This is the future of intercity transport, not “stupid” high-speed rail.
Category Archives: Business
ObamaCare
…will be Barack Obama’s Iraq:
The best medicine for the exchanges? It might involve letting the insurance industry offer pared back, cheap coverage at prices that reflect the risk profile of patients. This would bring back the young invincibles, but jack up prices for sicker patients. That problem could be solved by targeting subsidies on these patients on a strict means-tested basis rather than showering them on everyone up to 400 percent of the poverty level. The crucial upside to this approach is that it would allow the insurance marketplace to function again. However, market pricing based on health is against the religion of liberals. Clinton won’t go there. She could twist the screws on opt-outs by raising their penalty to something close to the price of the coverage they are refusing. But that would require Congress to override the statutory limits on these penalties in ObamaCare. And so long as the House remains in Republican hands, that ain’t going to happen.
Not really fair to compare it to Iraq. Iraq was a bi-partisan project. This disaster is all on the Democrats.
Jeff Greason And Dan DeLong
A Suborbital Flight To Space
Everyone’s been paying attention to the “race” between Virgin Galactic and XCOR (a story that got more complicated yesterday), but Blue Origin apparently had the first successful private flight to a hundred kilometers since the X-Prize was won, over eleven years ago. It will be interesting to see when their next one is, to see what kind of turnaround capability they have. It’s now clearly possible that they’ll be offering passenger flights sooner than either of the horizontal approaches.
[Update a few minutes later]
As someone over at Arocket points out, this wasn’t just the first trip to space since 2004, but the first-ever vertical landing of a ship that had been to space (even if SpaceX lands a Falcon 9 first stage, I’m not sure what its apogee is). It was a big milestone.
[Update a couple minutes later]
OK, on rereading, it’s not clear that the booster went all the way to space, just the capsule, so maybe that hasn’t happened yet.
[Update a while later]
Jeff Bezos issues his first tweet ever.
[Late-morning update]
Jeff Foust has the story now, including the Q&A with Bezos.
[Update a few minutes later]
And here’s Chris Bergin’s story.
[Early-afternoon update]
I think it's safe to say that this was the first fully reusable vehicle to go into space under its own power and land vertically on earth.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) November 24, 2015
Also worth noting that many of these space "firsts" were "first non-government entity." This one was a first, period.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) November 24, 2015
And if SpaceX hadn't had their launch failure in June, it's very likely that they'd have beaten Blue Origin for that first.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) November 24, 2015
[Update a while later]
Ashlee Vance has an amusing take on the pissing contest between Musk and Bezos.
BTW, it seems to be confirmed that there was only a 120-meter difference in apogee between booster and capsule, so it definitely made it into space.
[Update a few more minutes later]
For those new to the topic, I wrote an explainer about orbits and suborbits a little over a year ago.
DARPA’s Biotech Lab
This is interesting. I didn’t know it existed. I’m glad at least some of the federal money going toward health research is taking a more high-risk high-payoff approach.
NASA’s “Socialist Approach”
Lori Garver said last week that it’s time for the agency to shed it.
To be fair, it’s not all their fault. There are too few opportunities for graft on the Hill if it were take take a more competitive approach. Too hard to predict which zip codes the money will go to.
XCOR
Jeff Greason and Dan DeLong are out (though Jeff remains on the board). I’d been hearing rumors about this for a few weeks.
My question is: What does this mean for orbital plans? Does XCOR retain the IP for them, or can Jeff pursue independently? Does he have a non-compete?
Cryotherapy
When I first saw this headline, I thought they were talking about cryonics.
As Glenn notes, it’s not obvious that these new regulations would have prevented this (which is often the case).
Treating Brain Cancer
After quitting my job, I decided to study for a Master’s degree in Nutritional Therapy. As I got deeper into my course work,I was shocked to discover that everything I had learned during my undergraduate studies was either false, misleading, or outdated information.
It’s an anecdote, but a pretty powerful one. The ignorance about nutrition in the health-care field is probably killing thousands.
Space Elevators
A new documentary is coming out. Should be interesting, whatever you think about the feasibility.