Category Archives: Business

NASA/FAA Press Conference

NASA and FAA administrators are having a joint press conference. Announcing that FAA will license all flights to ISS, that NASA will be responsible for crew safety for flights with NASA crew, NASA will not be involved in non-NASA flights. Irene Klotz asking why two separate sets of requirements. Bolden says that Phil McAlister may elaborate, but he anticipates that there will be human flights not NASA flights, and NASA would have no involvement. Huerta noting that requirements will be same for both NASA and non-NASA flights (not clear if he’s referring to safety or protecting public). Bolden trying to clarify in response to question from Keith Cowing, McAlister says that non-NASA missions will have no NASA involvement, and FAA will regulate only for public safety until 2015. Alan Boyle: is the MOA going to be published so we can see? How will it work for non-crew flights? New role for FAA for cargo resupply? Answer: MOU link is in press release. Nield: MOU oriented toward commercial spaceflight, cargo already licensed by FAA. For non-NASA missions, will it be like Everest, or will FAA have safety standards? Huerta reiterating all of the FAA responsibility, that do not include crew safety. FAA participation in crew selection? Current regulatory authority only over launch and entry at least until 2015. How many companies selected in CC down select (Bolden said earlier announcement in mid-July)? Two and a half, per recent agreement with Congress. Take them through 21-month process, full funders all the way, half funded as best they could. Following that, an RFP under the FAR under which any company can bid.

Fighting LOST

So Don Rumsfeld testified against ratifying the Law of the Sea Treaty. This is a key point:

Rumsfeld called “an idea of enormous consequence” the fact that “anyone who finds a way to make use of such riches by applying their labor or their technology or their risk-taking are required to pay writ royalties of unknown amounts, potentially billions, possibly even tens of billions over an extended period, an ill-defined period of time, to the new International Seabed Authority for distribution to less developed countries.”

Saying that this principle has “no clear limits,” he mused that it could set a precedent for space exploration, too.

He shouldn’t just “muse.” It could be a disastrous precedent, completely undercutting the arguments we make against the Moon Treaty.

Elon And Charlie

I went over to SpaceX this morning to hear them speak, with the first Dragon to go into space (it was a repeat of their show in McGregor, Texas yesterday with the Dragon that flew the recent mission). There are a bunch of pictures at SpaceflightNow. I don’t think I’m in any of them. I was standing in the press area, just below the vantage point of most of the shots.

You might see some bulges on the side of the Dragon to the right rear. I asked Elon if those were the pods and thrusters for the abort/landing motors. He said they were, but that the design was still in flux. I also asked him if there were cosine losses, and he said yes, that they are unavoidable, since you can’t thrust straight down from the side of a cone.

Speaking of Elon, he’s giving the commencement address at Cal Tech tomorrow morning.

The Higher-Education Bubble

Why it will be worse than the housing bubble:

Once again government has created the conditions for wholesale failure, and failure is upon us.

From 1976 to 2010, the prices of all commodities rose 280 percent. The price of homes rose 400 percent. Private education? A whopping 1,000 percent.

In the end, this bubble will be worse than the last. Even when homeowners got hopelessly behind on their mortgages, two options helped. First, they could declare bankruptcy and free themselves of their crippling debt; second, they could sell their houses to pay down most of their loans.

Students don’t have either of these options. It’s illegal to absolve student loan debt through bankruptcy, and you can’t sell back an education.

I hope that it has a disproportionate effect on the academic left. In a sane world, the first thing to go would be diversity programs, with “studies” departments hard on their heels.

The Oatmeal

Don’t mess with it:

…not only is Inman not someone who is likely to back down, he is about infinitely times more creative than whatever drone is running FunnyJunk.com. He has reposted the letter, annotated it and illustrated it, and included an enormous list of links to pages on FunnyJunk.com where his work was even then being displayed without credit. (They have since taken those pages down, because they’re sneaky like that and also probably don’t know about the Wayback Machine.)

He also declared that rather than pay the drone and/or his lawyer $20,000, he would try to raise that much money through donations, “take a photo of the raised money” and “mail you that photo, along with this drawing of your mom seducing a Kodiak bear” before donating the money to charity.

As of today (Tuesday) at 2 pm Pacific time, he had raised $120,414.

These morons never learn.