…and the global sex recession.
As the machines get better, this is just going to get worse.
Category Archives: Economics
Lysenkoism
…and climate change. Heresy must be harshly punished.
The End Of Rockets?
No, Futurism:
All that essential, but not actually useful, extra weight jacks up the cost of a mission. Falcon Heavy launches cost $1.2 million USD per ton of payload. Again, that’s a crazy improvement from earlier missions, but that many zeros on a space mission mean these launches will stay out-of-reach for consumers or smaller companies.
No one outside of SpaceX knows what Falcon Heavy costs (and that depends on whether you mean average cost or marginal cost).
And then there is the environmental cost. These souped-up rockets use more fuel, and Falcon rockets rely on what’s basically kerosene and oxygen. Per launch, the carbon these missions spew isn’t that much. But if space flight frequency reaches the twice a month threshold that SpaceX is aiming for, experts think the overall carbon output could reach 4,400 tons a year. If every private space company chimes in with their own launch emissions, that number could climb dramatically.
Not everyone uses kerosene. Blue Origin (and ULA) plan to use liquid natural gas (mostly methane), which has much lower carbon content. And they both plan LOX/LH2 upper stages, whose exhaust is water. And even at a hundred times that amount, it would continue to be dwarfed by the airline industry.
There are also all the potential atmospheric impacts that we don’t understand very well. Burning rocket fuel emits soot and a chemical called alumina, and scientists have started to study how these molecules break down our ozone layer, something we’ve been working hard to restore over several decades.
Again, not all rocket fuel. Methane will produce almost no soot, and hydrogen none. And only solid rockets emit alumina, and only ULA plans to use them (OK, well, NASA will have them on SLS, if it ever flies, but it will hardly ever fly).
No, it will be a long time, if ever, before we need space elevators, even if they’re technical feasible and practical.
Missile Defense And Launch Costs
I did a thread on Twitter this morning.
It's worth noting that one of the reasons we never got space-based missile defense was that it was only recently that we've finally gotten launch costs down sufficiently to make it financially feasible, due to an almost demented policy failure for the past three decades. [1/n] https://t.co/ouaaIS9eUk
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
The first serious proposal for space-based missile defense was Lowell Wood's concept of "Brilliant Pebbles": Kinetic interceptors in orbit. But in order to implement it, launch costs had to be reduced far below those of the Shuttle and conventional USAF expendables.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
The purpose of the DARPA DC-X program was to demonstrate the potential for reusable Single-Stage-To-Orbit, which many viewed as a requirement for low launch cost (SpaceX has since proven this to be mistaken).
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
DC-X did demonstrate vertical take-off and landing of single vehicle in an atmosphere (the Apollo LEM was two stage in a vacuum). It also demonstrated relatively rapid turnaround of a LOX/LH2 propulsion system. But then NASA took it over.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
On one of the test flights of the NASA-modified vehicle, someone left a pneumatic hose off one of the legs, and it crashed and burned at White Sands, ending the program.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
Another thing that the DC-X program demonstrated before its demise was that traditional cost models for new concepts were utter crap. SpaceX has since validated that. NAFCON cost model has been shown to be worse than worthless for non-traditional activities.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
One of the biggest launch-policy errors of the 90s was to confine the military to expendables, and assign reusable space transports to NASA. It was nothing short of disastrous, setting us back over a decade.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
After the X-33 debacle, which no one saw coming except anyone who understood how to do X programs, the idiotic lesson (fallacy of hasty generalization) drawn from it by NASA was that reusable launch systems weren't practical. Tell it to SpaceX.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
X-33 should never have been awarded to Lockmart (their proposal wasn't compliant, in that the business plan was nonsense, but no one at MSFC would recognize a business plan if it kicked them in the ass). Also, should never have been a single award.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
A key rule of X programs is that a vehicle only tests one new technology, on a platform that is otherwise well understood. VentureStar was testing single-stage to Montana, with a linear aerospike engine, and a conformal composite hydrogen tank. Huge and obvious tech risk.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
X-33 was an example of NASA's Wile E. Coyote approach to technology development: Try some crazy thing, then when it doesn't work, don't try to figure out why and improve it, just assume it can't be done and go on to the next crazy thing.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
And so we entered the 21st century with no one, neither USAF or NASA, even attempting to get launch costs down. Former was focused on mission assurance of expendable EELVs, and latter had devolved into a jobs program for giant expendable rockets.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
But now, having done that, it's useful to go back and re-examine concepts for space-based missile defense that were financially infeasible with traditional launch costs of many thousands of dollars per pound. Cubesats are also a game changer.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
[Update a couple minutes later]
Trump’s missile-defense strategy.
As I noted above, if the space segment is now feasible, it’s despite, not because of government launch policy for the past three decades (except possibly for COTS).
The Elements Of Writing
An interesting interview with Virginia Postrel.
California’s Loss Is Texas’s Gain
SpaceX has decided to move all of Starship development from the Port of LA.
Why stay in the worst state in the union in which to do business?
America’s Shutdown Indifference
It is hard to work up sympathy for people who seem indifferent to the plights of the people in flyoverland who pay their salaries:
I mention these anecdotes not because I think the present record-setting shutdown is good or sane policy but because I am trying to illustrate why I and other Americans have a hard time caring much about it. In the popular imagination — and sometimes in dozens of little-read memos from the inspectors general of various departments — the average federal employee appears to be lazy, incompetent, performing meaningless tasks for too much pay, with an enviable array of benefits and other amenities (I still roll my eyes in disgust whenever I am reminded that there exist special credit unions for federal employees, whose pay and job security would be the envy of a hundred million other Americans). Government employees, at both the state and federal level, are among the only workers in the United States who continue to be represented by powerful unions, despite the fact that by definition they’re not bargaining against capital but against their fellow citizens.
This is to say nothing of the vast assortment of contractors, consultants, and hangers-on whose “work” has been temporarily interrupted by the shutdown. Their grotesque salaries have blighted the landscape with McMansions and driven housing prices in Maryland and northern Virginia to a level beyond what most families with children will ever be able to afford. So the people whose job it is to bid up the price of useless airplanes or dream up rival marketing schemes for some “cloud” project while our nation’s capital lacks a functional public transit system are going to have .05 percent fewer billable hours for the year? Boo hoo.
There is a lot of damage being done to space activities, though. Tethers Unlimited just had to do a 20% layoff due to contract delays. It’s only a partial shutdown, but NASA is part of it. There were a lot of papers not presented last week in San Diego because NASA employees weren’t allowed to attend the conference. Fortunately, people working Commercial Crew are “essential,” though they are working without pay. JPL may have to do layoffs if this continues into February.
[Via Glenn, who writes] “Coal miners lose their jobs for good and it’s ‘you’re obsolete, learn to code!’ Federal workers have a few paychecks delayed and the press is in heartstring-tugging mode.”
[Update a couple minutes later]
Roger Simon: The shutdown should go on forever:
That mysterious Trump official is also correct in saying that the shutdown should be about much more than the wall and border security. Serious as they may be, they are what the shrinks call the “presenting complaint.” The real issue is the function of government itself — what’s important and what’s not. A shutdown can serve as a living laboratory for examining the question of what is actually worthwhile that is missing because of that event. I daresay that most outside the Beltway would be hard pressed to find anything. (A fair number of these people can get around the National Parks by themselves, especially in the days of GPS.)
Both sides fear shutdowns not just because of that nauseatingly tedious inter-party blame game, but more importantly because it exposes this bloat and who caused it (i.e., who paid for what). This is the Deep State in action, in the off-chance anyone hasn’t noticed. What has been created by our government over decades is a self-preservation machine immune to the normal capitalist processes of creative destruction that have largely improved society over centuries, enriching almost everyone and extending life expectancy.
Yup.
[Update a few minutes later]
More good news: The IRS will issue refunds, but not do audits, during the shutdown.
Brexit
An explanation to George Will why it was a referendum.
Space Property Rights
Steve Wolfe just sent me a call for papers that’s right up my (and perhaps some of my readers’) alley:
I am chairing an interesting program at the ISDC this year titled the Space Settlement Policy Forum. It will be held June 5th in Washington, DC. Forum details and agenda are attached.
Though most consider discussion of space settlement related policies to be academic, for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other leaders the reality of space settlement is an imminent and highly desirable probability. In this forum we will take a sober look at the laws and policies that would or should be implemented in order to facilitate and encourage space settlement development. The Forum will address this broad challenge without presuming a single ‘silver bullet’ solution.
Topic Categories Include:
- How Current Space Law Encourages and Inhibits Space Settlement Development
- Potential Government Incentives for Private Funding of Space Settlements
- Changes to International Law to Enable Space Settlement Development
- Licensing Regime for Space Settlement Development and Construction—What would it look like?
- Proper Role of Government in Space Settlement Development: Leading the Way or Being a Cheer Leader?
- What Are the Space Settlement Enabling Technologies That Government Agencies Should Be Investing In Now?
Presentation Submission Guidelines:
- Prepare a 15-minute to present with slides
- Prepare a paper of not less than 3-pages that will be publish in the proceedings of the conference.
- The presentation must recommend, and argue for, a particular legal or regulatory change directly related to space settlement
- The paper must provide a summary that includes specific recommendations for policy change
- Interest must be expressed to Steve Wolfe immediately
- Abstract submission due by January 25, 2019
Kind of short notice, but I’ll probably be submitting multiple abstracts.
SpaceX
Is literally decimating its workforce.
My theory: their plans have changed sufficiently (e.g., going from composite to stainless in the Starship), and Falcon 9 is more reusable than they thought, so they don’t need to build more, that they need a new skills mix. Plus they couldn’t maintain that burn rate without an infusion of funding, and money has gotten more expensive to borrow.