Almost a year after the loss of SpaceShipTwo, Doug Messier has some questions about their switch back to a rubber engine. The answers are unsatisfactory. And there’s this perennial bit:

Despite Richard Branson’s increasingly dire pronouncements (The Time for Climate Action is Now) about how rising global temperatures and sea levels threaten the planet (and his private island home), it looks as if Virgin Galactic will go back to using a carbon spewing rubber hybrid rocket engine to power SpaceShipTwo.

That’s the word from Virgin Galactic officials in Mojave, who say that the rubber/nitrous oxide engine they previously abandoned is now performing better than the supposedly superior nylon/nitrous oxide engine they abandoned it for in May 2014. It’s not entirely certain, but it looks that way.

Branson won’t lose any sleep over this further expansion of his carbon footprint. He never has. Anyone who can passionately advocate for the climate while flying around the world in a private jet, expanding his fuel-gulping airlines, launching three new massive cruise ships, and burning rubber in the upper atmosphere is clearly untroubled by irony or contradictions. Here’s a guy who urges billions in new public spending on climate change while living as a tax exile in the British Virgin Islands.

As Emerson said, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.