I’m glad to see Karina pushing the idea that private industry is more risk tolerant than government.
But content aside, this story seems to have a strange structure. I don’t think there’s a single graf in it with more than one sentence.
Category Archives: Business
The Old Space Age Began
Today is the 60th anniversary of Sputnik. I have some thoughts over at The Weekly Standard. I’ll have more later today at PJMedia.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Henry Spencer reminds me that upon the successful launch, Korolev supposedly said “The road to the stars is now open.” A little premature, I think…
[Update a while later]
For a detailed history of the program, go read Asif Siddiqi over at The Space Review (it’s part one, the second part will appear next Monday).
[Update a couple minutes later, after going through the Siddiqi piece]
This is excellent. It is likely now the best available history of its development.
[Update a few minutes later]
Anatoly Zak reminds us that Sputnik wasn’t about the satellite; it was about the rocket.
[Update a while later]
More from Siddiqi on recent translations. Kind of amazing how much we still don’t know about space history six decades later.
[Update a while later]
How dreams of space-faring zombies resulted in Sputnik. Well, sort of.
[Update late morning]
Here‘s Chris Gebhart’s take.
[Afternoon update]
My (other) take is now up over at PJMedia. As usual, most comments are ignorant and/or idiotic.
[Update a week later]
Part 2 of Siddiqi’s new history is up now.
[Bumped]
The Continuing Waste Of SLS
Eric Berger has the latest.
How Much Will BFR Cost?
Sam Dinkin runs the numbers. Looks about right to me. People really don’t appreciate how little of the cost of a launch is propellant, and once we fix that, how much we can reduce it.
The Risk Of Spaceflight
A few months ago I did a phone interview with Sarah Scoles. She finally wrote the piece based in part on it, over at The Atlantic. (Note, Apollo 1 astros died of asphyxiation, not from the fire itself, Columbia happened 17 years after Challenger, not 36, and it was the co-pilot who died on the VG test flight. I’ll blame her editor, since she clearly gets the last two right later in the piece. I assume they’ll fix it at least on line.)
Space Regulation
Glenn Reynolds has put together a short video.
A couple points: The FAA has only been regulating space since the mid-90s; prior to that it was done by a separate office that reported directly to the Secretary of Transportation. I recommended in my book that the office be taken out of the FAA and restored to its original place in DoT. Others (including NASA administrator nominee Jim Bridenstine, who told me in February that he read the book) have recommended this as well, as has the commercial industry, but they’re (unsurprisingly) getting pushback from the FAA. Over a year ago, I had an op-ed in The New Atlantis in which I said that the FAA should keep its head on the clouds, and hands off space.
If Elon really does build BFR, and wants to use it for point to point, it’s going to raise some very interesting regulatory issues. Under the current law, because it’s suborbital, it will be regulated by the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, not the aviation portion of the FAA. There will be no certification of the vehicles; they will operate under a standard launch license, and the spaceflight participants (aka “passengers”) will fly in an informed-consent regime, without the same expections of safety they’d have with an airliner. We’ll see how long some in Congress will find that acceptable.
The New Accord
Wow, looks like they might be worth buying again. I’d like that 2-liter turbo with a six-speed stick.
The National Space Council
They had their first “meeting” today (scare quotes because it was basically a scripted dog and pony show). Bob Zimmerman has some thoughts. Mine: The tension between the old cost-plus dinosaurs and commercial space within the administration was on full display, but everyone recognizes that we’ve shifted back to the moon. “Civil” space remains focused on pork, “commercial” space is focused appropriately on cost reduction. Nothing new on the milspace side to anyone who’s been following it, but I’m sure it was news to several of the council members.
[Update a while later]
Here’s Pence’s statement, but it’s behind a paywall at the WSJ.
[Late-afternoon update]
Here’s Ken Chang’s report. Check out the kicker.
[Update Friday morning]
Eric Berger: The history of presidential pland to “go back to the moon.” Yes, you should be skeptical. SpaceX or Blue Origin will beat NASA back to the moon. And that’s not a bad thing.
Lies, Damned Lies, And “Tax Cuts”
This isn’t a new piece, but nothing has changed, and it seems appropriate to relink in light of the current discussion in DC.
The Bells Of Barcelona
Catalonia, to be sure, has trampled on the Spanish Constitution. But constitutions depend on the consent of the governed, and Catalonia refuses to be governed by Madrid. Rajoy now faces a political crisis without a clear solution. His minority government depends on the support of a Basque regional party, and the Basques are sympathetic to the Catalans. The governor of the Basque Autonomous Region proposed yesterday that Madrid adopt a British or Canadian solution, allowing the Catalans to vote on secession as did the Scots in 2014. The difference, of course, is that the Scots depend on British subsidies and voted to stay, while the Catalans subsidize the rest of Spain and would vote to leave. The Basques well might follow.
This is an existential crisis for the Spanish state, for reasons I laid out on Sept. 30. Spain is at the cusp of a steep rise in the proportion of elderly dependents (from 25% of the economically-active population to an insupportable 50% by 2050). The question comes down to who will be eaten first in the lifeboat: with the lowest fertility rate of any large European country, Spain cannot support its elderly, and the Catalans want to maintain themselves first.
There is a great deal of speculation about the possible knock-on effects in the rest of Europe. Catalonia is a singularity. The notionally separatist Lombard League has no stomach for a real fight, and no ambitions to create an independent country, as the League-affiliated Mayor of Bergamo explained in an interview yesterday. The Lombards merely want to keep a higher proportion of their tax revenue. The Italian regionalists are playing comedy, while the Catalans are enacting a tragedy: They perceive this moment as one of existential import for their future existence, and will not back down.
The first response of the rest of Europe, to be sure, will be to ask the Catalans as well as the Rajoy government to put the genie back into the bottle. We are well past that point. After demonstrating that mass civil disobedience could defeat the heavy-handed efforts of the national government to suppress them, the Catalans will not turn back. Nor should they. Europe’s infertility leaves the more productive regions of Europe with the choice of impugning their own future by picking up the retirement bill for the continent’s dead beats, or going their own way.
Something that cannot continue will eventually stop.