Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

More SpaceX Reusability

20 Comments

For years, it was understood that NASA wanted new Dragons for its CRS missions. But today SpaceX is going to fly a used one, with the agency’s permission.

As I’ve long said, there will come a point at which a launch customer will say, “Wait, you want me to trust my ass or my payload to an unflown vehicle?” We’ll look back in amazement at the first seven decades of spaceflight, when we thought it made perfect sense to put payloads on untested systems, and then throw them away after a single flight.

[Update a few minutes later]

Note that NASA allowed this for a cargo mission. I’ll bet they’ll still want new capsules for crew for a while. Speaking of which, NASA is admitting that Boeing and SpaceX are going to have a hard time meeting the totally arbitrary LOC goal of one in 270. I love this:

“The number one safety-related concern for the program is the current situation with respect to the estimate of loss of crew,” Donald McErlean, a former engineering fellow at L-3 Communications and a member of the panel, said at the meeting. “The threshold values were considered to be challenging, and both contractors currently have a challenge to meet that precise number.”

Got that? They’re going to have difficulty meeting that “precise” number. As I noted in the book, the precision with which they calculate these utterly arbitrary numbers, given the state of knowledge about the system, is absurd. And this is the sort of thing that keeps us dependent on the Russians, when neither we nor they have any idea what their reliability or LOC number is.

Business, Economics, Education, General Science, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Dilbert One

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…”scientists” zero:

…in a sense, the video doesn’t even refute the straw man it set up. It’s not that climate science consists only of models: obviously there are observations too. But all the attribution claims about the climatic effects of greenhouse gases are based on models. If the scientists being interviewed had any evidence otherwise, they didn’t present any.

When you can’t even knock down your own straw man, you don’t have much of an argument.

So how did the video do refuting Scott Adams’ cartoon? He joked that scientists warning of catastrophe invoke the authority of observational data when they are really making claims based on models. Check. He joked that they ignore on a post hoc basis the models that don’t look right to them. Check. He joked that their views presuppose the validity of models that reasonable people could doubt. Check. And he joked that to question any of this will lead to derision and the accusation of being a science denier. Check. In other words, the Yale video sought to rebut Adams’ cartoon and ended up being a documentary version of it.

They would appear to lack self awareness.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The Uncertainty Monster

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Thoughts from Judith Curry on the current state of knowledge in climate. The warm mongers never consider the possibility that their proposed cures may in fact be worse than the disease. I personally think it’s nuts to consider climate a greater threat to humanity than poverty, and particularly energy poverty. But then, many of them don’t really care about humanity, or consider humanity a problem in and of itself.

[Update a few minutes later]

A new paper on the epistemological status of general circulation models.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

OPEC

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Here’s your feel-good story of the day: The cartel lost $76B last year due to U.S. fracking.

I’m old enough to remember when Barack Obama told us we couldn’t drill our way out of the energy crisis. Oil reserves continue to climbe every year, as they have for decades.

[Update a few minutes later]

Sort of related: Three reasons natural gas prices may be headed higher.

We just put in a soaking tub in our renovated bath, and now our 40-gallon water heater isn’t quite up to the job. I’d been thinking about putting in an instant heater in the bath, but there’s no gas line to it, and at California prices, the electric bill would be a killer. I could replace it with an instant-gas heater, but I’m starting to think maybe just get a bigger tank, given that it’s almost thirty years old.

[Update a while later]

OPEC is dead.

It’s been a feature of my life for forty-five years. It’s not quite as big a victory as ending the Cold War, but good riddance.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

NASA And The GAO

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The latest major project assessment is out:

Three of the largest projects in this critical stage of development—Exploration Ground Systems, Orion, and the Space Launch System—continue to face cost, schedule, and technical risks. In April 2017, we found that the first integrated test flight of these systems, known as Exploration Mission-1, will likely be delayed beyond November 2018.

NASA concurred with our findings and is currently conducting an assessment to establish a new launch date. Because NASA’s assessment is ongoing, the cost implications of the schedule delay and its effect on the projects’ baselines are still unknown. However, given that these three human space exploration programs represent more than half of NASA’s current portfolio development cost baseline, a cost increase or delay could have substantial repercussions not only for these programs but NASA’s entire portfolio.

You don’t say.

[Update mid afternoon]

Bob Zubrin isn’t happy with NASA’s current Mars plans:

During the Apollo program, the NASA’s mission-driven human spaceflight program spent money in order to do great things. Now, lacking a mission, it just does things in order to spend a great deal of money.

Why is NASA proposing a lunar-orbiting space station? The answer to that is simple. It’s to give its Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule programs something to do. The utility of such activity is not a concern. As a result, nothing useful will be accomplished.

Because Congress isn’t serious.

[Update a few minutes later]

Bob Zimmerman has some caustic thoughts on the GAO report.

[Thursday-morning update]

Bob Zimmerman isn’t happy about the cost overruns on the engine test stands. Neither am I. These aren’t the costs, they’re the overruns. On test stands for engines for a rocket we don’t need, and can’t afford to operate.

Also Ethan Siegal agrees with Bob Zubrin that a cislunar station is a waste of time and money.

[Bumped]

[Update mid-afternoon]

NASA doesn’t have any good answers as to why the test stands were being built in Alabama. We know the answer. It’s not a good one.