Something for nothing?

Chrysler Headquarters,
Auburn Hills, MI,
Image via Wikimedia CommonsS0... Fiat (late of greenmailing GM not to merge with them after GM foolishly signed up, to the tune of 2B USD) gets 35% of Chrysler.

What did they give in exchange? Billions of dollars? Some factories? 35% of themselves? Nope. None of the above. They gave nothing except the promise of some future advice and access to technology.

Great work if you can get it...

Tell you what, Mr. Nardelli, give me .0035% of Chrysler and I'll give you some advice. Or maybe I'll just give it to you for free. You should have actually come out with the Durango Hybrid back when you first started talking about it. You know, in 2000? Then you'd have some technology experience by now. And stop giving away your company for nothing.

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• Fiat Acquires 35% Stake in Chrysler

Infrastructure?

Amtrak Locomotive
image via Wikimedia CommonsFirst, as a libertarian, I'm of course holding my nose even just writing this post... things should be funded by private enterprise rather than government. But since it's being talked about, and it's going to happen anyway... might as well make some constructive suggestions

Everyone has ideas for what sort of infrastructure the big stimulus should build. Everyone says be smart, and avoid pork... way easy to say but hard to do.

Some stuff is obvious:

• Improve the electric grid so that renewable energy can be routed to where it is needed.
  
• Fix bridges, tunnels, water mains, and so forth that really need it

Those are both "construction" sorts of things. Manufacturing has been hit too, though.

Amtrak has seen a surge in ridership of late, as other modes of transportation have become pricier. But they're running into limits. Why? Amtrak has a rolling stock shortage. For years, their capital budget has been far short of replacement, and there are lines of passenger cars in need of repair, awaiting funds. New trains or more frequent service are proposed and often deferred because there just isn't the rolling stock available.

So then... build some... increase Amtrak's capital budget, and get the shops going repairing things. That has the advantage of not only stimulating manufacturing, it also produces something that's actually needed, and when used, will reduce energy consumption.

And don't limit it to Amtrak, review all the other mass transit modes and see what capital improvements for rolling stock have been lacking. We need that more than we need new freeways that promote urban sprawl.

SpaceX, making it easier to get the heck out of Dodge?

Falcon 1 at launch complex
Image via Wikimedia CommonsWhen I was growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut. I suspect I wasn't the only person who felt that way. Heck, I even wrote NASA for an application.

In a previous posting, I questioned the value of Constellation and wondered why NASA isn't just farming the job out to SpaceX. That reminded me that I haven't written about one of my favorite new companies yet.

SpaceX, one of several companies started by Elon Musk, of PayPal fame and fortune, is trying to make space travel cheaper. This is a non trivial task, and the first two launches did not achieve orbit, but the company insists they were successful in the sense that they learned and refined a lot.

They have a novel approach to PR, they seem to be willing to put a fair bit of stuff right out in public... in particular they had live feeds of their first two launches, which was pretty cool.

Dragon and Falcon 9
Image via WikipediaSpaceX has three different projects going... the Falcon 1, and the Falcon 9, two different sized mostly reusable launchers, and the Dragon vehicle, which is a crew and cargo vessel that can be launched atop a Falcon 9.

With the activity at Scaled Composites (including winning the X prize) going on, it really looked like the 2000s were going to be the decade where space travel really went commercial. But both Scaled and SpaceX have suffered some delays. Scaled Composites had a damaging accident and the first launch of the Falcon 9 has been pushed back. They've tried to put a good spin on it, but still.Image by jurvetson via Flickr
So I'm still hopeful, but maybe not quite as. Maybe it will take a bit longer. Maybe it can't be done at all and we're doomed to government space? I certainly hope not! Is the fact that SpaceX have won some NASA contracts a good sign? A bad one? What do you think?

Is Constellation just a rehash of Apollo?

Image via WikipediaNASA has proposed "Project Constellation", which aims to put men back on the moon by 2020. Part of the project are the "Orion" manned vehicle, launched by the "Ares" (in versions I and V) rocket, and using the "Altair" lunar lander.

Some have evaluated the program and see it as another big expensive project that will compete for funding with science, and also will compete with the Commercial off the shelf (COTS) initiative.

While I've been a big fan of space exploration all my life, I have my doubts about this whole thing.

Except for some semi reuse at the beginning, it sure seems like the entire thing is more or less "Apollo, but bigger and better" ... Aries I and V (which use Shuttle SRB derived first stages) launch a crew module and lander separately, a rendezvous in orbit mates those and the crew module stays in orbit around the moon while the lander lands. The descent stage is left on the moon, just like the LEM.

Why do this at all? We already know how to do this. Instead of developing new government rockets, (and make work projects) why not just pay for launch capacity from SpaceX or whoever? Or better yet, how about actually building some industrial capacity on the lunar surface? I want the transformative activity in near earth space that science fiction promised us. It's 2008, where's my lunar catapult?

What do you think? Rehash or value add?

Money can't buy happiness?

Sometimes following tangents finds you interesting things. Danny's "White Fathers" blog post yesterday on what really would help folk in Africa, whether the WMF's mission of knowledge sharing was the most needful thing started the wheels turning for me.

Those wheels got a push from this thread on Wikipedia Review, and from Danny's "Congo" response to it here. I think maybe sometimes we lose track, in our situations, of how things really are and aren't, and what we can do about them. What I'm about to say should in no way be taken as diminishing how tough things are in places like the sub Sahara, the Congo, Sudan, Zimbabwe and the like. They're tough, make no mistake, way tougher than in the rich world...

So when I hear people saying "Money can't buy happiness?" I want to call BS. First, take a look at this classic essay by John Scalzi, "Being Poor" It's a rich world essay to be sure, but it drives home the point... being poor really really sucks.

Then take a look at this New York Times article... Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All ... Granted, its a study of the rich world, and of the well off people within it, but (quoting)

The fact remains that economic growth doesn’t just make countries richer in superficially materialistic ways.

Economic growth can also pay for investments in scientific research that lead to longer, healthier lives. It can allow trips to see relatives not seen in years or places never visited. When you’re richer, you can decide to work less — and spend more time with your friends.

That's rich world stuff... but the same thing is true in the less rich world. As Ben Yates cited in a "White Fathers" reply, cellphones can make a difference, and that says to me that aid isn't the solution. Changing society is the solution. Economic growth is the solution. Knowledge is the solution. Danny's right when he says an encyclopedia per se isn't the answer, that more thought is required, it has to deliver the things that are needed. But those who decry encyclopedias and economic and societal change in favour of direct aid? They miss the mark.

Money can't buy happiness? Tell it the the lady in Alabama with the 800 dollar car. Tell it to the mother in Gambia without the money to buy a sack of maize.

Money CAN buy happiness.... but the best kind of money is money you control because you earned it, because your society enabled it, not money that dropped in your lap.

Addicted to GPS

The Angeles Crest Highway
Image via WikipediaSome technologies are transformative. Cell phones are one example. (seen many payphones lately?)

I think GPS is another. Right now, I'm in LA, coastering... We have a part year exchange student (he was a switchout from another family) and I decided it might be fun to go coastering somewhere with him (and my son) during spring break. We're Cedar Fair season pass holders, so Knotts Berry Farm was an obvious choice. (most of the other CF parks aren't even open yet)

We arrived Wednesday around noon and decided to spend the half day sightseeing. I love the Angeles Crest Highway drive into the mountains, I try to drive there every time I'm in LA (it's a thrilling, curvy, steep, narrow drive) and wanted to share it. So up we went.
Antennas atop Mount Wilson
Observatory at left
Image via Wikipedia
I'd not been to Mount Wilson (which hosts the Palomar Observatory as well as a lot of transmitters) before, so we decided to take a drive up there on the way back. It's a very impressive outcropping. Circling "Video Drive" we went past one transmitter after another. As we passed a particularly large and impressive stone blockhouse-like base structure, the audio system in the rental Prius buzzed. Thinking nothing of it, we got some pics and started back.

On the way back down the mountain I noticed the GPS wasn't updating, it showed us still on the Angeles Crest Highway even after we got back to Glendale. A power cycle or two didn't seem to have any effect. The unit was receiving signals from the satellites, and could route to saved locations, it just thought it hadn't moved.

It dawned on me that we had no idea exactly how to get back to the hotel in Buena Vista, and LA freeways are not exactly trivial to navigate if you're confused. Fortunately my Blackberry also has GPS and integrates in with Google Maps nicely, so we were able to get turn by turn directions and limp back.

Magellan customer support is notorious for how bad it is. So I was a bit concerned about how to recover from that. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I connected the data cable, and tried to read some of the logs on the device. This caused it to display some error popup windows and lock up... this time, after power on, it went through a hard reboot and the GPS seems to be working again. Whew!

But the thought of doing the next few days without GPS was positively scary to me. Apparently I'm addicted. I've gotten very used to being able to blithely go where I want to go and have the GPS straighten me out if I take a wrong turn.

Agree that GPS is transformative? Disagree? What technologies are you addicted to?