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Space Travel For the 1%: Virgin Galactic's $250,000 Tickets Haunt New Mexico Town
The Real Dr John writes: The Guardian has an article about Virgin Galactic's proposed launch site, Spaceport America, which broke ground in southern New Mexico's high desert in 2009 with almost a quarter of a billion dollars from taxpayers, $76m of which came from the two local counties. Truth or Consequences, population 6,000 and home to the Spaceport America Visitor Center, is one of the poorest places in the state. The increased taxes, adopted across impoverished Sierra County, contributed to about $5m as of 2014. Since 2009, state school budgets have been cut and an estimated $26m in necessary repairs to the town's water system has been put on hold. There's no more money to pay for it. The average annual income of residents is just $15,000 per year, one third of residents live below the poverty line, and just 20% over the age of 25 have obtained a bachelor's degree.
Shame too many people think the government is some sort of magic purse.
Unless you're a corporate "person" in which case it most certainly IS a magic purse.
Why not Dubai?
1) Lack of infrastructure to support the venture.
2) Volatile region; what happens when you have to ditch in the Gulf of Oman, Yemen, or Iran?
3) You can buy off local gov't, but you can't buy off the ruler of Dubai.
4) Technology embargo issues.
Why New Mexico?
1) Its in the US. Los Alamos is located in the state.
2) Its relatively close to the equator while in the US. Florida is closer, but its going to be underwater within the century; also hurricanes.
3) Desert. Tons of cheap, open, unpopulated space.
Its disgraceful that money is being pissed away on a lightly used, space center gamble, but would the money be "available" for the local budget otherwise?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Woah, dude. Go look up liturgies (leitourgiai), including trierarchies and the choregoi. In ancient Athens the rich were socially compelled to spend their own fortunes on defending the state, performing rituals, and entertaining the poor. Imagine Soros and the Koch brothers and all the wealthy of either party building and equipping their own aircraft carriers at their own expense as a public benefit. Imagine the same people sponsoring ad-free television channels to keep people entertained as a public benefit.
That's how things were in ancient Athens.
If it worked as intended it would have been a good deal.
$65m in "stolen" money as you call it (taxes).
$250k tickets * say 10,000 = $2,500,000,000 into the net economy. Let's say that 15% of that is operations that's still $375m back into the economy in the form of wages. You aren't going to find a 576% investment opportunity very often.
Furthermore those people would probably want to eat somewhere while in town and maybe even visit a shop or two which would further boost the local economy.
It was a sound plan, and I'm sure virgin would very much like to be making a ton of money as well but the part that failed was the fact that they didn't have more protections for the county in the event that say.. a rocket exploded and the business plan was put on hold for 10 years.
As a 1%-er (it only takes a dual engineering income) there's not a chance in hell this would be affordable. Can we stop with this stupid label? I expect it from the OWS crowd and others lacking in critical thinking skills. I don't expect it at a site that claims to be for nerds.
Musk's government money is a drop in the bucket compared to what gas, energy, military industrial, etc companies receive. In Musk's case, taxpayers are getting a good deal. The half billion loan Tesla received is already paid back with interest, and it accelerated production of the model s and created many jobs. If you look up the details of other government money his companies received, you will see it's quite reasonable.