Yesterday, I took a tour of the new (well, new to me — I hadn’t seen it because they moved while I was in Florida) SpaceX facilities in Hawthorne. They are quite impressive, as are all the rocket parts being manufactured there. No cameras were allowed, unfortunately. It’s even more impressive considering how little (relative to other similar projects) money has been spent. I would say that this is the current state of the art in expendable launch systems, with plenty of room for future cost reduction (including at least partial reusability). It makes me curious to visit Decatur now, to compare it to the Delta/Atlas production process.
Category Archives: Business
The Free-Market Frontier
The Orange County Register has come out in favor of the new direction in space.
I’m Just Glad Someone Did
Harry Reid, not Lindsey Graham, killed the climate bill.
A Commercial Space Development Scenario
John Hare lays one out, over at Selenian Boondocks.
Supply Side Isn’t Enough
Message to Republicans: it’s the spending, stupid.
A Green Tea Party
That’s what Pulitzer-Prize-winning authoritarian-government admirer Tom Friedman thinks the Tea Partiers should form. I always love this:
I’ve been trying to understand the Tea Party Movement. Sounds like a lot of angry people who want to get the government out of their lives and cut both taxes and the deficit. Nothing wrong with that — although one does wonder where they were in the Bush years.
They were there all along, and few of them were very happy about the spending, but they weren’t idiotic enough to think that the Democrats would be better. And sometimes quantity has a quality all its own.
Anyway, I think that what Beijing Tom really wants is a watermelon tea party.
You Don’t Say
Most economists say that the “stimulus” didn’t stimulate. I’m shocked, of course.
Losing California Space
Stu Witt and Peter Navarro make a (probably futile) plea to Sacramento. Don’t hold your breath, guys. As you noted, the state’s politicians don’t give a damn.
Permission To Survive
Some thoughts on the health-care debacle, in Massachusetts and the nation:
Insurance companies in Massachusetts are thus required to offer numerous benefits as determined by politicians and lobbyists, but they may only charge what government bureaucrats permit. It would be akin to the government requiring restaurants to sell $50 steak dinners, but only allowing them to charge $25.
When similar price controls and “guaranteed coverage” laws were imposed in South Dakota and Kentucky, many insurers left these states rather than be slowly bled to death. As similar laws are phased in nationally under ObamaCare, the government could drive private insurers out of business altogether, enabling it to herd unwilling Americans into a “public option.”
ObamaCare thus places a noose around insurers’ necks. Insurance companies will be allowed to survive only at the arbitrary pleasure of the government.
…The trend is becoming clear. First, insurers must seek government permission to survive. Then, patients must seek permission to receive some forms of medical care. Will we soon need government permission simply to live?
That’s what seems to generally happen at the end of the road we’re on. A quarter of a billion people were, after all, murdered by their governments in the last century.
Heating The Planet
…with biodiesel.
Maybe politicos should do more research before imposing half-baked energy mandates?
It wouldn’t do any good. They’re mostly too stupid to understand the results of the research, or too much on the take from the benefitting industry to care. But they get to pretend to be saving the planet.
Speaking of biodiesel, will the same be true of biokerosene? Is the “green aviation” initiative another unintended consequence on the way?