Category Archives: Business
Climate Risk
How we’ve mischaracterized it.
I’ve noticed that in public-policy areas in which we do a crap job of risk assessment/tradeoffs, it is areas in which there are policy agendas independent of the actual issues.
Civil Rights Laws
…are not “undemocratic.”
A Promising Life-Extension Drug
I hope that this is as good as it sounds.
We’re not making enough new people, so we’re going to have to keep the ones we have around longer.
Sea Cruises
Other than a Windjammer Barefoot Cruise on a schooner in the late 90s (the ship went down in Hurricane Mitch a month afterward), I’ve never been on one, and have never felt a strong desire to do so. This tale doesn’t inspire me.
Lileks
I haven’t linked him in a while, but he has a nice remembrance of PJ, and some tart commentary on the mask Nazis.
Recovering Rare Earths
…from recycling electronics and coal fly ash.
Whenever I see a breakthrough in processing like this, I always wonder how applicable it will be to space resources.
When I was at Rockwell thirty years ago, one of the projects I managed, with Ed McCullough (who died a couple years ago–NSS needs to update the page) and the late Bob Waldron was in adapting processes they’d been working on for beneficiation of lunar regolith to recover high-quality silicon and other things from fly ash. I guess it ended up not going anywhere after I left in 1993.
Good NASA Versus Bad NASA
I’m supposedly quoted in this piece (or at least I gave Jim some suggestions), but unfortunately, it’s behind a paywall.
Privatize the Moon
…to cure Earthly poverty. A long research paper, that I haven’t read yet, but she appears (unsurprisingly) to take a Lockean approach.
Rockets Versus Airplanes
Brian Wang has run the numbers.
Reusable rockets have significant economic advantages at scale against aircraft for long haul. It’s partly because they don’t have to fight drag through the atmosphere for the whole trip.