Category Archives: Business

Business, Space

So How’s The Engine Coming?

37 Comments

…Sir Richard?

…why the relatively silence from a media savvy Virgin Group that understands the PR value of showing a rocket engine firing?

Nobody knows for sure. However, people familiar with such things thought the engine firings in the initial video looked rough. (At least from what they could see of it through the enormous cloud of dirt and dust the engine threw up.) Soon after the video was released, stories circulated that engineers at Sierra Nevada Corporation were having a hard time scaling up the hybrid engine system from the small, X-1 sized SpaceShipOne prototype to its business jet sized successor. Oscillations sufficiently severe that nobody would want to ride the vehicle.

The stories have persisted and, if anything, have grown stronger. The latest one circulating in Mojave is that the test in March didn’t go well, and that the propulsion team has decided to abandon the hybrid rocket for a liquid system. There is also a confirmed report that Virgin Galactic has formed its own propulsion team and hired the former director of SpaceX’s Texas engine testing facility — and an expert in liquid propulsion — as a member of it.

On Saturday, I asked Whitesides whether they were considering dumping the hybrid system entirely. He reaffirmed that the company are focused on hybrids for now; liquid propulsion is something that would be consider down the road.

I’ve always thought that the hybrid was a mistake. The late Jim Benson sold Burt on it for SpaceShipOne, though, and the success of the X-Prize apparently gave him the confidence to stick with it for SpaceShipTwo, despite its operational disadvantages. After the explosion in Mojave, I suggested to Alex Tai that it was a good opportunity to change course, but he said that it would cost too much in vehicle redesign, due to the different mass distribution. I’ll bet that they’re now really regretting that decision, if they have to do so anyway, because it has cost them years in schedule. Also, I wonder (assuming the rumors are true) why they’re developing their own, instead of just buying from XCOR? That was the mistake they made with the hybrid.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

In Which My Respect For Pawlenty Increases

22 Comments

He’s willing to tell Iowans that we must end not only ethanol subsidies, but farming subsidies in general.

[Update a few minutes later]

That’s not all:

“Later this week, I’m going to New York City, to tell Wall Street that if I’m elected, the era of bailouts, handouts, and carve outs will be over,” Pawlenty said. “No more subsidies, no more special treatment. No more Fannie and Freddie, no more TARP, and no more ‘too big to fail.’”

He’s also planning to go to Florida tomorrow and tell affluent seniors that “we will means test Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment.”

“Conventional wisdom says you can’t talk about ethanol in Iowa or Social Security in Florida or financial reform on Wall Street,” Pawlenty said. “But someone has to say it. Someone has to finally stand up and level with the American people. Someone has to lead.”

I just hope this goes over better than Fritz Mondale’s promise to raise our taxes in 1984. I think, though, that if he can survive Iowa with the ethanol stand, these positions will stand him up well with the Tea Party.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Waiver Corruption

7 Comments

I completely agree:

The priorities of the Obama administration and its Democratic allies are on display with every waiver granted. The list of beneficiaries in Mrs. Pelosi’s district, for example, belongs in an episode of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” Mrs. Pelosi, champion of the unions and no stranger to hypocrisy, has amassed a fortune as part owner of Napa Valley Auberge du Soleil resort – a luxurious nonunion shop. Now her luxury boutique colleagues also can benefit from her “do as I say” politics. The “four-diamond luxury” hotel Campton Place; Tru Spa, Allure magazine’s “best day spa in San Fransisco”; Boboquivari’s and its $59 porterhouse steaks; and Cafe des Amis, “a timeless Parisian style brasserie,” are among her beneficiaries.

The depth of corruption and mendacity of these people is unfathomable.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

It’s A Mystery

41 Comments

Frank Morring has a story over at Aviation Week on Chris Chyba’s testimony to Congress, in which he pointed out the same cost analysis that I did the other day:

Chyba repeated his 2009 warning that NASA has not been able to develop one vehicle and fly another at the same time, given historic budget constraints. But he said NASA may be able to learn from SpaceX as it develops the heavy-lift launch vehicle Congress has ordered it to build for missions beyond LEO.

“The other thing that I think one would want to understand in some detail would be why would it be between four and 10 times more expensive for NASA to do this, especially at a time when one of the issues facing NASA now is how to develop the heavy-lift launch vehicle within the budget profile that the committee has given it,” Chyba said.

I suspect the question was somewhat rhetorical — he probably knows the answer. As far as Congress is concerned, high costs are a feature, not a bug, as long as they don’t get so high that the program dies. Because high costs means lots of jobs for their constituents that they can point to at election time. A more efficient commercial industry would probably create even more jobs, but they would be a lot less visible. And note that whether or not anything is actually accomplished is secondary, if it’s a concern at all. Did anyone in Congress ever complain that Constellation was behind schedule? Maybe, but I don’t recall it. There were no complaints about the program from the rocket scientists on the Hill until it got canceled.

Business, Technology and Society

Only 99.7%?

6 Comments

Great. There’s apparently a major security flaw in Android phones:

“The reality is, you’re carrying around a desktop computer in your pocket — but there’s no security like there is on computers,” explained Dave Aitel, president of security firm Immunity Inc. and a former computer scientist for the National Security Agency.

And no smartphone comes with antivirus software, experts noted.

Android-based smartphones use security tokens to grant access to only certain bits of information on the phone, Aitel explained, such as the Calendar or Google Reader. The token for Gmail is encrypted; all other tokens are unencrypted, he said — and they’re incredibly easy to steal.

“The tokens are essentially keys that only unlock part of the house,” Aitel told FoxNews.com. And because they’re passed to Google servers unencrypted, a cybersnoop could easily swipe one while a consumer is surfing the web in Starbucks.

My biggest concern about my Droid is the fact that it backs up to the cloud, and doesn’t offer a way to store data locally, as I did with my Palm device and Palm desktop. Google’s going to have to make a major effort to straighten this out, with Verizon and others.

[Update a few minutes later]

Apparently, they’ve already fixed this particular problem on the server side, but I suspect this will be an ongoing issue.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

From Climate Alarmist

63 Comments

…to skeptic:

At this point, official “climate science” stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.

Follow the real money.