This idiotic sort of thing is what my current project, to make the international legal environment more friendly to space development and settlement, partially about.
Category Archives: Business
Acculturating
It’s hard. Very hard.
If you don’t read Sarah Hoyt every day, you should.
Building Light And Huge
Brian Wang (who I met at Foresight Vision Weekend in December) has a good roundup of the coming revolution in space assembly.
California’s Climate Litigation
It’s going to be a loser, on multiple levels:
San Mateo County claimed in its complaint to be “particularly vulnerable to sea level rise” with a 93 percent the county will experience a “devastating” flood before 2050. Imperial Beach and Marin County also claimed in their separate complaints to be vulnerable to devastating floods because of climate change.
“If sea levels were to raise that high, it most certainly would be catastrophic,” Epstein said.
However, bond offerings in the last few years by those counties and cities weren’t so forthcoming about those predictions, Exxon said in a verified petition filed last month with the District Court in Tarrant County, Texas.
San Mateo’s 2014 and 2016 bond offerings told would-be investors that the county “is unable to predict whether sea-level rise or other impacts of climate change or flooding from a major storm will occur,” Exxon’s petition said.
Imperial Beach and Marin County never disclosed the same information to perspective bond investors that was detailed in their complaints against the energy companies, Exxon’s petition said.
Making those claims in their lawsuits against energy companies – but not in their bond offerings – smacks of hypocrisy, Exxon is arguing.
As he says, cross-examination will be brutal.
SLS Follies
Eric Berg has the latest on the Leaning Tower of not Pisa, but Launch.
Can't someone just take this program back behind the barn and put it out of its and our misery with an axe? https://t.co/KbwbZqXSGc
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) February 20, 2018
[Late-morning update]
Good point in comments. This London skyscraper only cost half a billion dollars, in the heart of one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Prestigious Science Journals
…struggle to achieve even average reliability.
Mind blowing . . . makes blogs look relatively reliable, since comments and wider discussion quickly point out any flaws https://t.co/5yEL637k3v
— Judith Curry (@curryja) February 20, 2018
Falcon Heavy And Asteroid Mining
Martin Elvis says it’s a game changer. BFR would be even more so. But this (from the story’s author) is a little silly:
Also, I feel like launching all of those rockets and processing the metals can’t be good for the environment.
The metals would be processed in space. The whole point of this is to start to move industry off the planet, which would be great for the environment. He should try thinking, and doing some actually analysis, rather than going on feels.
[Tuesday-morning update]
This seems related, sort of: Planetary Resources has a funding shortfall.
Seems like those billionaires who supposedly founded it don’t actually have that much faith in the venture.
The Falcon Heavy
It is an absurdly low-cost rocket.
As Gwynne often says, “I don’t know how to make a rocket cost $400M.”
[Friday noon update]
Thoughts from Bob Zubrin on what this means for the moon and Mars.
Forget Boston Dynamics
Climate And Libel
Some thoughts on Michael Mann, the lawsuits, and the sad state of climate science, from Judith Curry.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Terrible: By awarding Mann as super-communicator, the AAAS is telling us that engaging in hyper-partisan gutter politics, targeted against Republicans and colleagues you disagree with, using unethical tactics is great.https://t.co/zA2HJF0tB3
— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) February 15, 2018