Thoughts on the futile attempts to make us perfectly safe.
Gee, someone should write a book about that.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Bezos Versus Musk
They are both trying to open up space to humanity, but they have fundamentally different philosophies:
“Let me assure you, this is the best planet. We need to protect it, and the way we will is by going out into space,” [Bezos] told Recode Editor at large Walt Mossberg. “You don’t want to live in a retrograde world where we have to freeze population growth.”
Bezos says tasks that require lots of energy shouldn’t be handled on Earth. Instead, we should perform them in space, and that will happen within the next few hundred years.
“Energy is limited here. In at least a few hundred years … all of our heavy industry will be moved off-planet,” Bezos added. “Earth will be zoned residential and light industrial. You shouldn’t be doing heavy energy on earth. We can build gigantic chip factories in space.”
Solar energy, for instance, is more practical for factories in space, he said.
“We don’t have to actually build them here,” he said. “The Earth shades itself, [whereas] in space you can get solar power 24/7. … The problem with other planets … people will visit Mars, and we will settle Mars, and people should because it’s cool, but for heavy industry, I would actually put it in space.”
This is the O’Neillian vision (which drove the founders of XCOR, and I continue to share, after all these decades. Mars isn’t the goal; allowing people to go wherever they want, including Mars, should be the goal. Elon’s vision (and that of the Apollo to Mars contingent) is actually quite blinkered. He is a romantic, and a planetary chauvinist (who, by the way, opposes space solar power, or at least thinks it won’t work).
But I’m happy to see them both pursue their visions. Competition is good.
XCOR Update
Jeff Foust has the latest official story.
I had seen XCOR on the NSRC program last week, but haven’t checked it since then. I’ll be flying to Denver myself for the conference later this morning.
I don’t know whom XCOR would have sent for that panel, but Krysti Papadopolous (the company’s former payload integrator, who was one of Friday’s casualties) told me in email that she’s still planning to attend, so if it was her, it will be to network for a new job, rather than provide an update. With Blue Origin flying now, and Firefly and others hiring, I’m sure she’ll have no trouble finding new opportunities.
[Update a while later]
What does this mean for Midland? Despite the brave face, they have to be disappointed. They went to a lot of trouble to get their spaceport license.
Hillary’s Emails
So many warnings, so many lies.
As Austin Bay says, anyone who has ever handled classified material knows that they be doing years in Club Fed for a fraction of what she’s done.
Will we ultimately see a Torricelli solution to this?
The Era Of The Expert
When it comes to putting them in charge of our lives, it’s the era of the expert failure:
The additional power that is being granted to experts under the Obama administration is indeed striking. The administration has appointed “czars” to bring expertise to bear outside of the traditional cabinet positions. Congress has enacted sweeping legislation in health care and finance, and Democratic leaders have equally ambitious agendas that envision placing greater trust in experts to manage energy and the environment, education and human capital, and transportation and communications infrastructure.
However, equally striking is the failure of such experts. They failed to prevent the financial crisis, they failed to stimulate the economy to create jobs, they have failed in Massachusetts to hold down the cost of health care, and sometimes they have failed to prevent terrorist attacks that instead had to be thwarted by ordinary civilians.
Ironically, whenever government experts fail, their instinctive reaction is to ask for more power and more resources. Instead, we need to step back and recognize that what we are seeing is not the vindication of Keynes, but the vindication of Hayek. That is, decentralized knowledge is becoming increasingly important, and that in turn makes centralized power increasingly anomalous.
Insufficient opportunities for graft in that.
British Diabetics
…rebel against junk-science dietary recommendations from the National Health Service, improve health.
It would sure be nice if government dietary advice was actually based on science.
Supersonics
I’m up at ArmstrongDryden today, getting an overview on NASA’s low-boom supersonics program. The focus seems to be entirely on noise reduction, but I’ll be interested in hearing what they’re doing to reduce wave drag.
Kevin McCarthy is here (I spoke to him briefly about some space regulatory issues), but he hasn’t spoken.
[Update a few minutes later
The QueSST aircraft has an L/D of 6 at Mach 1.4, in response to a question from me. In response to my question about what they’re doing about wave drag, the answer is “that’s a question for another day.” Peter Cohen from Langley actually shouted that from the back of the room, to my amusement.
A New Review Of The Book
Chris Petty has thoughts about it on his website.
In A World Of Self-Driving Cars
…we’ll still need the Miata.
Yes. Two counterpoints, though.
First, I don’t think I’d be able to read or write while being driven; in my experience that can make me car sick. I have to be in control.
Second, I very much fear that in a world of self-driving cars, it will be considered socially irresponsible and dangerous to drive yourself, and probably made illegal.
"so what did you do before self-driving cars?"
"we just drove 'em ourselves!"
"wow, no one died that way?"
"oh no, millions of people died"— Mel G. Castro (@MelGForever) May 29, 2016
“Violent Extremists”
They’re not “on the run” as the president says; they’re on the march:
“Today we worry about more than just terrorist cells — we worry about full-fledged terrorist armies as they capture territory and enlist thousands to join their ranks.”
In Syria and Iraq, McCaul said the world is witnessing “the largest global convergence of Islamist terrorists” in modern history.
Note: In “modern” history. This really has been going back for centuries. They just have better weapons now, and weaker-willed foes.