Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary, Science And Society

Questions For John Holdren

9 Comments

From Jeff Jacoby:

4. You argued that “a massive campaign must be launched . . . to de-develop the United States” in order to conserve energy; you also recommended the “de-development” of modern industrialized nations in order to facilitate growth in underdeveloped countries. Yet elsewhere you observed: “Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” Which is it?

5. In Scientific American, you recently wrote: “The ongoing disruption of the Earth’s climate by man-made greenhouse gases is already well beyond dangerous and is careening toward completely unmanageable.” Given your record with forecasting calamity, shouldn’t policymakers view your alarm with a degree of skepticism?

6. In 2006, according to the London Times, you suggested that global sea levels could rise 13 feet by the end of this century. But the latest assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that sea levels are likely to have risen only 13 inches by 2100. Can you explain the discrepancy?

This seems like a terrible pick to me, and now we’re going to see a “war on science” from the Democrats.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s one more, suggested in comments: Have you read Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto? If so, with which parts did you agree, and with which did you disagree? (A lot of people had fun after its publication, putting parts of it up alongside excerpts of Al Gore’s book, and defying people to guess which were which.)

Political Commentary, Space

Boundary Conditions

6 Comments

Chair Force Engineer has a useful post on the assumptions that go into the various choices of lunar architecture, an issue on which I kvetch on at least a weekly basis, because NASA steadfastly refuses to show its work. He delves into Ares vs Direct issues much more deeply than I ever bother to do, because, frankly, both approaches are flawed. I don’t have a vehicle-design dog in the fight. I like to argue at a higher level, which is, what is our institutional approach to becoming spacefaring: NASA develops its own vehicles for its own limited needs, or the federal space establishment encourages a private space industry off of which NASA can leverage to accomplish not only its own goals, but those of others?

But for those who like to design launch systems, and get down into those weeds, CFE offers some interesting contrasts between Direct and NASA’s current approach. I generally agree with his conclusion (as far as it goes):

I would like for the next NASA Administrator to call time-out and order a re-evaluation of crew and cargo launch strategies that takes development costs into account with infrastructure and operational costs for the expected duration of Project Constellation (from now until at least 2025.) The agency should look at permutations of all realistic crew launch & cargo launch designs. Examine Ares I, Jupiter 120, Atlas V Heavy, Delta IV Heavy, and Wide-Body Atlas for crew launch. Take a gander at Ares V, Jupiter 232, and a side-mount Shuttle Derived Vehicle similar to Shuttle-C. Take a realistic look at the assumptions which are driving the Orion capsule weight (especially the amount of volume available to each crew member) and the number of man-days the Altair lander is expected to support on the lunar surface.

But there are a lot more fundamental assumptions that have to be examined. For instance, if we focus a small fraction of the billions being spent on developing unneeded launch systems instead on orbital infrastructure (EVA equipment, docking protocols and hardware, mating interfaces, tugs, etc.) and utilize innovative approaches like Bigelow’s facilities for habitat, how much would we do with existing launch systems, and future (small) space transports that could drive down costs? It would be an interesting exercise, and one that NASA has never engaged in (because the insanely wrong lesson it learned from ISS was to avoid orbital operations and assembly) to challenge them to come up with a way to get to the moon with existing launch systems. Because that is the route to becoming spacefaring.

[Update a few minutes later]

One other thought, and one that I tried (unsuccessfully) to inject into the CE&R results that we were submitting to NASA back before Mike became administrator. NASA should consider marginal costs per mission, and average costs per mission (including amortization of development costs), and let that drive them toward architectures that are scalable to much more activity. From that standpoint, ESAS is an utter disaster.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Great Idea

10 Comments

…that will never happen, at least in this administration/Congress: reduce the corporate tax rate to zero:

In addition to New Deal spending programs, a series of new taxes were introduced that crushed the innovation, risk taking, and growth plans of entrepreneurs, corporations and investors. From 1930 to 1940, the top marginal income-tax rate rose to 79% from 25% while the corporate income-tax rate doubled to 24% from 12%. In addition, Roosevelt tacked on an excess profits tax and undistributed profits tax. He imposed an excise tax on dividends. Even the new Social Security payroll tax added 2%. As a result, the New Deal forced the allocation of money away from the private sector. …

The quickest way to strengthen the credit system and begin the end of this crisis is to get money into the economy for true job creation, and not into government work programs. The way to do this is to slash taxes. The U.S. corporate tax rate, currently the highest in the world, should be cut to 0% (corporate income would still be taxed, of course, when distributed to shareholders as dividends). The capital-gains tax should be cut further.

It’s often been said that corporations don’t pay income tax — they just collect it, either from shareholders, employees, or customers. Just eliminate it, if you want to see job growth. And if you’re not going to cut capital gains, at least index the gain calculation to inflation, so that people aren’t taxed on false gains.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

History Repeats

8 Comments

First time as tragedy, second time as tragedy again — Europe’s continuing estrangement from Israel:

I am standing in a queue waiting to buy a train ticket from London to Canterbury. A well-dressed lady standing behind me informs her friend that she “can’t wait till Israel disappears off the face of the earth.” What struck me was not her intense hostility to Israel but the mild-mannered, matter-of-fact tone with which she announced her wish for the annihilation of a nation. It seems that it is okay to condemn and demonize Israel. All of a sudden Israel has become an all-purpose target for a variety of disparate and confused causes. When I ask a group of Pakistani waiters sitting around a table in their restaurant why they “hate” Israel, they casually tell me that it is because Jews are their “religion’s enemy.” Those who are highly educated have their own pet prejudice. One of my young colleagues who teaches media studies in a London-based university was taken aback during a seminar discussion when some of her students insisted that since all the banks are owned by Jews, Israel was responsible for the current global financial crisis.

It’s looking like the 1930s again in more ways than one. Let’s hope it ends better this time.

Political Commentary, Space

Sucking Hind Tit

4 Comments

Al Fansome has some numbers to show where the Obama administration puts space in terms of federal R&D priority (scroll down to the eleventh comment):

I reviewed the stimulus package for the science & tech agencies. I have listed them by order of amount received in the stimulus bill.

DOE receives $43.9 Billion (for energy related projects.)

NIH receives $4.6 Billion.

National Telecommunications & Information Administration receives $3.8 Billion.

NSF receives $2.5 Billion.

NOAA receives $1 Billion.

NASA receives $600 million.

NIST receives $500 million.

Now you may think “well at least NASA got more than somebody.”

But wait, the President’s budget request for NIST for FY2009 was $678 million.
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/budget_2009.htm

The NIST stimulus package of $500M is 74% of its FY2009 budget request.

FWIW,

– Al

PS — This is completely depressing.

I’m certainly not surprised. I keep telling people that civil space isn’t important. This is just more proof of that.

Continue reading Sucking Hind Tit →

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Chicken And Egg

15 Comments

Which comes first, the car or the road?

“They’ve all looked at it from the perspective of how to build the car. We looked at it from the perspective of how to run an entire country without oil. You’ve got to put the infrastructure ahead of the cars.” The venture is coordinating with some car manufacturers who plan to create electric vehicles to ensure that the infrastructure will be utilized.

We have the same problem in space. No one is building vehicles designed to use gas stations in space because the gas stations don’t exist. No one is building the gas stations because there are no vehicles designed to use them. This is a place where government could lead by making it policy that this is the future of space transportation, and establishing standards (just as in the eighties, it was the flawed policy that everything would be flown on Shuttle, and that payloads had to meet its payload-integration requirements).

Political Commentary, Space

Not Rolling Dice

28 Comments

I’ve commented in the past (even recently) that risk estimates of continuing to fly the Shuttle are overblown. There are good arguments to retire the system, but the risk of losing the crew isn’t one of them, both because they aren’t as high as people are saying, and because losing another crew wouldn’t be the end of the world. As I’ve said repeatedly, if we’re not willing to risk human lives on spaceflight, then it’s probably not worth doing. Anyway, Dick Covey, former astronaut and head of USA, apparently agrees with me (at least about the risk numbers):

The often-quoted PRA numbers do not factor in the continuous improvement in the vehicle and operations — of which there have been numerous and significant changes — or the quality and performance of the team that makes it work.

PRA estimates alone should never be used to reach a go/no-go determination on flying one, two or 10 more missions. PRA is intended primarily to provide an analytical yardstick for making sound engineering decisions about the development of a system and whether incremental changes in a system would improve or degrade relative safety.

Applying statistical probability techniques to the space shuttle PRA number to determine the risk of flying multiple missions implies a randomness in safe shuttle operations that does not exist, and belies the real approach to risk identification and management that defines the current space shuttle program.

The shuttle currently operates at the highest level of safety in its history. It is not without risk, but that risk is better understood and mitigated now than at any time in shuttle history.

Absolutely. The Shuttle has never been safer than it is today. Mike Griffin has just been using the PRA numbers to scare Congress into retiring the system so he could free up the funds for the Scotty rocket.

And this nonsense about needing “recertification” (whatever that means — it was never “certified” in the first place) in 2010 is just that. The CAIB never really provided any basis for this date. It’s an arbitrary one that just happened to coincide with the planned completion of ISS, so it seemed like a good marker for the decision as to whether or not to continue to program. We don’t really know if the vehicles need an OMDP, or mini or nano OMDP. We would just have to continue to inspect as we fly.