I'm getting sick of hearing that the space shuttle is "still an experimental vehicle". The Columbia first flew in 1981. Columbia flew on average more than one flight per year since 1981. After three or four years, ok I can see it being classed as experimental. But the damn thing flew for 22 years, and the fleet has flown over 100 missions so far. If you built 5 experimental automobiles in 1981, and you hadn't done a significant technical upgrade, would you still consider them experimental today?

You knew it was bound to happen someday: high school student builds fusion reactor, wins second place in science fair.

Scaled Composites has been testing out the flight hardware for their X prize contender. Spaceship One's second flight last month, testing out the "feathered" wing mode, stall speeds, and similarity to simulation, was a success.

Other X prize teams are in the running, and other private space companies are seeking to go into orbit or beyond within a very few years. December 17, 2003 is the centennial of the first powered manned flight, and it looks like the Spaceship One team may make that deadline for the first suborbital flight.

{Spaceship One (and its lifter body, the White Knight) cost $30 million to develop (what NASA spends every twelve hours) and it will cost $80000 for a suborbital flight: 1/1000 of what it cost to send Alan Shepherd to suborbital space.}

So it looks likely that a private company will win the X prize this December. Then it (and other companies who won't be far behind) will start offering trips to suborbital space. The logical next step is for private firms to begin orbital launchs. Each of the X prize contenders is using its own unique method to get into space, and given the enormous difference in cost between Scaled Composite's method and the US government method, expect private companies to dramatically reduce the cost of launching people to orbit.

NASA is in its death throes right now. The space shuttles will be retired in 2010. Every year one space shuttle replacement program is started, and every other year a program is cancelled after having frittered away billions of dollars.

If NASA continues to go at the rate it is going, by 2010 it will have: sucked another 105 billion dollars from the US economy; at least one more shuttle accident; an extension on the shuttle program on the (by then) remaining two shuttles; three or four replacement projects that were 70% complete but scrapped; no heavy-lift shuttle replacement; no passenger delivery-and-return shuttle replacement; a still-incomplete International Space Station preparing to be mothballed; a larger budget.

At the rate private companies are going, by 2010 there will be: regularly scheduled commercial suborbital flights; regularly scheduled commercial orbital flights; a private space station; serious plans for lunar bases; a flotilla of robotic craft on their way to explore the asteroid belt.

China bracing for First Manned Spaceflight

BEIJING - Preparations for China's first manned space flight — expected sometime later this year — are moving ahead "extremely smoothly," a top science official said Tuesday.

Science and Technology Minister Xu Guanhua didn't give a date for the launch of the manned spacecraft, called the Shenzhou V, and said additional details would be announced later by other government departments.

"According to my knowledge, all launch preparations for the Shenzhou V spacecraft have proceeded extremely smoothly," Xu said in comments to journalists reported by the government's China News Service.

September 13, 2003
As Factory Jobs Disappear, Workers Have Few Options
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Copyright 2003 The New York Times
*full story posted below my comments*

This story sounds like it was ripped right out of the pages of Atlas Shrugged, about half-way through the book. It reads somewhat like a newspaper article, but just under the surface it is a barely-concealed plea: "somebody... fix it somehow!"

Greenhouse blames inexpensive imports, low wages in China, the strong dollar, production moving overseas, NAFTA, and George W. Bush for not "somehow" saving all those lost manufacturing jobs. The only mention of unions in the piece is in passing, as it is union workers who are losing their jobs. It is astounding that Greenhouse does not connect the dots. Instead, he paints union workers as innocent victims.

I found this paragraph particularly fascinating:

Mr. Greathouse, a wiry, muscular man who went into factory work after dropping out of Kent State University, asked: "When you have C.E.O.'s who think of moving jobs offshore, what are you doing but terrorizing the people who lose their jobs? This is a form of terrorism, also. The country is getting weaker and weaker."

Well his last sentence is bang on. Note that according to this poor schlub (who at the age of 55 just bought a new $99000 house), if a CEO >>thinks<< of moving jobs offshore, then that CEO is committing an act of terrorism. This is a whole 'nuther can o'worms. How convenient, to equate one man saving his business from bankruptcy with psychopaths crashing jetliners into skyscrapers. Doesn't it make capitalism sound downright evil?

Then we have miss Alice Hall. She has worked for 15 years as part of the union, a former janitor in a steel mill which just went belly-up.

But entry-level medical jobs may pay just half the salary of her old job. On a recent afternoon, Ms. Hall sat in the steelworkers' union hall across from the rusting Republic mill with 12 other laid-off workers seething with anger — at their former employer, at greedy chief executives and at the lack of health insurance.

And now poor Alice's daughter can't take dance lessons anymore. Such grinding poverty! Imagine -- an entry level job that requires the applicant to be able to read, write, and do arithmetic, that doesn't pay as much as a union job with 15 years of experience. (Is this not backwards? Should a job that does not require even the basics of literacy _ever_ pay more than a job that does?)

So now 700 people are unemployed at the steel mill, as the company has gone bankrupt. For going bankrupt (rather than keeping the mill open "somehow"), the CEO is considered "greedy". Further, the former employees no longer have "free" health care paid for by the company.

I wonder, if the CEO had fired half of those 700 and cut the health benefits for all the rest to zero, then hired 350 people in China at 55 cents an hour, whether the steel mill would still be open. No union would ever have stood for that of course... but the point is moot now, and 700 people are out of jobs because the company is gone.

Then we have John Russo, an expert on "labor studies" who gives us these hard facts:

"If you draw a line across the top third of this state, the manufacturing part of the state, you see a lot of pain, anger and frustration," said John Russo, director of labor studies at Youngstown State University.

Wow. I can imagine how drawing a line across a state would anger and frustrate people, as it would require a great many pencils and would be very difficult to keep it straight, and pain may ensue as those drafting the line may be exposed to carpal tunnel syndrome. Why is this quote in here? why is it relevant? Well, it must be an opinion piece rather than a news article ;)

Many workers embraced protectionism, with some suggesting a law to bar the
United States from importing more goods than it exports.

*shaking my head* They just don't get it, do they? What good would yet another artificial barrier to business do? Soon Bill's AutoParts can't replace the distributor on your 94 Hyundai or 99 Tercel, because Korea and Japan hit their import limits.

Some Ohioans predict that the state could swing to the Democrats in the
election next year.

Whoopie, so the author is threatening that the left wing of the Socialist party my win the election, as the right wing of the Socialist party hasn't "somehow" made it all better; of course the Dems will make everything all better again, it'll be a New Deal for America.

He then ends with the point of view of a single CEO:
"A lot of people say why doesn't President Bush shoot the silver bullet to help manufacturing," Mr. Timken said. "There is no simple answer. We tell people if you want to look at part of the problem, look in the mirror.

Darn right. The union of those 700 steel mill workers priced their jobs right out of the market and the company right out of business.

Ed

ps... In Canada, if one works in a union shop, then one is required to pay union dues, whether he wants to or not, whether he chooses to be a member of the union or not. It's the Law. If you do not wish to join the union and refuse to pay union dues, then the government simply deducts the dues from your paycheck and sends the money to the union. So you technically don't have to be a member of the union in order to pay dues. Lovely little scheme, isn't it?






CANTON, Ohio, Sept. 12 — For nearly 30 years, Jim Greathouse was part of the blue-collar elite, a tool-and-die man who sometimes earned more than $50,000 a year because his job, making the precision metal molds that factories use to shape parts, required such exacting skills.

But in June, Mr. Greathouse, 55, lost his job at the Hoover vacuum cleaner factory here, and with so many other factories laying off people, he is at a loss about what to do.

"What does it do when you take away all these jobs from people who support families, who raise families?" he asked. "Manufacturing has been the strength of this country. If we can't make anything here anymore, what does that do? The fabric of this society is falling
apart."

Mr. Greathouse has a lot of company. In three years, Ohio has lost more than 160,000 factory jobs, representing one-sixth of its total. That is but a small fraction of the 2.7 million manufacturing jobs lost nationwide in those three years, many of them because of imports.
Some economists say that even with a boom all those jobs are not likely to return.

Factory unemployment has snowballed into a huge social and political issue across the Midwest, after manufacturing in the region boomed in the 1990's. President Bush gave a speech about manufacturing losses on Labor Day in Ohio, and the Democratic presidential candidates are pressing the issue.

A wide range of figures suggests that the economy is likely to surge, but economists predict unemployment will remain almost unchanged at nearly 6 percent through the 2004 presidential election.

With its century-old stone buildings and handsome brick factories, Canton was long a booming industrial center, but the area has been hit by so many factory closings, bankruptcies and layoffs that many workers are losing hope. Many of the unemployed are reluctantly turning to less steady or lower-paying jobs like hospital aide. Some are
studying computer technology.

"I've applied for many jobs, and they politely tell me I'm too old, that they're hoping to find someone they can train and keep for a long time," said Patty Reich, who lost her job as a
metallurgical technician at the Republic Steel mill. "For someone like me who is
unemployed at age 54, we don't have too much light at the end of the tunnel."

Ask laid-off workers what is to blame for the woes, and they point to imports, low wages in China, the strong dollar, production moving overseas, President Bill Clinton for embracing the North American Free Trade Agreement and President Bush for focusing only recently on the crisis.

Robert White, a laid-off steelworker who voted for Mr. Bush three years ago, said: "He's slowly getting his eyes awakened to what's going on. The air has been going out of the balloon for a long time, and he's trying to stop it. But the air is almost out of the balloon."

In the last three years, Stark County, which includes Canton, has lost 3,500 factory jobs, more than 10 percent of the total. Two years ago in Massillon, just west of Canton, the lone rubber glove factory in the nation shut, moving production to Malaysia and India and throwing 200 people out of work. Last year, Hess Management of Austin, Tex., shut the
Danner Press printing plant, costing 325 workers their jobs, and 700 steelworkers at Republic Technologies on the east end of town lost their jobs when Republic filed for
bankruptcy.

This year, an automobile parts company laid off 150 workers, and Hoover, a division of Maytag, 200. Last week, the largest employer in the region, Timken, warned 1,300 workers at three ball-bearing plants here that their jobs were in danger unless costs were reduced.

"If you draw a line across the top third of this state, the manufacturing part of the state, you see a lot of pain, anger and frustration," said John Russo, director of labor studies at Youngstown State University.

Mr. Greathouse, a wiry, muscular man who went into factory work after dropping out of Kent State University, asked: "When you have C.E.O.'s who think of moving jobs offshore, what are you doing but terrorizing the people who lose their jobs? This is a form of terrorism,
also. The country is getting weaker and weaker."

Having just bought a three-bedroom house for $99,000, he said, he might have to consider personal bankruptcy, because he was having problems paying his mortgage and support for his former wife. He has applied to numerous tool-and-die shops with no luck, so he is thinking of returning to college, but says he first needs to speak with a vocational counselor for career advice.

Alice Hall, who worked for 15 years as a janitor in a steel mill, saw her house undergo foreclosure and has told her 16-year-old daughter that they can no longer afford the girl's dance lessons. Ms. Hall, a small, soft-spoken woma, is taking remedial mathematics and English classes to help prepare for work as a hospital aide.

"They told me go into medical," she said. "That's a field where you can always get a job."

But entry-level medical jobs may pay just half the salary of her old job. On a recent afternoon, Ms. Hall sat in the steelworkers' union hall across from the rusting Republic mill with 12 other laid-off workers seething with anger — at their former employer, at greedy chief executives and at the lack of health insurance.

"It used to be that manufacturing provided people with a decent middle-class living, but now these jobs are falling by the wayside," said Dan Yarnell, who worked at Republic for 26 years. "A lot of people are going to work at Wal-Mart. But how do you live on the $7.50 an hour Wal-Mart pays?"

Many workers embraced protectionism, with some suggesting a law to bar the United States from importing more goods than it exports.

Thomas Briatico, president of Hoover Floorcare, based in North Canton, said all of Hoover's major competitors but one were buying their vacuum cleaners from Asia and Mexico. That foreign competition, Mr. Briatico said, has forced the average retail price of cleaners to drop
10 percent in two years.

"It's put us at a little bit of a competitive disadvantage," he said. "In China, they pay their workers 55 cents an hour, and the easiest decision for me would be to go outsource in China. The tough decision is to stay here. I'm personally concerned about jobs leaving this
country."

Some Ohioans predict that the state could swing to the Democrats in the election next year.

"This is a fairly conservative state," Professor Russo said, "and last time, it went 3 percent for Bush. But I think there will be an electoral response to all these jobs losses, and Bush gets beat here."

W. R. Timken Jr., chairman of Timken, with 5,000 workers here, is often praised for doing his utmost to keep jobs in Ohio. But he said fierce foreign competition was forcing the company to weigh the future of the three ball-bearing plants.

"The truth is unless we can do something with these plants, they won't be globally competitive," said Mr. Timken, who recently stepped down as chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers.

Mr. Timken said his company had been hurt by the strong dollar, China's undervalued currency and the harm that imports were causing his customers. Foreign competition was so intense, he said, that the price of manufacturing goods in the United States has fallen 4 percent in the last 10 years as the price of other goods has increased 18 percent. That,
he said, has forced Timken and other manufacturers to increase productivity and reduce jobs.

"Manufacturing has been the key to innovation in the United States and has given the United States leadership in innovation," said Mr. Timken, whose great-grandfather founded the company in 1899 "If you eliminate manufacturing, which accounts for 65 percent of
private sector R & D, then innovation will decline, and you will see a nation in decline."

It will take many steps to turn around manufacturing, Mr. Timken said, adding that although tax cuts have help, he wished more of them had gone to spur investment.

"A lot of people say why doesn't President Bush shoot the silver bullet to help manufacturing," Mr. Timken said. "There is no simple answer. We tell people if you want to look at part of the problem, look in the mirror. You buy cars from Japan, shirts from Hong Kong and many imported products in Wal-Mart. American manufacturers are caught in the
middle."

Well, here it is right from the horse's mouth: in the 1970's NASA lied to Congress about the cost of the shuttle program.

bwahahaha

bwahahaha

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I always enjoy Russell Maddens's articles, and this one is particularly good.