Potpourri L (for 50, not for Large)

Holy cats! WAY too much stuff in the inbox this evening. Well, I'd best get cracking. I've got a couple letters to write tonight, too. The wild, out-of-control life of a space geek blogger.

The Space Frontier Foundation has extended the deadline for its space business plan prize to June 19. Don't have time for it myself, but there might come a day when $5,000 might come in handy. I have ideas, mind you, just haven't got the time to focus at the moment.

The web site for the Human Space Flight Panel is now up. If you're ready to tell the representatives of your elected officials what they should do with the human spaceflight program, now is the time. Go get 'em!

Some more stuff from Lin on the potential for hyperinflation, which I've addressed on this site before.

For those of you who are familiar with the term, my apologies. The point is that we are almost out of wiggle room when we have to send the US Secretary of the Treasury hat-in-hand to grovel to the Chinese to keep buying our worthless paper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing
http://dailyreckoning.com/us-stuck-in-inflation-causing-positions/print/
http://dailyreckoning.com/the-gold-bull-market-and-the-fed-it-rode-in-on/print/

Tip o' the fedora to Martin for finding this: a diorama of a sort of Mount Rushmore for the Moon. It's pretty cool.

I got this summary on the Air France crash from my daily AIAA news feed:

ABC World News (6/4, story 5, 2:15, Gibson) reported, "Next, to the investigation into Air France Flight 447. ... French investigators reported that automatic messages from the plane indicated it was not maintaining consistent air speed. And that prompted the plane's manufacturer, Airbus, to issue a warning to all airlines flying its planes." ABC (Stark) added, "Late today, Airbus warned airlines that fly all models of Airbus planes to follow correct procedures if pilots are dealing with unreliable speed indications or data. ... In what's called an accident information telex, Airbus reminded airlines that if that occurs, pilots should maintain their power and level off if necessary, and start troubleshooting procedures. Aviation experts say in some cases, such air speed problems can be difficult for cockpit crews to detect."

Jeff Foust found some insightful stuff from the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel on former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin.

Ian Murphy asks some tough questions about the "why" of space exploration, a topic that motivates most of why I do what I do for the space business.

Need free internet "radio?" Doc had a couple of suggestions for me the other day:

• Last.fm
• Pandora.com

Bored with "Whack a Mole?" Try "Whack a Kitty." I am not kidding--the couple who put this video together--and it really is pretty harmless--were on one of the cable news shows because some folks on the internet were utterly offended and thought they were encouraging cruelty to animals. And speaking of cats, someone else sent me an internet video on cat yodeling. No doubt someone will raise heck about this as well. This is probably why Robert D. Raiford calls us the United States of the Offended. Sense of humor is apparently out the window.

Congress is cutting the exploration portion of the NASA budget. Oh, joy.

Okay, I don't talk about my day job much, but I thought I'd share this. Dan Kanigan, the NASA Public Affairs Office (PAO) guy I work with on Ares I-X, got a break from I-X to travel along with the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) 747 as it ferried Atlantis back to Kennedy Space Center. He did a couple of cool live reports, which are worth watching:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/3591644145/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/3592450676/in/photostream/

Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, has bought himself a ticket to be a tourist at the International Space Station.

There's a great editorial on CNN.com on why the future ain't what it used to be. It called to mind the Avery Brooks commercials done for AT&T, where he railed, "Where are the flying cars? There were supposed to be flying cars!"

Some good stuff from Tracy:

• A guide to the NASA history program.
• More from the History office: NASA's Decadal Planning Team and the Policy Formulation of the Vision for Space Exploration

From the NASA PAO, a notice of NASA research opportunities.

Some great discussion at work today. I learned, for example, that it's often cheaper to buy Xbox 360 to play Blu-Ray DVDs than to buy a straight DVD player. What else? Oh yeah, Doc also mentioned that Microsoft has an online store for buying music and podcasts via Xbox and the Microsoft Zune marketplace. This is akin to the Amazon store feature available via Kindle. The convergence of new media continues. If I want to make money in the future, I'm going to have to describe myself as a "content developer," not a "writer." Writing implies pens, typewriters, paper, and other archaic technologies. We'll have none of THAT stuff on the Internet, pal...

We also had a discussion about some guy plugging an eyeball-size camera, which transmits images to a server via wireless internet. This might be a next step toward connecting the camera to the human brain--the Singularity moves ever closer.

Doc and I had an extended conversation on the merits of various adults beverages. He's a beer and whiskey snob, I'm a wee bit of a wine snob. We're both occasional fans of bourbon whiskey. He recommended a few brands that I might consider trying "if you have some money to burn." They include:

• Woodford Reserve
• Ridgemont Reserve 1792
• Bulleit
• Booker's
• Rip van Winkle

And here's the quotation of the day, also from Doc (though a bit altered, as I didn't write it down precisely when and as he said it): "You can't help having ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) anymore. It's not an affliction anymore, it's a survival skill." HA! Perfect!

And lastly, there's a new Star Wars video game coming out about the Old Republic. The lead villain looks like a character I created for my own sequels and prequels backindaday. I probably won't play the game, as I don't own a game console (I waste enough time "talking" to people who are reputedly "real" on the internet as it is). The game's "trailer" looked pretty cool, though.

Various Items and Comments Regarding the Economy

President Obama's $800+ billion-dollar "stimulus" bill is a problem for people who believe in classical economics. It is mostly about federal spending on various sorts of pet projects, political favors, bailouts of failed banks and businesses, and perhaps creating a nationalized Bank of the United States. The tax base cannot support it. Since the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped from 11,000 to around 8,000, we've lost at least a trillion dollars in value from our economy. Businesses have closed their doors, unemployment has gone up, interest rates are at essentially zero yet no bank will issue new loans. This is a crisis of confidence, and a new government expenditure of a trillion dollars, unsupported by the tax base or the monetary system, can only mean one thing down the road: hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is simple to understand--too much money is created, prices continue to increase, leading the government to print more money to help people artificially keep up with rising prices, causing the value of the currency to drop.

My "favorite" image of hyperinflation occurred in Weimar Germany, the republic formed after Kaiser Wilhelm II's regime collapsed in 1918. In the economic hardship and uncertainty that followed from crushing war debts, Germany's currency was inflated to pay the debt. Citizens of Germany faced mounting inflation, to the point where instead of US$1 equalling 60 Marks, US$1 equalled 8,000 marks. People were going to the store with wheelbarrows full of money to buy a loaf of bread. The value of the Mark collapsed because there was nothing of value backing it--at the time, gold was the standard for backing national currencies.

Since the U.S. went off the Gold Standard in 1973, the dollar has had a value accepted based on currency speculation and the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government. That is, people in this country and around the world believe the dollar has value because the U.S. Government says it does and is willing and able to back up that value with something of tangible worth. It is "fiat money," from the Latin term "fiat" meaning "let there be" (ex. "fiat lux" - let there be light). So: the U.S. Government says, "Let there be money," and lo, it was so. But that sort of money only lasts so long as people believe in the ability of the U.S. Government or its people to create enough value in this country to consider the dollar still believable. When the government says, "We're going to spend a trillion dollars to fix the economy!" some folks might say, "Great!" Others, a little more cautious, would ask, "Where's the money going to come from?" The sources, given the current state of things, are limited:

1. Print more money (inflation)
2. Increase taxes
3. Borrow money from someone else who has it
4. Create new wealth

Curious about what happens with inflation? See that article on Weimar Germany or these items on the inflation occurring right now under dictator Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/3264644/Zimbabwe-shops-stop-accepting-local-currency.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/4224947/New-Zimbabwe-50bn-note-buys-three-newspapers.html

Okay, so what about raising taxes? You might recall that businesses all over the country are facing profit losses because the economy is slowing. Unemployment is rising because businesses are cutting costs (employment) in order to stay afloat. They are unable to expand into new ventures because fewer consumers and investors have money to buy into them and because banks are unwilling to loan money. So there's less money to go around to support economic growth, and some folks want to raise taxes on businesses. That will slow down how well money flows through the economy (liquidity), as the government gets more and businesses capable of building long-term employment shrink further.

We could, have, and probably will, borrow more from other countries who can afford to buy U.S. Treasury Bills: Europe, Japan, China, and (surprise, surprise), the oil sheikdoms of the Middle East. The first problem is that an economic slowdown here cuts down economic activity elsewhere, reducing the amount of money available overseas to buy our debt. Second, T-Bills are, like the dollar, backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government, with the difference that they actually have a due date for a return on investment. If other countries no longer believe that the U.S. will ever repay the debt, they might stop buying our T-Bills or declare us to be in default, which amounts to the same thing. Back when Japan was still our biggest economic competitor (from the mid '80s to the early '90s), there was some loose talk about Japan accepting the state of Hawaii or California as "payment" for our debts. Could that idea arise again? Who would buy that?

The best ways government itself can increase tax revenues, create jobs, and stimulate businesses are to lower taxes, reduce intrusive regulations, create and maintain infrastructure, and keep government out of competition with the private sector. The best ways private industry can create growth are to find new sources of wealth, develop new technologies, and create new businesses.

The best place for this nation to do those things is in space. As of yet, I've not heard about any new money going to NASA or any tax breaks going to businesses seeking to start businesses or prospect for resources there. But, of course, I'm a conservative and a kook, so what do I know?

This whole thing is just insane because the government is most likely to pick options 1, 2, and 3, which will stifle option 4, thereby slowing the recovery. Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man has never been more timely.