Category Archives: Business

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Space Science

Space Political Action Alerts

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As a result of the disastrous initial markup of the House appropriation for NASA last week, the Space Access Society, the Space Frontier Foundation, and Tea Party in Space have all put out alerts for everyone to call your Congressman (extra points if your congressman is one of the chairs of the appropriations committee or subcommittee, Hal Rogers or Frank Wolf).

Briefly, to summarize, the top line of the NASA budget has been cut back to pre-2008 levels (no shock, except to those living in denial), but the real problem is where the cuts are, and aren’t. The Webb Telescope was canceled, which was probably necessary given how out of control it was, but Commercial Crew and space technologies were severely chopped back as well, putting off further the day that we will no longer be reliant on the Russians for ISS, and that we can start moving humans beyond LEO. Instead, the Senate Launch System and Orion-by-another-name earmarks were actually increased, though there is still insufficient funds to build them in any timely manner, and no missions described or funded for them. Go follow one or more of the links, where there are useful instructions as to who to call and what to say. And as always in these matters, be firm, but polite. You have until tomorrow to make a difference.

[Update a few minutes later]

One other disastrous cut, though it’s small, is the CRuSR program. It’s only fifteen million, but it could really help jump start the suborbital industry. Given the trivial amount, it can’t really be about the money. I would guess that it’s pressure from the traditional sounding rocket people, who stand to be put out of business by low-cost reusables.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

It’s Not The End Of American Leadership In Space

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So sayeth Dana Rohrabacher.

[Update mid afternoon]

Jay Barbree has finally noticed that there’s more to the commercial space industry than SpaceX, but he’s still drinking the ATK koolaid:

he key here would be the launch vehicle for Boeing’s CST 100.

Standing by is arguably the world’s most reliable rocket: a U.S.-European vehicle which is an upgraded version of the space shuttle’s solid booster rocket that has flown perfectly 216 times, and France’s Ariane-5 rocket as a second stage that has flown 41 times successfully.

The rocket, called Liberty, is being offered by ATK Space Launch Systems. It’s capable of carrying all crew vehicles in development today.

“Both stages of Liberty were designed for human rating from the beginning,” said ATK Vice President Charlie Precourt, a veteran astronaut and former director of NASA’s flight crew operations. The other rockets haven’t yet gone through the time-consuming process to be certified as safe for flying humans.

Without getting too deep into the details of this nonsense (any discussion containing the phrase “human rating” are almost predestined to be nonsense), he writes this as though Liberty exists in any form other than marketing viewgraphs. Here’s a question I have. Can an Ariane-V even handle the vibration environment on the top of an SRB without major beefing up of the structure?

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

The Problem With Big Cities

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It isn’t about race:

Think of the path to successful middle class living as a ladder; the lower rungs on that ladder are not nice places to be, but if those rungs don’t exist, nobody can climb. When politicians talk about creating jobs, they always talk about creating “good” jobs. That is all very well, but unless there are bad jobs and lots of them, people in the inner cities will have a hard time getting on the ladder at all, much less climbing into the middle class.

Many sensitive and idealistic people in our society work very hard to keep from connecting these dots and admitting to themselves that bad jobs are something we need. Quacks abound promising us alternatives (“green jobs” is the latest fashionable delusion), but ugly problems rarely have pretty solutions. We need entry level jobs that will get people into the workforce, and we need ways that they can learn useful skills at affordable prices that will help them climb the ladder and move on.

To get these jobs, we have to change the way our cities work. Essentially, we have created urban environments in which the kind of enterprises that often hire the poor — low margin, poorly capitalized, noisy, smelly, dirty, informally managed without a long paper trail — can’t exist. The kind of metal bashing repair shops that fill the cities of the developing world are almost impossible to operate here. Plumbers, carpenters, electricians, pushcart vendors and day care operators need licenses; construction work has to comply with elaborate guidelines and city bureaucracies disgorge the required permits slowly and reluctantly.

The minimum wage is part and parcel of this problem.