Category Archives: Business

Business, Education, General Science, Space

Alan Stern Speaks

Building a new community, something out of nothing. It is 1979 and the PC is about to appear in the next year.

When suborbital took off after X-Prize win, was all about tourism. Last year we saw at the first conference that research and education had come to the fore. A lot of surprise last year when over 250 people showed up at first conference, but now providers talking about this as primary market. Life science, earth science, space physics, astronomy and solar physics, lots of new ideas that we couldn’t have imagined a year ago, just heard an idea last night about how to detect extra-solar planets using suborbital flight. Will be able to get more useful microgravity time for many areas than on ISS. Last year over 80 presentations, with double that this year, three hundred pre-registered with a lot of walk-ins this morning. Last year SS2 had just rolled out, but this past year we’ve seen vehicles actually flying. Spaceport America dedicated in October (many here were there), SS2 is doing approach/landing tests, XCOR, Masten and Armadillo manifesting payloads, Blue Origin has announced their cabin payload system, NASTAR offereing regular REM training courses, CRuSR funded, Commercial Spaceflight Federation has new members, and new space policy that encourages commercialization. Flights will be beginning soon with SwRI and others, and next year we may start to see results at this conference.

George Nield of FAA up next.

Business, Economics, Space

Frank DiBello Speaks At The Suborbital Conference

Thanking SwRI and UCF for planning/hosting conference. Industry facing challenges, though most fun one for Florida. Excited about providing platforms for new areas of research. Investors still skeptical, know that space is good place for innovation, but can’t rely on government. Have to seek opportunities for industry-driven research. Celebrated ten years on orbit of permanent habitation of ISS and more research on Shuttle. Decades of good foundational research, but is it enough? We are believers in NASA and space, but we are the choir and have to not just listen to our own song. Not everyone understands potential in same terms we do, including the average citizen who sees lots of money that gets spent on infrastructure that gets cancelled. Need to expand research beyond peer review to involve industry in more concerted way. Florida ready to stand up to opportunity, will support community in very aggressive way. Have invested $30M in life-science center with hundred thousand square feet of space for animal care/integration for flight. Seen a significant increase in suborbital research interest, want to see a lot of coordination between suborbital and orbital research, from a hundred kilometers to Bigelow orbital facilities. Seeking collaboration on these activities and reaching out to industry for corporate dollars to broaden activities. Announcing that they will be releasing a program for matching funds for corporate investment in the next month. Will join with NIH and other sources for ways to find more bang for the buck. Welcome XCOR’s announcement of flight sales to SwRI. Looking forward to more such deals with Masten and others to operate out of Florida. Hope to spawn many new companies in research and applications, bring benefits back to earth and keep America a leader in space.

Business, Space

A Big Suborbital Deal

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XCOR and Southwest Research Institute have a major announcement today:

In a first for the reusable suborbital launch vehicle industry, XCOR Aerospace announced today that the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), a commercial entity, has purchased six suborbital flights to carry SwRI experiments as pathfinder missions for other SwRI suborbital clients. This is the first such contract SwRI has issued, and XCOR is proud to be chosen for this opportunity.

I hope it’s the first of many such deals, for XCOR and other providers.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

You Don’t Say

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Public unions force the taxpayers to fund Democrats:

Everyone has priorities. During the past week Barack Obama has found no time to condemn the attacks that Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has launched on the Libyan people.

But he did find time to be interviewed by a Wisconsin television station and weigh in on the dispute between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the state’s public employee unions. Walker was staging “an assault on unions,” he said, and added that “public employee unions make enormous contributions to our states and our citizens.”

Enormous contributions, yes — to the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign. Unions, most of whose members are public employees, gave Democrats some $400 million in the 2008 election cycle. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the biggest public employee union, gave Democrats $90 million in the 2010 cycle.

Follow the money, Washington reporters like to say. The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public employee unions, who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party.

Which is both why they need to be outlawed, and why the Democrats are fighting so hard, to the point of threatening blood in the streets, to protect them. It’s obviously part of that new civility we’ve been hearing so much about.

[Update a while later]

Time for public-employee unions to go, and end a half-century mistake.

[Early afternoon update]

Even FDR understood — there is no role for government unions.

Business, Economics, Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Balance Of State Trade

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So, Illinois is sitting pretty. It’s chasing out all of those annoying whiny greedy businesses to Wisconsin and Indiana, due to its rapacious tax and spending policies, but that’s not the best part. It’s now importing cowardly and corrupt Democrat politicians from both those states, on the off chance that its home-grown supply runs dry. It’s a win-win!

I disagree, though, that this is the right Monty Python reference. It’s this one.