So NASA management’s defense of Ares 1 will be that if you don’t let us waste incredible amounts of money it will force us to waste stupendous amounts of money
I doubt if they see it that way, but that’s what it is.
Category Archives: Economics
Househunting
In Flint, Michigan:
As the veteran of a brutal San Francisco home-buying odyssey, there’s no denying the appeal of a place where desperate Realtors sometimes offer up houses by the dozen. But this is more than a quest for cheap housing. I have an almost unhealthy attachment to Flint. I want to do something—anything—to help my hometown. Maybe a “summer place” in what has been ranked one of America’s most depressing cities can pump a little life into the local economy. And I fear that after 15 years in San Francisco—sometimes described as 49 square miles surrounded on all sides by reality—I’m losing touch with my roots, drifting uncomfortably far from the factory town my grandparents moved to at the turn of the 20th century.
How do I know this? Sometimes I fret about the high price of organic avocados. After growing up driving a Buick Electra 225, I now own a gutless four-cylinder Toyota Camry. And then there’s the fact that I’m so jittery in the place where I grew up that I’m sleeping with a bat.
There are some good neighborhoods there still, I think, it’s close to recreation up north (though Saginaw and Bay City more so) and it’s cheap living, if you can work from anywhere. Of course, you could even live up north (though the winters are tougher there than southeast Michigan). On the other hand, there are the Michigan taxes…
No New Thing Under The Sun
Thoughts on socialized medicine, and freedom, from Bill Whittle and others.
Obama’s Failed Gamble
Obama wagered that the deluge of money coming from the Federal Reserve would do the heavy lifting as far as stabilizing the financial sector and keeping the already apparent recession from turning into a real disaster. Voters would, thus, continue to support his policies to assert more government control over healthcare, heavily regulate energy through a costly cap-and-trade program and further intervene into the financial industry.
The gamble appears to have failed miserably, both economically and politically. The terrible tale of the tape: a) the current downturn is arguably the worse since the Great Depression; b) household wealth has fallen by $14 trillion during the past two years, including the first quarter of 2009; c) while the economy may not shrink as much this quarter as it did in the previous three months (-5.7 percent) or the final quarter of 2008 (-6.3 percent), unemployment is soaring; d) Obama himself said the jobless rate will hit 10 percent this year; d) even worse, the Federal Reserve sees it approaching 11 percent next year. (Recall, that the original White House economic analysis of the Obama economic plan never saw unemployment exceeding 8 percent if Obamanomics was passed by Congress.)
While I don’t mind him failing, since his policy goals are disastrous, I’m furious that it’s wrecking the economy anyway.
The World’s Recession
It doesn’t look like 1930 here (at least yet), but it does most everywhere else. I hope, as noted there, that at least we’ve learned some lessons from the past over there, even if the current White House longs for a return to the Depression.
Commercial Space Symposium
Medical Bankruptcy
A horror story from Canada. And of course, it if weren’t for the fact that they can fall back on their friends south of the border, it would be even worse.
But don’t worry, when it comes to socialism, now that The One is in charge, we’ll make the Canadians look like pikers.
A Response To Derbyshire
He gets a letter from an astronaut in response to his anti-manned-space piece. Of course, it should be noted that it was anti-NASA manned space, not anti-manned space in general.
He remains unrepentant:
I would give everything I have, ten times over, to have been where Greg has been and see what he has seen. I don’t see any reason why U.S. taxpayers should fund my enthusiasm, though.
Neither do I.
He is obviously not opposed to human space flight. I think that he might think differently had the taxpayers’ money done more (and a lot more) to allow him to go. And, to forestall the usual trolls, that doesn’t mean paying for his trip. It just means doing the kinds of things that made aviation successful.
[Wednesday afternoon update]
Mark Whittington imagines that I am “misreading” Derb’s attitude:
He is obviously not opposed to human space flight. I think that he might think differently had the taxpayers’ money done more (and a lot more) to allow him to go.
Actually Derbyshire makes it clear that he is opposed to all government funded pace exploration, such as Apollo.
So sayeth the Derb today (though not in response to Mark’s own misreading — I’m quite confident that he never reads Mark’s scribblings):
…even if I grant your argument, the role of government remains to be decided. Stuck as I am with the rooted conviction that government does everything badly and in a spirit of financial irresponsibility, I’d keep government involvement to a mimimum, with just perhaps a modest subsidy here or there to encourage entrepreneurs. Shuttle missions at half a billion dollars per, though? No thanks. Not unless I’m on board!
I’m a little more principled than Derb — I’d object to billion-dollar shuttle flights (just as I object to billion-and-a half-dollar Ares I flights) as a national policy even if I were on board.
I’m sure that Mark will continue to misread it, though. It’s what he does.
[Bumped]
Don’t Hold Your Breath, Guys
EADS Astrium is still “fully committed” to building a suborbital tourist vehicle. All they’re waiting for is someone to hand them a billion dollars. Hey, it’s only a millibarack.
These people crack me up.
Do You Hear That Little Sound?
It’s the sound of me playing the tiniest violin in the universe:
…as much as I hate the idea of the leader of the free world being short on sleep, it’s hard to work up a lot of sympathy for a guy who can’t sleep with his own decisions, and is still trying to figure out ways to drive the deficit even higher … no matter how often he says his universal health plan is going to cut costs. In fact, the news that he can’t sleep and can’t stop is more than a little disturbing.
And you know that the last way that he’ll try to do anything about the deficit is to cut spending. Unless it’s military spending, of course.