Category Archives: Business
Jennifer Granholm’s Perfect Bad Example
It’s easy to blame her for Michigan’s woes, but my home state has to own up to the fact that they voted for her:
With this kind of record, most politicos might take refuge in prudence. Not Ms. Granholm. Today she is running around the nation selling a book and a message. The book is called “A Governor’s Story: The Fight for Jobs and America’s Economic Future.” Her message—that Granholm’s Michigan shows the way forward—has been taken seriously in all the places you might expect: the New York Times and Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”
At the top of Ms. Granholm’s claims is that she knows that low taxes and lean government are no prescription for growth because she tried supply-side and found it wanting. To prove her point, her appendix lists 99 business and 17 individual “tax cuts” she approved. She notes likewise that both state spending and the number of state employees dropped during her time.
In fact, almost all Ms. Granholm’s “tax cuts” are tax credits or other forms of tax preferences. A less delicate way of saying this is that far from reducing rates for everyone, Ms. Granholm played favorites. That meant a more complicated tax code where trendy businesses (green jobs, anyone?) that would fail without subsidies are effectively underwritten by non-favored businesses and other taxpayers.
A good plan, as always. Not.
The EU Monetary Union
Is it on the verge of collapse?
Something profound has changed. Germans have begun to sense that the preservation of their own democracy and rule of law is in conflict with demands from Europe. They must choose one or the other.
Yet Europe and the world are so used to German self-abnegation for the EU Project – so used to the teleological destiny of ever-closer Union – that they cannot seem to grasp the fact. It reminds me of 1989 and the establishment failure to understand the Soviet game was up.
Go long on the Deutschemark.
The SpaceX Press Conference
Clark Lindsey has a link roundup.
A Reusable Rocket
The latest from SpaceX.
I wonder what the performance penalty is for carrying the deorbit/landing propellant?
[Update a couple minutes later]
Clark Lindsey is taking notes from the webcast of Elon Musk’s talk at the National Press Club today:
/– Exciting announcement to make but first preface motivation for SpaceX
/– His goals since college were to contribute to development of the Internet, electric vehicles, and expanding humanity into space.
/– Discusses why space is important.
/– Life becoming multiplanetary – next stage of life’s development that started with birth 3.8B years ago
/– Next natural step.
/– Life insurance – something humans could do or a natural disaster could destroy life on earth
/– What is an appropriate expenditure on life insurance – probably a 1/4 per cent of GDP is reasonable
/– One of the greatest adventures humanity could pursue.
/– Got to be more to life than just solving problems.
/– We all went to the Moon with the Apollo crews
/– Need some of those things.
/– Makes you feel good about the world.
More to follow, no doubt.
[Update a few minutes later]
Marcia Smith is covering it. Apparently he’s proposing a business venture for a Mars settlement.
Cool.
[Update a few minutes later]
There’s a thread running over at NASA Space Flight. Not that this has much of anything to do with NASA space flight.
[Update a couple minutes later]
More notes from Clark:
/– Pivotal break-through is a fully reusable, rapid turnaround rocket
/– 2-3% of expendable initial total mass gets to orbit
/– Adding reusability cuts into that 2-3%
/– Very tough engineering problem. Wasn’t sure for awhile that it could be solved. In past year decided that it could be.
/– SpaceX will try to do it. No guarantee of success.
/– Calculations and simulations say it should work.
/– See simulation (video above).
/– Some inaccuracies in animation, including some due to proprietary techniques.
/– Powered vertical landing of both stages.
/– Falcon 9 is the lowest cost rocket in world at ~$50M
/– Fuel is only about $200,000
/– So if could reuse it would lead to 100 times reduction in cost.
/– Fully reusable rapid turnaround is absolutely required for practical spaceflight and making humanity multiplanetary.
/– A little base is not interesting.
/– Definitely going to be an adventure to make this happen.
/– Doesn’t think mining anything on Mars to bring back to earth is viable.
/– If you could make moving to Mars cost around $500k, that would be a viable business model.
/– If only 1 in a million decided to do that, that’s 8000 people. Probably number would be far higher.Q&A:
/– Near term – use for sat launches, ISS resupply, etc. Have $3B in orders. Moderately profitable.
Have to stay profitable to make all this happen. Most orders of any launch provider in the world.
/– Made competition is China, which has told them SpaceX they intend to compete with them.
/– Role of govt?
US space spending still leads the world. Budget crisis is limiting this.
Expect compression of all budgets including space.
/– Launch facilities- plan on developing a new commercial launch site.
/– NASA has been a major benefit to SpaceX.
/– USAF wants to maintain ULA monopoly through 2018. SpaceX has 1% lobbying power of Boeing/Lockheed-Martin
/– Russian launch situation wrt ISS?
SpaceX launch will probably be delayed until crew with proper training is on board.
Probably in January assuming current launch schedule met.
/– Soyuz is a good vehicle with good record.
Lot of experienced people are retiring so wonder about long term problems with Russian rockets.
China is the long term competitor.
Little progress in Russian technology since Soviet times.
Confident that SpaceX can handle Chinese competition.
/– Can SpaceX fast track launch to ISS?
Could launch astronauts on next flight if acceptable safety level was same as Shuttle.
Need launch escape system to exceed that.
Will take 2-3 years to build and test the LES.
Using a system that also allows for powered landings.
/– With NASA funding, are you transparent as NASA projects?
Generally a very open company.
Have to obey ITAR limits.
NASA and FAA get very detailed information. Both have oversight roles.
Emphasis mine.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s more:
/– Can you sustain a tragic failure?
Think it will be OK.
Other modes of transport suffer accidents with loss of life.
There would be no transport if no risk allowed.
/– Enough private market business to sustain SpaceX.
SpaceX is largest customer. But have a big manifest of private orders.
Even a pencil maker probably sells 40% to govt. customers.
/– Getting a job at SpaceX?
NASA spending only about $300M on commercial crew, and that’s spread over 4 firms.
Looking for engineers who have worked on and solved real hardware problems.
Very demanding environment.
/– Climate change debate?
Can’t be 100% sure of human caused global warming.
But essentially running an experiment to see if putting large amounts of CO2 into atmosphere will have an effect.
Oil is a finite resource. Need to plan ahead for other alternatives.
Lean towards sustainable technologies. Lean slightly away from non-sustainable tech.
/– Tech loans and Tesla?
Solyndra has become a political football.
Portfolio investment programs – must assume that some firms in a portfolio will fail.
A number of top notch venture capitalist lost on Solyndra as well.
Tesla doesn’t face same problem that Solyndra did: commodity price collapse due to Chinese competition.
China probably put $40B into its solar industry.
Elon expected solar prices to fall and didn’t think Solyndra was a good bet.
Solar City is doing super well. Growing at 50-100% per year and positive cash flow.
Just show up at board meetings and hear the good news.
/– Innovation in the US?
Least bad at encouraging innovation.
Silicon Valley is great at that.
Still could be better. Avoid excess regulation. Tax system reform
Small companies are like tadpoles that die very easily.
Governments tend to protect big companies which don’t in fact need protection.
You don’t say…
[Update a few minutes later]
Todd Romberger: “Interesting that a private company has more clearly stated goals and strategies for enabling the settlement of space than NASA itself.”
[Update a few minutes later]
Lyrics from the song in the video:
They will not force us,
They will stop degrading us,
They will not control us,
We will be victorious.
“Burn the land and boil the sea
You can’t take the sky from me…”
[Update about quarter to three Eastern]
CSPAN has the video. It’s about an hour.
[Update early afternoon Pacific]
Marcia Smith has the story up now.
Nein, Nein, Nein!
Herman Cain is an attractive candidate, but his economics are pretty iffy.
How NASA Will Do SLS Affordably
The usual buzzphrases:
5) Lean, Integrated Teams with Accelerated Decision Making
4) Right Sized Documentation and Standards
3) Risk-Informed Government Insight/Oversight Model
2) Robust Designs and Margins
1) Evolvable Development Approach
[In reverse order, ‘cuz I pulled them off Ed Ellegood’s Twitter feed]
As I tweeted him back, those tricks never work. Not on a cost-plus program where you have to spread the pork.
So, What Disney Tunes?
…were the Solyndra robots playing? I’m not thinking “Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it’s off to work we go…” Off the the top of my head — when you wish upon a star…
Going After The Space Pork
The Tea Party in Space praises Tom McClintock’s effort to shutdown the congressional SLS porkfest.
Grasshopper
I asked Elon if he could discuss it on the record. His response: “Sorry, but SpaceX is not commenting on Grasshopper at this time, except to say that it is part of a reusability strategy that I’ve had in mind for a long time.”
That fits in with everything else I’ve ever heard (and his adamance that he was going to recover the first stage when I asked him after the first flight). But that doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be a lot more to it, of course,