Business, Space

Gwynne Shotwell At ISPCS

14 Comments

Aim of her talk is to embolden those who want to enter the space industry, and encourage those doing it. Lows and highs in the industry, but right now lots of highs.

Company formed in March, 2002, she was seventh employee to bring in business, ended year with fourteen. 2006 Falcon 1 first flight, lot of people never involved in industry before. Couldn’t fly from Vandenberg because of safety concerns, had to go out of Kwajalein. Learned a lot on first failure — SpaceX became a very different company that day. 2006 also year they won COTS agreement, historical public-private partnership. Created Falcon 9 and Dragon, and made US competitive in space launch again.

Moved into new cavernous facility in Hawthorne in 2008 (now running out of space). Also year of first successful Falcon 1 flight. Also won Cargo Resupply Contract. 618 employees at end of that year.

2010, successfully flew Falcon 9 twice, and successfully recovered Dragon capsule. Signed largest commercial contract ever with Iridium (half a billion dollars), ended year with 1200 employees.

Didn’t fly in 2011, because getting Dragon ready to fly. Flew successfully to ISS in 2012, developed new version of Falcon 9, 2000 employees.

Showing Falcon 9R launch video.

What’s next?

Into regular operations. First flight for SES out of the Cape in less than a month, with another commercial launch, and four flights to ISS. Developing suits, seats, life support and escape systems for Dragon to carry people. First flight in about three years, don’t know if it will be NASA or SpaceX astronauts, first flight just to orbit and return.

Falcon Heavy still in work, expecting $1100/lb. 53 metric tons. Grasshopper more in the media than Elon this days, a rock star. Showing latest Grasshopper video. “This is not fake.” 25 people working Grasshopper program, about 3000 who want to. Moving to Spaceport America for Falcon-9R test vehicle. Showing photo of first stage three meters above the ocean fully intact (didn’t survive impact). “Really close to full and rapid reuse of stages.” First time photo has been shown. Not high resolution, but clearly a full vertical stage. First flight in New Mexico hopefully in December.

We want to go to Mars, think it’s the right place to go. Describing similarity of Mars to earth in terms of geographical features — grand canyons, volcanoes, rocks. Showing Mars landscape, with similarity to American southwest.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

A Third Party

11 Comments

A majority of American want one.

It’s nice to see a majority of Americans finally catching up with me — I’ve been unhappy with both parties all my adult life, and been unhappy with the direction of the country for as long. The problem is that there’s no agreement on what that third party would look like, or what its principles would be. I want it limited government/libertarian, but I’ll bet a lot of the Democrats are looking for something more socialist and bigger government.

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

The ObamaCare Train Wreck

8 Comments

Thoughts from Richard Epstein.

Even its supporters are having trouble excusing it. Read this from Ezra Klein.

Hey, it’s not like this wasn’t perfectly predictable, and predicted.

[Update a while later]

Was the site crash caused by rate shock?

[Update a few minutes later]

Wow, even the New York Times is becoming racist:

“These are not glitches,” said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange. Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate the federal officials with whom he works. “The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, ‘It’s awful, just awful.’ ”

Interviews with two dozen contractors, current and former government officials, insurance executives and consumer advocates, as well as an examination of confidential administration documents, point to a series of missteps — financial, technical and managerial — that led to the troubles.

It’s almost like these people think politics is more important than actually competently running the government.

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