Ares I versus Falcon 9. The vast majority of the Ares hugging and SpaceX bashing comes off as lunacy. Much of it is driven, of course, by pecuniary interests. But not all of it.
Category Archives: Business
More Space Misreporting
There’s a story over at the Grauniad today about the dotcom space millionaires, featuring Elon Musk and SpaceX. As usual, the reporter doesn’t understand what Constellation is/was:
His confidence has been boosted following last month’s decision by President Barack Obama to drop funding for the Constellation programme – the Nasa spacecraft intended to replace the space shuttle, which is to be grounded later this year.
Once again, Constellation is not now, and never was, a “replacement” for the Space Shuttle. If anything, it’s a replacement for Apollo. It’s an architecture of vehicles designed to get humans back to the moon, including launchers, capsule, earth-departure stages, and lunar lander and ascent vehicle. And the only parts that are really being cancelled are the Ares I launcher and the Orion crew module, because none of the rest of it was scheduled to start development for years.
Beyond that, the reporter doesn’t seem to understand the difference between suborbital and orbital, saying that Falcon I went to suborbit. Well, the first one did, but the other four went to orbit, albeit only the last two with full success. And all five were intended to.
Obama’s Middle-Class Squeeze
I’m shocked, shocked:
The hardest hit won’t be those earning more than $250,000 a year–the group that he says needs to “pay their fair share.” Rather, it’s families whose combined annual income is around $100,000 who could be crushed under this plan.
Many of these middle-class families will probably opt to pay the federal fine, and go without health insurance until they get sick.These folks will be too “rich” to qualify for ObamaCare’s subsidies, but probably too poor to easily afford the pricey insurance that the president’s plan forces them to buy.
Many of these $100K families will be obliged to buy a policy costing an average of $14,700 for the mid-level, “silver” health plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates. After income taxes, they’ll be spending almost a quarter of their net income for health insurance.
I think that if you pass a law that requires you to purchase something, and it’s enforced by the IRS, it’s not unfair to call it a tax. And it’s another demonstration that every one of Obama’s statements (this one about no raising taxes on people making less than a quarter million) has an expiration date.
[Late afternoon update]
A commenter asks what he can do to fight this in the final hours. This looks like a good place to start. Whatever your political affiliation, if you want to stop this, it’s all up to the Republicans at this point, and you’re going to have to help them this weekend, if not in the future. Don’t look for any help from the Democrats.
The Clock Is Ticking
The reconciliation bill is up, and Keith Hennessey is your best tour guide.
The Hippocratic Oath
…versus ObamaCare. Thoughts from (Doctor) Paul Hsieh. One of many reasons that so many doctors say they will go Galt if it passes. And what will that do to prices, and costs?
[Update a few minutes later]
GOP doctor to Pelosi: “Arrogant, Ignorant, Incompetent.”
So what else is new?
The Health-Care Talking Points
…versus reality. A lot of those talking points are familiar, because the supporters attempt to deploy them here, in comments.
Congratulations
SpaceX has had a successful static test, after the abort earlier this week. As they note, it’s a key milestone to a first launch attempt in the next few weeks.
Huh?
Why does the Air Force think that their launch costs will go up with the new policy? Look at the caption of the picture:
Less demand could drive up costs for rocket propulsion systems used to launch Air Force satellites.
This makes no sense. How is flying additional missions for NASA creating “less demand”?
There are two factors that will affect the price of EELVs with the new policy. The first is that adding failure on-set detection to the vehicles may increase their production cost, but I can’t imagine it will be by much. Most of the cost will be in development, which could legitimately be charged to NASA. The second is that increased demand will provide a higher flight rate (which the system is quite capable of, in both production and operations), which will allow the amortization of fixed costs over a larger number of flights, reducing the cost (and presumably price) per flight. From that standpoint, the Air Force should welcome this (and always should have, and in fact not approved NASA’s Ares plans). Moreover, a couple years ago the Air Force was considering forcing one of the lines to shut down, to save fixed costs, which goes against the doctrine of assured access to space, because if there was a problem with the remaining vehicle (whether Atlas or Delta), the Air Force would have no ability to launch its satellites. Increasing the demand like this allows both lines to continue affordably. I just don’t understand the concern.
Is there anyone who can explain this?
[Update a couple minutes later]
I see that Clark Lindsey is scratching his head, too. I just don’t know what Gary Payton is thinking.
[Update a few minutes later]
Commenters over at NASA Watch can’t figure it out, either. So it’s not just me.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, I’m starting to infer that the problem is the production base for the solids. Apparently, ATK and others have been sharing fixed costs between NASA and the Air Force, and if NASA is no longer purchasing SRBs, as Shuttle ends and Ares doesn’t begin, the Air Force will have to bear the full burden.
Well, boo frickin’ hoo. So the taxpayer will no longer be subsidizing the Pentagon with NASA’s budget, and the actual cost of maintaining our missiles and boosters for defense will become more transparent. Why am I supposed to be concerned about this?
Five Lies
1. Bold government action staved off a Depression, saving or creating 1.5 million jobs.
“Just remember,” Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said on November 1, 2009, “a year ago today, last year, you had markets around the world come to a stop. Economic activity just stopped, came to a standstill, like flipping a switch.”
Geithner implies that the American business climate improved substantially in the first year of the Obama administration. In fact, nearly every indicator, from employment to freight transport to rents to retail sales to real estate, has headed steadily south. In some cases, such as unemployment, the numbers have been far worse than the Obama economic team’s worst-case projections. In others, such as real estate, the weakness of the market is masked by expensive government support, including but not limited to the unkillable First-Time Homebuyer Credit, an assault on loan underwriting standards (see Lie No. 2) by the Federal Housing Authority and the government-run mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the completely opaque $75 billion Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).
The $787 billion in stimulus spending authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is now best known for its inflated and unsupportable job creation numbers. At press time, Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Christina D. Romer (who, confusingly, made her academic reputation proving that fiscal stimulus did not help the U.S. economy during the Great Depression and World War II) was giving the stimulus credit for 1.5 million American jobs in 2009. All efforts at checking her claims, however, have turned up very different numbers.
There’s a lot more.
Pot-Kettle Alert
A Colorado politician accuses Amazon.com of “tyranny.”
As the old British expression goes, their problem is that they lack a sense of irony.