John Tierney explains why those promoting socialized medicine should stop ignorantly (if not duplicitously) claiming that it is the cause of greater longevity in countries that have it. If you want to argue that we should be more like Europe, find a better argument, or you’ll just continue to make yourselves look foolish.
Category Archives: Economics
The Solar Power Satellite Business
Alan Boyle has a good rundown on the current state of play. I wonder, though about the assumptions underlying this comment:
To be competitive with other power sources, Maness figures that the powersat system’s launch costs would have to be around $100 per pound – which is roughly one-hundredth of the current asking price. Launch costs may be heading downward, thanks in part to the rise of SpaceX’s Falcon rockets, but Maness can’t yet predict when the charts tracing cost and benefit will cross into the profitable zone.
Launch costs to where? They’re that high to GEO, but not to LEO, and it doesn’t say where the satellite constellation will live. It’s going to be a long time before it’s a hundred bucks a pound to GEO, though though a robust market for LEO propellant depots will be a help in that regard. But we’re not far from having a thousand bucks a pound to LEO. Anyway, it would be nice to see more details on these things.
The bottom line, though, and the reason that I’m not that sanguine on the business prospects for SBSP, at least for base load, is this:
In addition to potential environmental concerns, large-scale solar farms can’t generate a steady flow of electricity at night, or during cloudy weather. But if engineers ever figure out a way to store up the intermittent energy generated by solar cells or wind turbines, at levels high enough to keep utilities flush with power, Maness thinks that would deal a heavy blow to his powersat dreams.
“At that point, I take my marbles and go home,” he said.
Yup. It’s not the technical risk of the space hardware and launch costs, but the risk of terrestrial competition as technology evolves, that is the biggest risk of all.
ULA’s Heresy
I have a piece up at Popular Mechanics about the AIAA conference this week, and ULA’s non-heavy-lift architecture. Hell hath no fury like a rocket company scorned.
Meanwhile, it looks like there may be a battle in Congress to preserve the Ares pork. At some point, though, they’re going to have to confront budgetary and programmatic reality.
[Noon update]
Here is the permalink.
[Another update a few minutes later]
Paul Spudis has a longish essay on the history of the VSE, how NASA mangled it, and what we need to do going forward.
Time To Take Private Space Seriously
So sayeth The Economist:
Five years ago the idea that the private sector might have been capable of transporting cargo and people reliably into low Earth orbit was viewed as crazy. Much has happened since, and two things in particular. One was that Virgin Galactic, an upstart British firm, said it would develop a space-tourism business based around a craft that had cost only $25m to build. The other was that an equally upstart American entrepreneur called Elon Musk, flush from his sale of PayPal, created a company called SpaceX (whose Falcon rocket is pictured above, dropping its first stage on its way into orbit). He said he wanted to make it cheaper to launch people into space and wanted, ultimately, to send a mission to Mars—but that he would start by launching satellites.
It would be an understatement to say that both ventures were treated with scepticism. But they have now come far enough to be able to thumb their noses at the cynics. On September 3rd SpaceX signed a contract worth $50m with ORBCOMM, a satellite-communications firm. The deal is to launch 18 satellites for ORBCOMM’s network. Meanwhile, at the end of July, Aabar Investments, a sovereign-wealth fund based in Abu Dhabi, bought a 32% stake in Virgin Galactic for $280m. Aabar was not just interested in space tourism. It was also keen on a proposal to use Virgin’s White Knight launch system to put satellites into low Earth orbit. Will Whitehorn, Virgin Galactic’s president, said that one of the things which attracted Aabar was the fact that White Knight (an aircraft which lifts to high altitude a rocket that can then take either passengers or satellites onwards into space) could be flown from Abu Dhabi.
The “Giggle Factor” continues to dissipate.
The Ghost Fleet
Here’s an interesting, but depressing article about the world’s shipping industry. As noted, this is going to get worse before it gets better.
The Man Who Saved Millions
Norman Borlaug has died. Ron Bailey has some thoughts.
The Tony Soprano Health Insurance Plan
Some trenchant thoughts on the Dems’ plan to take over the health-care system, from Shikha Dalmia.
The Speech That Barack Obama Should Have Given
…but never will. From John Stossel.
Keep Them On The Defensive
Time to streamline the “stimulus”?
A Healthcare Alternative
From CEI:
1. Modify tax policy to eliminate the disincentives for individual purchase of health insurance and health care.
2. Eliminate regulatory barriers that prevent small businesses from cooperatively pooling and self-insuring their health risks by liberalizing the rules that govern voluntary health-care purchasing cooperatives.
3. Eliminate laws that prevent interstate purchase of health insurance by individuals and businesses.
4. Eliminate rules that prevent individuals and group purchasers from tailoring health insurance plans to their needs, including federal and state benefit mandates and community rating requirements.
5. Eliminate artificial restrictions on the supply of health-care services and products, such as the overregulation of drugs and medical devices, as well as state and federal restrictions on who may provide medical services and how they must be delivered.
6. Improve the availability of provider and procedure-specific cost and quality data for use by individual health consumers.
7. Reform the jackpot malpractice liability system that delivers windfall punitive damage awards to small numbers of injured patients while it raises malpractice insurance costs for doctors and incentivizes the practice of defensive medicine.
Never happen. Makes too much sense.