Next Big Future has quite a few interesting links.
Category Archives: Business
The FDA
Time for SCOTUS to rein it in.
Safety Netting Our Citizens
…to death:
…it’s true that at any point Rob could have taken concrete actions to change his path — and he bears moral responsibility for his failure to act — but it’s also true that our government has relentlessly incentivized every step of his deterioration, all in the name of compassion. Even worse, by providing such generous benefits with no meaningful strings attached, we’ve also essentially immunized him against the kind of assistance that he truly needs — the “tough love” that demands that a man do what he can to help himself through productive work.
The result? Another statistic. Another father who is no longer a role model for his children. Another sadly shortened lifetime’s worth of money (some borrowed from China) paid to sustain a lifestyle not good enough to enjoy and not tough enough to leave.
There’s nothing compassionate about this. And I don’t even believe that the intentions are good.
Comparing Golden Spike To SLS
There’s a doozy of a comment in Friday’s post on the Golden Spike architecture.
I’m busy, but I’ll toss the chum in the water here.
Green Energy
Why people are finally losing hope in it.
Because they’re finally coming to their senses.
More Golden Spike Thoughts
…from Clark Lindsey, with a lot of links.
[Early afternoon update]
Jeff Foust has a story at The Space Review.
The “Tax Cuts For The Rich”
Now that the election is over, they’ve morphed into middle-class “tax cuts.”
These demagogues are despicable.
The Golden Spike Architecture
Here is a technical description. I’m reading through it now, so perhaps comments later.
[Update a while later]
Sorry, link is fixed now.
[Update late morning]
OK, I skimmed it. As one would expect, there’s a trade off between development costs and ops cost with regard to lander reusability. Ultimately, to get to low marginal costs, we have to not throw hardware away. I also wonder how much it would take to make the Centaur reusable over a period of months or years. They’ve got a start on it with the refueling scenario. Eventually, if one is getting propellant from the moon, that would make sense. I would have liked to see a trade between LLO and EML-1 or EML-2, though. It looks to me like they settled on LLO early on.
I’m amused that they have to defend their costs as being “too low.” They look high to me (a hundred million for training?), but I have vastly different expectations about these things.
Michigan Miracle
It’s about to become a right-to-work state. I hope the backlash from the thugs isn’t too bloody, and Lansing doesn’t become Madison.
[Update early afternoon]
I would note though, that the whole state will benefit, not just the lower peninsula. The place is finally starting to undo all the Obama-like damage that Granholm did to it.
That 91% Top Rate
Peter Schiff describes what a fantasy it was. No one paid it.