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Title: Spaceflights From Desert Depend on New Jobs
Source:
Bloomberg
URL Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011- ... f-dead-depend-on-new-jobs.html
Published: Jul 27, 2011
Author: Bloomberg
Post Date: 2011-07-27 09:18:05 by go65
Keywords: None
Views: 4814
Comments: 20
The frontier of commercial spaceflight, which opened when NASA’s shuttle program ended this month, is taking shape in an unfinished assembly of metal, glass and concrete that resembles a rust-colored stingray burrowed halfway into New Mexico’s desert. “Spaceport America” bills itself online as “the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport” and will be the official home of Virgin Galactic, billionaire Richard Branson’s venture that proposes to take tourists into suborbital space. It’s about 75 miles southwest of the Trinity atomic-bomb test site where the U.S. ushered in the nuclear age 66 years ago. It’s even closer to the mobile home of Florita Munoz in Rincon, New Mexico. Munoz, 69, says she has little regard for this latest attempt to enter a new era. The 4-year-old project has already cost her state, the 10th poorest in the U.S., $209 million in public money. It’s at least nine months behind schedule and its director says it won’t generate as many jobs as backers once claimed.
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#1. To: jwpegler (#0)
thought you would find this of interest, few proponents of private space flight replacing NASA seem to realize that private space companies such as virgin are completely dependent on public support to survive.
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I don't understand this delusional - other reality world - jwpegler and his fellow travelers on the so called right in America hold on to. They accept dogma over facts. They are people who say the New Deal was bad for America, yet I would not want to live in the America as it was before the New Deal. I don't get where they get their actual facts from - they have theories based on ideology not on science/numbers. jwpegler, I am sure you are a good person and I know I sound like I am attacking you but at some point I have to confront this world view you hold that is not based on real world evidence. jwpegler, to me you and your fellow travelers sound like Maoists from the Cultural Revolution era waving their little book where all the answers supposedly held and you react violently to any fact that contradicts this. Maybe it is the internet/talk radio distortions making me see this but when I hear that Republicans say a default is no big deal and it is fear mongering as if a default would do nothing is insane. That is Jim Jones kool-aid mentality.
"Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" - Various Tea Party signs.
I oppose taxpayer funding for billionaires to build "space ports" just as I oppose taxpayer funding for billionaires to build new football stadiums. If the government has to subsidize a commercial activity to keep it going, it's probably not worth doing. If Richard Branson wants a "legacy" (as stated in the article), great! He should fund it himself or go out and get investors willing to risk their own money. This is what most start ups do. The guy is not even a U.S. citizen. Why should American taxpayer's hand money over to him? Government spending on economic activities should be limited to basic research -- not applied research, not product development, but basic research -- and to infrastructure. I am a strong proponent of both.
You are the one that doesn't understand the real world. My world is the start up companies of Seattle and Silicon Valley, where people started with nothing but an idea. The idea gets rejected over and over. They work hard and persist. Then they succeed. They employee a ton of people. Make lot's of people rich. And change the world for the better. Microsoft was started by two geeks who decided to drop out of Harvard to pursue their dreams. Microsoft created 10,000 millionaire employees in the 1990s (I was one of them, but my wife took 65% of it in our divorce!). Today Microsoft employs 90,000 people with great salaries, benefits, and bonus potential. Apple, Cisco, Amazon, Google, and too many more to mention succeeded on similar paths. In your world of a government directed economy, these companies and the innovations that they brought to market wouldn't exist. If the government had succeeded in declaring IBM a government regulated monopoly in the 1970s (as it tried to do), would we have the personal computer, smart phone, or world-wide web today? I don't think so. I suspect that you and most of the leftists on this board are 60+ years old. You grew up in a relatively stagnant world, where people just didn't quit their secure job at some mega-corporation to pursue their own dreams. That world is dead. It died with the invention of the microprocessor and the Apple personal computer. This is what you just don't understand. You never will understand.
Prior to the start up culture taking hold in the late 70s / early 80s, a team a Xerox invented the basic under interface model that we've used over the last 30 years. It's known as WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointing Devices). They took it to Xerox management who rejected it out of hand. There wasn't any start up culture or venture capital firms to support start ups, so the actual people who invented WIMP never profited from it. Steve Jobs and Bill Bill Gates took WIMP and used it to build big companies from scratch that changed the world. Society needs renegades who are willing to risk all to buck the establishment and pursue their vision. There isn't any room for renegades in your world of centrally planned, government directed economies. Your vision of society leads to stagnation and misery. That's why it needs to be rejected out of hand.
That's because it's BULLSHIT. Virgin is in the biz because Branson put his OWN PRIVATE money into it. Then there is the INCORPORATION of companies in private business who are working on space trade. Don't talk bullshit about stuff that you know nothing about. My old man worked Red Stone through Titan III (ZD), I rated M (missile), and worked it afield. We were lucky enough to participants and witnesses to the so called "space race" and VICTORY by the USA. Anyhow ... I call BULLSHIT on your specious assertion. Spoiled, stupid and ignorant, brain dead phuckwads, libTURD fools, tools, and idiots, are the real sickness; the messiah "king" obammy and his regime are only the symptoms.
Steve Jobs and Bill Bill Gates took WIMP and used it to build big companies from scratch that changed the world. As usual,your facts are bit off. Xerox delivered a WIMP-based product called Star (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star) in 1981 that didn't sell very well due high cost and poor performance. However, Bill Gates bought one. And he hired several of the early developers to join him at Microsoft to help copy the Xerox design. (Apple's Lisa was also based on Star). If you want to get really down in the weeds - the end result of Gates' efforts was Windows 1.0, which was a kludge, It wasn't until Gates signed a license with John Scully that gave him permission to copy the work Apple was doing with MacOS, and used it to develop Windows 3.0, that Windows finally took off. (See: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1593270100/tmo-20). Apple ended up suing Microsoft, claiming that they had only licensed Microsoft to use Apple elements in windows 1.0, a suit they eventually lost (Windows 1 didn't even include icons). If you read the history, you'll find that Gates absolutely loved the Mac (the internal Microsoft name was SAND - Steve's Amazing New Device). Gates envisioned Microsoft as a company that would deliver Mac software, and he tried to get Apple to license MacOS to run on 3rd party hardware, but he was rebuffed by Scully, so he went off and built Windows 3. And the rest is history. My vision isn't all one or the other. My view is that there is a role for government in preventing monopolies, protecting the environment, ensuring free/fair competition, and protecting the rights of workers.
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Is it safe to assume that you like John Kerry's plan to grant citizenship to anyone who comes over here, graduates from a 4 year school and starts a business?
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Dude, WIMP was developed at Xerox in 1973. They finally decided to release Star as a specialty "office automation" computer 8 years later in 1981. Star wasn't designed or sold as a standalone system. It was sold as part of a larger "office" system for word processing and document management targeted at large corporations. By 1981 the general PC revolution was brewing and there was no room for that type of specialty device. My facts are correct. Xerox invented WIMP. The CEO rejected it. Apple and Microsoft made billions bringing it to market. Yes, there was some intermediate activities (like bringing Star to market), which happened too late for Xerox and has nothing to do with the lessons to be learned here.
Go back and read what he wrote. He said that STAR was developed in 1981 and that it was WIMP based. Not that WIMP was developed in 1981.
America...My Kind Of Place... "I truly am not that concerned about [bin Laden]..." "THE MILITIA IS COMING!!! THE MILITIA IS COMING!!!" I lurk to see if someone other than Myst or Pookie posts anything...
Let me explain it slowly. A couple of guys at Xerox invented WIMP in 1973. They took it to CEO who told them that they were out of their mind. 8 years later, Xerox finally released a specialty "computer system" based on WIMP. It was too late, because Apple had already released a general purpose personal computer based on WIMP (LISA). Apple took the WIMP concept and started the LISA project in 1978 -- to build a general purpose computer based on WIMP. LISA was released with limited success, but Apple learned from it and succeeded with the Mac. Then Microsoft released Windows. The establishment blew it. They lost a huge business opportunity to a couple of kids working in their garage.
That's not the point in dispute.
America...My Kind Of Place... "I truly am not that concerned about [bin Laden]..." "THE MILITIA IS COMING!!! THE MILITIA IS COMING!!!" I lurk to see if someone other than Myst or Pookie posts anything...
Apple took the WIMP concept and started the LISA project in 1978 -- to build a general purpose computer based on WIMP. LISA was released with limited success, but Apple learned from it and succeeded with the Mac. Again, your facts are off. The Lisa was released in 1983, two years after the Star. Apple's Lisa developers had been working with Xerox's research team since the late 1970's. Many of Jobs' ideas for Apple's GUI game from the Xerox Alto, which Xerox demonstrated to Jobs in 1979.
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Are you a joke? You mean the computers that the govt funded and the internet infrastructure that went with it? Are you really living in this Disney-esque fantasy world http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~amulet/papers/uihistory.tr.html Brad A. Myers. "A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology." ACM interactions. Vol. 5, no. 2, March, 1998. pp. 44-54. In fact, virtually all of today's major interface styles and applications have had significant influence from research at universities and labs, often with government funding. To illustrate this, this paper lists the funding sources of some of the major advances. Without this research, many of the advances in the field of HCI would probably not have taken place, and as a consequence, the user interfaces of commercial products would be far more difficult to use and learn than they are today.
"Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" - Various Tea Party signs.
Ok, lets stop right here. I allowed you to take the conversation off track. My bad. The salient point is that a top down directed society stagnates. A society needs renegades who are willing to buck the established order to pursue their own vision. I gave a concrete example of this. People at Xerox did invent wimp and the management team did reject it. These are well known facts. Unfortunately, I allowed you to take the conversation off track with a bunch if details that are completely irrelevant to the point at hand. Whether the specialty Star system was released before or after the Lisa is not relevant. I remember the Lisa. I do not remember the Star, and neither do you (you Googled wimp and found the Star). What is relevant is that it took Xerox 8 years to decide to build a product based on their own inventions. This is why Xerox didn't own the bulk of the computer industry.
Agreed. Yes, companies make mistakes. But again, I don't buy your argument that the only possible societies are communist and anarchist. Even you agree there's a role for government in areas such as infrastructure and health care, yet anytime anyone else talks about what they see as a proper role for government, you accuse them of supporting a top-down directed society. I'll remind you again that your beloved Singapore has a top-down directed healthcare system.
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I am certainly not equating you with Gooberson. I am not an anarchist. At the local level, I am a strong proponent of infrastructure spending. I often get frustrated in Seattle because there are eco-leftists that want to halt progress and move "back" to some utopian agrarian society that never really existed. When I was growing up in Michigan, Democrats wanted to build roads. Now a lot of them what to tear roads down. In 2002 the GOP passed the largest federal infrastructure budget the world has ever seen. Much of it was pork. When Omaba was elected, his stimulus should have been mostly about infrastructure . Instead, it focused on temporarily keeping state government employees in their jobs. The entire D.C. establishment is corrupt, so I am not willing to give them a penny more for anything. I've been following this nonsense since 1980. Right now, I've had it. Yes, I want to build roads but only after they stop spending on things that won't move us forward. Until they do that, yes I will be a temporary anarchist
and tax cuts, you keep ignoring that one. The Ryan framework cuts road spending from $52 billion to $35 billion a year. How are we supposed to compete against the rest of the world when the Republicans see nothing wrong with crumbling infrastructure so long as we maintain tax cuts on income over $500k a year?
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The 2009 stimulus package: $288 billion in tax cuts. Notice where the largest amount went to? Notice, also, that it provided exactly zero stimulus.
That's right. The Obama stimulus plan provided exactly zero stimulus. What taxes where cut? Did the "stimulus" lower marginal tax rates? No he didn't. What he did was give a tax rebate to people (some of who don't even pay federal income taxes), who immediately went to Wall Mart and spent it on products made in China. I've said this repeatedly, demand stimulation doesn't work any more because we live in a global economy and the money is likely to be used to buy consumer goods that are made overseas, with little to no benefit to the U.S. economy. Obama's "stimulus" also further larded up the tax code with special tax breaks for politically favored industries. He needs to stop the damn micro-management and create an environment where people are willing to invest in innovation and productive capacity. He's too ideologically stubborn and inexperienced in the real world to do that.
#2. To: go65, jwpegler (#1)
#3. To: go65 (#1)
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#4. To: Godwinson (#2)
(Edited)
his world view you hold that is not based on real world evidence
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#5. To: Godwinson, go65, capitalist eric (#2)
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#6. To: go65, jwpegler (#1)
few proponents of private space flight replacing NASA seem to realize that private space companies such as virgin are completely dependent on public support to survive.
#7. To: jwpegler (#5)
(Edited)
Prior to the start up culture taking hold in the late 70s / early 80s, a team a Xerox invented the basic under interface model that we've used over the last 30 years. It's known as WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointing Devices). They took it to Xerox management who rejected it out of hand. There wasn't any start up culture or venture capital firms to support start ups, so the actual people who invented WIMP never profited from it.
There isn't any room for renegades in your world of centrally planned, government directed economies. Your vision of society leads to stagnation and misery. That's why it needs to be rejected out of hand.
#8. To: jwpegler (#4)
My world is the start up companies of Seattle and Silicon Valley, where people started with nothing but an idea. The idea gets rejected over and over. They work hard and persist. Then they succeed. They employee a ton of people. Make lot's of people rich. And change the world for the better.
#9. To: go65 (#7)
(Edited)
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#10. To: jwpegler (#9)
Dude, WIMP was developed at Xerox in 1973.
--GW Bush
--Sarah Palin's version of "The Midnight Ride of Paul revere"
#11. To: war (#10)
(Edited)
Go back and read what he wrote. He said that STAR was developed in 1981 and that it was WIMP based. Not that WIMP was developed in 1981.
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#12. To: jwpegler (#11)
--GW Bush
--Sarah Palin's version of "The Midnight Ride of Paul revere"
#13. To: jwpegler, war (#11)
8 years later, Xerox finally released a specialty "computer system" based on WIMP. It was too late, because Apple had already released a general purpose personal computer based on WIMP (LISA).
#14. To: jwpegler, go65 (#4)
(Edited)
My world is the start up companies of Seattle and Silicon Valley, where people started with nothing but an idea.
#15. To: go65 (#13)
(Edited)
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#16. To: jwpegler (#15)
The salient point is that a top down directed society stagnants. A society needs renegades who are willing to buck the established order to pursue their own vision.
I gave a concrete example of this. People at Xerox did invent wimp and the management team did reject it. These are well known facts.
#17. To: go65 (#16)
(Edited)
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#18. To: jwpegler (#17)
When Omaba was elected, his stimulus should have been mostly about infrastructure . Instead, it focused on temporarily keeping state government employees in their jobs.
Yes, I want to build roads but only after they stop spending on things that won't move us forward.
#19. To: go65 (#18)
$224 billion in extended unemployment benefits, education and health care.
$275 billion for job creation using federal contracts, grants and loans.
#20. To: Skip Intro (#19)
(Edited)
Notice, also, that it provided exactly zero stimulus.
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
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