And an efficient one. It’s very telling that a private company can take technology that has been languishing in NASA labs for years and actually apply it.
Category Archives: Business
Well, Now We Know Why He Hired Her
Christina Romer says that we need a higher growth rate to reduce unemployment.
In related news, the Pope remains Catholic.
[Update a while later]
Good riddance, Christina Romer:
The ordinary function of government is to destroy talented people, but Romer’s epic failure has an additional element of tragedy. As an economist, Romer did an excellent job [pdf] of establishing that New Deal stimulus failed to end or seriously mitigate the Great Depression. As an Obama team player (and poignantly, a sunny supporter of the then-senator’s campaign), she made a 180-degree turn toward pro-stimulus hocus pocus. Romer will be remembered as the main advocate of the mythical “multiplier” phenomenon, in which every federal dollar spent producers more than 100 pennies worth of economic activity. This is the kind of economics you’d expect to hear from a fine arts major.
I wonder what she’ll say in the future? This reminds me of so many smart people who, after leaving NASA, say things like, “…how could I have made that decision”?
Boeing Is Cutting Metal
I sat in on a Boeing press conference on CST-100 yesterday morning, with several other space reporters, including Andy Pasztor, Ken Chang, Denise Chow, Todd Halvorson, Bill Harwood, and others. I’ll be incorporating some of it into a PM piece that I just wrote, but Pat Brennan at the OC Register has a story this morning.
[Update a while later]
Here’s Todd Halvorson’s story at FL Today.
[Update a while later]
Here are my notes from the presser:
4.5 meter, seven crew, pusher abort system flying in 2015. simplicity for safety/reliability. Space Act Agreement, fixed price, need low development risk, high TRL. Business case challenging. Need development funding/ISS market. Also need other markets. Keith: already started program under CCDev, just did IDR a couple days ago. Complete SDR in October. Pressure-vessel testing at Bigelow’s facilities. Doing drop tests, started a week ago, working on life support. Using rendezvous system from Orbital Express. Not viewgraph engineering.
Berger: Confidence that Boeing has in getting contract? Elbon: Watching that closely. NASA envisions process like COTS. Will have to assess probabilities as they move forward. Want to see commitment downstream so they have better idea of price.
Pat Brennan: Is this a Shuttle replacement? Crew only, can’t replace all capabilities of Shuttle. Will be able to stay for months.
Which authorization bill most favorable? Senate closer to the compromise they’d like to see.
What launch vehicle? Human rate Delta IV, what about hydrogen issue? Looking at Atlas, Delta, Falcon 9. Primary targets EELVs. Systems are human rated, not components. ULA working CCDev for FOSD. Don’t think that any major mods to rockets themselves. Big issues launch pad for crew egress.Denise Chow: How did they settle on the shape? Good data base on Apollo design, don’t need much wind tunnel. Also good shape for land landing.
What have the biggest challenges been? Pusher abort.Future for larger capsules in the future? Have to take it one step at a time. Get started with simple safe system and see how market develops.
Private individuals can fly, or just scientists? Hope to have broad markets — need destinations, not NASA only.Harwood: Will the business model support multiple players? Even with Bigelow, is there enough? Elbon: More launches, lower prices. Working with KSC to find government assets, cost per use rather than having to own them. NASA wants at least two providers. Boeing hopes to get to market first, and see significant flight rate from Bigelow.
What is the order of magnitude of a ticket price? Will be competitive with Soyuz.Halvorson: Test flight schedule? What vehicles? No vehicle selected yet, but ULA baseline. Late 2013, 2014 for abort tests and orbital flight tests. Pad abort test at White Sands, and rest out of the Cape.
Andy Pasztor: How much overall development cost? How much will Boeing spend? Less than numbers for CRV. How much Boeing spends depends on risk level, and what Congress/FAA/NASA do.
David Baker: What consideration being given to expanding market off shore? Ever launch on Ariane? Have to base business case on those things as upside potential, not baseline. Have considered that and will further develop down the road.
Any interest from Air Force? Not that I know of?Chang: Anything beyond ISS/Bigelow? Hoping that other ventures will mature. Market is a chicken/egg thing.
Any chance of going forward without NASA business? Unlikely that biz case closes without it.
Bigelow not big enough market? Sees a lot of potential, but also a lot of risk.Harwood: How reusable? Capsule reused up to ten times. Some parts get ejected (forward cone, base heat shield). Land at White Sands.
Halvorson: How many objectives and how many achieved in CDDev? 36 milestones (four per demo, four for design) completed 22, essentially done by end of year. About halfway to PDR. How long to PDR/CDR? Next spring, then end of year.
Brennan: What’s being done in Huntington Beach? For development, pressure vessel being assembled, base heat shield, AR&D sensors, tied into Houston simulators.
I had two questions. First, how did the pusher abort system work, did it have two different thrust levels, and was it liquid? Answer from Keith: it’s hypergolic (MMH/NTO, like the Shuttle) and has high thrust engines for the abort, and uses lower-thrust RCS for orbital maneuvering. I didn’t follow up on the operations implications for those propellants. The other question was whether or not it could be kitted, or if it was being scarred, for deep-space operations. The answer was no, that would be a different vehicle entirely. This one is for LEO only.
Let’s Hope This Survives
Chris Bergin has a lengthy discussion on a joint NASA/commercial propellant depot demonstrator to be flown in 2015, if it can survive the fools on the Hill (to paraphrase the old Sérgio Mendes song).
This is the key sentence:
A HLV – of any kind – is not listed in any current ULA or commercial documentation, with experts claiming such a vehicle isn’t required under the EELV and propellant depot architecture.
Don’t anyone tell Congress.
[Via Clark Lindsey, who has an interesting discussion going in comments]
Housing Insanity
If you want to know why us libertarian types are skeptical of the government’s ability to prevent housing market bubbles, well, I give you Exhibit 9,824: the government’s new $1000 down housing program.
No, really. The government has apparently decided, in its infinite wisdom, that what the American economy really needs is more homebuyers with no equity.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
Is Scaled Having Engine Development Problems?
Thoughts from Trent Waddington. I’m on pretty long record of thinking that hybrids were a mistake, as was Scaled attempting to develop in house. The Mojave accident could have provided an opportunity to rethink the approach, but I guess they didn’t want to bite off the vehicle redesign issues of going to a liquid, and as Trent says, much of the sales hype has revolved around the supposed safety of hybrids. But as Dave Salt notes in comments there, continuing down that path will put them at a competitive disadvantage in terms of ops tempo and cost.
As Goes Missouri
They say Missouri is a — perhaps the – bellwether state. If so, the Democrats had better start typing up résumés. At time of posting, support for the the measure stood at between 75 and 80 percent.
“Repeal ObamaCare” sounds like it could be a pretty potent campaign issue this fall. It really puts the Donkeys in a well-deserved bind.
The Rich
…have options:
Leaving aside the morality of abridging property rights based on income level, and the meaningless puddle this practice has melted our Constitution into, it seems reasonable to conclude there is a sweet spot on the Laffer curve: a point at which tax and regulatory burdens are low enough to encourage the most growth-oriented behavior from wealthy individuals and large corporations, but high enough to generate the income necessary to fund government without running huge deficits. The government must, in turn, live within its means. It must be small enough to survive on the funding provided by this optimum rate of taxation. Obviously, our current federal government has swollen far beyond this size, becoming a tumor that murders its host organism with increasingly frantic demands for greater nourishment.
Soak-the-rich policies are dismal failures, because they rely on controlling the behavior of people who have many options to escape. The promises of such systems depend on capturing extremely agile dollars. Those of us with fewer options, and less liquid income, always end up suffering the fallout from these failures. We live the dusty spaces left behind when billionaires decide not to follow the scripts prepared for them by Washington social engineers.
Unfortunately, the country is being run by economic ignorami. At least for another few months.
Worker Abuse
Thoughts from Eric Raymond on the working conditions in IT and engineering, and the disparities between men and women.
[Update a while later]
Who will manage the mainframes?
The Parasite Has Been Growing
…while the host has been losing weight:
[Rasmussen] asked likely voters — his usual sample, which tilts more Republican than all adults — whether increased government spending is good or bad for the economy.
The results were unambiguous. Good for the country? 28 percent. Bad for the country? 52 percent.
He got similar results when he asked whether increasing the federal debt is good or bad for the economy. Likely voters believe it’s bad for the economy by a 56 percent to 17 percent margin.
There is some dissent, from the voters Rasmussen labels the Political Class. These are voters who trust the judgment of America’s political leaders over that of the American people, who do not believe the federal government has become a special interest group and who don’t believe government and big business work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.
In other words, they’re the people the New York Times’ David Brooks refers to as “the educated class.” Or those voters in Cambridge and Brookline who stuck with the Democratic nominee in the special Senate election last January.
Around here, we refer to them as the parasitic idiot class. And David Brooks is at the head of the class.
[Update a couple minutes later]
This seems related: thoughts on the academic/industrial complex. I wonder if it will survive the bursting of the academic bubble?
[Update a while later]
Gee, this seems related, too. Electric car subsidies as handouts for the rich.
And thoughts from Roger Simon on the continuing myth of Democrats as the party of the people:
We live in an era — the worst economically since the Depression — when the daughter of the first couple of the Democratic Party has a multi-million dollar, Marie Antoinette-style wedding with port-a-potties almost as luxurious as a toilette in Baden Baden; it’s self-proclaimed environmental leader, the first global warming billionaire, sprouts “green” McMansions from Nashville to Montecito; and its already multi-billionaire senator from Massachusetts moors his yacht in another state to escape taxes we hoi polloi could only dream of paying.
But wait, as they say, there’s more. At this moment, two of their leaders from a supposedly disadvantaged minority are about to be tried for ethical transgressions (read: thievery) even Congress couldn’t sweep under the rug. Never mind that these transgressions mostly exploit the very minority these people purport to represent. It’s part of the game. Convince minorities they should act like victims. Extort guilt payments from the majority and keep the change. Meanwhile, nothing improves for the minority because it would interrupt the system.
They’re the new Bourbons, of whom it was said that they have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing. But I think they’re in for a big lesson this fall.