Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The President’s “Default”

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There’s no reason to default, even without an increase in the debt ceiling:

Failing to cut Social Security checks does not constitute “default.” Neither does withholding checks intended for bureaucrats, veterans, or contractors. In the context of the federal government, “default” means a failure to make good on your debt-service payments. Our interest payments run about $30 billion a month, easily paid out of the roughly $3 trillion (or $250 billion a month) in revenue the federal government is expected to collect this year. You can do rather a lot with $3 trillion a year, but not as much as you can do with $3 trillion a year and a limitless line of credit. There certainly is no reason to default on $360 billion in interest payments when you have $3 trillion in revenue.

What can you do with $3 trillion a year? You can have Social Security ($880 billion), Medicare/Medicaid/HHS ($940 billion), Department of Defense and additional war spending ($672 billion), Veterans’ Affairs ($140 billion), NASA ($18 billion), Homeland Security ($55 billion), Transportation ($99 billion), Commerce ($9 billion), the Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works ($8 billion), Interior ($13 billion), State and international aid ($59 billion), Justice ($36 billion), the Small Business Administration ($1.4 billion), the EPA ($9 billion), the National Science Foundation ($7.5 billion), the Department of Energy ($33 billion), and the FDA ($4.5 billion) — and still have enough money to triple the budget at the National Park Service, because people love Yogi Bear and Booboo. Yeah, you’d have to close down the Department of Education, which does not one useful thing, and downsize the Treasury Department, perhaps even to the radical extent of shutting down its Healthy Food Financing Initiative (my apologies to the first lady), sell off the housing projects and close down HUD, and a few other things. I know, I know: radical austerity.

Rather, you could do all of that on $3 trillion — if you didn’t have $360 billion in payments on interest from past spending weighing down the budget. But since you do, take away the State Department and international relations, Homeland Security, Energy, Justice, NASA, DOT, Interior, Commerce, Civil Works, EPA, NSF, and SBA, say goodbye to the national parks and the guys who maintain our nuclear arsenal — all to finance past spending excesses.

Put another way, $3 trillion a year in revenue gets you federal spending at 2008 levels plus a small surplus. Not savage austerity, not the Hobbesian state of nature, not Somalia. That is what we are talking about in the debt-ceiling debate. Republicans are being criticized because they are demanding some modest spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. But refusing to raise it at all would simply necessitate balancing the budget at pre-Obama levels of spending. Of course, the deficits we have run since then mean that about $100 billion more of that spending will have to go toward debt service in 2013 than in 2008. We are spending on spending.

And as the president used to claim to believe, before he doubled down on the spending, it’s “unpatriotic.”

Business, Philosophy, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Too Little, Too Late

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Wayne Hale continues to recall the events of a decade ago, when Columbia was lost, here, and here. And as I suspected at the time, they took the attitude that Gene Kranz did in the movie:

Jon Harpold was the Director of Mission Operations, my supreme boss as a Flight Director. He had spent his early career in shuttle entry analysis. He knew more about shuttle entry than anybody; the guidance, the navigation, the flight control, the thermal environments and how to control them. After one of the MMTs when possible damage to the orbiter was discussed, he gave me his opinion: “You know, there is nothing we can do about damage to the TPS. If it has been damaged it’s probably better not to know. I think the crew would rather not know. Don’t you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done, until the air ran out?”

I was hard pressed to disagree. That mindset was widespread. Astronauts agreed. So don’t blame an individual; looks for the organizational factors that lead to that kind of a mindset. Don’t let them in your organization.

As I wrote:

…you’re asked to make an assessment, in the absence of any data except a launch video showing some insulation hitting the vehicle, as to whether or not the damage could be catastrophic. Others around you, whom you respect, are saying that it won’t be. You have a bad feeling, but you can’t prove anything with the available data.

What do you do? What’s the benefit, given that there’s no action that can be taken to alleviate the problem, in fighting to get people to recognize that we may have a serious problem?

Moreover, suppose that we do believe that there’s a problem.

Do we tell the crew? What can they do, other than make peace with their God and say goodbye to their families?

Add to that the fact that it would disrupt the mission, perhaps for nothing, and sadly, deliberate ignorance looks appealing.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Affirmative Action

The sad irony:

The biggest change since Grutter, though, has nothing to do with Court membership. It is the mounting empirical evidence that race preferences are doing more harm than good — even for their supposed beneficiaries. If this evidence is correct, we now have fewer African-American physicians, scientists, and engineers than we would have had using race-neutral admissions policies. We have fewer college professors and lawyers, too. Put more bluntly, affirmative action has backfired.

As do many “progressive” policies. And it’s sometimes not clear what the real intentions were.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

More ASAP Thoughts

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I’ve been reading the report, and this (partial) graf jumped out at me:

Before NASA crew or personnel on NASA-sponsored missions will be allowed to fly on commercially provided spacecraft, the systems will need to be certified. NASA is still refining the details of the certification process, but as part of the recently awarded Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) Space Act Agreements (SAAs), the partners were asked to provide NASA with recommendations for what they believe it would take to complete a certification milestone, including an “option” to conduct an orbital flight-test demonstration (demo) — under the SAA (outside of a NASA contract) — with a non-NASA crew. Although there is plenty of precedent for contractor test flights in government aviation developments, such flights are always under the certification authority of the government (either the contracting agency, Federal Aviation Administration [FAA], or both). For this NASA option, the demo flight would be outside of NASA’s acquisition authority, thus raising several safety-relevant questions: (1) Would the SAA partner’s demo flight be conducted outside of NASA’s launch and entry certification authority? (2) To the extent that the required FAA license would not cover crew safety systems and procedures (FAA authority is limited by statute), would any other government agency step in to certify flight crew safety? (3) If not, would NASA be legally obligated to certify for crew safety? (4) If the answers to (1) through (3) leave a gap in government crew safety certification, would Agency stake-holders perceive NASA as irresponsible in its sponsorship/facilitation or tacit acceptance of a high-risk activity? [Emphasis added]

Note the unstated assumptions in the questions. For instance, there is an assumption that it is a federal responsibility to ensure passenger safety in private spaceflight. There is currently no such responsibility, statutorily. Let me answer the questions for the panel, under current law.

1) Yes.
2) No.
3) No.
4) Maybe.

The latter is a political question, but it strikes to the core of what I’m talking about in my book. “Agency stake-holders” is an ill-defined term, and certainly not a formal one. I presume they mean primarily Congress, but perhaps they mean the American people as well. If it is not NASA personnel involved, it truly is none of NASA’s business if SpaceX or Boeing want to risk their own employees. In any case, we need to discuss this, and that discussion should be happening now.

[Update a few minutes later]

Whoa! They’re singing my tune:

Space transportation, like all other modes of transportation, involves risk. In 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, 547 people lost their lives in aviation accidents, most of which involved general aviation aircraft. Accidents related to trains and railroad systems killed 695 people. Recreational boating claimed the lives of 736 participants. On our nation’s highways, we experienced 33,868 fatalities involving cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles. It is not very realistic to assume that space transportation will be able to eliminate accidents completely, no matter how much emphasis we place on safety and mission assurance.

NASA must to do a better job of helping its stakeholders, which include senior political leadership,the news media, and the general public, to understand and manage expectations about the risks and benefits (the value) involved in human spaceflight. As Congress itself pointed out in the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, “spaceflight is inherently risky.” Spaceflight will never, in the foreseeable future, be truly routine, nor will it ever be “safe” when that word is used in the context of our everyday life. Discussions of risk without concomitant discussions of the associated value to be gained are superficial, misleading, and do not permit those involved to arrive at a well reasoned judgment concerning the appropriateness in undertaking this risk. The ASAP recommends that NASA clearly and consistently communicate the hazards involved, their risk of occurrence, and why the value of the goals to be realized warrant taking such risks. This practice will enable the programs to better pursue innovative paths forward to achieve safe, reliable, and cost effective space transportation.

At its heart, the reticence to discuss problems is exacerbated by a failure to proactively explain the risk versus reward—in other words, the net value of the undertaking. It is not surprising that without a clear mission whose importance is understood and is explicitly articulated, stakeholders would be less likely to support an activity which is perceived as having problems without any countervailing benefits that offset the risks. NASA should develop a focused strategic communication plan covering priorities, risks, costs, and benefits. [Emphasis added]

From the conclusion of the book:

NASA must establish a finite value for an astronaut’s life. In practice, the amount cannot be infinite, since the agency has a finite budget and finds it necessary to get things done occasionally. If there is a political obligation to pretend that it is infinite, this means that honest discussion of safety tradeoffs and priorities is forbidden. This actively increases risk, because, as we saw with the Ares I program, it essentially guarantees that money and effort will be allocated haphazardly, rather than being focused on the most serious problems.

It’s almost like they read the book already.

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Starving People For A Green Ideology

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…for a green ideology, and corporate greed:

…many worry that Guatemala’s poor are already suffering from the diversion of food to fuel. “There are pros and cons to biofuel, but not here,” said Misael Gonzáles of C.U.C., a labor union for Guatemala’s farmers. “These people don’t have enough to eat. They need food. They need land. They can’t eat biofuel, and they don’t drive cars.”

This isn’t a market failure. It’s a deliberate distortion of markets through government policy. In some sense, it’s almost as criminally egregious as the behavior of the British during The Hunger in Ireland.