Category Archives: Economics

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

The Space Access Conference

5 Comments

It’s less than a week away:

Space Access ’16 – next week! – three days focused on the technology, business, and politics of radically cheaper space transportation.

Thursday afternoon April 7th through Saturday night April 9th in warm springtime Phoenix, in an intensive informal atmosphere, single-track throughout so you don’t have to miss anything.

Organizations like Agile Aero, DARPA, Lasermotive, Masten Space Systems, Nanoracks, Spaceport America, United Launch Alliance, XCOR Aerospace.

People like Mitchell Burnside Clapp, Jeff Greason, Gary Hudson, Jordin Kare, Dave Masten, Rand Simberg, and Henry Spencer in a variety of presentations and panels.

Progress reports ranging from major government & industry programs through university student & high-end amateur rocket hardware projects.

Plus this year, now that a thriving low-cost space transportation industry is near, a focus on What’s Needed for The Next Thirty Years? S

A’16 is just days away – make your plans NOW. Everything you need to know to be there.

I encourage all to come, despite my own presence.

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

Rethinking SLS

17 Comments

In the course of working on my Kickstarter project over the past several months, I’ve been examining the arguments in favor of the SLS program. In the course of doing so, I’ve finally come to realize that they aren’t just compelling, but irrefutable, really.

Dumbacher, Griffin, Cooke, Cook and King are right. It does take a lot of mass in orbit to get to Mars, and bigger rockets are clearly better. Sure, each flight will cost billions, but how can we put a price on national pride, and jobs in Huntsville, Promontory, Michoud and Titusville? The more I think about the hazards and complications of launching a lot of dinky rockets, and all that orbital assembly, the more I realize how risky it is, not just for our precious astronauts’ lives, but for the mission itself. And really, NASA just wouldn’t be NASA if it’s not building and launching its own giant rocket.

So I want to go formally on record as being fully supportive of this program, and I can’t wait for President Trump to come in next January to make space great again, with a yuuuuuuuge rocket, not those little dummy loser rockets that are always exploding on barges. #MakeSpaceGreatAgain

Business, Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Is Barack Obama A Socialist, Or A Fascist?

14 Comments

Yes:

One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left.

Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely — and correctly — regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg’s great book “Liberal Fascism” cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists’ consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left’s embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.
Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left.

It was in the 1930s, when ugly internal and international actions by Hitler and Mussolini repelled the world, that the left distanced themselves from fascism and its Nazi offshoot — and verbally transferred these totalitarian dictatorships to the right, saddling their opponents with these pariahs.

The real act that broke the Left from Hitler was when he betrayed Stalin.

[Update a while later]

Obama: “No difference between communism and capitalism.” Well, if you ignore the tens millions of citizens murdered by their governments, sure.

[Sunday-morning update]