Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Space

My Sidebar For Popular Mechanics

19 Comments

…didn’t run, so I’ll run it here.

In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Andy Pasztor reported that SpaceX’s CEO, Elon Musk, has claimed that it will cost a billion dollars to develop the launch escape system for the Dragon capsule needed to allow it to carry crew. This would be twice the amount that it has cost to develop both the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets, and the Dragon itself, from scratch, and seemed quite improbable to many who have read it.

Mr. Musk notes in an email:

“I definitely didn’t tell Pasztor that our LES would cost $1B. He is off by a factor of ten! All I told him is that there is no way it would cost us more than $1B to demonstrate crew transport. That includes development, testing and certification to the most stringent NASA standards of everything needed for a seven-crew vehicle. I’ve also said that our price per person would be $20M, assuming the seven-person configuration and minimum of four flights per year. This compares to $30B for Ares I/Orion and a per person cost of ~$250M.”

In a follow up, he noted that the billion (if it goes that high) will include two abort flight tests (one on the pad, one high altitude) and a demonstration flight to and from ISS. Sounds like a bargain to me.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Commercial, One For One

17 Comments

Government, Oh For Two:

A half-Russian, half-Korean rocket likely exploded a few minutes after liftoff Thursday, dealing a second blow the South Korea’s $400 million program to develop its own satellite launcher.

They spent almost as much on this as SpaceX has in their entire company history, to develop two rockets and a capsule, not to mention manufacturing and test facilities, and launch infrastructure.

There’s an idiot commenter (well, there are a lot, actually) over at Space Politics who keeps repeating the mantra, “There is no cheap.” Well, maybe not, but there does seem to be inexpensive and affordable, as long as a government isn’t intimately involved.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Stop The Power Grab

11 Comments

…at the EPA. Especially if you live in Virginia.

[Update a few minutes later]

Yes, that’s exactly what it’s like:

Senator Boxer lost any credibility she might have had left when she said that the Murkowski Resolution would be like Congress “saying the Earth is flat.”

I’ve got two idiots for senators in California, but only one of them is blithering.

[mid-afternoon update]

The amendment failed:

I don’t want to hear a liberal bemoan executive supremacy ever again. This is Congress abdicating its own authority because the Democrats know they can’t get the votes to pass cap-and-trade.

Yup.

Business, Political Commentary, War Commentary

A Simple Question

84 Comments

I don’t have time to expand on this right now, but I assume the point is obvious to intelligent readers (as opposed to Obama koolaid drinkers).

Why is it that the president would talk to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions, but he thinks that, in the middle of arguably the biggest domestic crisis of his presidency, it’s a waste of his time to have a conversation with the head of British Petroleum?