Category Archives: Business

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

“Balance”

9 Comments

Andy Pasztor always has to toss fecal matter in the punchbowl:

John Marshall, a former member of NASA’s outside safety review board, said SpaceX continues to face major challenges in demonstrating its rocket is ready to carry astronauts. “They are still a long way from having a vehicle” that can be certified as reliable enough for such missions, Mr. Marshall said in a recent interview. “The company is clearly not ready,” he added, to tackle manned launches “by a long shot.”

At least he found someone willing to go on the record with this kind of stuff. What does “a long shot” mean? What does “certified” mean? Do others have a different opinion.

You know what? If it were important to get someone to the station, it’s “safe enough” now. But it’s clearly not.

That’s not to say, of course, that they shouldn’t investigate, and find out what happened, and mitigate it. But there’s no reason to think that they won’t do it, and do so quickly. Garret Reisman said that they would in Las Cruces, and he’s presumably going to ride it himself.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

The Deferred Dreams Of Mars

64 Comments

This article reminds me of a passage from my space safety book (still in draft form, but nearing completion, with illustrations):

Unfortunately, Congress has been pretty much indifferent to missions, or mission success, or “getting the job done,” when it comes to space. Its focus remains on “safety,” and price is no object when it comes to it. In fact, if one really believes that the reason for Ares/Orion was safety, and the program was expected to cost several tens of billions, and it would fly (perhaps) a dozen astronauts per year, rather than fifty million dollars, NASA was implicitly pricing an astronaut life to be something on the order of several billion dollars.

As another example, if it were really important to get someone to Mars, we’d be considering one-way trips, which cost much less, and for which there would be no shortage of volunteers. It wouldn’t have to be a suicide mission – one could take along equipment to grow food, and live off the land, but it would be very high risk, and perhaps as high or higher than the early American settlements, such as Roanoke and Jamestown. But one never hears serious discussion of such issues, at least not in the halls of Congress, which is a good indication that we are not serious about exploring, developing or settling space, and any pretense at seriousness ends once the sole-source contracts have been awarded to the favored contractors of the big rockets.

For these reasons, I personally think it unlikely that the federal government will be sending humans anywhere beyond LEO any time soon, but I do think that there is a reasonable prospect for private actors to do so – Elon Musk has stated multiple times that this is the goal of SpaceX, and why he founded the company. There are a number of other people with similar goals and financial resources, and one or more of them is likely to achieve them, because they have a much different tolerance for risk than bureaucrats and Congresspeople. The real danger of NASA hypersensitivity to safety is not that it will prevent NASA from sending astronauts into space, but that its standards will osmotically bleed over into the regulation of commercial human spaceflight, making it more unaffordable for all.

Just as a tease…

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

Employee Code: USAPOTUS0044

3 Comments

A performance review:

Deliverable 2: Public Safety. Under your management, violent crime is up 18 percent — the first such increase in 20 years. Your “Fast and Furious” project has caused serious damage to the balance sheet: one dead federal officer, more than a hundred dead civilians, a seriously cheesed-off next-door business partner, and zero cartel convictions — the lattermost being, if I understand your business strategy, the whole point of this mess. Your performance reports here have been remarkably obstructive, which is why you should have on our advice terminated Eric Holder.

Deliverable 3: Energy. When interviewing for this position, you said, and I quote, “We could have headed off $4-a-gallon gas.” We’ve seen gas prices above or near $4 for most of your term, and above $5 in some parts of the country under the management of your associates. Energy production on the firm’s lands is down substantially year-over-year.

Deliverable 4: Balance Sheet. During your interview, you proposed cutting the firm’s current operating deficit in half. In fact, the firm has acquired trillions of dollars of new debt under your management, along with new unfunded liabilities that our accountants are still trying to work out. When you were presented recommendations from a committee named by you and your management team, you refused even to consider implementing them. You are on track to add another $1 trillion in debt this year.

…On a personal note, I’d like to say that the first time I ever had to fire anybody, I felt really bad about it. She was a nice young woman in her first real job, courteous, well-liked, always on time, and eager to do a good job. She had, unfortunately, been hired for a position that required more than her talents and experience enabled her to deliver. This is also true of you, with the exception of being courteous, likable, and punctual. If I could, I would fire you twice.

Well, it was a foolish hire.

[Update a while later]

UNINSTALLING OBAMA…..……………. █████████████▒▒▒ 90% complete.

Business, Economics, Education, Political Commentary

Illinois

11 Comments

Thoughts on the president’s home state:

Illinois politicians, including the present President of the United States, have wrecked one of the country’s potentially most prosperous and dynamic states, condemned millions of poor children to substandard education, failed to maintain vital infrastructure, choked business development and growth through unsustainable tax and regulatory policies — and still failed to appease the demands of the public sector unions and fee-seeking Wall Street crony capitalists who make billions off the state’s distress.

But other than that, it’s great. And California’s pretty much in the same boat.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Immigration, Democracy And Multi-Culturalism

1 Comment

Pick any two:

The sociopolitical heritage from Spain and the post colonial experience of Latin America has engendered in the Hispanic-American population an understanding of the role of government significantly different from the principles of limited government and imprescriptible rights embraced by the Founding Fathers. Thus classical liberalism, or libertarianism in the contemporary American coinage, does not come naturally to Hispanics.

In a recent American National Elections Study, in answer to the question: “Which of these two statements comes closer to your opinion, (1) The less government the better, or (2) there are more things the government should be doing;” 47.4 percent of the white non-Hispanic population responded “the less government the better.” In contrast, only 17.9 percent of Hispanics responded similarly.

In a question regarding preferences for free market vs. government solutions, 35.8 percent of white non-Hispanics opined that the free market can handle economic problems whereas 83.3 percent of Hispanics expressed that a strong government involvement is required. The political philosophies of classical liberalism that limit the role of government and place the individual in center stage are not nearly as ingrained in Hispanic heritage as they are in the American sociopolitical discourse. In some measure, this undermines effective pluralistic participation in the civil institutions of free societies.

This is a real problem. And it’s made worse by our terrible school system.