Category Archives: Economics

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

Apollo, I Love You

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…but:

So maybe Apollo went too far too soon and set an impossible target against which everything since has been measured. It wasn’t about primarily about exploration, although that did happen, and it certainly wasn’t about sustainability, but it has cast a long shadow over what has come since.

Am I committing some sort of heresy by saying these things? Well, all I can say is that the people who made Apollo happen are still my heroes. I still get a lump in my throat when I think what they did, the risks they took and the certainty they had in their belief that it was worth it. Armstrong himself has now left us, his surviving fellow moonwalkers are now old men – still active, still advocating the next big step, but a vivid reminder of the time that has passed since Apollo.

I guess my conclusion is that the further we get from those days, the more anomalous Apollo appears – an amazing adventure that will stand out as future generations look back on the twentieth century, but not something that can be repeated. We live in a different world now.

Yes. We need to stop trying to do Apollo to Mars. It isn’t going to happen, and moreover, it shouldn’t.

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

Orion

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Construction in slow motion; Bob Zimmerman notes the snail’s pace:

Orion’s budget these days is about $1 billion per year, with a total cost expected to reach $17 billion by the time the fourth capsule is built and launched in 2023, for a project first proposed in 2004.

In other words, it will take NASA and Lockheed Martin almost 20 years to build four capsules for the cost of $17 billion. That is absurd. Compare it to commercial space: The entire budget for all the commercial crew contracts, including both cargo contracts and the manned contract, is about half that, and will produce four different vehicles, all of which will be built and flying by 2019 at the latest. And in the case of Dragon and Cygnus, more than a dozen capsules have already flown.

Is there no one in Washington with the brain power to read these numbers and come to a rational decision about SLS/Orion? It costs too much and isn’t getting us into space. Moreover, at its pace and cost it isn’t doing anything to help the American aerospace industry. Better for Congress to put money into other things, or save it entirely and reduce the deficit and thus not waste it on this pork barrel garbage.

It’s not about building a capsule, or going to Mars. Or even beyond earth orbit.

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

History, And Consensus

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Judith Curry has found an interesting paper:

The participation of historians in the climate debate is critical. This is a topic that I am extremely interested in, and we have all been highly appreciative of the original posts by Tony Brown, at CE and also at WUWT.

Apart from the eloquent comment sense in this Jenkins’ essay, he raises the issue of the Goldilocks Principle – what climate do we want? Does anyone want the cold miserable climate of the 17th and 18th centuries? I’m not even sure we want the climate of the 1930’s or 1950’s. Historians have a huge role to play in articulating what constitutes a desirable climate, both regionally and globally.

Yes, the easiest way to stump a warm monger is to ask them what the ideal climate is, what is the magic year we want to return to?

Business, Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Administrative State

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Time to blow it up:

A smaller government would mean fewer phony-baloney jobs for college graduates with few marketable skills but demonstrated political loyalty. It would mean fewer opportunities for tax dollars to be directed to people and entities with close ties to people in power. It would mean less ability to engage in social engineering and “nudges” aimed at what are all-too-often seen as those dumb rubes in flyover country. The smaller the government, the fewer the opportunities for graft and self-aggrandizement — and graft and self-aggrandizement are what our political class is all about.

A more accountable government would be, in some ways, an even greater nightmare. Right now, when the federal government screws up, people often don’t find out — look at how the IRS and the State Department have stonewalled efforts to find out what happened with the Tea Party audits or the Benghazi debacle — and even when word gets out, it’s rare that anybody loses their job. (The EPA knew that Flint, Michigan’s water was toxic for months and didn’t tell anyone. Will there be consequences? Doubtful.)

Most of the time, the bureaucracy acts without any real oversight from Congress, or from the public. It’s able to enact political agendas that, if put to an open vote, would never pass. And to the bureaucracy’s supporters, that’s not a bug, but a feature.

It is indeed.

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

Fossil Fuels

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Matt Ridley on how they’ll save the world.
The conclusion:

The one thing that will not work is the one thing that the environmental movement insists upon: subsidizing wealthy crony capitalists to build low-density, low-output, capital-intensive, land-hungry renewable energy schemes, while telling the poor to give up the dream of getting richer through fossil fuels.

(Yes, behind paywall, but google the headline and you should be able to read it.)

[Update a while later]

I’m very sorry to hear about Piers Sellers’ illness, and hope for the best, but this NYT op-ed seems to me to be delusional:

All this as the world’s population is expected to crest at around 9.5 billion by 2050 from the current seven billion. Pope Francis and a think tank of retired military officers have drawn roughly the same conclusion from computer model predictions: The worst impacts will be felt by the world’s poorest, who are already under immense stress and have meager resources to help them adapt to the changes. They will see themselves as innocent victims of the developed world’s excesses. Looking back, the causes of the 1789 French Revolution are not a mystery to historians; looking forward, the pressure cooker for increased radicalism, of all flavors, and conflict could get hotter along with the global temperature.

Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part of this whole business.

I hope that will change next January. As Ridley points out (as does Alex Epstein), it is the poor who would be hit the hardest byaabandoning fossil fuels (particularly with plunging prices), much more so than by “climate change.”