Dumb idea. But it increases government control over our lives, so it has that going for it.
Category Archives: Business
Dismantling America
Thomas Sowell has some pretty legitimate concerns. Fortunately, judging by the polls, a lot of people are starting to share them.
Is It Legal To Mine The Moon?
Some links from Instapundit.
More Augustine Links
…over at Clark’s place.
[Update a couple minutes later]
And a lot more at NASA Watch.
[Update a few minutes later]
One of Clark’s links is particularly interesting. Now that the report is out, Jeff Greason is unleashed: “It’s time to base US space policy on the truth.”
I’ve had some similar conversations with Jeff throughout the summer, but kept them off the record at his request. I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot more from him now, though.
Barack’s Socialist Mop
I have some thoughts on cleaning techniques over at Pajamas Media.
[Mid-morning update]
The trolls have showed up in comments over there, predictably accusing administration opponents of racism. Well, I have to ‘fess up. About the only thing that I like about the president is that he’s black. So I guess I am a racist.
ISPC Reporting
I couldn’t make it to the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight this year (for the second year in a row), but Alan Boyle did, and he has a report on yesterday’s talks, including two disparate views from Augustine panel members Lester Lyles and Jeff Greason. Regular readers will know that I’m with the latter. The panel results will be revealed in less than three hours, in a press conference to be broadcast on NASA TV. I’m encouraged that the airmail analogy has become a prevailing NASA meme. But unsurprisingly, Senator Shelby has already launched a monumentally ignorant pre-emptive strike against it.
Something that I’ve noticed in the debate is that, while opponents make cogent arguments against Constellation, and shoot down the arguments of proponents, the latter simply ignore the opponents arguments, and simply continue to repeat the same nonsense. For example, I never hear anyone defending Constellation address the operational affordability issue that Jeff and Sally Ride made last summer, in which they stated that the program would have to be cancelled for lack of budget even it if was delivered, developed, for free. And the press, even most of the space press, seems too clueless to parse or sort the arguments, instead turning it into a Battle of the Astronaut Stars (as though astronauts are experts in launch economics).
[Update a few minutes later]
Jeff apparently also demolished the nonsense (and Shelby’s primary “argument”) that Ares is safer than other approaches. I would also add the (politically incorrect) point that in fact safety should not be the highest priority. Anyone who says that it is is unserious about opening up space. In one sense, the Ares proponents are right about it being the safest vehicle. If a system is so expensive you can afford to fly it rarely, or not at all, you’re unlikely to lose many people on it.
The Potemkin Rocket
Well, OK, Potemkin missile. I had a brief email exchange with Patrick Peterson over at Florida Today a couple weeks ago, and he apparently used it in this article on next week’s planned Ares-1X test. I should sit down and put together a list of things that half a billion dollars could have gone to that would have advanced us in space much farther than this flight.
I’m guessing that this article isn’t going to result in a flurry of consulting requests for me from Marshall and its contractors…
[Update a few minutes later]
As is often the case with newspaper comments sections, the comments are pretty uniformly idiotic. Except the one that agrees with me, of course. 😉
The Myth Of The Multiplier
Why massive Democrat payoffs to their constituencies at taxpayer expense aren’t stimulative.
Dissecting The Deficit
Most of it is spending. This can’t go on.
Lunar Uncertainty
…and Google Lunar X-Prize. The latest Lurio Report is out (subscription only). There’s a lot of good stuff in there (as usual), but I found this interesting and it was a new thought, at least to me (partly because I don’t pay much attention to GLXP):
…under the alternative exploration scenarios developed by the the Augustine group, lunar exploration and services demand from the government could be far lower than that assumed by the Futron study.
I think that for the most part the Augustine commission did a landmark job.
But the story above shows what happens as long as the political class feels it has to keep paying off the existing interest groups in and out of NASA, burning bucks on developing and operating high-overhead (instead of high practicality) systems, such as the Shuttle-derived heavy booster that is evidently in the cards, as discussed in a section below. From outside “the system” the obvious question is: Why don’t we go all the other way instead? Why not spend such money on multiple COTS/CRS-like projects and R&D items such as fuel depots, so that we can create a really sustainable and expandable system for exploration and utilization?
Of course, I understand the practical politics, and yes, it’s far better to make _some_ progress towards commercialization even when that must be “balanced” by larger and wasteful “protection money.” Mr.
Griffin left us with an unworkable exploration framework and a NASA with fictitious utility. Even new policy that just commits to elements that both “push” and “pull” to enable new markets for human access to Earth orbit would be very valuable – it alone is worth the chance that adequate private funding for the GLXP _might_ not be possible.But it’s lousy to be left with that chance (see my item in Vol. 4, No. 16, “Lunar Water and the Google Lunar X-Prize”). Perhaps a combination of increasing private lunar market potential but with a smaller degree of NASA interest could ameliorate the situation. After all, the much discussed ‘flexible path’ option from the Augustine panel – seemingly getting close White House attention – would involve a lot of robotic exploration elements, admittedly distributed more widely than a lunar focus.
Go subscribe, and read the whole thing.