Category Archives: Economics

Economics, Space

No Lunar Landings For The Indians

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At least no time soon, or affordably:

Theo Pirard, who attended the conference, discovered the projected plan of the Indian manned Mission on the Moon, which is the result of recent feasibility studies made by ISRO. This plan offers some similarities with the US Constellation programme for the return to the Moon but no date could be announced, because of lack of money.

Yes, the main similarity is that they think that in order to go to the moon, you have to replicate Apollo. We’ll see how these long-term plans evolve in the years to come when the reusables start flying, and Bigelow is doing lunar excursion using depots.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

The Boondoggle

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…that is high-speed trains in California:

Those hoping to ride the state’s high-speed train next decade will have to dig much deeper into their wallets than officials originally thought, a harsh reality that will chase away millions of passengers, according to an updated business plan released Monday.

The average ticket on the bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles is now estimated to cost about $105, or 83 percent of comparable airfare. Last year, the state said prices would be set at 50 percent of comparable airfare and predicted a ticket from San Francisco to Los Angeles would cost $55.

As a result of the higher fares, state officials now think the service will attract 41 million annual riders by 2035, down from last year’s prediction of 55 million passengers by 2030.

Finally, the cost of the project — recently pegged at $33.6 billion in 2008 dollars — is now estimated at $42.6 billion in time-of-construction dollars.

The voters were crazy to approve that bond issue. Does anyone really believe that those numbers aren’t going to continue to rise, and ridership fall, into a death spiral that will turn it into a subsidized Amtrak (with subsidies probably coming from airfares between northern and southern California)? And this was supposed to be stimulus? Your government at work, and the country’s in the very best of hands.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Why Not Just Fund The Program Of Record?

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Chris Kraft weighs in with a “common sense approach”:

NASA should essentially stay the course that has been pursued for the past several years. It makes good common sense to preserve and continue the use of the present NASA assets. Specifically, NASA should:

* Continue to operate the space shuttle until a suitable replacement is available, and initiate a study to consider a modernization program aimed primarily at reducing the operating costs.
* Operate and maintain the international space station until it ceases to be economically reasonable and scientifically productive.
* Continue to push forward with orderly haste to accomplish the goals set forth by the Constellation program.
* Initiate an aggressive research and development program aimed at the technology required to make space exploration to Mars and other deep-space objectives rational and affordable.
* Estimate a realistic set of budget requirements for the total NASA program based on the above goals and the other elements and goals of the agency.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t explain how much this would cost (it would cost billions to get the lines started again to keep Shuttle flying alone, even ignoring the orbiter-aging issues), or where the money would come from. Without doing any analysis, I’m guessing that it would require a doubling of the current HSF budget, or on the order of an additional ten billion dollars per year, for a system that will continue to cost billions per mission.

Jon Goff, on the other hand, explains why Kraft’s proposal is a non-starter, and fiscally insane:

Where I come from, we tend to think that getting a heck of a lot less while paying a heck of a lot more is usually the sign of a sucker. I just wish that a few space pundits and public figures didn’t keep enabling Senator Shelby and his ilk from hijacking NASA’s budget to enrich his campaign contributors at the rest of our expense.

Unfortunately, it’s more than a few. He also has a good question for Chris Kraft and other America bashers:

Why does Congress trust Russian commercial space more than American commercial space, btw?

Obviously, Russians are much better than American entrepreneurs and businesses. The latter can’t be entrusted with the vital duty of spending billions of dollars per flight on unsafe vehicles to protect jobs in key states and congressional districts.

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

Common Sense

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…backed up by real math and science, instead of ideology. Thoughts on Kyopenhagen and Climaquiddick from Bjorn Lomborg:

…let’s say we index 1990 global emissions at 100. If there were no Kyoto at all, the 2010 level would have been 142.7.

With full Kyoto implementation, it would have been 133. In fact, the actual outcome of Kyoto is likely to be a 2010 level of 142.2 ― virtually the same as if we had done nothing at all. Given 12 years of continuous talks and praise for Kyoto, this is not much of an accomplishment.

The Kyoto Protocol did not fail because any one nation let the rest of the world down. It failed because making quick, drastic cuts in carbon emissions is extremely expensive.

Whether or not Copenhagen is declared a political victory, that inescapable fact of economic life will once again prevail ― and grand promises will once again go unfulfilled.

Fortunately, reality will still prevail, despite the speechifying and bloviating.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Jackson And The Goregonauts

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Thoughts on the EPA’s extortionate power grab, from Jonah:

If Jackson cares so much about sound science, why is she basing some of her policies on data from the discredited scientific frat house, the Climatic Research Unit?

If Jackson cares so little about politics, why did she make her announcement to such fanfare at the opening of Climapalooza in Copenhagen?

In fairness, Jackson is only a Medusa’s head to those who care desperately about economic growth and who don’t think draconian taxes on energy and massive wealth transfers for white elephants in the Third World are the answer to our problems. But for others, she represents another icon from Greek mythology: the Golden Fleece.

Jason and his Argonauts set out to find the fleece so they might place Jason on the throne of Iolcus. The original story is one of power-seeking in a noble cause.

It’s debatable whether the modern tale of Jackson and the Goregonauts is quite so noble. But it’s obvious they’re interested in power and hell-bent on fleecing.

It’s what all their policies are about.

[Update a few minutes later]

Also, read Dr. K on the new green socialism:

One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques.

Politically it’s an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man’s guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt. But the idea of shaking down the industrial democracies in the name of the environment thrives not just in the refined internationalist precincts of Copenhagen. It thrives on the national scale, too.

On the day Copenhagen opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over the regulation of carbon emissions by declaring them an “endangerment” to human health.

Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO2 a year will fall outside EPA control. This means over a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses, and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.) Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.

But that’s just a coincidence. They’re just trying to save the planet, that’s all.

And more on the religious fanaticism:

…while research grants push the global warming agenda, the initial impulse is religious. (Presumably most priests believe in God before their jobs depend upon doing so.) Freeman Dyson, by consensus one of the greatest physicists of the past century, attacks not only the “sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories [about global warming ],” but also the underlying “worldwide secular religion of environmentalism, which views man as an unwelcome interloper in some imagined natural equilibrium.”

In the name of that religion, writes George Will, “communicants in the faith-based global warming community,” who imagine themselves to be a “small clerisy entrusted with the most urgent truth ever discovered,” are asking the rest of the world to wager trillions and hand over a substantial part of their freedom to governmental and intergovernmental bureaucrats.”

Have to pay the tithe to the priesthood.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Real Fat-Cat Party

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Thoughts from Jonah Goldberg:

My biggest objection is not to what isn’t true about the claim that the Right is the handmaiden to big business, it’s to what is true. Too many Republicans think being pro-business is the same as being pro-market. They defend the status quo against bad reforms and think they’ve defended economic freedom. The status quo stinks. And the sooner Republicans learn that, the sooner they’ll deserve to win again.

Of course, there are a lot of things they’ll have to learn to deserve to win again.