I don’t really believe in “peak oil,” though I’ll buy the concept of peak cheap oil. But Randall Parker does, and thinks we’re there, and is worried about the transition. Lot of good discussion in comments.
In my opinion, it will only be a problem if the government mucks with the market too much. Unfortunately, at least based on their behavior in the seventies, that’s not an unlikely possibility.
Leonard David has a good piece this morning on the prospects for commercial space.
There was actually a mini debate between Elon Musk and Alex Tai at their press conference at the Personal Spaceflight Symposium last month, in which Alex expressed skepticism as to whether New Space can be comparable to the Dotcom industry, in terms of the potential for huge returns and wealth generation. Elon thought that there would be some sort of significant funding event that would open the investor floodgates, as happened with IT, and Alex thought that this was a more conventional industry, with more conventional rates of return. But he also expressed hope that he’s wrong.
We may find out in the next couple years, given the list of potential events that could occur in that time frame that Leonard lays out.
Leonard David has a good piece this morning on the prospects for commercial space.
There was actually a mini debate between Elon Musk and Alex Tai at their press conference at the Personal Spaceflight Symposium last month, in which Alex expressed skepticism as to whether New Space can be comparable to the Dotcom industry, in terms of the potential for huge returns and wealth generation. Elon thought that there would be some sort of significant funding event that would open the investor floodgates, as happened with IT, and Alex thought that this was a more conventional industry, with more conventional rates of return. But he also expressed hope that he’s wrong.
We may find out in the next couple years, given the list of potential events that could occur in that time frame that Leonard lays out.
Leonard David has a good piece this morning on the prospects for commercial space.
There was actually a mini debate between Elon Musk and Alex Tai at their press conference at the Personal Spaceflight Symposium last month, in which Alex expressed skepticism as to whether New Space can be comparable to the Dotcom industry, in terms of the potential for huge returns and wealth generation. Elon thought that there would be some sort of significant funding event that would open the investor floodgates, as happened with IT, and Alex thought that this was a more conventional industry, with more conventional rates of return. But he also expressed hope that he’s wrong.
We may find out in the next couple years, given the list of potential events that could occur in that time frame that Leonard lays out.
…over at the Bleat today:
Well,
the minute the movie begins you know you
…through termite guts:
The bellies of these tiny beasts actually harbor a gold mine of microbes that have now been tapped as a rich source of enzymes for improving the conversion of wood or waste biomass to valuable biofuels.
Sounds better than converting food to fuel.
Mark Steyn writes about the silence of the artistic lambs.
Did Israel destroy a Syrian nuclear bomb factory a few weeks ago?
I wouldn’t be surprised. And I still wonder how much of Saddam’s WMD material was moved there before the war.
From a comment at this post about the JFK assassination, which has drifted far off topic because an anonymous moron came in and asked if I thought that Clinton was involved with it (for the record, as far as I know, JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, unassisted).
Rand, it was clear from even a quick google search that everything you said about Newsweek, Isakoff, and Drudge were true, and I’m not disputing them. What I couldn’t figure out, from admittedly just a quick search, was _why_ Newsweek “spiked” the story, I assume by “spiked” you mean “suppressed”.
I saw lots of sources that suggested that they did because they were still building the story.
The bigger more interesting picture: I’m just a vanilla Hillary-Supporter, and my support Hillary is probably only of interest to you in that I’m similar to the vast majority of voters who simply aren’t knowledgeable about this stuff. Maybe unlike most voters, I read the NYT every day, and lately I’ve been reading politico.com obsessively. But I never hear about this stuff. I respect your opinion (this blog isn’t in the rat’s nest), and when you have time and interest, I would like to hear more about a) the worst things you suspect eithor of the Clintons did and why, and b) why in the world the NYT and the Washington Post (and Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, etc), don’t cover the evidence for these deeds. No hurry, although I hope you write about it (or link to it) before I vote on Feb 5th.
That was suggested by many (lots of things were always suggested by many to deny the press bias in favor of the Clintons in the nineties), but my understanding is that Isikoff thought it was ready to go, and expected it to, and it was spiked at the last minute.
As to why they did it, the media was always reluctant to print negative things about the Clintons, and when they did, they always gave prominence to their spinmasters to minimize the damage. Don Hewitt claimed credit for saving Clinton’s candidacy with the Sixty-Minutes puff piece on the “problems with their marriage” after the Gennifer Flowers audio tapes surfaced. In one particularly shameful episode, when Gary Aldrich came out with a damaging book about them
Does anyone know if this is for real, or vaporware?
There is no doubt a significant market for a supersonic business jet. The problem is, they still haven’t found a solution to the sonic boom problem. They’re finessing it with this airplane by (as the Concorde did) flying supersonic over water only, but enhancing performance by flying it just slightly below sonic velocity (almost transonic) over land, which gives them a faster trip than a conventional subsonic jet. But the advantage isn’t all that great, since they’re restricting it to Mach 1.5 (presumably because their fuel costs would go through the roof, and their range to almost nothing, if they went faster).
If you look at the comparisons of trip times, in some cases, it doesn’t make that much difference, and because they haven’t solved the wave drag problem, they still don’t have trans-Pacific range–they have to make a stop to refuel, so it only drops the trip time from fourteen to nine hours or so. Also, they only show a route from the east coast to Japan. If they wanted to fly from, say, LA to Down Under or Taipei, it’s not obvious to me where they’d stop for a refuel. Hawaii’s too far from Asia for their range, and Society Islands are too far from the US. It’s interesting, though, that they claim to have the same range at Mach 1.5 as as Mach 0.85. They really get killed in that transonic region, as expected.
A true supersonic bizjet (say, Mach 2.4, which is about as fast as you could go with aluminum), with adequate range to get across the Pacific, could do it in about five hours, which would be a huge revolution.
Still, there will be a market for this thing, I think, if their cost numbers are valid. They seem to be claiming that they’re comparable to a G550 on a per-mile basis (which also means on a passenger-mile basis for the eight-passenger configuration). I’d like to understand more about them, though. What are they calling “fixed” and “direct” costs?
While they drink a lot more Jet A than the Gulfstream, they claim to have lower fixed costs for supersonic flight. Is this because they spend less time to travel a mile, and get more miles per maintenance? That would explain why they have higher “fixed” costs and lower “direct” (mostly fuel, I assume) costs for the high subsonic mode.
I think they can make some money with this, but it’s not the real breakthrough we need.