Texas Is Planning To Make a Huge Public Investment In Space (arstechnica.com) 103
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As part of the state's biennial budget process, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has called on the state legislature to provide $350 million to create and fund a Texas Space Commission for the next two years. "With companies seeking to expand space travel in coming years, continued development of the space industry in the state will ensure Texas remains at the forefront not only in the United States, but the entire world," Abbott stated in his budget document for the 88th Legislature. "Further investment will cement Texas as the preeminent location for innovation and development in this rapidly growing industry. Due to increased competition from other states and internationally, further planning and coordination is needed to keep Texas at the cutting edge." Texas has a historic budget surplus this year due to oil prices, inflation, and other factors driving economic growth. The state is projected to have $188.2 billion available in general revenue for funding the business of the state over the 2024-2025 period, a surplus of $32.7 billion over spending during the previous two years.
In their initial drafts, both the House and the Senate budget bills for this legislative session include the full $350 million in funding for a space commission. The initiative is being led by the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Texas Rep. Greg Bonnen, whose district just south of Houston is adjacent to NASA's Johnson Space Center. A source said the bill "has all of the support it needs to pass" from leaders in both the House and Senate. Bonnen's office did not specify what the Texas Space Commission will address, including how the money would be spent. A second source in the Texas Legislature told Ars that details about the commission's funding priorities were expected to be worked out later in the legislative session, which ends on May 29.
However, the framework for the proposed space commission appears to have been prepared by a Houston-based workforce-development organization called TexSpace, which published an annual report in December calling for the creation of such a commission. According to this document, the commission would "focus on policy and arranging statewide strategy by monitoring local, state, and federal policies and opportunities and establishing an economic ecosystem for Texas' space enterprises." It would include 15 members, including those appointed by political officials, as well as an appointee each from SpaceX and Blue Origin. [...] The commission will likely seek to ensure that SpaceX and Blue Origin continue to grow their presence in the state and to nurture other, smaller startups. "Compared to the Texas proposal, Space Florida has a modest annual budget of $12.5 million," notes Ars.
"Florida leaders made the brilliant decision to invest in the commercial space industry years ago, and that investment has paid off," Anna Alexopoulos Farrar, a vice president of communications for Space Florida, told Ars. "Space Florida alone had a $5.9 billion economic impact on the state over the past 15 years, and we project a $1.1 billion impact every year starting this year. It's not surprising that other states want to emulate our proven model, and we welcome the challenge from our friends in Texas -- competition yields the best outcomes for both businesses and taxpayers."
In their initial drafts, both the House and the Senate budget bills for this legislative session include the full $350 million in funding for a space commission. The initiative is being led by the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Texas Rep. Greg Bonnen, whose district just south of Houston is adjacent to NASA's Johnson Space Center. A source said the bill "has all of the support it needs to pass" from leaders in both the House and Senate. Bonnen's office did not specify what the Texas Space Commission will address, including how the money would be spent. A second source in the Texas Legislature told Ars that details about the commission's funding priorities were expected to be worked out later in the legislative session, which ends on May 29.
However, the framework for the proposed space commission appears to have been prepared by a Houston-based workforce-development organization called TexSpace, which published an annual report in December calling for the creation of such a commission. According to this document, the commission would "focus on policy and arranging statewide strategy by monitoring local, state, and federal policies and opportunities and establishing an economic ecosystem for Texas' space enterprises." It would include 15 members, including those appointed by political officials, as well as an appointee each from SpaceX and Blue Origin. [...] The commission will likely seek to ensure that SpaceX and Blue Origin continue to grow their presence in the state and to nurture other, smaller startups. "Compared to the Texas proposal, Space Florida has a modest annual budget of $12.5 million," notes Ars.
"Florida leaders made the brilliant decision to invest in the commercial space industry years ago, and that investment has paid off," Anna Alexopoulos Farrar, a vice president of communications for Space Florida, told Ars. "Space Florida alone had a $5.9 billion economic impact on the state over the past 15 years, and we project a $1.1 billion impact every year starting this year. It's not surprising that other states want to emulate our proven model, and we welcome the challenge from our friends in Texas -- competition yields the best outcomes for both businesses and taxpayers."
Fix your power grid first please (Score:4, Insightful)
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Then again https://www.texasstandard.org/... [texasstandard.org]
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> The most reliable grid in North America is in Quebec and it is completely independent.
Not sure what you mean by "completely independent". Our network is connected to networks in the US and other provinces, we sell a lot of electricity we also import electricity when we can't keep up with demand.
For example, "In January 2022, Hydro-Québec saw the previous record for electricity demand broken with 40,380 MW of consumption. It had to import 2,000 MW from Ontario and the state of New York." - https:// [www.cbc.ca]
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Re:Nice try (Score:4, Informative)
Wildfires on Federal Land took out California's grid. These problems were fixed under Democratic administrations. They're also a handful of problems caused by privatization under Republican Governor Schwarzenegger
Umm...do you even live in California dude? I do, and anybody who has spent any significant amount of time outside of this state (I've spent nearly all of my life outside of it) it's pretty obvious that it has systemic problems that had to have taken place across multiple governors, not just one. In fact, these are ongoing problems, that you're blaming on a guy who hasn't even been in office for over 12 years. More than that, California is structured as a republic, and most of the representatives were democratic even when Schwarzenegger was governor. They totally had veto power.
but again putting a democrat in charge has gradually corrected these problems and you'll notice you're not hearing about rolling blackouts in California anymore
No, that's not at all why. The reason why is because they're increasing their dependence on capacity from neighboring states. And what do you think they're doing to address local production?
Greenwashing, of course!
You see, the California is proud of the fact that it has almost completely eliminated coal based power sources, which it replaced mostly with -- get this -- biomass! In other words, they traded one carbon source for another. But they can successfully claim that they got rid of coal! But still, that's not enough, because you know, California still can't meet its own energy needs. So what do they do? Add solar!
But that's not quite what you think it is. See, during the day, California produces so much solar power that it is overloading the local grid capacity. It's also during the day that California never really had any issues with brownouts or blackouts. The problem, barring a local disaster, acute or otherwise, has always been at night. But because they need to prevent the local grid from burning out, guess what they do? In many cases, they actually PAY the neighboring states to take that excess energy, because even the neighboring states don't really need it.
Problem is, they still have big energy shortages in the evening. So what do they do? They pay a premium to import it from neighboring states. 20% of their off-solar power comes from Arizona alone.
Meanwhile, what do you think California is doing to address the evening power shortages? Why, more solar of course! Gotta meet those clean energy goals, after all!
https://www.instituteforenergy... [institutef...search.org]
And that's the strategy they're pursuing until at least 2025. Meanwhile, a republican state is going to help these democrats keep up the facade so that YOU will keep voting for them, as you inevitably will. And for a modest fee, of course, which Californians are more than happy to tax. Way to go democrats! You show those republitards how to run a state!
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Oh and while you're ranting about Texas: California, despite its heavy, poorly thought out, purely politically motivated (rather than pragmatic) greenwashing, doesn't even come close to first place. But guess who IS in first place?
https://www.usnews.com/news/be... [usnews.com]
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No, biomass only makes up 2.3% [ca.gov] of California's energy.
Are you trolling? The carbon in biomass hasn't been locked up for millions of years, so it has nothing to do with global warming.
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Are you trolling? The carbon in biomass hasn't been locked up for millions of years, so it has nothing to do with global warming.
Forgot to also mention what else they replaced it with (editing mistake):
https://www.eia.gov/state/prin... [eia.gov]
The point still remains.
Yes, that's how a resilient, multi-state grid works.
That's not the point. Didn't you see what I replied to? Namely, rsilvergun, as usual, is politicizing it. And, as usual, he's horribly mistaken.
They are adding battery [slashdot.org] storage [slashdot.org].
That still goes way against rsilvergun's politicization of the topic. You know who rsilvergun, along with basically every democrat everywhere, loves to rail against, especially after he bought twitter? Now, read your first link.
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"Coastal" is iffy. Ie, the Bay Area is very large but mostly not coastal (coast of the bay isn't often considered "coastal"). LA (liberal) and San Diego (conservative) are the most populated coastal areas. The central coast between Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara are smaller towns without much clout at all; politics is dominated there by more inland farming cities like Bakersfield and Fresno. Yes, rural populations don't have much power but they didn't in the old system; their regional power came from regi
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The Salton Sea is an anomaly. It was caused by an overflow of the Colorado river. It is drying up naturally and returning to its normal state. Of course this damages farmers who came there assuming that the water supply would never change.
That's one of the things that California does pretty bad with. They don't know how to conserve water, and they know even less about how to reclaim it. Arizona and Nevada do, and so they had no issues ceding their proportional share. However, California still refuses to, and as if that's not bad enough, they still seemingly aren't interested in improving their water management. Like everything else that isn't a hot-button topic trending on social media, they adopt this "let sleeping dogs lie" mentality. Mean
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People think of California as liberal, but it was very conservative for a long time and that conservative streak is sort of opposed to conservation. Especially with water. The rich orange county conservatives want big lawns, and the conservative farmers want water for the farms.
Arizona needs to do better though. It's a desert, and they had to stop portioning out parts of the Colorado because of drought and, again, it was the relatively newer arrived farmers up in arms that suddenly their business plan i
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People think of California as liberal, but it was very conservative for a long time and that conservative streak is sort of opposed to conservation. Especially with water. The rich orange county conservatives want big lawns, and the conservative farmers want water for the farms.
Actually that's not what I'm talking about. Case in point, right now it's raining cats and dogs. And yet, very little (if any) of it is going to be reused or reclaimed.
Arizona needs to do better though. It's a desert, and they had to stop portioning out parts of the Colorado because of drought and, again, it was the relatively newer arrived farmers up in arms that suddenly their business plan involving cheap water was in danger.
Farmers have been there for a long time, that's not really new. If anything they've been moving or being pushed out on account of urban sprawl.
The reason housing prices are high is 100% due to the free market. The conservatives believe in it, and blast anyone suggesting rent control, but then they turn around and criticize the high prices that their laissez faire market causes. As a real estate developer it makes great business sense to build for the wealthy and extract the highest rent that renters can handle.
All you're trying to do here is correlate, and you're not even doing a good job of it. You know they started under a free market right? So let's correlate some more. Isn't it funny how they took off in
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Take the Salton Sea, for example. It gets ignored until the fish and animal kills cause a stench so bad that it reaches all the way west. Once the smell hits the rarified noses of the LA elites, then stuff gets done, but not until then.
I kind of doubt that. I live less than a quarter mile from the beach. Unless you're right on the beach, chances are very high that at any given moment, the outside air smells like a skunk's butthole.
Mind you, I don't care if people use weed, but god damn, the people here really need a bit of moderation. Or they should put it in their brownies or something, because, as with anything else, smoking it is really bad on your lungs.
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While non-carbon sources are better, biomass and coal are not the same.
Coal, along with oil and natural gas, are fossil fuels. Their carbon has been out of circulation for hundreds of millions of years. Ex
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California rolling blackouts were a problem during the DAY typically. That's when peak usage is, all the air conditioners turn on, everyone's at work in over air-conditioned buildings, and then the grid gets problems. Blackouts at night are relative rare and almost always localized and due to storms and not overuse.
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Informative)
Fermion is talking about Enron 2000-2001, probably the worst blackouts in California history, right during the end of the first Dot Com bubble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Highly paid Enron traders in Texas beat to death state employee traders in Sacramento. And bragged about the blackouts, which spiked prices. By the end of 2001, Enron was dead, largest bankruptcy till then in US history, as its own practices destroyed it in an accounting scandal.
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Enron was the pinnacle of the rent seekers - it did not create a product, it did not deliver a product, it did not alter a product, and it provided no service. And yet it made a profit off of other people's efforts.
They also had a subsidiary in California, Azurix, whose business plan was to pump water into the aquafiers in wet years and then sell it back at a high profit in drought years. And aquifer that it did not own, and which ran under the ground for several counties. Unlike the Enron loving Texans,
Re: Fix your power grid first please (Score:2)
I don't know where you're from, but at least in the case of Arizona, the grid just fuckin works. Damn well too. Can't say the same for California though. I think they pretty much stopped caring about their public infrastructure at least 20 years ago.
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It's not just electricity that's bad here. Notice I used the word infrastructure. That word choice wasn't an accident. California is also one of the worst states when it comes to road maintenance (5th worst in the US in fact) and really doesn't know god a damn thing about water management.
But don't let this get in the way of your argument either: The two major power companies in Arizona are APS and SRP. Both are also corporations. Do with that information what you will.
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Worse roads than Michigan?
Is that even possible?
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There are more users of wather than there is water in California. The big headache are conservative farmers who insist on centuries old water rights that are meaningless in the modern age. San Francisco has it's own giant reservoir for 150 years or so and doesn't really care much about others to about the same degree that the farmers care about others. Southern California depends a lot upon the Colorado river even though it gets sucked mostly dry each year and Arizona has no real conservation plans going
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It is indeed a problem. Deregulation (under Pete Wilson (R) not Schwarzenegger (R)) just made the private utilities worse. The infrastructure didn't really have public ownership but was partially managed by the private utilities themselves too; but the infrastructure didn't become a major problem until the fires with PG&E. The PUC was mostly rubber stamping what the utilities asked for. Since the deregulation though the utilities have been reeled in more; the energy problems were a wake up call in a
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We should all hope for a power grid more like California's, where they have serious regulations in place. Blackouts and electrical wildfires are a thing of the past in the golden state, right???
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Whataboutism. Texas refuses to connect to the national grid because they're Texas and fuck you, that's why. What Texas won't tell you is they have links to the Mexican power grid.
Re:Fix your power grid first please (Score:5, Informative)
Whataboutism. Texas refuses to connect to the national grid because they're Texas and fuck you, that's why. What Texas won't tell you is they have links to the Mexican power grid.
Texas is doing dumb things, but that's a poor understanding on your part. There really is no "national" grid. If anything it's more like a confederated grid. And no, that doesn't have anything to do with the civil war era. It varies by region, but overall the power infrastructure across the US is very disjointed and aging. Basically a holdover from times past. That's the downside with being the first mover of any given technology, as the US frequently is.
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Texas is doing dumb things, but that's a poor understanding on your part.
So enlighten me then. Why won't Texas connect to the massive east or west grids? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Worst state for blackouts is, surprise surprise, Texas! https://www.texasstandard.org/... [texasstandard.org]
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Infrastructure just does not seem to be a thing in Austin
Austin's infrastructure plan seems to be "don't build it and they won't come". At least that's been their plan for building highways until recently when they finally upgraded a few badly overloaded highways.
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Because doing so would subject them to federal regulation (FERC). Seems like a pretty reasonable reason that isn't as simple as "fuck you we're texas"
Re: Fix your power grid first please (Score:2, Insightful)
If Texas connected to certain of their neighbors (California) theyâ(TM)d be like Arizona, paying to feed an infrastructure problem that isnâ(TM)t theirs.
Texas had 1 outage and people thought the world ended. California, New York, they have outages seasonally and even plan shutdowns around the lack of power generation.
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Texas, the state that revolted twice over slavery issues. Their nickname should be the Revolting State. I honestly think Texas is off of the grid because they still think they're an indepedent republic and that there should be a giant wall around the state.
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Summer is coming. We'll see how well California's short streak of good luck holds up. In this winter's "big freeze" the Texas grid never gave out.
Texas never has rolling blackouts in the summer when usage spikes due to air conditioners everywhere. This is in part because Texas has by far the most wind power of any state, four times what California has. https://www.weforum.org/agenda... [weforum.org] California government *talks* about moving to clean energy, while Texas is actually *doing* it, mostly by the government ju
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Texas does have a huge amount of wind power. Kudos for that. At the same time, the Texas governor blamed the last big blackout on wind power. Not sure if they're really for renewable energy or not, they send mixed messages.
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Your confusion about the Texas governor is a great illustration of why less regulation is good. Texas has a lot of wind power in large part because there aren't a lot of regulations and rules preventing them from being built. Energy companies took advantage of a money-making opportunity when they saw it, with or without the governor's approval. It's less about the governor, and more about lack of stifling rules.
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Are the rules stifling? Regulations don't show up just because someone wants to be mean, there's always a reason behind them. Such as "don't cheat your neighbors", "play fair", "be safe", etc.
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there's always a reason behind them
You have much more faith in the good heart and the intelligence of government regulators than I do. Have you not noticed the shenanigans and stunts and self-dealing and dishonesty practiced by members of congress and state legislatures, and for that matter every other ruling body anywhere? If you haven't, then you deserve the government you get.
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Didn't you notice that you haven't been seen stories about rolling blackouts in California? With the Democrat in charge there's been increased regulation after the massive deregulation push from the Schwarzenegger administration.
Gonna drop this [newsweek.com] right here.
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EVs aren't banned from charging in CA, that's silly. However you can charge them in off-peak hours if you want to and this should be encouraged.
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I'm wondering where they think all the engineers are going to come from. Probably other states where public education isn't being destroyed.
The influx of "foreigners" will be great for Abbott's culture war. None of the west/east coast transplants will vote against him either. (And for who? Beto?) Generally if they're employed in aerospace they feel like the system is working for them and can't be bothered. Plus voting is for old people in Texas. Seriously, I was the only dude under 60 at the polling place.
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So is LSD, apparently.
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Or at least the ones who are allowed to vote are
"Dang citizens!", lol
Seriously, you are so deluded. Nobody who actually is legally allowed to vote is prevented from doing so. (And many who aren't legally allowed to vote do so anyway.)
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Probably other states where public education isn't being destroyed.
So states like Texas and Florida then...
Since other more Democratic states, well, children there can't even perform math at grade level [foxbaltimore.com] across scores of schools...
Re: Fix your power grid first please (Score:2)
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Florida? The state with empty bookshelves? https://www.orlandosentinel.co... [orlandosentinel.com]
Children in Florida schools can't even read a book about baseball player Roberto Clemente because his book mentions that he experienced racism during his career. https://www.wpxi.com/news/loca... [wpxi.com]
Re: Fix your power grid first please (Score:1)
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Texas has two e-schools in the top 10, three in the top 40. The closest top 40 to Florida is #7 Georgia Tech. In aerospace, it's even worse, with #109 Embry-Riddle topping the list in Florida, and Texas again with two in the top 10. The history of education in these two states, K through PhD, could not be more different, and Texas is actually rather similar to California.
Remains to be seen how Dobbs will affect young professional talent in super modern, super sized places like Houston, Dallas and Austin. If
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From blue states. That way Texans can complain about all the newcomers changing Texas. At least that's what my native-Texan brother tells me has already been happening.
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Caring about shit isn't just the money in the budget. I doubt 300 million moves the needle on the energy infrastructure issues in Texas. Voters gotta vote on it, but .. apparently the ones that care enough dont vote? have a hard time voting? are basically fucked over so much they can't spend time thinking about voting?
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the same kind that killed the Texas grid years before
The recent cold snap was nowhere near as severe as the one in 2021 when 246 people died.
Texas ... winterized their systems
Your link only talks about how the publicly-owned utility in San Antonio was prepared. It also mentions that another utility had to go to rolling blackouts.
Is there any information about how the privately-owned utilities that dominate ERCOT are preparing? My quick search only turned up:
- an article about how Abbott is controlling all o
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You are wrong. https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
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This is straight up corruption.
A slush fund for the good old boy network to hand out money to their friends.
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You can't meet the basic needs of a modern civilization.
Ya, but in Space, no one can hear you ... fail to meet the basic needs of a modern civilization.
(Apologies to Stephen Hawking and the marketing team for Alien.)
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So leave the space stuff to the federal government. This whole thing reeks of corruption anyway.
Look at the SLS program and tell me how the federal government handles space programs in a non-corrupt manner.
What people seem to forget is that the individual states are supposed to be semi-autonomous. It makes perfect sense for them to try to attract industries. At least some of the time, politicians manage to do this in a sensible fashion. Whether this Texan program will do so remains to be seen, but it can hardly be worse than what happens at the national level.
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It makes perfect sense for them to try to attract industries.
The point that the parent was making was that while this is being described as an 'investment,' this does not seem to be a legitimate attempt to promote economic development in Texas. Where is the profit supposed to come from? How are Texans going to get a return on their $350 million investment? Entirely from out-of-state organizations paying for satellite launches?
Even if that's possible, maybe the governor is anticipating a satellite gold rush or something, there is already very significant private in
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You can't meet the basic needs of a modern civilization. So leave the space stuff to the federal government. This whole thing reeks of corruption anyway. If space is so profitable why do you need to have 350 million dollars to private companies to support it?
I remember the days when all space activity was left to the federal government. At the time, you socialists demanded that NASA's budget be chucked into your bottomless welfare pit, rather than being "sent into space." Now that private enterprise has made access to space cheap enough that a state government can efficiently contract with it in the same way that it can contract with an electric utility, shouldn't you at least be updating your shibboleth?
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So, in the winter storm now raging, more than a million have lost power, and not one of them is in Texas. https://www.npr.org/2023/02/23... [npr.org]
Of course, I know Texas isn't really affected by this storm. The point is, severe storms cause power outages, regardless of whether the grid is managed by ERCOT or is part of the national grid.
That would require (Score:2)
Space exploration is for governments that aspire to do MORE than the absolute minimum.
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They'll just raise residential property taxes again. Texans pay more tax than Californians [chron.com] on average because we have property tax controls (flawed as they are) and they don't, despite us having a state income tax and them not.
Space exploration is for governments that aspire to do MORE than the absolute minimum.
Oh don't worry, this is just a handout. They give zero fucks about space.
Who is Abbot bribing? (Score:1, Flamebait)
New Mexico spent hundreds of millions on Spaceport America. Few have heard of it. State based space initiatives have proven failures. Houston does own the old Ellington AFB and it can be used for some space related stuff. But that will be private funding
Abbot is clearly trying to buy
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SpaceX isn't based out of Texas, rather there's just one launch site there, which is primarily just used for R&D work.
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For perspective on $350 million (Score:5, Informative)
Texas DOT is allocating $85 billion for road construction, with $12 billion in Houston alone. https://abc13.com/houston-tran... [abc13.com].
$350 million for space doesn't seem like such a huge amount, by comparison!
I wonder how many Texans ... (Score:2)
... if given a chance to vote on this use of tax payer money would, instead, rather it was spent on beefing up the state's feeble power grid.
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The good thing is, the power grid is in fact being "beefed up." This year's "big freeze" did not result in widespread blackouts, as the one two years ago did. Perhaps Texas should take a cue from California, which has such a great track record of keeping the power on when demand spikes in the summer. Or perhaps Texas should start investing in wind and solar power, like California. Oh wait, Texas is already the clear leader in wind power, generating four times more than California. https://neo.ne.gov/program [ne.gov]
Just let the professionals do the work (Score:2)
As mentioned SpaceX and others are doing the heavy lifting already. The best Texas can do is help them prosper, but of course without sacrificing public safety.
It might all be vaporware/impractical, it might be the best thing after sliced bread, but the Starship still have not received approvals for orbital tests. Maybe help the move faster?
Blue Origin has a launch pad. Maybe get them to invest more?
And again, help local communities affected by noise, pollution, or other artifacts.
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Blue Origin has a launch pad. Maybe get them to invest more?
Maybe get them to make a rocket that can actually reach orbit? Because all they have now is a carnival ride for billionaires, and when it fails (which it has done twice so far), they keep the press away from the wreckage.
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Sure,
Don't get me wrong. I am not a fan of individual billionaires.
But having competition and alternatives is good, and our previous "cost plus" model have not worked. (Well it worked to make Boeing and ULA rich, and many astronauts dead). So, current situation is better. Yet, if SpaceX does have real challengers from other companies, all better for us. NASA can bid lower, and can have a backup.
Again, yes, Blue Origin need to clean up their act.
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I STRONGLY support any Texas policy... (Score:1)
... that seeks to help residents of the state move hundreds of kilometers away, to regions outside it's jurisdiction.
Yeah, who cares about... (Score:1)
Uh, No (Score:2)
How about keeping the power on consistently first?
I'm all for it! (Score:2)
Should work out because every one knows (Score:2)
If only... (Score:2)
If only the US government hadn't kowtowed to the railroads, we wouldn't have given up Rocky Point for a shipping port and we wouldn't have given up Baja which would make a better launch latitude.
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Literary event (Score:2)
Houston.... (Score:2)
Houston, you have a problem.