If this works out, it would be huge. It might be useful for Martian water, too.
Category Archives: Economics
“Space Exploration”
I hate op-eds like this. They’re meaningless.
I oppose "space exploration." It's a meaningless phrase. I favor space development.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 20, 2015
Reusable Mars Landers
Yes, throwing them away makes no sense. That’s Apollo-to-Mars thinking.
Creating fully reusable transportation infrastructure will be a key element of my Kickstarter report.
Trump’s Immigration Policies
No, they wouldn’t have prevented 911. And no, Ben Carson, neither would have declaring oil independence.
The frightening thing, of course, is that neither of these positions are as disconnected from geopolitical reality as Obama’s remain, almost seven years into his presidency. But now we just have to hold on and survive the next fifteen months.
Income Inequality
What Bernie Sanders doesn’t understand about it.
To be fair, of course, I don’t think Bernie Sanders understands anything about anything.
Related: Bernie Sanders and the fixed-pie fallacy. He (like all Marxists) doesn’t understand that wealth is created, or how. He thinks it’s just something to be magically redistributed.
[Update a few minutes later]
Unfortunately for the Marxists, the American people don’t think that wealth inequality is a crisis. They don’t think that climate change is, either. It barely makes the list.
[Update a few minutes later]
Dems appeal to “progressives,” not all Americans.
There’s nothing progressive about them. Forced wealth redistribution is the oldest game in the book. Free markets are what are new and revolutionary.
The Best Route To Mars
…takes a detour to the moon.
Yup.
[Afternoon update]
Here’s another story. With an endorsement by Bill Gerstenmaier. Funny he never tells that to Congress.
Meth
It’s not an argument for drug prohibition; it’s a demonstration and consequence of the failure of drug prohibition.
Hoplophobic Professors
I think they should be shunned and punished for being the bigots that they are.
Global Warming Scare Tactics
…environmental groups have known since 2000 that efforts to link climate change to natural disasters could backfire, after researchers at the Frameworks Institute studied public attitudes for its report “How to Talk About Global Warming.” Messages focused on extreme weather events, they found, made many Americans more likely to view climate change as an act of God — something to be weathered, not prevented.
Some people, the report noted, “are likely to buy an SUV to help them through the erratic weather to come” for example, rather than support fuel-efficiency standards.
Since then, evidence that a fear-based approach backfires has grown stronger. A frequently cited 2009 study in the journal Science Communication summed up the scholarly consensus. “Although shocking, catastrophic, and large-scale representations of the impacts of climate change may well act as an initial hook for people’s attention and concern,” the researchers wrote, “they clearly do not motivate a sense of personal engagement with the issue and indeed may act to trigger barriers to engagement such as denial.” In a controlled laboratory experiment published in Psychological Science in 2010, researchers were able to use “dire messages” about global warming to increase skepticism about the problem.
Many climate advocates ignore these findings, arguing that they have an obligation to convey the alarming facts.
But claims linking the latest blizzard, drought or hurricane to global warming simply can’t be supported by the science. Our warming world is, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, increasing heat waves and intense precipitation in some places, and is likely to bring more extreme weather in the future. But the panel also said there is little evidence that this warming is increasing the loss of life or the economic costs of natural disasters. “Economic growth, including greater concentrations of people and wealth in periled areas and rising insurance penetration,” the climate panel noted, “is the most important driver of increasing losses.”
People like the Bills McKibben and Nye look like fools when they seize on every weather event to evangelize their religion.
Increase NASA’s Budget
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