have a clearer plan for the future, the only realistic and reasonable way to preserve America’s leadership in space is too [sic] provide for a temporary extension of the Shuttle. To terminate the Shuttle later this year with no plan, but rather a vain hope, is ill advised.

He has never proposed a realistic plan as to how to extend Shuttle. They’re running out of pieces to fly it, and the lines were shut down long ago. And I get very tired of arguments for “jobs,” good paying or not, with no apparent concern about cost or value to the taxpayer (or space enthusiast, for that matter). I grow even more tired of hearing about how an Atlas that has an almost perfect flight record is “unproven,” while Powerpoint rockets are some kind of sure thing, merely because they are being designed by NASA.

No, this isn’t exactly what I’d be doing if I were president, but it’s a hell of a lot better policy than anything we’ve had since Mike Griffin took over. I don’t even object to spending more money on climate monitoring, particularly given what a mess the science currently is — I just wish that Jim Hansen wouldn’t have any control, or even influence, over it.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Manufactured Consensus

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The more we learn about the working of the IPCC, the more clear it is that it was not doubt that was being “manufactured,” but the consensus itself:

Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, served as a UN IPCC lead author in 2001 for the 3rd assessment report and detailed how he personally witnessed UN scientists attempting to distort the science for political purposes.

“I was at the table with three Europeans, and we were having lunch. And they were talking about their role as lead authors. And they were talking about how they were trying to make the report so dramatic that the United States would just have to sign that Kyoto Protocol,” Christy told CNN on May 2, 2007. – (For more on UN scientists turning on the UN years ago, see Climate Depot’s full report here. )

Christy has since proposed major reforms and changes to the way the UN IPCC report is produced. Christy has rejected the UN approach that produces “a document designed for uniformity and consensus.” Christy presented his views at a UN meeting in 2009. The IPCC needs “an alternative view section written by well-credentialed climate scientists is needed,” Christy said. “If not, why not? What is there to fear? In a scientific area as uncertain as climate, the opinions of all are required,” he added.

‘The reception to my comments was especially cold.’

No doubt. Time for some climate change at the UN.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Cui bono, when the IPCC lies?

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Clueless Commenters

7 Comments

As is usually the case, the comments at this Andy Pasztor article on the upcoming changes to the human spaceflight program, are ignorant and often nonsensical (the usual spinoff arguments are employed — one comments corrects another that NASA didn’t invent the microwave oven, only to then claim that it invented Teflon). As is often the case, it’s a stupidly partisan debate, with Obama haters (ironically) defending a bloated government agency. Jim Muncy and Bob Werb try (probably unsuccessfuly) to inject a little sanity.

And I have to say that I really don’t understand all these comments about “outsourcing” to US private industry. The irony of course is that the current plan is to “outsource” all of US human spaceflight after Shuttle to the Russians, indefinitely, and largely because the past five years and many billions were wasted on Ares/Orion instead of providing more incentive to private industry.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Sane, Affordable And Sustainable

30 Comments

“Ray” over at Vision Restoration has a development approach to expanding human spaceflight beyond LEO that would actually work, and work within NASA’s constrained budget. Paul Spudis likes it, and has further comments.

Of course, it makes far too much sense to be adopted in Washington. But this is the approach that will be taken privately, regardless of what NASA does.

Business, Economics, Humor, Political Commentary

The Half-Wit

3 Comments

I don’t normally pass along emailed jokes, but I thought this one too good to pass up:

A man owned a small ranch in Montana. The Montana Work Force Department claimed he was not paying proper wages to his help and sent an agent out to interview him.

“I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them,” demanded the agent.

“Well,” replied he said, “there’s my ranch hand who’s been with me for 3 years.. I pay him $200 a week plus free room and board.

“The cook has been here for 18 months, and I pay her $150 per week plus free room and board.

“Then there’s the half-wit. He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work around here. He makes about $10 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of bourbon every Saturday night. He also sleeps with my wife occasionally.”

“That’s the guy I want to talk to … the half-wit,” says the agent.

“That would be me,” replied the rancher.

I think that Tuesday’s results show that the half-wits are coming to their senses.