Do the math on this. With 36 launches costing about 450 million each that would be over $16 Billion. So, using SpaceX could save over $10 Billion over those 36 launches. Even if you go with a satellite that costs $1B to get to the launch pad that would mean you could launch an extra 5 to 10 satellites just by going with the Falcons instead of the Deltas. That is a significant enough difference. Heck you could toss in a couple hundred cubesat experiments on top of that with all that savings and extra launch capability.

That is just silly. You set procurement schedules based on getting the best value for the taxpayers. And it isn't like they have been doing launch procurement this way for many years. The switch from single launch contracts to this block of launches going to a sole source being done to "save money" is just laughable reasoning when there is a competitor out there that can launch for less than a third of the cost.

This procurement schedule very clearly seems to have been set to give the most taxpayer money to Boeing and Lockheed Martin before the air force is forced to put these contracts out to bid. If you care about US space capabilities for national defense then we need to reduce launch costs significantly. SpaceX is doing that.

As a taxpayer, I wouldn't usually care about these corporate tiffs, but SpaceX can probably save the government hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars which could be used towards additional capabilities in space... so using SpaceX for launches could allow the Air Force to double its launch capacity at the same cost. Forget about sending money to Russia using ULA rockets, using SpaceX could double or more than double US space capabilities which translates to more communications satellites, more surveillance satellites and more R&D payloads.

It is boggles the mind that the procurement folks at the air force would sign long term contracts with ULA just a few months before SpaceX has finished jumping through all the Air Force hoops for certification. Seems like a pretty blatant multi billion dollar gift (going out of business gift?) to the United Launch Alliance and is a bad deal for the Pentagon.

Given the likelihood of certification for SpaceX, at the very least the Air Force procurers should have limited the contract to nearer term launches and not so many.

The requested $125k is about what it would cost to build and launch a cubesat, but a cubesat would only be in orbit for a couple months at most. So this is a very good return on investment if they can get some longer term use out of it.

If Japan wants to move away from nuclear power, then space based solar might be the only alternative. Reliance on foreign oil has been a big drain on their economy since shutting down their nuclear power plants after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The tension with China over the senkaku could be a direct result of increasing pressure to do oil and gas exploration in the surrounding waters. Regardless of Global Climate Change because of burning fossil fuels, we would all be better off if Japan could move away from fossil fuels, either back to nuclear and/or with more geothermal and even space based solar.

Basically the FCC is allowing fraud. Customers are paying for bandwidth and then the company is secretly throttling that bandwidth only for certain content.

Google doesn't need tax breaks, they just need municipalities to cut through the red tape that has the habit of ending up in brown paper bags full of cash to regulators. The big telecoms need those tax breaks to fill brown paper bags full of cash that are sent right back to the army of "consultants" that grease the wheels of government and of politicians.

Given the trillion dollar or more per year injections of new money into the economy, the fact that there isn't more inflation is a cause of concern. The money injections seem to be happening primarily at the top and only partly trickling down into the wider economy which is showing up as income inequality and growth starting at the very top rather than being spread around which would show up in consumer inflation. I think the real threat in the trickle down way the Federal Reserve and the US government are distributing new money is that it is getting concentrated even more at the top and that is further undermining and diluting democracy and freedom.

Certainly the new money does help to capitalize businesses and that has stabilized jobs, but the real long term sustainability of that "debt" will be premised on using Federal Reserve "profits" to balance the federal debt out over time rather than actually taking money out of the economy to pay it back later.

Bottom line is that with all this new money being concentrated at the top because of the actions of the Federal Reserve and the stimulus, then we are going to need a set of public policies to try and restore the political and economic power of the middle income earners that has been eroding steadily for decades. Which I am arguing has happened as a direct result from the way that new money creation is distributed by the Federal Reserve and US Government.

We need more ways to save income that are tax free combined with lower taxes on both the poor and middle class. And lower taxes or no taxes on job creating businesses. But higher taxes on very high individual incomes.

Deficits and new money creation to support economic reforms to broaden the middle class and strengthen our democracy and freedom are a worthwhile investment in the future.

Yes, $100k used to mean you had made it... not just to the middle class, but to the upper middle class and maybe with some additional savings you could save up enough to start your own business. Now, especially in many of the more expensive metropolitan areas, $100k simply means you are in the middle of the middle class. $150k or even $200k is closer to the old $100k threshold in terms of a threshold to the upper middle class. And a lot depends on how much wealth you have already and which area you live in. Because $100k in salary if you have $500k in savings or a fully paid off house is like having a $2k to $3k per month increase in salary.

Making $100k today is about the equivalent of making $80k in 2004 or $72k in 2000. A decent salary... but making "six figures" ain't what it used to be.

I still use email after 30 years, but I'll be damned if I remember any of my AOL screen names. Facebook is a trend on the down slope in a long line of trendy online communities and not a distinct communications platform. AOL is a lesson for Facebook in that if a company tries too hard to keep control of a proprietary communications system then it will loose out to another company that will be less controlling.

That implies that the money comes from the bottom up and feeds into a pyramid. Actually it is in very large part the opposite with the Federal Reserve creating new money, feeding it into the banks and Federal Government and all that new money trickling down through Wall Street and Federal contractors then eventually a little bit eventually gets through to the real production oriented economy where food gets grown and transportation and energy get produced. At each level very unproductive people are spinning their wheels and calling that work and taking a bigger and bigger cut just because they can.

The problem isn't that it is a ponzi scheme, for the most part the problem is that the capital isn't flowing up from individuals but rather the capital is trickling down from the top with the top being determined in a false meritocracy which is thinly veiling a more insidious form of entrenched elitism.

And it isn't a huge problem that people are getting paid to spin their wheels like this, with a lack of truly necessary jobs for people to do suck wheel spinning is a good way to keep people occupied doing something challenging yet meaningless, the problem is when the system becomes so overtly corrupt that the real producers get fed up with producing something of necessity and being rewarded with worthless trinkets while unworthy people are living lavishly wasteful lives while others go without necessities. It really is undermining freedom and democracy to be perpetuating this system of economics where capital is trickling down and concentrated in fewer and fewer hands at the top.

Heck it isn't even true anymore that getting a bachelor's degree guarantee's that you will receive a middle income salary. At least not a salary that will allow you to live a middle class lifestyle unless your parents were already rich.

And there is a good solution for storage, but the allies of the fossil fuel industry have combined with the anti nuclear folks to block Yucca mountain from opening. Bury the nuclear waste deep in the earth, because that is where it came from in the first place.

It is very sad for the thousands of people that lost their homes because of radiation around Fukushima. But compare that evacuation to the effects of the earthquake and tsunami itself, which claimed the lives of 15,885 people and injured 6,148 with 2623 people still missing, the response to the radiation leak is just one after effect of the tsunami, but it hasn't caused any deaths.

As for "Such a fire will render the U.S "virtually" uninhabitable.".... a hundred nuclear weapons were detonated on the US mainland as part of above ground nuclear weapons tests. While I think that was incredibly stupid and irresponsible and there have certainly been health effects and increased cancer deaths in the decades afterwards, the radiation leaks at nuclear power plants pale in comparison to the radiation released by those above ground tests and as far as I can tell the US is still inhabitable.

And it is still a non-issue. When it is 30 years later and you can still store it on-site then it is not a lot of waste. Compare that to any other energy source, the amount of toxic waste, even solar panel manufacturing and you have your answer.

I would love to do some recreational flying, but I can't afford to with a family and a mortgage and many expenses. And I couldn't justify it as an expensive hobby before then.

The point was simply that people don't fly because it isn't economically viable to do so. The number of pilot's licenses isn't an indication of people's ability to fly or their inclination to do so. It is an indication of the expense of flying which is partly the result of FAA regulations and the lack of efficient mass production of light aircraft.