Category Archives: Business

The Virgin Galactic Mess

It’s not at all clear to me that it’s in their interest to stir this pot of merde with a lawsuit. I have no trouble believing that they’ve been overhyping safety, because it’s always appeared to be the case to anyone who understands rocketry. For example:

Virgin also advertised the “simplicity and safety” of SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid motor, claiming that the nitrous oxide and rubber used in it were “both benign, stable as well as containing none of the toxins found in solid rocket motors.”

This is a straw man, since few, if any, have ever proposed solids for passenger vehicles (other than NASA).

Basically, Branson made some disastrous business and technical decisions a decade ago, and it’s coming back to haunt him on an ongoing basis.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Related: An update on Spaceport America, who (along with the poor taxpayers of the two counties) was also sold a bill of goods by Branson.

“Expert Climate Economists”

Are apparently morons:

When asked at what date climate change will have a net negative impact on the global economy, the median survey response was 2025. In the recent past, climate change likely had a net positive impact on the global economy, due primarily to the effect of carbon fertilization on crops and other plant life. However, even contrarian economists agree, when accounting for the vulnerability of poorer countries to climate impacts, global warming has been hurting the global economy since about 1980.

The NYU survey asked when the economic benefits we experienced up to 1980 would be completely wiped out; 41% of respondents said that’s already happened. Another 25% answered that it would happen within a decade, and 26% said we’d see net negative economic impacts by 2050. If we continue with business-as-usual pollution and warming, on average the experts predicted a GDP loss of about 10% by the end of the century, and that there would be a 20% chance of a “catastrophic” loss of one-quarter of global GDP.

There is no scientific evidence to believe any of this.