"Experts say" China taking the lead in the lunar race

I find this not even slightly surprising, but it's the feature space-related article at Ars Technica today: "After recent tests, China appears likely to beat the United States back to the Moon."  The article begins by talking about some headlines that the usually secretive Chinese space agency has talked about publicly.  

On August 6, the China Manned Space Agency successfully tested a high-fidelity mockup of its 26-ton "Lanyue" lunar lander. The test, conducted outside of Beijing, used giant tethers to simulate lunar gravity as the vehicle fired main engines and fine control thrusters to land on a cratered surface and take off from there.

"The test," said the agency in an official statement, "represents a key step in the development of China's manned lunar exploration program, and also marks the first time that China has carried out a test of extraterrestrial landing and takeoff capabilities of a manned spacecraft."

As part of the statement, the space agency reconfirmed that it plans to land its astronauts on the Moon "before" 2030.

Let's start with the idea that the issues the Artemis program to return to the moon is having are largely due to the monstrous waste of the Space Launch System.  The Artemis I mission that was the first full-scale test of the system - uncrewed, of course - was in November of '22.  The next mission, Artemis II, will be the first US mission since the end of the Apollo program to circle the moon.  After Artemis I they said it would launch in '24 - one to two years later, depending on exact dates.  As the end of '24 was approaching they said it would be late 2025.  Now that we're approaching the end of 2025, Artemis II is scheduled for 2026.  Will it make it in '26 or get bumped to '27?  It's hard to imagine they could be much faster than the switch to Artemis III after II, and the same four years as from '22 to '26 means the moon landing will be "in" 2030.  Not 'before' as the Chinese say.  All of these are SLS issues.

The next big problem is that it's not just SLS.  The Human Landing System, or HLS, is a version of SpaceX's Starship and the last year has been a big issue for SpaceX.  The other contractor and lunar lander is Blue Origin's Mark 2 lander.  Neither of these seems remotely close to being ready to fly.  Starship's Flight Test 10 is next Sunday evening, currently NET August 24 at 7:30 PM EDT (6:30 Local).  If their fixes to the system perform as simulation and testing have shown, and Starship gets back to where they expected to be back in January, that's the best possible outcome and that could even make path back to where they wanted to be shorter. 

China's Lanyue (which means embracing the moon) lander undergoes tests in early August. Credit: CCTV

Put together, the problem with Artemis is that the program is overly complex, and the reason for that is the "corporate culture" of NASA was not to just recreate Apollo but to create a program that was more likely to help enable long term settlement of the moon.  Just going back to the moon the same way we did over 50 years ago had too much of a "Been There, Done That" feel to it.  Which led to the overly complex look with the Lunar Gateway, Near Rectilinear Halo Orbits, trying to land and settle at the lunar south pole, and more.  

By comparison, China took a much lower risk approach - use a basic system like we used in the Apollo days, one step at a time, carefully.  Minimize risks.  

The down side to that is when China beats us to the moon, those details of "we built a system better for the long term than theirs" argument won't register with the rest of the world.  It will be the end of being regarded as Exceptional.  I'll close with a comment from Dean Cheng, one of the most respected analysts on China, space policy, and the geopolitical implications of the new space competition, published on Ars:

It means the end of American exceptionalism. One of the hallmarks of the post-1969 era was that only the United States had been able to land someone on the Moon (or any other celestial body). This was bound to end, but the constant American refrain of "We've put a man on the Moon, we can do anything" will certainly no longer resonate.

It means China can do "big" things, and the United States cannot. The US cannot even replicate projects it undertook 50 (or more) years ago. The optics of "the passing of the American age" would be evident—and that in turn would absolutely affect other nations' perceptions of who is winning/losing the broader technological and ideological competition between the US and the PRC.

Stop me if you've heard this before: NASA wants a cheaper SLS

What a surprise.  We've only been talking like this for years including reaching the uncomfortable conclusion that we're trapped with SLS and no way out.  The latest tweak to the idea is centered on the Exploration Upper Stage - which has still never been built and tested - and replacing it with something cheaper but "close enough" instead of the original Artemis mission plans. 

Not surprisingly, Congress is pushing back against the Trump administration's proposal to cancel the Space Launch System, the behemoth rocket NASA has developed to propel astronauts back to the Moon.

Spending bills making their way through both houses of Congress reject the White House's plan to wind down the SLS rocket after two more launches, but the text of a draft budget recently released by the House Appropriations Committee suggests an openness to making some major changes to the program.  

The current situation is that Artemis II is in pre-launch preparations, with the booster stacked and work proceeding.  Artemis II will be the first Americans to fly around the moon since the Apollo days.  Long talked about as flying late this year with some talk about September of '25, it's now looking more like '26.  Artemis III, the first Americans to land on the moon since Apollo, is looking to be '27 - and if you believe that, nothing in SLS or Artemis has stayed on its schedule given this far out. 

After Artemis III, the official policy of the Trump administration is to terminate the SLS program, along with the Orion crew capsule designed to launch on top of the rocket. The White House also proposed canceling NASA's Gateway, a mini-space station to be placed in orbit around the Moon. NASA would instead procure commercial launches and commercial spacecraft to ferry astronauts between the Earth and the Moon, while focusing the agency's long-term gaze toward Mars.

At the moment, both House and Senate budget proposals keep SLS, Orion, and the (IMO: totally worthless) Gateway.  Note that the House version has an interesting paragraph directing NASA to explore cheaper, faster options for a new SLS upper stage, currently intended to be the Exploration Upper Stage by Artemis IV, the second moon landing in '28.  As usual, the EUS is behind schedule 

The House version of NASA's fiscal year 2026 budget raises questions about the long-term future of the Exploration Upper Stage. In one section of the bill, House lawmakers would direct NASA to "evaluate alternatives to the current Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) design for SLS." The committee members wrote the evaluation should focus on reducing development and production costs, shortening the schedule, and maintaining the SLS rocket's lift capability.

"NASA should also evaluate how alternative designs could support the long-term evolution of SLS and broader exploration goals beyond low-Earth orbit," the lawmakers wrote. "NASA is directed to assess various propulsion systems, stage configurations, infrastructure compatibility, commercial and international collaboration opportunities, and the cost and schedule impacts of each alternative."

Ars Technica's Eric Berger wrote last year about the possibility of flying the Centaur V upper stage on SLS missions.  The first problem is that using the Centaur V wouldn't maintain the SLS rocket's lift capability: the EUS is more powerful.  The second stage of Blue Origin's New Glenn could conceivably fly on the SLS, but Blue's stage would be a more challenging match for SLS for several reasons, but primarily its 7-meter (23-foot) diameter, which is too wide to be a drop-in replacement for the planned EUS.  ULA's Centaur V is much closer in size to the existing upper stage.  Interstage adapters to bigger or smaller stages are pretty common features across the industry, so it doesn't seem like an impossible dream to call one out here.  

In the big picture sense, there's too much going on here to assume a design change will be decided and added to schedule for a while.  It's my understanding the house and Senate are closing for August - or parts of it, if not the whole month.  It seems safe to say this isn't going to be resolved any time soon.

Artist's illustration of the Boeing-developed Exploration Upper Stage, with four hydrogen-fueled RL10 engines. Credit: NASA

SpaceX wins OK to extract LOX and LN2 at Starbase

Thanks to a lead from Ars Technica's Rocket Report this week, we learn that SpaceX has won approval to build a plant to extract and liquefy both Oxygen and Nitrogen from air.  

Cameron County has given SpaceX the green light to build an air separator facility, which will be located less than 300 feet from the region’s sand dunes, frustrating locals concerned about the impact on vegetation and wildlife.

The commissioners voted, 3-1, to give Elon Musk’s rocket company a beachfront construction certificate and dune protection permit, allowing the company to build a modern-day factory akin to an oil refinery to produce gases needed for space flight launches.

The plant will consist of 20 structures on 1.66 acres. The enclosed site will include a tower that will reach 159 feet, or about 15 stories high, much shorter than the nearby launch tower, which stretches 480 feet high. It is set to be built about 280 feet inland from the line of vegetation, which is where the dunes begin. The factory will separate air into nitrogen and oxygen. SpaceX utilizes liquid oxygen as a propellant and liquid nitrogen for testing and operations.

Saying the facility is "akin to an oil refinery" is a rather wrong picture as I understand the process.  It's an air compressor that compresses air sucked into a cylinder which is then cooled to remove the heat added in compressing the gasses, causing the air to liquefy.  The resultant liquid air is separated into O₂ and N₂ by controlling the temperature carefully around the boiling points, letting one boil off as the other remains liquid.  

If you've watched operations around Starship test flights you might have a feel for how much LOX and LN₂ they need for launches; I thought I had a feel for it but I was surprised.  SpaceX says they need more than 200 trucks of liquid nitrogen and oxygen delivered for each launch.  I know I've seen several trucks at a time going through the side gates into the area around the launch mount but saying 200 trucks worth surprised me.  Think of the fuel that gets consumed just getting those trucks to SpaceX's area on the island from where the current provider liquefies the gasses. 

With their application, SpaceX submitted a plan to mitigate expected negative effects on 865 square feet of dune vegetation and 20 cubic yards of dunes, as well as compensate for expected permanent impacts to 7,735 square feet of dune vegetation and 465 cubic yards of dunes. While the project will be built on property owned by SpaceX, the county holds the authority to manage the construction that affects Boca Chica's dunes. 

Of course, the liquid oxygen is used as the oxidizer in SpaceX's methane/oxygen (methalox) system - both Starship and Super Heavy.  They also use liquid nitrogen in many places around the operation; testing and other operations. 

April 5th, 2024 Super Heavy static firing.  LOX and Methane burning, with LN₂ in many places.  Image credit: SpaceX

Trump appoints Secretary of Transportation to run NASA

I'm surprised at this news, time tagged Wednesday, July 9 at 9:32 PM.  Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has been installed as the temporary, new administrator of NASA.  Secretary Duffy, a cabinet-level position, currently (without NASA) oversees 55,000 employees across 13 agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration.

"Sean is doing a TREMENDOUS job in handling our Country's Transportation Affairs, including creating a state-of-the-art Air Traffic Control systems, while at the same time rebuilding our roads and bridges, making them efficient, and beautiful, again," Trump wrote on his social media network Wednesday evening. "He will be a fantastic leader of the ever more important Space Agency, even if only for a short period of time."

In response to this post, Duffy wrote on X, "Honored to accept this mission. Time to take over space. Let’s launch."

The idea of the head of NASA being the secretary of transportation is a little odd, especially if, like me, you think NASA should get out of the transportation or "getting there" side of their business - how to get there when "there" is beyond the surface of our planet.  On the other hand, his experience in the air transportation regulatory world might help guide NASA to concentrating on the mission once they're at their destination and not on renting rockets.  Given that "getting there safely" is critical for a mission like going to Mars, it still pales in comparison to all the other planning required. 

Although he does not have a space background, Duffy has shown an interest in spaceflight since becoming FAA administrator. He watched from NASA Headquarters the Crew 9 mission's splashdown on March 18, which brought Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth after a prolonged stay in space. He also had expressed an interest in attending the forthcoming Crew 11 launch at the end of this month.

Officials at NASA were caught unaware by the announcement on Wednesday evening. They had been expecting the existing acting administrator, Janet Petro, to remain in place at least through the end of the year while a new nominee was put forth to lead NASA and confirmed by Congress.

Eric Berger at Ars Technica quotes his sources as saying Petro wasn't highly regarded in the Trump administration.  Another way of saying that is that she did nothing to be removed from her position.  It simply seems that Trump wanted someone he liked and trusted running NASA. This is probably a benefit for the agency, as it will give NASA a direct line to the president.  He and Trump are thought to have each other's phone numbers and can text each other 24/7.

Sean Duffy, US secretary of transportation, during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, July 8, 2025. Credit: Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images

As always, speculating to any depth on every imaginable subject is going to be rampant for a while.  He's going to rubber stamp Trump's budget cuts versus he's going to back someone else's ideas for NASA's budget.  As with all of other appointees, we can message our senators and representatives to approve or disapprove of Sean Duffy or for whatever level of NASA's spending you think is proper. 

Trump Cancels Jared Isaacman's Nomination

Thanks to a Comment from jeff d to yesterday's post about Blue Origin's CEO I learned that the White House has pulled the nomination of Jared Isaacman to be NASA Administrator.  

There's no real answer to the question of why this was done, but it's not hard to have come to the conclusion that something wasn't going right in the process they're going through to get him appointed.  It's June already (UTC) as I write and people like Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, and a list as long as my arm went through similar processes and were approved months ago.  An easy example is Isaacman's passing a senate committee vote on April 30; he won 19-9 with the "nay" votes coming from Democratic senators.  They seemed to view attacking Isaacman as attacking Musk and Trump. 

Something was clearly interfering with the process and a website called Semafor.com broke the story that Eric Berger summed up in the second link up above.  They quote what White House spokesperson Liz Huston (whom I've never heard of but that isn't saying much - maybe she works weekends) released in their statement was:

“The Administrator of NASA will help lead humanity into space and execute President Trump’s bold mission of planting the American flag on the planet Mars. It’s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda and a replacement will be announced directly by President Trump soon.” 

Berger interpreted that to mean he wasn't in close enough agreement with Trump's political agenda, but the more I read, the more it sounds like the issue was they believed that the nomination was going to be stuck in the senate because of the hate that has been directed against Elon Musk.  To quote Eric Berger at Ars Technica:

Musk was a key factor behind Isaacman's nomination as NASA administrator, and with his backing, Isaacman was able to skip some of the party purity tests that have been applied to other Trump administration nominees. One mark against Isaacman is that he had recently donated money to Democrats. He also indicated opposition to some of the White House's proposed cuts to NASA's science budget.

Musk's role in the DOGE effort was strangely controversial, attracting enemies from both opponents of Trump's MAGA agenda as well as from inside the administration.  One would have had to have slept through the 130 days Musk was a "Special Government Employee" and running DOGE to not have noticed the relentless attacks on Tesla factories, dealerships, and randomly encountered Tesla drivers.  There were also stories about threats against other things Musk runs. 

That quote from White House spokesperson Huston says that Trump will announce a replacement for Isaacman soon.  There's "wailing and gnashing of teeth" from supporters as Berger continued:

Isaacman is generally well-liked in the space community and is known to care deeply about space exploration. Officials within the space agency—and the larger space community—hoped that having him as NASA's leader would help the agency restore some of these cuts.

Now? "NASA is f---ed," one current leader in the agency told Ars on Saturday.

"NASA's budget request is just a going-out-of-business mode without Jared there to innovate," a former senior NASA leader said.

Further, Berger quotes "other sources" who provide a name for the likely replacement, a former US Air Force Lieutenant General Steven L. Kwast  but then criticizes General Kwast as only coming from the Military side and being far more focused on seeing space as a battlefield than on seeing cooperation and peaceful exploration.

NASA looks at reducing the ISS operating expenses

With the release of NASA's first 2026 "skinny budget" last week, one of the glaringly obvious things was that, like every agency of the Federal Government, they were going to face a budget cut rather than staying the same or even still growing but growing slower.  The relevant "money quote" from there was this:

The tradeoff of more money for the moon and Mars is less money for the ISS, but the budget still commits to flying it until 2030. "The Budget reduces the space station’s crew size and onboard research," the document states. "Crew and cargo flights to the station would be significantly reduced. The station’s reduced research capacity would be focused on efforts critical to the Moon and Mars exploration programs."  

More details on what, when, and all those details made headlines today in an Ars Technica overview titled, "NASA scrambles to cut ISS activity due to budget issues."    

• Reducing the size of the crew complement of Crew Dragon missions from four to three, starting with Crew-12 in February 2026
• Extending the duration of space station missions from six to eight months

These sound like minor adjustments.  A reduction in crew assigned to a mission on the ISS of 25% in itself probably doesn't save 25% of NASA's operating expenses, because those astronauts will remain at NASA - unless they're not telling us there will be a RIF (Reduction In Force) in the astronaut corps.  

Extending crew missions from six to eight months will save some money in launch costs, but while I don't believe that's a big cost contributor, going from half year missions to two thirds of a year means going from four crewed launches to three launches in two years, which is absolutely going to cut the number of launches before the ISS gets de-orbited.  In the big picture sense, yes, it seems that less work will be accomplished on the ISS.

"The Budget reduces the space station’s crew size and onboard research, preparing for a safe decommissioning of the station by 2030 and replacement by commercial space stations," stated the budget request for fiscal year 2026. "Crew and cargo flights to the station would be significantly reduced. The station’s reduced research capacity would be focused on efforts critical to the Moon and Mars exploration programs."

The president's budget proposal document linked in that paragraph estimates this would save $508 million from a budget of about $3 billion annually to support the ISS - roughly a 17% cut.  

Coincidentally (hah!) this matches plans Roscosmos has for its Soyuz launches to the ISS.  Beginning with the Soyuz MS-27 mission launched last month, Russia has extended the duration of flights to eight months.

It needs to be said that this is probably less final than such budget ideas usually are this early in the process.  Add to the usual uncertainties that NASA doesn't have an administrator yet, so this is all preliminary and may unfold differently.  

The decision to fly fewer than a full complement of astronauts is not consistent, for example, with the goals of the Trump White House nominee to lead NASA, Jared Isaacman.

He spoke in favor of "maximizing" science on the space station during his confirmation hearing last month. In subsequent answers to written questions, Isaacman reaffirmed this position.

"My priority would be to maximize the remaining value of the ISS before it is decommissioned," Isaacman wrote. "We must prioritize the highest-potential science and research that can be conducted on the station—and do everything possible to 'crack the code' on an on orbit economy."

NASA Astronauts (from left) Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain work together at the International Space Station’s Port-4 truss structure to install a modification kit readying the orbital outpost for a future rollout solar array.  Photo taken May 1, 2025.   Image credit: NASA

NASA's Associate Adminstrator Has Retired

In a statement late in the day on Wednesday, Feb. 19, NASA reported that associate administrator Jim Free was retiring effective yesterday, Feb. 22.  Free had been associate administrator, the top civil-service position in the agency, since the retirement of Bob Cabana at the end of 2023.  

Free was previously associate administrator for exploration systems development, a position NASA created in 2021 when it split the former Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate into two directorates, one overseeing exploration programs and the other the International Space Station and related operations. Earlier in his 30-year NASA career, he was director of the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

I know that I've mentioned Jim Free by name here in the blog many times, and while I don't claim any sort of insider knowledge of life inside NASA, I think the first mention that I remember by name was June 16, 2023 when I reported that he was arguing NASA should drop fixed price contracts and use only cost-plus.  It's simply hard to sum up how much I differ from Free on that.  His argument is that if a fixed cost contract doesn't deliver on time, the buyers are stuck; the problem is he completely ignores that big, cost-plus contracts (think SLS) are also late and you pay more for them to be delivered late. There's simply no evidence that cost-plus contracts deliver better results sooner.

Primarily based on his position, when Bill Nelson and Pam Melroy stepped down as NASA administrator and deputy administrator at the end of Biden's administration, Free was expected to take the top spot.  In fact, SpaceNews reports that on inauguration day, NASA's website listed Free as acting administrator.

However, several hours later the White House announced it had selected Janet Petro, director of the Kennedy Space Center, as acting administrator. The decision reportedly even took top agency officials by surprise.

There has been puzzlement over appointing Janet Petro so it's worth pointing out that back before the election, Free had voiced concern that a new administration might drop the priority on Artemis, saying, “We need that consistency in purpose. That has not happened since Apollo.  If we lose that, I believe we will fall apart and we will wander, and other people in this world will pass us by.”  Contrast that view of Artemis, which necessarily includes SLS, with the talk of going to Mars instead of the moon (and rather than both).  If you're a fan of SLS with its absurd cost overruns and schedule slips, it seems out of line with the current administration. 

NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free at an agency "all hands" event in December 2024. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

FAA Just Gave SpaceX a Big One

The day after SpaceX launched Flight Test 6, they received a long awaited approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. 

In a draft version of what is known as an "Environmental Assessment," the FAA indicated that it will grant SpaceX permission to increase the number of Starship launches in South Texas to 25 per year from the current limit of five. Additionally, the company will likely be allowed to continue increasing the size and power of the Super Heavy booster stage and Starship upper stage.

"FAA has concluded that the modification of SpaceX’s existing vehicle operator license for Starship/Super Heavy operations conforms to the prior environmental documentation, consistent with the data contained in the 2022 PEA, that there are no significant environmental changes, and all pertinent conditions and requirements of the prior approval have been met or will be met in the current action," the federal agency stated in its conclusion.

This isn't final. As always, the FAA is required to open this up for public comment, a period which will end on January 17th, eight weeks from now.  In addition to that, the agency will hold five public meetings to solicit feedback from the local community and other stakeholders to get input on expected impacts of the increased launch cadence. 

And there will be significant impacts. For example, the number of large trucks that deliver water, liquid oxygen, methane, and other commodities will increase substantially. According to the FAA document, the vehicle presence will grow from an estimated 6,000 trucks a year to 23,771 trucks annually. This number could be reduced by running a water line along State Highway 4 to supply the launch site's water deluge system.

SpaceX has reduced the duration of closures of State Road 4 through the area by 85%, by moving launch preparations that could be moved to the "Massey's Test Site," a former gun range they added in 2023. SpaceX is now expected to need less than 20 hours of access restrictions per launch campaign, including landings.  

Contrast the approval for 25 launches per year, pretty much one every other week, with Gwynne Shotwell's statement that she expects them to do 400 Starship launches in the next four years and you see the pretty obvious problem. Doing 25 in the first year turns the next three years to 375 launches and so on. At some point, there are too many launches at the end of the four years to be realistic. SpaceX has a pad on the Kennedy Space Center that has never actually held a vehicle or done any of the things they need the ground infrastructure to do; it's part of Launch complex 39. Plus, there has been talk about building a second launch pad on the KSC to handle Starship launches, Launch Complex 49 (last story of three), but there's talk about the impact of so many launches on the KSC, too. 

All that aside, notice that in the first paragraph quoted above the FAA said, "the company will likely be allowed to continue increasing the size and power of the Super Heavy booster stage and Starship upper stage." 

... SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said the company intends to move to a larger and more powerful version of the Starship and Super Heavy rocket about a year from now. This version, dubbed Starship 3, would double the thrust of the upper stage and increase the thrust of the booster stage from about 74 meganewtons to about 100 meganewtons. If that number seems a little abstract, another way to think about it is that Starship would have a thrust at liftoff three times as powerful as NASA's Saturn V rocket that launched humans to the Moon decades ago. The draft environmental assessment permits this as well.
...
For the time being, SpaceX will still need to receive a launch license from the FAA for individual flights and landings.

Will this quiet the groups trying to kick SpaceX off of South Padre Island, and restore it to being the pretty, unspoiled place they want it to be (but probably never was)? I seriously doubt it. I expect them to hit back with more and even less likely arguments. 

Integrated Flight Test 6, seconds after launch. Image credit: SpaceX

Now imagine looking at this and saying, "400 feet tall and twice the thrust of the Saturn V? I remember when Starships were that small."

Speculative, But Worth A Read

One of those things floating around the intertubes since Trump's landslide victory and the many other "red team" triumphs a week ago, is "where does Elon Musk end up?"  To me, it's only natural to ask that. After all, when Musk partnered up with Trump late in the campaign, it generated a lot of interest in his campaign. Many people have expressed the idea that the late additions to the campaign, specifically Musk, RFK Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard, were largely responsible for swinging a lot of votes to decide on Trump.  Bobby Kennedy is already going after targets in the federal health industry, but he's the only one we really know about. I've seen nothing about Tulsi and nothing official on Musk. 

One of my favorite sources for space-related stories is Eric Berger at Ars Technica. Berger is actually a meteorologist but switched to reporting on space years ago.  An old-style reporter, he has developed a relationship with lots of sources in different companies. Because of this, it seemed natural to see his story, "Space policy is about to get pretty wild, y’all," published last Friday (Nov. 8). 

It's a bit long and more than a little bit speculative but because of his good sources, it's worth reading. His sources and experience are the good points. Some of his views strike me as listening to "Trump is Hitler!! or "the Russians control him!!" too much are the weak points. As usual in cases where I say little besides "go read the whole thing," I'll just put up a few quotes to hopefully build some interest. 

The issue, of course, is that Musk can't remain associated with SpaceX and take a job like Bill Nelson's as NASA Administrator. Conflict of interest. 

It will be a hugely weird dynamic. Musk is unquestionably in a position for self-dealing. Normally, such conflicts of interest would be frowned on within a government, but Trump has already shown a brazen disregard for norms, and there's no reason to believe that will change during his second go at the presidency. One way around this could be to give Musk a "special adviser" tag, which means he would not have to comply with federal conflict-of-interest laws.
...
Let's start with NASA and firmly establish what we mean. The US space agency does some pretty great things, but it's also a bloated bureaucracy. That's by design. Members of Congress write budgets and inevitably seek to steer more federal dollars to NASA activities in the areas they represent. Two decades ago, an engineer named Mike Griffin—someone Musk sought to hire as SpaceX's first chief engineer in 2002—became NASA administrator under President George W. Bush.
...
Notably, Musk despises NASA's Space Launch System rocket, a central element of Artemis. He sees the rocket as the epitome of government bloat. And it's not hard to understand why. The Space Launch System is completely expendable and costs about 10 to 100 times as much to launch as his own massive Starship rocket. 

Us, too, Elon. Many of us. Very likely everyone not drawing a real paycheck from SLS think it's a horrific waste of money.

Another problem with cutting the size of NASA is cutting some of the 10 or 12 NASA centers around the country. As Berger said, that bloat is deliberate. What he didn't say specifically is that it's borne of congress critters saying "I'll vote for your center if you vote for mine" and that's common throughout the Department of Defense and other government agency spending.

As I write this, it might have just become a moot point. As of moments ago tonight, Trump has announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will be running the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). That has been all but promised for a while, now. 

President Donald Trump steps on the stage at Kennedy Space Center after the successful launch of the Demo-2 crew mission in May 2020. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Don't Count on Next Year's Artemis II Flight

Eric Berger at Ars Technica has gone through some Fed.gov General Accountability Office reports on preparations for next September's Artemis II launch, the first mission back to the moon since the end of the Apollo programs, and says they have pretty much used every bit of schedule slack they had reserved. His conclusion was, "It’s increasingly unlikely that humans will fly around the Moon next year."  

A new report from the US Government Accountability Office found that NASA's Exploration Ground Systems program—this is, essentially, the office at Kennedy Space Center in Florida responsible for building ground infrastructure to support the Space Launch System rocket and Orion—is in danger of missing its schedule for Artemis II.
...
The new report, published Thursday, finds that the Exploration Ground Systems program had several months of schedule margin in its work toward a September 2025 launch date at the beginning of the year. But now, the program has allocated all of that margin to technical issues experienced during work on the rocket's mobile launcher and pad testing.

NASA has been reasonably cautious in following the step-by-step approach Apollo used in going with the unmanned Artemis I and then the lunar fly-by of this mission next September ('25) followed by the Artemis III lunar landing mission in September '26.  The Apollo program had more hardware and concepts to test, and did so after the Apollo I disaster before landing with Apollo XI. There were many more test missions than in the Artemis program. Still, Artemis I was almost two years ago (November of '22) and NASA still hasn't reached a decision on what seems to be the most critical thing: the Orion capsule's heat shield issues. 

The report continues:

"Earlier in 2024, the program was reserving that time for technical issues that may arise during testing of the integrated SLS and Orion vehicle or if weather interferes with planned activities, among other things," the report states. "Officials said it is likely that issues will arise because this is the first time testing many of these systems. Given the lack of margin, if further issues arise during testing or integration, there will likely be delays to the September 2025 Artemis II launch date."

Weather?  Like the Hurricane of the Month Club?    

This kind of boggles the mind. Yes, the ground systems program has had to complete some important work since the Artemis I mission in late 2022, including building an emergency egress system for astronauts in the event of a problem during the launch countdown. But by September of next year, the agency will have had the better part of three years to work on those and other accommodations. At this point, there is no longer any margin in the schedule.

Artemis I mission during one of its trips to the pad that didn't result in flying, August 2022.   NASA Photo.

Eric Berger's conclusion:

To prepare for the Artemis II launch next September, Artemis officials had previously said they planned to begin stacking operations of the rocket in September of this year. But so far, this activity remains on hold pending a decision on the heat shield issue. Asked when NASA now plans to start stacking operations, the space agency official said, "We are still tracking toward stacking beginning this fall."

The bottom line is that NASA is facing schedule challenges on multiple fronts for the Artemis II mission. Although a launch delay is unlikely to be announced soon, we can be fairly confident that it is eventually coming.

I saw a story today that Michael Bloomberg, the founder of Bloomberg News and a former US Presidential candidate, called for cancelling the SLS program. The only thing I'm sure cancelling the SLS would do is guarantee that the next boots on the moon will have launched from China, and that may happen regardless of what we do about the outrageously bad SLS program. China says they plan to land a crew on the moon in 2030, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did it sooner.

Artemis/SLS Late and Over Budget Again?

From the department of repetition department.  

The new Mobile Launcher Project, ML-2, for Artemis program has just been reviewed by the Office of the Inspector General at NASA. Let's just say they found nothing unusual; it's all costing far more than bid and being set for delivery far later than the contract first required. 

The OIG report highlights significant cost overruns and delays. Initially projected to cost $383 million with delivery by March 2023, the project's cost has now run to an estimated $1.8 billion. The OIG believes the final cost could yet grow to $2.7 billion — more than six times the initial cost estimate — by the time contractor Bechtel delivers ML-2. Delivery is now expected in September 2027.

Bechtel was awarded the cost-plus contract in 2019. The company has struggled with technical challenges, including issues with steel fabrication and weight management of the giant ground support structure, according to the report.

Mobile Launcher 2 is required to haul the upgraded, larger and heavier SLS Block 1B rocket to the pad, starting with NASA's Artemis 4 mission. The structure includes a base platform and a tower with various systems for fueling, power and crew access.

This isn't exactly a new problem, although it's a new Mobile Launcher. The same things happened with the ML-1 project. I posted my first report on that back in March of 2020. My first post on the ML-2 was a little over two years later in June of 2022. At that time, it was projected that original contract award of $383 million would grow to $960 million. Now, a little over two years later, we see the cost is almost double that growth estimate of $960 million - it's $1.8 billion - and expected to grow to $2.7  billion by delivery. Which is 4-1/2 years later than the contract.

The ML-1 is being left alone for the remaining Block 1 SLS missions and Block 1B is what we're talking about here. This image shows the differences between the two.  

Image from NASA Office of the Inspector General in the 2022 piece here. Image credit: NASA OIG

The changes were required just to add the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) to the SLS stack. The development of the EUS isn't done, either.

If anything is going to kill NASA, it's things like this. 

EDIT 8/30/24 1115 AM ET to Add: Ars Technica's Rocket Report this week adds this Fun Fact on the price of the ML-2: (the $2.7 billion) cost is nearly twice the funding it took to build the largest structure in the world, the Burj Khalifa, which is seven times taller. 

It might not be a totally fair comparison since the Burj Khalifa doesn't need to handle tons of cryogenic fuels  or stand up to millions of pounds of thrust in fire, but it has to do things the ML-2 doesn't.

FAA Ends Public Comment on Starship Expansion on Cape

As part of approval for SpaceX adding a second Starship launch complex on the Kennedy Space Center, the FAA has been soliciting comments from everyone. The results are to be considered in preparing the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Payload Space carries the story.  

Frankly, the comments surprised me because I've never met people who feel this way. It seems those who commented think the average two launches in a week of a Falcon 9 are too loud and too much to bear. They're afraid of destruction from the sounds and are worried the much bigger Starship/SuperHeavy will be far worse.

“Every time that there is a Falcon 9 launch, depending on where the wind is coming from, you can hear a fairly potent rattling of windows,” said Pablo Deleon, a resident of Cape Canaveral.

As they see it, the noise complaints can’t be solved with earplugs and quiet hours. Many commenters voiced concerns about infrastructural damage that could come with the added launch frequency.

“We need to come up with a mitigation plan to where we don’t destroy our beloved structures in the area in the name of progress in space exploration,” said Brad Whitmore, a resident of Cocoa Village, 20 miles from the launch site.

The first comment about fairly potent window rattling is something I view as a feature, not a bug, but I'm also around 30 to 35 miles from the launch pads and we enjoy the launch rumble. It figures to be louder as you get closer to the pad. We have noticed that when the weather conditions and trajectory are just right for a "really good" rumble, our patio doors will shake enough to rattle. Mrs. Graybeard put a toothpick between them and silenced it.

At least one other commenter said that the EIS the FAA approved for Boca Chica was bad and doesn't want to see anything like that here. 

“In Boca Chica, the FAA has taken the position that deluge waste water from Starship craft is indistinguishable from stormwater… and this is in direct contradiction of the Clean Water Act,” said Eric Roesch, a frequent watcher of federal approvals in the oil and gas industry.

Let's see: SuperHeavy burns methane with oxygen - both are liquidized for better handling - and it's about as simple a chemical equation to balance as you'll ever find.

CH₄ + 2 O₂ → CO₂ + 2 H₂O

Methane and oxygen burn to produce carbon dioxide (plant food) and water (also good for plants). What else is in the waste water? Maybe bits of dirt that were under the launch pad? Maybe flakes of paint? That should be all there is, so what's in there that's so much worse than stormwater runoff that I'm missing?

A particularly pretty photo of an evening Falcon 9 launch, January 2023. Image credit: Trevor Mahlmann

The few quotes acknowledged, my perspective is entirely different. There's a handful of places in the world where you can watch rockets launch from your yard. I've been blessed enough to watch a couple of launches from the Cape itself with the required pass to get there. After the first minute, it doesn't look extremely different than from my yard. Of all the places in the world where you can watch them, we're the only place with a launch rate well over 100 in a year. China might be close, but they drop boosters on populated areas and we don't. 

The Cape has been America's primary launch facility since the start of the space program, and the creation of NASA. I moved here in the early years of the space shuttle program and every place I worked, people would go outside to watch a shuttle launch, spending a few minutes watching until the SRBs were dropped instead of taking a regular break time. 

I consider it practically a privilege to live here. They seem to consider it an annoyance.

FAA Completes Review of SpaceX Investigation

As our friends over at Gun Free Zone like to say, BLUF - for Bottom Line Up Front.

The FAA completed their review of the report SpaceX submitted and closed the investigation.  That does NOT mean they are cleared now or will be cleared to fly any time soon. 

That said, completing the investigation is certainly a big step to the second launch.  

"The closure of the mishap investigation does not signal an immediate resumption of Starship launches at Boca Chica," they said in today's statement. "SpaceX must implement all corrective actions that impact public safety and apply for and receive a license modification from the FAA that addresses all safety, environmental and other applicable regulatory requirements prior to the next Starship launch."
...
"Corrective actions include redesigns of vehicle hardware to prevent leaks and fires, redesign of the launch pad to increase its robustness, incorporation of additional reviews in the design process, additional analysis and testing of safety critical systems and components including the Autonomous Flight Safety System, and the application of additional change control practices," FAA officials wrote in today's statement.

The language completely ignores an important point here.  The report being investigated by the FAA was written by SpaceX.  That means that at a minimum they know a very high proportion of what the Feds say need to be changed, and they quite possibly know all of the things the FAA would say need to be addressed.  And a few years of observing how SpaceX works says if they know something needs to be fixed, they're not going to wait around for someone to tell them that.  They're just going to go fix it.  SpaceX issued a statement on X today essentially saying that. 

The site linked to in this post from X is this SpaceX site, the entry dated September 8, 2023.

Elon Musk has previously said the company has made "thousands of upgrades" to Starship, the launch pad and Starbase's huge launch tower.  Someone now has the task of going through what the FAA wants and seeing if it has been done.  Probably an engineering group; if not for the whole task, than to clear up some number of things the FAA said to do that won't be exactly the way SpaceX documentation is worded.

SpaceX image of the "rocket garden" at Boca Chica.  Just because it's a neat picture.  Four Starships and three Super Heavies.  

 

And What Were We Saying Yesterday?

A headline today at PJ Media, Ohio Town Rolls Out Red Carpet for Homeless. Is Shocked When Stream of Homeless Show Up.

They just wanted to do the right thing. The small town of Middletown, Ohio, a town of 49,000 people, has opened all manner of homeless services. There is everything from soup kitchens and shelters that allow you to be high and drunk to rehab facilities to sober up.

And that's the problem. You can come to Middletown to stay drunk and high and get three hots and a cot without having to do much.

It turns out that since their initiatives were put in place, the homeless are swamping the town and residents are shocked - shocked I say! - to find that many aren't even from their town!

Seriously, they're that naive.

Middletown is learning the lesson that when they incentivize something, they get more of it.  Some of it is voluntary migration of the homeless, but some of the homeless they've added have been dumped by other cities.  It's not just New York City that gives homeless a one-way bus ticket to somewhere out of town (it's reported that NYFC spends more than half a million bucks on tickets every year), it's a widespread practice.

Listen, Middletown, I'll let you in on the secret.  It's not a new secret; it's been known for millennia.  Benjamin Franklin, put it this way:

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”  

The author of that PJ Media piece is Victoria Taft, who is also a radio and TV personality with talk radio show in California and TV appearances on One America News Network, OANN.  She has some interesting anecdotes from covering the California homeless situation, but concludes with the bottom line:

Helping the homeless requires a delicate balance. This is a fragile population of people. But there's one thing you can bet on: if there's free stuff and if it's easy to get, they will come.

I wonder how long until Middleton needs the street cleaning treatments for human waste, like this one in Seattle?  (Getty Images, Yuri Kadobnov) 

How Can You Tell When A Politician is Lying?

You know that old joke: his lips are moving.  And what do you get when you create a giant group of politicians "working" together?  A government.  As surely as deductive logic follows, how do you know when a government is lying? ...

Earlier this week, it was leaked that congress is looking at new ways to calculate inflation.  You can bet the goal will be to minimize the inflation reported. 

If adopted across the government, the inflation measure would have widespread ramifications. Future increases in veterans’ benefits and pensions for federal workers and military personnel would be smaller. Over time, fewer people would qualify for Medicaid, Head Start, food stamps, school lunch programs and home heating assistance.

Taxes would go up by $60 billion over the next decade because annual adjustments to the tax brackets would be smaller, resulting in more people jumping into higher tax brackets. Annual increases in the standard deduction and personal exemptions would become smaller.

I have reported before, as have thousands of others, that the Bureau Of Labor Statistics does not calculate inflation as it did until the 1980s.  The best known example is that the CPI core inflation does not include food and energy expenses - the most important numbers to the consumer (what's more important than feeding your kids and keeping your lights on?);  a lesser known fact is that their method relies on something called Hedonics, which discounts the cost you pay based on the perceived "pleasure" you get out of it.  In the case of your electronics, as the often cited example goes, you may pay a little more that computer you just bought, but it's twice as fast as its predecessor, so you really saved money on it.  In March of this year, the President of the New York Federal Reserve almost got himself made into soup for telling an audience just that. 

John Williams at Shadowstats.com make a nice living keeping track of what the government says and running a bullshit to English translator on it. For example, the current reported inflation rate is less than 4%, while the actual number is more like 11%!

The new method being proposed is called the Chained Consumer Price Index.  Proponents argue that it more closely shows the effects of inflation on individuals; for example, if beef goes up in price while chicken doesn't, people will "eat mor chikin".  They neglect to tell us what happens in the current situation - where the price of everything goes up.

We read last week to expect peanut butter prices to go up by as much as 40% in a few weeks.  That's extreme, but Business Insider is reporting inflation of around 9% this year, on their shopping basket average.

It's not just the cost of living they want to distort.  The government proposes a new measure of poverty  which, economists argue, is a better measure of income inequality than poverty.  There's a distinction there: if you live next door to Bill Gates, you might well be a millionaire and not poor in anyone's eyes, but you have less income than Bill. 

... the new tool measures income inequality not purchasing power. Or, as Rector put it, “The old measure told us how much one household can purchase; the new measure tells us how much one person can buy relative to others.” [emphasis in original]

That’s convenient for a government that wants to pursue a redistributive agenda. Call those who are less well off “poor” and people will be far more supportive of programs to aid them. In general, folks agree that poverty is a problem. But, the prevalence of Occupy Wall Street protesters aside, not everyone assumes income inequality is. If everyone in the U.S. was a millionaire or billionaire, income disparity would still exist — but poverty wouldn’t.  [emphasis added]

What is, perhaps, saddest about these figures is that it obscures the picture of true poverty — both in the U.S. and in the world. Like so much of this administration’s rhetoric, it encourages class envy and tends to inspire dissatisfaction with what actually amounts to a pretty decent standard of living among some who qualify as “poor” by the government’s measures.  [emphasis added]

In summary, it appears our government's response to inflation is to: (1) distort the numbers that show how bad it is, which will cut COLA increases to seniors on social security and military veterans, and (2) try to create enough envy to engender class hatred and perhaps feed the OWS attempt at open source civil war. 

at tip to Bayou Renaissance Man for the ideas leading to this.

The Corruption is Stunning - Part III

(parts I and II)  I don't go a week without being stunned by government corruption.  The DOJ and the Gunwalker/Fast and Furious mess in one big example, "Holder Lied, People Died", and it's good to hear the pressure for a special prosecutor is building.  But there's something going on all the time: what about pressuring General Shelton to lie about Lightsquared?  What bout the FCC defying congress and the courts and implementing their net neutrality plans? 

By contrast, this little story from Kerodin at III Percent Patriots is minor: no one got killed, less than half a million dollars was wasted.  Judicial Watch filed Freedom of Information Act papers to determine how much was spent for Mrs. Obama's trip to South Africa this past June - $424,142.  The released information contains nuggets like this:

The passenger manifests confirm the presence of Obama’s daughter’s, Malia and Sasha on the trip. The two girls are listed as “Senior Staff.” The manifests also list Mrs. Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, and niece and nephew, Leslie and Avery Robinson, as well Mrs. Obama’s makeup and hairstylist (Carl Ray and Johnny Wright).

I never begrudge a vacation, but isn't this like the fourth one this year?  What about all those Martha's Vineyard trips?  Exactly what does the First Lady do that warrants such a trip?  It's perfectly in character with an administration that opened with the militantly-environmentalist president setting the mid-winter temperature of the White House up to 80.  Austerity is for us, not them. 

A good mark of thoroughly dishonest person is that they lie and cheat when they don't really need to.  How much would it have cost to pay for the kids and mother to go out of pocket?  A couple of k-bucks to a family of millionaires?  

A Fan of Keynesians and Democrats Replies

I'm not sure how apparent this is to readers, but comments to posts older than 14 days require my approval.  This is to help me know comments have been posted, because I don't typically look at posts older than a few days.  Regardless of the approval, I don't censor and have only deleted two comments in the history of this blog; both were obvious spam.

I received a long set of comments to an old post (June 18, "Why A Depression is Inevitable, and Economic Collapse Inescapable").  The long comment is there on that post, but to keep from resurrecting an old post, I'm going to re-post it here in its entirety, with comments.  As this was an anonymous comment, I have no idea where they came from or if they'll be back, but perhaps they would be curious about my response.

A few facts.
1) Keynes was not a socialist. He believed capitalism was the best economic system.
2) Keynes did not advocate running a deficit. He believed that governments should, in normal times, run a surplus. It was Glen Hubbard of George W. Bush's council of economic advisors who said that "Deficits don't matter".
3) The one fiscal conservative in the USA in the last 30 years was Bill Clinton.
4)The one party with by far the greatest share of deficit spending run up under their time in power is the Republican party.
5) Keynes was also not a tax-and-spend fanatic. He believed that a government should not take more than 25% of National Income in taxation at most.
6)Business expansion is predicated on real demand. That means you only make enough of x that you believe will be demanded in the market. DO you really believe that if you made ten billion luminous pink garden gnomes that would create a market of that size by virtue of producing it? Besides, if employers were scared from employing extra people, wouldn't they just utilize the employees they have more? But no, the latest figures show that employees are not being utilized, and workforces taking weeks off from production. Why? Red tape! Bah! No, it's lack of demand out there.
7) When America threatened to default on it's debt, it was just the same as you taking a hug loan with a credit card, and refusing to pay. That is right - if you hadn't raised the debt ceiling and defaulted, you would have STOLEN OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY. That is called theft. I'm sure you like to see a jail sentence for people who hold up a store. Well, it would have been exactly the same thing. But worse.
8) THE US (under Bush) gave the bankers on Wall Street $800 billion. Why? Because of a whole off-the-books shadow banking system that hid the real risk and value of debt off the balance sheet. The U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reported its findings in January 2011. It concluded that the crisis was avoidable and was caused by: Widespread failures in financial regulation, including the Federal Reserve’s failure to stem the tide of toxic mortgages and dramatic breakdowns in corporate governance including too many financial firms acting recklessly and taking on too much risk. The highest proportion of bad loans for property were in the commercial sector - not private sector for homes, interestingly enough.
9) Geithner isnt a Keynsian. He is pumping money (quatitative easing) into the US economy to make money cheap and stimulate demand. Keynes said this is "like pushing on a string" i.e. not effective. However, it has helped avert a total catastrophe - the sort that austerity would have brought. Just take a look at Greece. There was nothing wrong with the Greek economy, but the government owed lots of money to the banks. It has deflated (which means the economy has shrunk) and guess what? The deficit has got bigger because there are more people out of work and on welfare / not paying taxes.
Anyway, I advise you read a general economic text book (not Austrian - they don't even count as economics and they reject the scientific method plus they have no tools to examine finance - and their model's predictive power is non-existent. And realise that if you get a bunch of austerity nuts in, balancing the budget in a recession - you will have a major depression, and people will die of starvation all over the country.

Apparently, our friend has never visited here except for reading this.  First off, he seems to think I'm a fan of Republicans and opposed to Democrats.  Wrong: I'm a fan of small governments and maximum liberty and opposed to crony capitalism whether the party in power has an R or D after their name.  Like many folks, I don't see a dime's worth of difference between the mainstream R and D. 

1.  Should you be back, I'd like to point out that I don't believe I ever said Keynes was a socialist - (a search with that Google tool in the upper left returns no post with those two words in it) not that it matters. 

2.  I'm not entirely sure I've ever even said Keynesian economics is categorically wrong, although it is wrong as practiced in the world today.  In this post,  I said "John Maynard Keynes himself never said the government should deficit spend in good times, only as an emergency measure. "  I said the same basic thing in this post and that's from just a few seconds of searching.  This part, however, is laughable:

It was Glen Hubbard of George W. Bush's council of economic advisors who said that "Deficits don't matter".

He may have well said that, but two things: first, you must be a kid because I remember being told the same thing in the 1970s, and throughout my entire adult life; second, you imply I must be a fan of George W. Bush.  While he had his merits, he was an economic disaster. 

3.  I don't buy that Bill Clinton was an economic conservative; a better description is pragmatist.  He triangulated and found what people wanted, not really having any real principles other than love of power and attention.  I don't believe we've had a real economic conservative since Warren G Harding fixed the depression of 1921.  Ronald Reagan did some good things, for sure, but he cranked the deficit spending up to bankrupt the Soviet Union.  It apparently did, but is now bankrupting us. 

4.  Numbers, and real quantitative data, please.  You have a 50-50 chance of being right, but you need to give me some real, inflation-adjusted numbers.  I wouldn't bother, though, it's not very relevant to the problem we're in now.

5.  The problem is not Keynes, it's the way governments have implemented it in the world today.  Look, we don't need to have a gold or silver standard, or the stone rings from Yap; all we need is the discipline to not debase our currency.  The problem with the whole economic system, from the Federal Reserve to the tax system, is that politicians can't resist f**ing with it!  Whether it's printing extra money to hand out to welfare mothers, or to go bomb Libya, it's the government that's the problem. History says whenever they go off a commodity standard, governments eventually debase their currency into worthlessness.  Go read the intro to the book, "Guide to Investing in Gold and Silver", written by a partner of that radical Robert Kiyosaki (the "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" franchise).  He gives example after example. 

6.  I'm not sure what your point is.  I'm not saying supply causes demand, but aren't you saying that flooding the market with low cost money causes demand?  Whatever - you're saying employers are trying to keep employees on hand, even though they're not working them to lots of overtime because demand is low; that appears to be true.  Companies are "saving for a rainy day" and trying to keep people from being hurt.  Shame some are trying to get that "extra" money they're holding on to. 

7.  But America didn't threaten to default on its debt, it simply would have had to stop borrowing more.  There was plenty of money to pay the interest on the debt, which is not defaulting on the debt; the trade was to pay the interest but stop deficit borrowing.  It would be a spending cap.  As I said in that article you're responding to was, (in a crisis) "Anyone who has so much as run a newspaper route, or any business, or anyone even the least bit grounded in reality would say to pay your debts and not spend the money you don't have. "

8.  That whole $800 billion bailout was a disgrace - we're in complete agreement.  Furthermore, the $2.2 Trillion that the Bernank gave to the European banks to prop them up was even worse.  The banks should have been allowed to fail - just like GM and Chrysler.  There would have been widespread misery, but I believe that has just been delayed, because I believe there's no way to head off the bad times that are coming.  Your point about the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is one I've made many times: the collapse could not have happened without the complicity of Fannie and Freddie along with the Fed.  In short form, the government is the problem. 

9.  This is a difference without a distinction.  Has QE really "... helped avert a total catastrophe - the sort that austerity would have brought"?  Wanna ask the folks living in the tent cities around the country?  What about the savings being wiped out by inflation?  Have we had GDP growth or useless monetary inflation?  (oh, the government doesn't count food in the cost of living, or inflation; isn't that special?)  The treasury is printing money out the wazoo to buy our own bonds so we can deficit spend, we're creating money out of thin air and that is going to be a problem.  Dude, we have a debt that's virtually 100% of GDP - how does that end well without cutting back spending?  Greece is coming here.  I find it interesting that you say Austrian economics isn't even worth looking at and "...their model's predictive power is non-existent"   In the years coming up to 2008, I read a large number of writers who claim to be Austrian economists that predicted the 2008 crash and the one that's still coming.  I believe it was 2005 or 2006 when I first read that the sub-prime mortgages were rolling up to around a quadrillion dollar leverage and was going to collapse the banking system.  I didn't see a single Keynesian say it was going to happen.  Maybe some did, but I haven't run across any. 

Finally, you say, "And realise that if you get a bunch of austerity nuts in, balancing the budget in a recession - you will have a major depression, and people will die of starvation all over the country."  See, I think the world is on the verge of dumping the US dollar as the reserve currency.  China has been getting out of dollars as fast as they can (without causing a panic); not buying gold, but buying gold mines - along with copper, aluminum and everything else they might need.  Opec is talking with Russia, China and Europe about no longer selling oil in dollars.  Brazil, Russia, India and China are instituting the BRIC currency.  The signs of the death of the dollar are everywhere.  When the dollar dies because America couldn't control its spending habit - could be this year, could be next year - the "major depression and people will die of starvation all over the country" is coming here.  You seem to advocate printing more money.  At some point, don't you think the rest of the world is going to say those dollars are worth less because there's so many more of them, and start looking for something that holds value better?  

Oh, yeah, one more thing.  You'll find that my readers have zero tolerance for "proof by appeal to authority".  BTW, is that you Dr. Bernanke?

More Tales From the Over Regulated State - A Series

Wherein tonight's episode can be called, "I hope you don't have asthma". 

I do.  Relatively mild - my main symptom is a tendency to get chest congestion - but I know asthma can be a killer.  Every year, about 5000 people die of asthma, and that number is growing despite the improved long range treatments.  There are two main treatment approaches for asthma symptoms: a fast-acting "rescue inhaler", and daily administered corticosteroids, which help reduce the need for the rescue inhaler.   Most of these are administered by an inhaler, as well.  The "gold standard" propellant for those inhalers has been freon: a light, extremely inert propellant. 

Enter the EPA and the Montreal protocol, a treaty to reduce the use of so-called ozone damaging chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, like freon.  Although medical uses were not specifically banned in the treaty, the FDA decided to ban CFCs in those asthma inhalers.  In the place of freon, HFA, hydrofluoroalkane is used - but some inhalers included small amounts of ethanol (the kind of alcohol we drink).

“Whereas the direct contact of ethanol with the bronchial mucous caused bronchospasm, the consumption of alcohol had never caused the patient’s asthma to worsen. Various effects on the bronchial tone after the ingestion of ethanol have been documented and approximately 30% of asthmatics report an exacerbation in their symptoms (5). In an animal model, it has been shown that ethanol can trigger bronchoconstriction through TRPV1 (transient receptor potential vanilloid-1) activation of the airway sensory neurons in the brochi (6). Our findings suggest that bronchospasm is caused by ethanol-induced TRPV1 activation [in humans].” (Bronchospasm induced by inhalant corticosteroids: the role of ethanol).

This was big news in 2008, (at least among asthma patients_ and I sent some money to a group that was trying to stop the removal of CFCs from prescription inhalers.  The problem was that side effects from the new propellants were far more common, and people died because of their "rescue inhaler"!  While the chart shown on this page shows that HFA inhalers held about 1/3 of the market, almost 1/2 of the asthma deaths were HFA users.  This could be statistical noise and it could be a warning shot. 

The "Doctors Speak Out" page I just linked to is full of comments by physicians and respiratory therapists saying that the new inhalers are not working.  This one is representative:

“My daughter has stopped using HFA albuterol inhalers because she ended up in the ER several times (always at 3 am) after they exacerbated the problem. My daughter and I have tried all four HFA inhalers (we cleaned them every day) and we think they are dreadful! They are not effective at all. They make the asthma problem worse. Right now we are using CFC albuterol inhalers from India, and my daughter will be forced to use her nebulizer for emergency relief when these run out.”  Robin Levinson, MD, Hematologist, Florida, by email, July 20, 2009

You might think that patient care and improved outcomes would be the most important aspect in a medication - and I'm sure that's what every doctor I've ever known is interested in - but then you would not have been a good observer of the FDA, whose regulations are all written in the blood of those they didn't protect until it was too late.  Or a good observer of an environmental movement who thinks the world needs about 95% fewer people. 

This all took place in 2008, so why is it a topic tonight?  There is one remaining over the counter treatment for asthma, Primatene Mist, and it is being banned from the market because it has retained its CFC propellant.  The FDA has told them to be off the market by January 1.  Primatene is epinephrine - adrenaline - and is very safe and effective.  Perhaps 2 million people have a Primatene inhaler in their home, their purse, or other place where it's always at hand.  As Twitter user @jimgeraghty said

Think of how much smaller the U.S. carbon footprint will be without all of those asthma sufferers around.

So people who get relief from a Primatene inhaler will, at least temporarily, not be able to get an over the counter inhaler (in this press release, they say they're working on an HFA version).  Their cost will go up from about $20 to perhaps $60.  And until an OTC asthma inhaler is available again, they'll need to see their doctor to get a prescription, and probably go back once a year for a follow up. 

Will they be able to get a product onto market soon enough? Don't hold your breath.  In the mean time get some spares.  Hoard.  And if you don't have asthma, you might consider getting one or two.  Epinephrine is also therapy for bee stings and other severe allergic reactions.