Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Green Movement Jumps The Shark

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Walter Russell Mead:

Between Rajenda Pachauri and Peter Gleick, the international green movement has displayed a penchant for colorful personalities. But the root cause of the green meltdown is not the flawed personalities and eccentric ethical standards some greens display. The problem has been that the greens tried to stick the world with a monstrous and unworkable climate control system through the flawed medium of a global treaty. This project is so expensive, so poorly conceived and, in fact, so naive and unthinking, that greens increasingly felt their only hope to get their agenda adopted involved scare tactics.

Like Dean Acheson addressing the communist menace, they were “clearer than truth.” They stretched evidence, invented catastrophes — vanishing glaciers, disappearing polar bears, waves of force five hurricanes sweeping up the coast, the end of snow — to sell their unsalable dream. Not all greens were this irresponsible, but many prominent spokespersons and journalists working with the movement were; ultimately the mix of an unworkable policy agenda and a climate of hype and hysteria holed the green ship below the waterline.

Of contemporary mass movements, the green movement has been consistently the most alarmist, the least constructive, the most emotional, the least rational, the most intolerant and the most self righteous. What makes it all sad rather than funny is that underneath the hype, the misstatements, the vicious character attacks on anyone who dissented from the orthodoxy of the day, and the dumbest policy ideas since the Kellogg-Briand Pact that aimed to outlaw war, there really are some issues here that require thoughtful study and response.

Unfortunately, we’re not going to get it from people who are reflexively anti-human socialists, such as John Holdren.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Space-Policy Stupidity On Stilts

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Doug Mohney wonders why the Texas congressional delegation seems to have its collective head up its fundament:

Two problems exist for the Congressional delegation from Texas if they continue to push SLS funding at the expense of fully funding NASA Commercial Crew program. First, it would appear that they advocate a policy that has the United States continue to purchase transport to ISS from Russia until SLS is built — rather than “insourcing” the dollars and work to American companies.

Second, if Russia’s spotty track record with the pieces to its manned launch system continues, a Soyuz failure leaving the $100 billion space station unmanned and untended — or worse, deorbited — could have a significant impact on the 15,000 employees employed at Houston’s Johnson Space Flight Center (JSC). If ISS goes down, there’s no need to have a Mission Control Center for its operations or the many other NASA employees and contractors supporting space station operations.

SLS mostly benefits Alabama, Florida and Utah — there is very little in it for Texas, which just makes this all the more stupid.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Space

Don’t Know Much About Launch Technology

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Jonathan Coopersmith says that both Romney and Gingrich get it wrong on space policy. But he’s a little confused himself:

Rockets cost so much because most of their weight is fuel. Usually 1 percent or less of launch weight is the actual payload. Nor are rockets fully reliable. To launch a communications satellite into geosynchronous orbit demands an insurance premium of 10 percent or more for a single one-way trip! Contrast that to the premium for your car insurance.

Yet rockets have launched every satellite and space probe since Sputnik in 1957. The entire space infrastructure, governmental and private, has grown around building and launching rockets. What rockets have not and cannot do is make the cost of reaching orbit low enough that Gingrich’s lunar base could pass Romney’s financial test.

To truly encourage private enterprise in space a radical reduction of the cost to reach orbit must become a national priority. Several promising technologies, such as beamed energy propulsion and space elevators, could reduce the cost of entering space from $10,000 to as low as $100 a pound, radically changing the economics of spaceflight.

Ummmm…no. Rockets don’t cost so much because most of their weight is fuel. As Elon notes, the propellant costs for a Falcon 9 are less than half a percent of the total flight costs, and he expects to be able to get to a hundred dollars a pound of payload with the Falcon Heavy if he can get the flight rate up.

Coopersmith is right that we need to get launch costs down, and it’s probably worth spending some R&D on advanced technologies, but we don’t need them to get to a hundred dollars a pound. All we need are reusable vehicles operating at high flight rates.