Thursday Throughput: Billionaires In Space Edition

Michael Siegel

Michael Siegel is an astronomer living in Pennsylvania. He blogs at his own site, and has written a novel.

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45 Responses

  1. fillyjonk says:

    ThTh2: I am trying to negotiate with myself the whole “should I mask in class this fall”? thing. Our mask mandate has been lifted, and selfishly, I’d love to be able to teach without a mask (especially on our super humid days, especially in the rooms where the AC has the tendency to go out). But I also know that even though I’m vaxxed, I could be one of the “lucky” (as you put it) 10%, and I’d feel terrible to learn that I had an immunocompromised student I made sick.

    Then again: I have faith in the vaccine protecting me, and also – I don’t GO anywhere. I don’t hang out in crowded clubs, if I go to a store these days it’s at a slow time and I wear a mask in the store. So I don’t know.

    this is all a giant What We Owe To Each Other problem, I guess, and my bar for What I Owe seems to be higher than that of a lot of my fellow citizens.

    I suppose also my continuing to mask might help morally support those who feel they have to in class? I can’t quite imagine any of our students being big enough jerks to harass a mask-wearer, but it’s a bit world and I’ve learned this past year there are more a(pple)holes in it than I had thought possible before.

    As for improving ventilation, which I would love to see? There’s no money for that. There’s never any money for anything like that.

    (Frankly, I wish that I had someone much wiser than I am tell me either to mask or not. I have had to make too many hard decisions this past year and I am burned out on these kind of “there is no clear best choice” choices)Report

  2. Burt Likko says:

    Why ever shouldn’t the ultra-rich fund and personally participate in aerospace ventures? They’ve been doing it ever since there was such a thing as aerospace in the first place!

    Branson and Bezos and Musk want to go to space and spend their money on making that possible? Awesome! They want to try monetizing space tourism? Cool! No skin off my nose, and frankly, not a particularly big opportunity cost to the rest of society. At least someone is dreaming, innovating, developing, and exploring, which is a necessary thing if we are to grow as a society and as a global culture.

    Full disclosure: my ex-wife worked for one of Branson’s space development companies for a time while she and I were together. I am not comfortable divulging all the information she brought home because it’s not mine to divulge and I don’t know what’s been made public. I wouldn’t be surprised if in ten years Virgin Galactic and its related projects have become a profitable commercial venture for which space tourism is simply the public face. Likely the same is true for Bezos’ and Musk’s ventures too.Report

    • See also ThTh6. Portland’s new temperature records will fall. With a non-zero probability, the opening of The Ministry For the Future will happen within 50 years. If the billionaires want to drop a billion or two on tech, affordable small modular fission reactors, and safer ways to address the spent fuel problem, are save-the-world sorts of efforts that would put them in the history books*. A few billion dollars to mitigate the miserable massive-fire-prone condition of the US national forests is another, given how much CO2 wouldn’t be released. Yet another space-tourism launch vehicle, not so much.

      * Note that Bill Gates appears to have finally figured out that no one else, including the federal government, is going to take all those TerraPower simulations and drop the few-to-several billion it will cost to get a license and build the first one, and that he’s going to have to take the risk himself.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Burt Likko says:

      When I hear people complaining about billionaires making speculative investments in pushing the technological frontier, or donating to charity (yes, complaining about this is a thing; see Rob Reich on billionaire philanthropy) because it’s not under democratic control, what I hear is that we should put all our eggs in one basket. That only people small-minded enough to be elected to Congress should have any say in what approaches we take to solving technological and social problems.Report

  3. Dark Matter says:

    Vaccines are not supposed to stop you from ever getting the disease, they’re supposed to give your immune system a serious leg up.

    I’m not shocked the vaccine is less than perfect against Delta but remains REALLY good at stopping people from getting killed. The idea vaccines are supposed to be perfect is absurd, it showcases just how great a job Pfizer (etc) did.

    We have multiple states where, in a given month, all the deaths are from unvaccinated people. The overall mortality rate is holds steady at 100% so some people who have been vaccinated will die, but mostly they’ll be corner cases.

    Math-wise, getting vaccinated is an easy choice.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Dark Matter says:

      If I remember my immunology (spoiler: I don’t), the way this works is that when the immune system encounters an unknown protein, B cells with antibodies that kind of match it start proliferating and mutating like crazy until a good match is found.

      As you might imagine, randomly finding a match for a three-dimensional structure takes some time, but the closer the antibodies you already have match an invading virus, the less time it takes, and the less time the virus has to reproduce before your immune system eradicates it. So even having a kind of close match can dramatically reduce the severity of infection.

      I do wonder if the mRNA vaccines are less helpful against variants, since they only train your immune system to recognize one part of the virus, rather than the broader recognition you’d get from infection or a whole-virus vaccine, but that’s wholly speculative. Again, I don’t really know what I’m talking about.Report

    • Philip H in reply to Dark Matter says:

      you’d think the math would be persuasive, but on a day where the Mississippi health officer announced 10 of 11 deaths in the sate were unvaccinated, people responded to the news with wailing about how this isn’t a vaccine its gene therapy and thus we were all guinea pigs in some sort of dark devious genetic experiment and they all pronounced themselves glad they were not getting the shot.

      Math will not save us in this instance.Report

      • MathPuppy in reply to Philip H says:

        Philip,
        It’s all about the ACE sites, honestly.
        People are forcing their children to get injections for a virus that they cannot catch.
        2000-3000 dead American children, by our best estimates.
        That’s a 9/11’s worth of dead chillun.
        Not counting all the kids who “can’t do sports no more.”

        And we aren’t even getting into the dead unborn. 6 per 1000 women.Report

        • Dark Matter in reply to MathPuppy says:

          2000-3000 dead American children, by our best estimates.

          Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are rare. More than 331 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through July 6, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 5,946 reports of death (0.0018%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines.

          https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html

          In terms of realistic risks we have Anaphylaxis (allergic reaction), which is 2-5 people per million in the US, and blood clots, which was limited to J&J and which we have a good idea how to treat now.

          The US has 75 million children. 75*(2-5) implies 150-375 cases of Anaphylaxis in children (not thousands).

          If the rate of 0.0018% held true then we’d be looking at 1350 children. VERY likely this is an absurd over estimate since it includes very sick people (old age, etc) who then die from unclear sources. The overall death rate holds steady at 100%, so we should expect that we give the vaccine to people who then die of random stuff.

          For comparison, in December we had 2+ million children who had had Covid, 172 of them died, so their death rate is something like 0.01% (something like 5x even our absurdly high for children rate of 0.0018%).Report

          • MathPuppy in reply to Dark Matter says:

            You’ve kindly forgotten “skin melts off” (acute version) and “heart-enlargement related deaths.”

            Famous people conveniently “die of covid” less than two weeks after being jabbed…Report

          • MathPuppy in reply to Dark Matter says:

            I find it cute, and quaint, how you assume that the FDA/CDC is publishing everything immediately and accurately.Report

            • Dark Matter in reply to MathPuppy says:

              You claimed 6 out of 1000. That’s a very high, very impressive number. Should be lots of serious players finding it.

              If you can back that up with a link go ahead. I suggest you check if the source isn’t some quack, there’s a lot of disinformation around.Report

            • As opposed to pulling things directly from our backsides, as you are?Report

              • MathPuppy in reply to Michael Siegel says:

                If you get to cite sources as “The Scientists I know”
                I get to cite sources the same way (my friend cast the deciding vote for the WHO to declare COVID-19 a pandemic. Don’t think I’m saying he’s a big fish, it was a timezone issue).

                I’ve cited sources. Will continue to cite sources.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to MathPuppy says:

                I see no links from you in this exchange. I thought you had posted one at some point and it had a three digit claim (which is small in this context).

                However I don’t see it now so I may be misremembering things or that may be a different conversation.

                The WHO certainly didn’t cover itself with glory at the start of this, however you’re disputing the WHO, the CDC, and FDA. Where do your numbers and claims come from?Report

              • You haven’t cited a single source for your claims that thousands of children are dead and faces are melting off and all your other nonsense. We’ve cited CDC data, refereed papers, etc.Report

              • MathPuppy in reply to Michael Siegel says:

                Projected deaths at 2000-3000 dead children (This is the correct figure to use in discussions of public policy decisions). Given current rates of vaccination, we shouldn’t expect to see all of them occurring at this time.

                https://nypost.com/2021/03/30/mans-skin-peeled-off-in-reaction-to-johnson-johnson-covid-vax/
                Skin melting off (acute version, which is MUCH MUCH easier to treat — chronic version does NOT have a good life expectancy. As in two people ever have survived it, and one of them has naked bone where flesh used to be).Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to MathPuppy says:

                Nice hyperbole. That isn’t ‘skin melting off’, it’s more akin to a nasty sunburn without the added benefit of a day at the beach.

                It’s also a very rare reaction.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                It’s an allergy rash.

                I got one from some over the counter med I took. Spreads FAST, over a couple of hours it went from red dots to a red welt covering my entire chest.

                Now with a couple of dollars worth of medicine (a steroid pill in my case) it goes away as fast as it came.

                This guy’s problem is he left it untreated for 4 days. I can easily believe you lose your skin like a bad sunburn if you do that.

                This is very rare, but very well understood, and very treatable if you actually get it treated.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Heightened immune system is attacking it’s own body is the fecking definition of an allergic reaction.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Dark Matter says:

                To be clearer, when I phoned this into the Doc he treated it like it was a BIG deal. The questions he kept asking where about whether I was starting to have problems breathing, and his instructions where on how to deal with that.

                People die from this… although in my case it showed no signs of spreading to my lungs. I could have ignored it for days and I expect I’d have been where that guy was.

                The good news is massive, full body rashes from the immune system running amok are treatable with state-of-the-art 1970’s medicine, so it’s really cheap.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to MathPuppy says:

                Please link to “2-3k dead children” rather than “one guy got a rash” with lots of clickbait title spin.Report

        • Chip Daniels in reply to MathPuppy says:

          This entire exchange is a good example of the conspiracist mindset.

          There is the discarding of authority like the CDC and NHA, combined with the credulous appeal to some other authority (the New York Post).

          We can’t trust the government authorities, they are lying to us.
          But the New York Post tabloid? You betcha, that’s the straight scoop right there!

          This is combined with the autodidact’s appeal to their own authority in tossing out technical jargon and statistics as if the speaker were an expert in the field.

          This is what I was talking about on the other thread, about the collapse of faith in institutions being so dangerous for a democracy.

          The quote about those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities comes to mind.Report

  4. j r says:

    The “billionaires are going to space to escape the collapsing earth” narrative is one of the most visible signs of how politics can really rot people’s brains. And this is from a science journalist writing in one of the premier prestige publications.

    There is no place on the surface of planet earth, save for maybe the floor of the deepest ocean trench or inside of a volcano, that is anywhere near as inhospitable to human life as outer space. It’s not even close. And climate change may be making a lot of places noticeably worse, but it’s not going to make any place on earth worse than mars. If rich people wanted to flee climate change, they would just move to New Zealand or further north in Canada.

    If you just think that space exploration money would be better spent directly on climate change activism or mitigation, that is at least a coherent argument. But the same argument could be made for money spent on any area of basic research.

    I won’t touch the “please read the room” framing. Telling people to hold off on making investments that have potential long-term benefits to everyone because it makes some people who don’t have as much money feel bad is Peak Millennial in a way that doesn’t even feel real. It reads like satire.Report

  5. The problem isn’t billionaires going into space. The problem is their coming back.Report

  6. Jaybird says:

    A few days back, there was a minor kerfuffle over Kodak Black throwing $100,000 into the ocean.

    I generally get the feeling that the perception is that billionaires going into space is just doing what Kodak Black did with extra steps.

    If I shared that perception, I imagine that I would respond to the billionaires going into space thing the way that the intertubes responded to Kodak Black.

    (Note: Kodak Black has since done stuff like “hand out air conditioning units to poor neighborhoods” so I think that someone pulled him aside and said that he looked like those billionaires going into space instead of actually helping people so… maybe he turned a new leaf?)

    But the point is that billionaires going into space instead of, I dunno, buying AC units for people is something that billionaires aren’t particularly good at spinning.

    And I say that as someone who looks forward to what private space exploration is going to accomplish.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jaybird says:

      It’s a question of opportunity cost. The vehicle is going to fly with X many people on board because it needs to have X many people on board for the flight (testing, certification, proving the concept, etc.).

      The fact that one of those people is the person who funded the whole thing is largely irrelevant except as PR stunt. If the CEO wasn’t going, that seat would be filled with someone else, or perhaps with a sandbag or tank of water massing 90 kgs.

      I mean, if it helps everyone sleep better, just remember that for the purposes of the flight, the billionaire CEO can easily be replaced with a human equivalent mass of inert matter.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        Oh, I didn’t mean putting Branson on the flight too.

        I meant “funding private space in the first place”.

        “NASA ought to be doing this instead!” and that sort of thing. “The billionaires should be using that money to provide free false teeth to underprivileged elderly people!”Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jaybird says:

          No, NASA shouldn’t. NASA has it’s strengths, but designing and building launch vehicles is not one of them, for the many reasons I and others have pointed out numerous times.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            Pournelle said something to the effect of “I was delighted to have been alive for the first man to walk on the moon. I fear that I was alive for the last man to walk on the moon.”

            Will the billionaires be the next ones up there?

            “We found the flag. It’s been bleached. Probably by the Commies.”

            Anyway, it’s not my criticism, but it is a real criticism out there asking why the billionaires are spending billions of dollars on things that cost billions of dollars instead of doing millions of things that cost thousands of dollars each.Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jaybird says:

              That’s because those people have no idea how many thousands of dollars per kg it costs to lift a communication satellite, or a science probe, or just food for the ISS crew. Any money we spend on making the lift cheaper is money that is returned to us by making other things cheaper.

              I mean, unless you see any effort to do any kind of work or science in space as a waste (and NASA is a money pit), in which case, I have no argument you’ll find acceptable.Report

          • And here there’s the question of whether Virgin Galactic even falls under “launch vehicles.” So far as I know, there are no plans to do more than suborbital with a flight plan that ends up back at the NM facility.Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to Michael Cain says:

              Back when it was still Scaled Composites, the whole thing was a proof of concept for using a carrier vehicle to reduce launch costs. What Branson is doing is (from what I hear through the grapevine, VG being a customer of ours and all) is trying to use tourism as a way to fund development of more ‘work horse’ carrier that can loft commercial payloads.

              I mean, the rocket equation doesn’t have just one neat trick to avoid the requirements it computes, so any altitude, or latitude, you can gain by using a carrier is money in the bank.Report

              • Digging farther, they do have a separate company with a couple of successful launches to LEO. The business plan seems to be small payloads (300-400 kg max), lowish cost ($10M per launch) on short notice.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Michael Cain says:

                Short notice is a pretty big deal. Being able to get something up quick because you can shift your launch window to wherever the carrier can fly to, and be high enough that the FAA doesn’t have to create a massive exclusion zone (Musk just had to scrub a launch for that one) is a huge savings in time and cost..Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to Philip H says:

              Oh, I know, but there are still people who think NASA should be the only one designing and launching rockets because NASA officials aren’t billionaires looking to build and move to Elysium.

              So the idea of Musk, Bezos, or Branson doing space stuff (beyond paying NASA to launch their satellites) is offensive at it’s core.Report

              • 3RG in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Our new masters disagree, sadly.
                Next time you wonder why NASA sucks?
                You voted for it.
                NASA engineers are now running advertising companies.
                Yep, that’s a DAMN good use of talent.Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:

      He’s fighting inflation!Report

  7. Andre Kenji de Sousa says:

    Sinovac hasn’t been shown to be useless, far from that, as it’s being shown in South America(That’s in the middle of winter, unlike Europe or North America). In fact, I think that considering what I’m seeing in Brazil it might make sense to give Sinovac for women and Pfizer/AstraZeneca for men.Report