Author: Robert Zimmerman

NASA Awards Next Set Of Commercial Crew Development Agreements

11:59 pm

NASA has awarded the next set of commercial crew development agreements, giving contracts worth from $22 to $92 million to four companies, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, and Boeing. More here and here.

The amounts that NASA is giving these companies is minuscule, compared the monies spent on the program-formerly-called-Constellation. Yet I bet they all get their rockets/capsules launched and in operation, supplying cargos and crews to low Earth orbit, before NASA even test fires its heavy-lift rocket.

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The real disaster in Japan

12:10 pm

Getting control of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima is going to be a challenging job, no doubt. Nonetheless, it remains a minor and comparatively trivial problem for Japan after the earthquake and tsunami destroyed the country’s northeastern coast, and it saddens me that so much of the American press and public seems unable to absorb this simple fact.

This footage of the tsunami hitting a small coastal town in Japan gives us a clear and unvarnished look of the real disaster there. Near the end you can see people fleeing for their lives, and throughout the video the voices of the watchers can only express horrified gasps at what they are seeing.

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China finds SpaceX’s launch prices challenging

7:08 pm

Competition! China finds SpaceX’s launch prices low — and a challenge to meet.

Declining to speak for attribution, the Chinese officials say they find the published prices on the SpaceX website very low for the services offered, and concede they could not match them with the Long March series of launch vehicles even if it were possible for them to launch satellites with U.S. components in them.

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No deal

12:48 am

No deal. Key quote:

If Democrats are not going to do even minor surgery on Medicare and Medicaid and Republicans are not going to raise taxes, there is no hope of big budget deal to cut a deficit now running at 11 percent of gross domestic product.

And that raises another question. How long can the Federal Reserve continue financing these deficits? China, choking on U.S. debt, is reportedly beginning to divest itself of U.S. bonds. Japan will need to sell U.S. bonds to get hard currency to repair the damage from the earthquake and tsunami. And the Fed is about to end its QE2 monthly purchases of $100 billion in U.S. bonds. Where is the Fed going to borrow the $125 billion a month to finance this year’s deficit of $1.65 trillion, and another of comparable size in 2012? Bill Gross’ Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund, has sold all his U.S. bonds and begun to short U.S. debt. Pimco is betting that the value of U.S. Treasury bonds will begin to fall.

We may be about to enter a maelstrom.

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Congress removes wolf from endangered list

11:16 pm

Congress removes the wolf from the endangered list. From Senator Jon Tester (D-Montana):

“Right now, Montana’s wolf population is out of balance and this provision will get us back on the responsible path with state management. Wolves have recovered in the Northern Rockies. By untying the hands of the Montana biologists who know how to keep the proper balance, we will restore healthy wildlife populations and we will protect livestock. This provision is best for our wildlife, our livestock and for wolves themselves.”

I don’t know if Tester’s description of the situation in Montana is accurate (though I tend to rely on local expertise in these matters). However, to get an opposing viewpoint the article above goes to the Center for Biological Diversity, an organization I do know something about. In caving matters relating to white nose syndrome, CBD has pushed extremist and outright ignorant policy positions (trying for example to have all caves and mines on all public lands closed in order to protect bats, even though there is literally no evidence that such an action made sense). I would not trust their opinions under any condition.

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