Category Archives: Business

Business, General, History

Farewell, Central High School

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My old high school in Flint is being closed (as part of downsizing the city in general). It was the oldest existing high in Flint, I think, arch-rival Flint Northern having been closed and moved to a more modern facility while I was attending high school. Here are some pictures of the farewell from its many decades of alumni. I remember playing french horn in the orchestra on that auditorium stage.

And Gordon Young (not an alumnus — he attended the Catholic school) did something that I never did (though I did wander a lot in the steam tunnels) — he climbed the tower, and took some great photos. That blue dome you see in the distance is the planetarium in the arts and cultural center, a large campus of which Central was just a part. It also contains the main branch of the public library, an arts institute and museum where I used to take art lessons as a kid, Mott Community College (where I attended my first two years before transferring to Ann Arbor) and the former home of the University of Michigan – Flint, before it moved downtown back in the eighties. The trees over to the right of the planetarium are on the estate of Charles Stewart Mott, the General Motors philanthropist who made Flint one of the great places to live in the country when I was growing up, before it all started to fall apart, about the time I graduated from Central, in the early seventies recession.

I haven’t lived there since 1977, but I would have liked to attend this farewell.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

A Response To Derbyshire

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He gets a letter from an astronaut in response to his anti-manned-space piece. Of course, it should be noted that it was anti-NASA manned space, not anti-manned space in general.

He remains unrepentant:

I would give everything I have, ten times over, to have been where Greg has been and see what he has seen. I don’t see any reason why U.S. taxpayers should fund my enthusiasm, though.

Neither do I.

He is obviously not opposed to human space flight. I think that he might think differently had the taxpayers’ money done more (and a lot more) to allow him to go. And, to forestall the usual trolls, that doesn’t mean paying for his trip. It just means doing the kinds of things that made aviation successful.

[Wednesday afternoon update]

Mark Whittington imagines that I am “misreading” Derb’s attitude:

He is obviously not opposed to human space flight. I think that he might think differently had the taxpayers’ money done more (and a lot more) to allow him to go.

Actually Derbyshire makes it clear that he is opposed to all government funded pace exploration, such as Apollo.

So sayeth the Derb today (though not in response to Mark’s own misreading — I’m quite confident that he never reads Mark’s scribblings):

…even if I grant your argument, the role of government remains to be decided. Stuck as I am with the rooted conviction that government does everything badly and in a spirit of financial irresponsibility, I’d keep government involvement to a mimimum, with just perhaps a modest subsidy here or there to encourage entrepreneurs. Shuttle missions at half a billion dollars per, though? No thanks. Not unless I’m on board!

I’m a little more principled than Derb — I’d object to billion-dollar shuttle flights (just as I object to billion-and-a half-dollar Ares I flights) as a national policy even if I were on board.

I’m sure that Mark will continue to misread it, though. It’s what he does.

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Do You Hear That Little Sound?

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It’s the sound of me playing the tiniest violin in the universe:

…as much as I hate the idea of the leader of the free world being short on sleep, it’s hard to work up a lot of sympathy for a guy who can’t sleep with his own decisions, and is still trying to figure out ways to drive the deficit even higher … no matter how often he says his universal health plan is going to cut costs. In fact, the news that he can’t sleep and can’t stop is more than a little disturbing.

And you know that the last way that he’ll try to do anything about the deficit is to cut spending. Unless it’s military spending, of course.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

A Reason To Have Voted For McCain

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He says scrap the health-care bill. While his idea of taking away employer deductibility and giving individuals a tax credit wasn’t an ideal solution, it would be a hell of a lot better than what Obama wants to do. A key element of any useful reform is to level the tax playing field between individual and employer-provided plans, and get more people to shop for themselves, instead of making it part of an employment package.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Rich Gov, Poor Gov

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Why Barack Obama can’t fix the economy:

Last night, as I reread Robert Kiyosaki’s 1997 Bestseller Rich Dad Poor Dad, I realized why Barack Obama will be unable to do what is necessary to fix America’s economy. It’s not just that he believes in government intervention in business, although that’s a big part of it. But what makes it even worse is that President Obama is Poor Dad.

Read all.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Space History

End Of An Extravaganza

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John Derbyshire says that government human spaceflight was largely pointless, and likely to end soon.

I don’t actually find much in there with which to disagree (I’ve pointed out the Zheng He analogy myself) — we have gotten horrible value for the money spent over the past forty years, and I do think that the hope is for private space. Though if the Augustine Commission could recognize and articulate the value to the nation and planet of becoming truly space faring, for things like planetary defense, and put forth a realistic plan to do it, I suppose that it’s possible it will survive somehow, but it will have to have sufficient pork content, which will defeat the purpose. But it’s hard to see Constellation continuing to exist in its current form.

I’m actually working on (or at least supposed to be working on) a longish piece for the summer issue of The New Atlantis on this subject.

[Tuesday afternoon update]

I will say that I think that “pointless” is too strong a word — as I said, we have gotten quite a bit of value, but not enough to justify the expenditure. And in many ways, Apollo has actually set us back from progress in space, by establishing a failed government-development model that lives on to this day in the form of Constellation. I hope that the Augustine Commission can finally fix this, but I fear that it won’t.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

More History Lessons For Senator Shelby

4 Comments

Jeff Krukin’s piece has been republished over at the Commercial Space Gateway, with a lot of comments (including one commenter who doesn’t know where the Delta IV is manufactured, or where the Atlas V is planned to be).

[Update a few minutes later]

Actually, in rereading that comment (I notice now it was from the SSF’s Bob Werb, who presumably does know where the EELVs are built), it was probably sarcasm.