Category Archives: Economics

Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Asilomar Two

19 Comments

Here’ is the first report I’ve seen on the conference this past week on geoengineering. I would have like to attend, but didn’t have either time or money right now. I was a little disturbed by what seemed to be an absence:

Participants…split into groups representing the two broad kinds of geoengineering: methods which block solar radiation from the sun, like spreading aerosols in the stratosphere, and techniques to remove carbon from the atmosphere, like growing algae blooms at sea.

…A vexing question for participants was the role of commercial companies in this controversial field. A breakout group devoted to the idea of blocking sunlight—by whitening clouds or the ocean surface, for example—couldn’t agree on whether it should propose barring for-profit companies from the enterprise.

Ignoring the issue of the role of private enterprise, what I’m reading seems very terracentric (which isn’t uncommon among the scientific community — I think it was one of the reasons that it there was so much skepticism about Alverez’ dinosaur-extinction theory). After all, if the goal is to block sunlight, the closer to the source you are, the easier the job might be. Maybe there were some space-based solutions discussed, but you can’t figure it out from this report. One of the reasons that I wanted to attend was to provide a perspective that might not otherwise be there, and it looks like my fears were born out.

I’d bet that if you proposed (say) Ehricke-type solettas, or sunshades, you’d be laughed out of the room, largely out of ignorance of space transportation economics. I would have provided a tutorial to explain why it’s foolish to extrapolate costs of current launch systems to future large-scale space access, because I’ll bet that’s exactly what most of them would do (because it’s what most people do now). I’ll look forward to a more detailed report on the conference, though, including a full list of presentations.

[Monday afternoon update]

It should be noted that I’m not advocating geoengineering. I’m just pointing out that for those who do, they shouldn’t exclude space-based solutions because of false preconceptions. It’s sort of like my attitude toward NASA. I wouldn’t weep much if the agency was defunded (other than the personal impacts on my friends who are employees and contractors). But seeing as how that’s unlikely to happen, I’ll continue to lobby to at least have the funds spent sensibly, in terms of actually advancing us in space.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

And The Hits Just Keep Coming

10 Comments

Here’s the latest, from AT&T. Bet this will encourage them to hire a lot more people:

AT&T Inc. said it plans to take a non-cash charge of about $1 billion in the first quarter following the passage of the health-care reform bill earlier this week, according to a filing submitted by the company Friday. The telecommunication giant will also evaluate changes to its health care benefits for employees and retirees.

But don’t forget — if you like your plan, you can keep it! As long as the ObamaCare hasn’t wiped it out, of course…

And of course, we can at least count on new jobs for IRS agents.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

If You Liked The “Stimulus…”

3 Comments

…you’ll love ObamaCare. Further thoughts here:

In both cases, despite broad public skepticism, the Democrats pushed forward on their bill while the White House intensified its messaging efforts, turning President Obama loose on crowd after friendly crowd in an effort to sell Middle America on a near-trillion-dollar fix whose murky specifics were in flux even as it approached a final vote. Sure enough, in both cases polling found support for the measure slowly creeping up as Congress passed the measure (with virtually no Republican support.) And in the days immediately after each became law, public support even reached scant majorities or pluralities in some places, with many saying that though the bill was imperfect, it sure beat doing nothing at all.

Liberals, covered in the stink of success, are now enjoying that bump. But, as I outline in the piece, if Obamacare’s post-passage public opinion trajectory is anything like that of the stimulus, they shouldn’t get too comfortable. A year out, the popularity of the stimulus falls somewhere between Tiger Woods and John Edwards. — and for similar reasons. The stimulus is widely-perceived to have been a failure because it didn’t keep its promise to stop and reverse job losses. Instead, 49 of 50 states have lost jobs since the stimulus passed.

We’re only a few days out from Obamacare’s passage and already reports are piling in from businesses bracing for tax increases and coverage changes. Wait until it’s been a year.

Maybe they should have read the bill…

Business, Economics, Space

A Propellant Depot Architecture

26 Comments

Dallas Bienhoff of Boeing presented their current concepts at a recent NASA in-space servicing workshop. It’s an impressive story of the performance leverage that a depot gives you, even with Constellation. I wonder if the trade includes dry launch in the depot case?

It’s interesting that he shows how they could use a Falcon 9, and an Atlas, but that Delta is unmentioned. Of course, now that ULA has taken over, perhaps Boeing has no institutional bias any more. I assume that this is the story that he’ll be telling at Space Access in a couple weeks, in the panel that we’ll both be on.

I’d like to see more detail on the ops (one of the slides came through as black for me). How do they propose to reuse the GTO/GEO tug? Aerobraking, or impulsively? You might want to check out some of the other papers at the link to Clark Lindsey’s site as well.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Message To Dems

6 Comments

People still don’t like ObamaCare. We’re going to follow your sage advice from yesterday, Mr. President, and “bring it ongo for it.”

And it turns out Nancy Pelosi was right — we had to pass the bill to learn what was in it:

Now that the bill has been safely passed and signed into law, the mainstream press is gradually revealing the scores of delightful provisions tucked away in the 2,700 page abomination: job-killing taxes on businesses, innovation-killing taxes on medical products, suffocating regulations on individual freedoms, wealth-sapping taxes on the middle-class, unprecedented intrusions on personal privacy, unconstitutional mandates on individuals, racially discriminatory preferences for favored groups, a Ponzi-scheme-on-steroids financing mechanism, and spending on a galactic, incomprehensible scale.

Not to mention this:

The health care overhaul will cost U.S. companies billions and make them more likely to drop prescription drug coverage for retirees because of a change in how the government subsidizes those benefits.

In the first two days after the law was signed, three major companies — Deere & Co., Caterpillar Inc. and Valero Energy — said they expect to take a total hit of $265 million to account for smaller tax deductions in the future.

With more than 3,500 companies now getting the tax break as an incentive to keep providing coverage, others are almost certain to announce similar cost increases in the weeks ahead as they sort out the impact of the change.

Figuring out what it will mean for retirees will take longer, but analysts said as many as 2 million could lose the prescription drug coverage provided by their former employers, leaving them to enroll in Medicare’s program.

But “if you like your plan, you’ll be able to keep it.” Right? And just think of all the job creation this will mean. For IRS agents.

“Bring it onGo for it,” indeed. For the Democrats, that bill may be the longest suicide note in history.

[Update mid morning]

(Dr.) Paul Hsieh, on the real ObamaCare fraud.