Category Archives: Space

Dyson’s New Sphere
of influence

The most interesting addition to the Space Access crowd was Esther Dyson. Far from the outsider she was pilloried as when she set up Flight School last year, she has a healthy vision for how to take space travel, micro sat’s, space burial and the rest of “New Space” and shape it into a growing large industry.

She mentioned on a panel that she would like to see companies sharing their lists of investors. The purpose is to allow those investors to diversify. She is
“talking her own book” here as she has already invested in XCOR, Space Adventures, Zero G Corporation and Space Services, Inc. I hope that her comment that she liked the Rocketplane presentation translates into some money for them too.

Someone knowledgable about the inner workings of the New Space firms (whom I agree with) assures me that it will take a major cultural shift for these firms to share investor lists. But Dyson by telling everyone at Space Access her goal may encourage other investors to advertise their own interest in space investment diversification.

Dyson got into space because of her family. Her father, Freeman Dyson, designed the Orion spacecraft. Her brother is the historian at Blue Origin.

Following her around was a post-modern experience. She had many suiters and always seemed to have three conversations going at once. It took almost as long to talk to her as it did to talk to Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit. To talk to Glenn I had to fly to Atlanta and drive to Knoxville.

Talking to her was also thoroughly post modern. Conversations with Dyson jumped from electricity to food, to luxury goods reporting. She immediately grasped the concept of the Space-Shot.com game noting the single elimination tournament is a “binary tree”. She pressed me about my electricity auction history asking the single most thoughtful question on that topic I have ever been asked, “if you auction the electricity in advance, how do you assure the spot price is the right price?”

Spot prices in New Jersey are determined by a spot market and many of the large customers have to pay the spot price. In those cases, the forward auction merely determines the cost of the capacity. This piece is critical to why New Jersey and Illinois are different from California’s ill-fated experience with CalPX. Dyson got to live through the California electricity crisis. I bid to run the CalPX and lost. I could have averted that crisis.

Hopefully space in ten years will do as well as the Internet is doing now under her thoughtful guidance or electricity under mine.

Dyson’s New Sphere
of influence

The most interesting addition to the Space Access crowd was Esther Dyson. Far from the outsider she was pilloried as when she set up Flight School last year, she has a healthy vision for how to take space travel, micro sat’s, space burial and the rest of “New Space” and shape it into a growing large industry.

She mentioned on a panel that she would like to see companies sharing their lists of investors. The purpose is to allow those investors to diversify. She is
“talking her own book” here as she has already invested in XCOR, Space Adventures, Zero G Corporation and Space Services, Inc. I hope that her comment that she liked the Rocketplane presentation translates into some money for them too.

Someone knowledgable about the inner workings of the New Space firms (whom I agree with) assures me that it will take a major cultural shift for these firms to share investor lists. But Dyson by telling everyone at Space Access her goal may encourage other investors to advertise their own interest in space investment diversification.

Dyson got into space because of her family. Her father, Freeman Dyson, designed the Orion spacecraft. Her brother is the historian at Blue Origin.

Following her around was a post-modern experience. She had many suiters and always seemed to have three conversations going at once. It took almost as long to talk to her as it did to talk to Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit. To talk to Glenn I had to fly to Atlanta and drive to Knoxville.

Talking to her was also thoroughly post modern. Conversations with Dyson jumped from electricity to food, to luxury goods reporting. She immediately grasped the concept of the Space-Shot.com game noting the single elimination tournament is a “binary tree”. She pressed me about my electricity auction history asking the single most thoughtful question on that topic I have ever been asked, “if you auction the electricity in advance, how do you assure the spot price is the right price?”

Spot prices in New Jersey are determined by a spot market and many of the large customers have to pay the spot price. In those cases, the forward auction merely determines the cost of the capacity. This piece is critical to why New Jersey and Illinois are different from California’s ill-fated experience with CalPX. Dyson got to live through the California electricity crisis. I bid to run the CalPX and lost. I could have averted that crisis.

Hopefully space in ten years will do as well as the Internet is doing now under her thoughtful guidance or electricity under mine.

Dyson’s New Sphere
of influence

The most interesting addition to the Space Access crowd was Esther Dyson. Far from the outsider she was pilloried as when she set up Flight School last year, she has a healthy vision for how to take space travel, micro sat’s, space burial and the rest of “New Space” and shape it into a growing large industry.

She mentioned on a panel that she would like to see companies sharing their lists of investors. The purpose is to allow those investors to diversify. She is
“talking her own book” here as she has already invested in XCOR, Space Adventures, Zero G Corporation and Space Services, Inc. I hope that her comment that she liked the Rocketplane presentation translates into some money for them too.

Someone knowledgable about the inner workings of the New Space firms (whom I agree with) assures me that it will take a major cultural shift for these firms to share investor lists. But Dyson by telling everyone at Space Access her goal may encourage other investors to advertise their own interest in space investment diversification.

Dyson got into space because of her family. Her father, Freeman Dyson, designed the Orion spacecraft. Her brother is the historian at Blue Origin.

Following her around was a post-modern experience. She had many suiters and always seemed to have three conversations going at once. It took almost as long to talk to her as it did to talk to Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit. To talk to Glenn I had to fly to Atlanta and drive to Knoxville.

Talking to her was also thoroughly post modern. Conversations with Dyson jumped from electricity to food, to luxury goods reporting. She immediately grasped the concept of the Space-Shot.com game noting the single elimination tournament is a “binary tree”. She pressed me about my electricity auction history asking the single most thoughtful question on that topic I have ever been asked, “if you auction the electricity in advance, how do you assure the spot price is the right price?”

Spot prices in New Jersey are determined by a spot market and many of the large customers have to pay the spot price. In those cases, the forward auction merely determines the cost of the capacity. This piece is critical to why New Jersey and Illinois are different from California’s ill-fated experience with CalPX. Dyson got to live through the California electricity crisis. I bid to run the CalPX and lost. I could have averted that crisis.

Hopefully space in ten years will do as well as the Internet is doing now under her thoughtful guidance or electricity under mine.

Humor Break

Sorry, but I’m busy with work and continuing kitchen drama. But meanwhile, here’s a knee slapper of a space joke:

Q: How did Mary’s little lamb get to Mars?

A: On a rocket sheep.

Get it?

A rocket sheep?

Huh? Huh?

Feel free to pass it on to everyone you know–share the hilarity!

Keeping An Eye Out

This isn’t news any more (it was published in February), but Paul Dietz had a post that I just found out about describing a new asteroid-hunting scheme that seems very promising:

All NEOs down to a few hundred meters in diameter will be found. If any are possibly going to hit Earth soon, we’ll know.

Good. We can’t do this too soon.

Open Letter to George Bush

Dear Mr. President,

I want to bring to your attention a major opportunity to get people thinking about the future in the only area of federal activity you threatened a veto: Space. There are new opportunities for ordinary citizens to fly into space. Major industrialists Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen, Elon Musk, George French, John Carmack and Jeff Greason have all started rocket companies to carry ordinary citizens into space for far less than the $20 million price to fly on the Russian Soyuz. You have the potential for a major win here. These industrialists will beat China and NASA back to the Moon. Anyone can buy an entry into a skill game for $3.50 to win a trip to space at my web site http://www.space-shot.com

Take some credit for the good news.

Regards,

Sam Dinkin
CEO
SpaceShot, Inc.
3101 Lating Stream Lane
Austin, TX 78746
(512) 750-1751 Sound
(512) 347-9149 Image
http://www.space-shot.com
dinkin@space-shot.com

A Classic Of The Genre

…of space economics fallacies, the topic of my panel discussion at Space Access on Friday night:

…did you ever think about what is involved in presenting anything to the general public? When is the last time you purchased, studied, or otherwise became interested in a subject that was not in some way advertised to you? I would say, “never”. The time, and sometimes dollar, investments are heavy, but necessary if there is anything worthwhile to say. Getting information out to people costs a lot, but the return will, hopefully, be worth it. How? In terms of public support for the program, backed up with funding to make it possible. This, in turn, provides jobs for engineers, scientists, and, well, you. They, subsequently, provide jobs and income for car salesmen, lawyers, doctors, service providers, restaurant owners, teachers, website owners, and all who get pieces of the income spent by the space workers.

Yes, it’s all about job creation. Who cares if anything useful is accomplished, or wealth created?

This (flawed) argument would apply to any government program–there’s nothing unique about NASA with regard to it. I beat this one to a pulp a few years ago, but people still fall prey to it.