Business, Economics, Popular Culture

Hollywood Comes To Flint

1 Comment

Amid all the bad news, here’s one bright spot for my home town:

Don’t rub the stars from your eyes: you really might see award-winning actor Brian Dennehy chatting up fellow star Fred Thompson at Gillie’s Coney Island in Genesee Township or Blackstone’s in downtown Flint.

The pair have signed on to two of the leading roles in “Alleged,” a new movie on the historic Scopes Monkey Trial being shot at Crossroads Village starting Sept. 14…

…The film’s $4.1-million budget might be small by Hollywood standards, but nearly a quarter of it will go directly into the pockets of businesses right here in Flint and southeast Michigan in less than eight weeks’ time — and that’s just for the most obvious, basic expenses.

It would be nice if this sets a trend, but I wouldn’t bet on it. But the town definitely has to diversify out of autos.

Political Commentary

I’m With Them

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57% of the voters want to throw the rascals out:

While Democrats have become more supportive of the legislators, voters not affiliated with either major party have moved in the opposite direction. Today, 70% of those not affiliated with either major party would vote to replace all of the elected politicians in the House and Senate. That’s up from 62% last year.

Republicans, not surprisingly, overwhelmingly support replacing everyone in the Congress. Their views have not changed. But Republican voters are disenchanted with their team as much as the Congress itself: 69% of GOP Voters say Republicans in Congress are out of touch with the party base.

There’s really just one political party — the big-government party.

Political Commentary

A Random Thought

I wonder if the president chose his vacation location because he anticipated, or had been told that it was a strong possibility, that Senator Kennedy might die during this period. It certainly made his life much easier than if he had had to disrupt it to fly across the country to deliver his eulogy.

Not criticizing, just wondering. The thought struck me because I was just hearing Chris Wallace saying that he was returning to his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.

Business, Space

Short Dynetics

6 Comments

Steve Cook has made his departure official.

Rocketman called this a few days ago, and as I said in comments on another post, Dynetics‘ loss is Marshall’s gain. Guess he’ll have to be “the next von Braun” in the private sector (to the degree that a government cost-plus contractor is the private sector).

[Late morning update]

Man, the comments over at NASA Watch are brutal. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

[Early afternoon update]

Sorry, but you can’t take my investment advice in the post title. I guess it’s not publicly traded. Though if you’re a shareholder/employee, you could look for greener pastures, I guess.

[Update a few minutes later]

I think that this is the most definitive evidence so far that Ares is dead. What (if anything) will replace it is unknown, but I for one do not mourn it. I only mourn the lost years and billions that were wasted on it.

[Saturday afternoon update]

You know, if I were working Ares, my morale would be at rock bottom right now, and it wouldn’t be helped by either Cook’s memo, or Jeff Hanley’s. Notice that in Cook’s memo, here’s all he says about why he’s leaving now:

I have been honored and privileged to work with the best-of-the-best in the aerospace industry over the past 19 years. NASA has graciously allowed me to pursue dreams of exploration that I have had since my passion was ignited watching Apollo 17 land on the moon. That said, my professional goal has long been to spend the first half of my career in public service and the later half in the private sector. On September 14, I will begin phase 2 of my career, as Director of Space Technologies at Dynetics in Huntsville, AL. I look forward to helping the Dynetics team take on the challenges associated with space flight.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there a significant double-dip pension benefit if he’d made it to twenty years? Why leave now? Even assuming that he’s being honest about his “professional goal,” why not stick it out for a few more months?

It seems pretty obvious to me he’s reading the writing on the wall, and getting out while the getting is good, being the second rat down the lines (after Horowitz). And then we have Hanley:

To those who wish to ‘read something into’ Steve’s departure, I say this… The substance of Ares is dependent on no specific individual. It is what the integrated team HAS accomplished and WILL accomplish that matters. And it is in your hands – it remains true that the very BEST expression of the true heart of the Ares team will be the fortitude required to honor Steve’s contribution and excel beyond it.

He must think they’re stupid. This is a complete non-sequitur. Those who are “reading something into” Steve’s departure aren’t reading into it that the program isn’t going to be able to succeed without him. If they’re smart, they’re reading into it the same thing that I am — that the program is in its death throes, with or without him, and he didn’t want to be around when it happened. This was a completely pointless paragraph.

I would have had much more respect for him if he’d just thanked Cook for his service, and left it at that, or even said something like “I understand that many of you are justly concerned with the future of the program. We all understand that there may be changes coming soon, perhaps major, over which we no longer have any control. Whatever happens, you can all take pride in the work that you’ve done to make this program a success, and we will strive to ensure that your hard and excellent work is recognized in future activities, whatever they may be.” But that would be too honest for NASA management.

[Bumped]

Space

Cost Estimates

8 Comments

I agree with Bob Zubrin that the numbers coming out of Aerospace on development costs are highly suspect:

Following retirement of the Shuttle, Aerospace’s cost estimates have ground operations cost triple to $900 million by 2012, and then continue to rise to $1.8 billion by 2022. This sixfold rise in ground operations cost would be difficult to explain in any case, but in the absurdity of this instance is outstanding since during the entire ten year 2012-2022 period in question, there are NO heavy lift flights at all for the ground operations to support. In other words, the Aerospace Corp’s estimates have NASA’s ground operations costs rising sixfold over Shuttle flight support requirements, spending $15 billion over ten years, in order to launch nothing.

Rather than basing their projections on actual grounded estimates of development costs for different types of hardware, what the Aerospace Corporation appears to have done is to regard each program element as an “activity” which each need to be funded continuously at multi-billion levels per year. The program is then arranged so that no flights beyond LEO can take place before around 2023. So, with a budget of about $3 billion per year (equivalent to 30,000 employees on payroll) the Ares 5 development program is allowed to run for 12 years, bringing development costs to the spectacular $36 billion level. Why, in this day an age, a launch vehicle development program needs to run 12 years (or require 30,000 people) is left unexplained. In contrast, the Saturn V development, done at a time when much more still needed to be learned about launch systems, took only 4 years to complete (Contract awarded in 1962, first flight in 1966.) Summing up all such activities the net result is a program which costs $14 to $20 billion per year (140,000 to 200,000 employees) and which does nothing at all for a decade.

I disagree with this, though:

Americans want and deserve a space program that is actually going somewhere. In order for that to happen, a radically different methodology to that being accepted by Augustine Committee needs to be employed. Rather, a real goal, worthy of spending serious money on, if necessary, needs to be selected. That goal can only be humans to Mars. Then a minimum cost, minimum complexity, and, critically, fastest schedule plan needs to be selected to achieve that goal. In order to minimize schedule and cost, such a plan should avoid advanced propulsion, on-orbit assembly, or other futuristic ideas, and instead get the job done in the manner of the Mars Direct and Semi-Direct missions by employing a strategy of direct transportation to Mars of required payloads using an upper stage mounted on the heavy lift launcher.

I don’t agree that the goal “can only be humans on Mars,” at least as the focus for the program, though it may be a useful long-term ultimate one, as the Augustine panel has stated. And the notion that on-orbit assembly is a “futuristic technology” is quite amusing, seeing that we’ve been doing it with ISS for over a decade.

[Update late afternoon]

There are a lot of good comments by “Red” over at Space Transport News. Also, I would add that while I consider the numbers suspect, this isn’t meant to be a criticism of Aerospace or its methodology so much as the NASA inputs and assumptions.

Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Only Forty Years Left For The Planet

14 Comments

Because they aren’t taking our advice to not shout:

Great. So if there is an advanced civilization on Gliese 581d, the very first communication it’ll get from us will be a two-hour long text spam attack. How, exactly, is several billion variations of “u r teh suxxors rofl” and “OMG ur my new BFF aliens!!11!!!” supposed to convince an alien planet that we’re actually intelligent. More importantly, how will this convince them that we’re actually good neighbors?

Seriously, why should they be allowed to put the entire planet at risk like this? Listening is one thing, but deliberately broadcasting (or even, as in this case, narrowcasting) our presence doesn’t seem very smart to me.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!