The Economy - What No One is Saying

The Economy and Energy: I find it interesting with all of the talks about the economy - basically no one has proposed anything known to really work.  OK, not raising taxes is smart.  It is a start - but the tax rates are already there - so how will that change anything? 

What I find interesting is that President Obama often has in the same speech, talked about trying to do something positive for the economy, while at the same time restricting access to one or more forms of energy.  Any development by any nation has greatly hinged on the the access to affordable energy.  Don't believe me?  I challenge you to find a case historically that differs with what I am saying.

Lets look at what our government's policy on energy is or has been recently:

More regulations on Nuclear Power.  This has been done and now there are even plants that will shut down sooner than scheduled, because of regulations that have basically been "retroactively applied" to existing plants.  With no more Nuclear plants being built, and not even planned - this is ridiculous.  If I bought into conspiracy theories, I would definitely think this was part of some sort of "plan" to attack our energy and economy.  Nuclear is the most efficient way to produce electricity known to man.

America hates using coal.  While we are the world's largest producer of coal, an we are exporting it to our competitors, we are not ready to use it ourselves.  All is talked about "alternative energy sources" which all have to be subsidized or we would not even be using it now.  I am not against wind power - but even with subsidies I will explain why it will not work in the short term.

Baseless moratoriums on offshore drilling.  The US has moratoriums against offshore drilling.  This somehow includes in international waters.  The bad part about this - other countries can drill in the same places we are banning US companies from drilling.  You may claim that this is based on the horizon platform aka BP oil spill.  That was an excuse to put a choke hold on American oil while helping our competitors from over seas.

The Wind Problem: I am not going to get into all the hype about "alternative" energy sources, but they are not efficient.  I said I would explain about wind power.  I have studied it a bit as Texas produces more wind power than anyone- as much as 6,200-megawatts a day. The problem is - when you build a power plant - there is infrastructure designed to transmit the power into the electrical grid.  Wind farms do not have such a transmission line in place - and engineers are yet to find a good way to do this as wind farms are not a power plant - but many small power plants.  The current grid cannot even support what energy is generated today in Texas.  Texas is spending over $5 billion to address this issue - but if many more wind farms pop up - look for more big spending.

The Answer - Easy Access to Affordable Energy: When you need to build your economy - you need to have easy access to affordable energy.  Yes, it is that simple. China has this, India has this.  The US does not have this.  The bad part is, it is all self inflicted.  We had it in the 80's and even the beginning of the 90's when our economy was strong.  Any real talk about helping the economy has to include accessing affordable energy.

I am not against "going green"  but we need to take much more measured changes.  We need to quit listening to the Chicken Littles of this world "The sky is falling" (or getting a hole in it, etc).  We need cheap energy.  - Stay safe!

Private Rockets in Space

It looks like the private company SpaceX will be launching a capsule into orbit soon.  There have been successful tests of the engines and all systems are go - for now.  SpaceX is owned by the same guy that owns Paypal.  Yes, Elon Musk is filthy rich.  I am a Paypal fan and so kudos to him.  SpaceX has a contract with NASA to send supplies to the space station for around $1.6 billion.  Supposedly cheaper than NASA doing it themselves.

I wonder if the company sells advertizing space on the side of the rocket like NASCAR.  It would be smart to do that, and it could help off-set the costs of operation.  I do not know how the company got the contract - but it does not surprise me that the CEO of the Tesla car company has a space contract with NASA with the current administration.

Good luck to SpaceX and may you have a lot of competition soon.


UPDATE:
The spacecraft successfully lifted off at 10:43 EST on 8 Dec 2010.

Remember to Stay Safe!