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(Maggie Bringhurst is an opinion writer for The Daily Utah Chronicle in her third year studying communications and journalism. She likes to spend her free time hiking and camping. She loves movies and music, with a sweet spot for 90s ska-punk. , 11-5)

Space exploration is an increasingly profitable sector and billionaires are cashing in. Since Elon Musk’s success with SpaceX, other entrepreneurs have hopped on the train — Richard Branson founded Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos started Blue Origin. Many are upset billionaires are investing in space while climate change remains a growing concern. Though the ultra-rich investing in space travel is a blatant display of wealth, it’s actually one of the better ways they are using their money. Commercialization of the space industry is good. The fact that billionaires are leading this change has larger implications of labor exploitation and a poor tax system. Our government is the guilty party, for allowing the wealth divide in America to become so dramatic and polarized. Billionaires Shouldn’t Fix Climate Change Many argue that billionaires should be spending their money on saving our planet before investing in space exploration. I agree with this general sentiment, but billionaires spending their excessive wealth on unnecessary things isn’t a billionaire problem. It’s a government problem. We need to tax the rich to prevent excessive wealth accumulation. We can’t rely on billionaires to solve the world’s problems because they won’t. Billionaires profit from the working class’s struggle. The top 1% increased their profits during the 2008 recession and flourished similarly during the COVID-19 pandemic. While 40 million Americans filed for unemployment during the pandemic, billionaires’ net worth increased by half a trillion dollars. This is due to disproportionate financial aid and tax evasion through loopholes. Why would you work to fix inequality when you are actively profiting from it? Dependence on billionaires to solve problems like climate change will only increase opportunities for exploitation. Billionaires like Bezos, Bill Gates and Musk are investing in and donating to renewable energy because it is profitable and good for PR. If we rely on them to fix the climate crisis, they could change their minds as soon as something more lucrative comes up. The purpose of government is to act in the interest of the public. CEOs act in the interest of their wallet. Billionaires make money. It’s what they do. Bezos is investing in space travel because it’s profitable. We can’t expect the rich to give that up out of the goodness of their hearts because to become a billionaire, you likely don’t have much good in your heart. We must pressure the government to fix problems that matter. Privatizing Space Travel is Good Compared to other things tech billionaires could be doing with their money, space travel is worth the investment. Paul Sir, an educator at Clark Planetarium, suggested that the privatization of the industry will have positive effects on the progression of technology, even if it stems from corporate greed. He said the moon landing “was more politics than anything, but we did get a lot of good things out of it.” The private sector will progress space technology faster and more sustainably than the government. NASA spent nearly $20 billion on the Space Launch System, a rocket that has been in the works since 2011. The private sector should fund space projects, instead of our taxes being funneled into expensive, unnecessary projects. Musk estimates that his rocket will cost only $2 million per mission. Additionally, his rocket will be reusable, which is more sustainable than any current NASA rocket. The space industry is progressing fast. It is a lucrative field, so our tax dollars are better spent on things that need government funding to advance like sustainable agriculture or renewable energy. Space exploration could offer answers to questions we’ve been asking for centuries. Space travel led to discoveries that improved technology on Earth, like smartphones’ GPS capabilities, weather tracking services and climate change research. Yes, our government should prioritize legislation to mitigate climate change and they should absolutely address the wealth divide. But until those changes happen, we can’t expect private corporations to stop innovating. That said, our government should take its role as regulators seriously and should create legislation for the space industry. The Government’s Role Feeling upset at people with excessive wealth for spending it on unnecessary things is completely good and natural. We should be upset. But we should direct those emotions towards the people who affect change.

(Julia, https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/07/20/nothing-says-tax-rich-recreational-billionaire-space-race-critics-denounce-bezos , 7-20)

Economic justice advocates recoiled on Tuesday at the sight of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world's wealthiest person, launching himself into space--momentarily leaving behind a planetary emergency; a global pandemic that's disproportionately affecting poor countries without access to vaccines; and rampant wealth inequality in the U.S. and around the world--all of which could be eradicated or mitigated with a wealth tax imposed on Bezos and other billionaires. The New Shepard launch came days after business magnate Richard Branson launched his own spacecraft, beginning what the news media has called a "billionaire space race." Both flights made the latest powerful argument for a wealth tax, said critics like Public Citizen, which tweeted Tuesday: "Nothing says tax the rich like a recreational billionaire space race." Warren Gunnels, policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), tweeted that "if there was any economic justice in the world, we would impose a $100 billion re-entry tax on Jeff Bezos upon his return from outer space."

(Katherine, is editor in chief of Reason magazine. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/07/24/bezos-branson-musk-space/ 7-24)

Before both flights, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — a member of the NASA Caucus — tweeted: “Should billionaires play out their space travel fantasies, or should we invest in schooling, provide healthcare, and create prosperity for everyone? We need a wealth tax.” This week, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), said he’ll introduce legislation that would tax wealthy passengers on space flights that don’t have scientific goals, in order to “support the public good.” They’re not wrong that there are plenty of problems here on Earth that need attention, and resources. But what’s wrong with letting the billionaires take a turn at tackling outer space? You or I might not choose to spend money the way Bezos, Branson or SpaceX’s Elon Musk have. But it’s one giant leap from there to suggesting that Congress is better at spending money, or that a private space race, which right now looks like a game of one-upmanship between famous rich guys, can’t ultimately redound to the public good. In a country where there is ever-increasing disagreement about policy priorities (on Wednesday, a Senate procedural vote to advance a putatively bipartisan infrastructure package failed), the proper role of the state, and the trustworthiness of our elected officials, it’s time to take seriously the idea that government may not always be primed to take on some of our biggest problems. Sure, if we instituted a wealth tax or started “abolishing billionaires,” as some on Capitol Hill seem eager to do, legislators might better build consensus around spending some of that money to strengthen a safety net that helps people in crisis, while also prudently acting in the short term to stave off long-term existential threats. Might. But they’re definitely going to spend a pile of money on forever wars, handing out corporate welfare and incarcerating minor offenders as part of the misbegotten war on drugs. They’d fund a space program, too. Bezos, Branson and Musk have all made it clear why they’re willing to invest in space: They think having a new frontier (and a possible escape hatch) are worth a lot to mankind in the long run. Clearly, they all want to add to their billions — that’s just what they do. But as Bezos explained to CNBC, there’s a broader vision: “What we’re really trying to do is build reusable space vehicles. It’s the only way to build a road to space, and we need to build a road to space so that our children can build the future.” Americans appear to agree: 72 percent of them telling Pew Research that it’s essential for the United States to be world leader in space exploration. But on this challenge, and so many others, too many of the politicians — who well know that they have no hope of getting on the same page with their counterparts — still seem to prefer scoring points on Twitter. If we can’t have consensus, though, maybe it’s time we tried competition. There’s an old saying among space nerds: Space is a place, not a program. The Apollo Program was an inspiring feat, something Americans deserve to brag about until the heat death of the universe. Yes, the Soviets beat us to orbit, but we got men to the moon and back with a repurposed pen and 32,768 bits of RAM. Over time, the U.S. space agency relinquished its early dominance of manned spaceflight, pivoting to expensive, cumbersome shuttles that were akin to space buses, loaded with science projects involving roundworms. The program was shelved a decade ago. This left a bunch of folks who came of age during the Apollo era hanging. A few became billionaires who figured if they were going to realize the spacefaring dreams of their youth, they’d have to do it themselves — and they might as well sell tickets while they were at it. They began to realize those ambitions and to dramatically bring down the cost of launch. According to one 2018 analysis: “NASA’s space shuttle had a cost of about $1.5 billion to launch 27,500 kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), $54,500/kg. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 now advertises a cost of $62 million to launch 22,800 kg to LEO, $2,720/kg. Commercial launch has reduced the cost to LEO by a factor of 20.” What if philanthropy isn’t the best way for rich people to help others? It’s easy to see how a roughly 10-minute round-trip space flight that takes passengers from Earth to Earth strikes many as a vanity project. There’s no guarantee that every luxury good will eventually become a commodity. And competition ought to be a fair fight: No regulators playing favorites, no subsidies — right now, the private space sector is too reliant on government infrastructure and government contracts. But billionaires are helping turn a pricey, ineffective government initiative into a competitive industry, and they’re doing it following an ego-powered, grandiose template that has worked before. The eccentric interests of prominent, sometimes wealthy weirdos trying to outdo each other brought us electric light, the automobile, commercial airlines, personal mobile phones and more. One day: passenger berths for regular schmos. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether Branson launched before Bezos, or if Musk thinks it would be cool to be “born on Earth and die on Mars. Hopefully not at the point of impact,” as he’s fond of saying. What matters is what the rest of us will do when we can buy tickets to use their tech, something Congress isn’t putting on offer. Billionaire antics aren’t the point. While politicians are pointing fingers, they’re getting us one small step closer to where so many of us already agree we’d like to go.

(Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? , as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond and, most recently, Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/bidens-wealth-tax-would-undermine-his-space-and-environmental-goals 4-15)

Finally, any effort to fleece the wealthy of their riches would tend to undermine both space and environmental goals championed by the Biden administration. Private individuals such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are providing the means by which people can travel to and explore space. Musk’s SpaceX is providing rides to and from the International Space Station for both crews and cargo. SpaceX’s Starship rocket has been assigned the goal of landing America's astronauts on the lunar surface by 2025. Bezos’s Blue Origin is due to compete for the second Human Landing System. Blue Origin is also developing the New Glenn orbital rocket that will help launch satellites and other payloads and the BA4 rocket engine that will replace Russian-made engines. The wealth tax would also undermine Biden administration policies designed to combat climate change. The dirty little secret is that private entrepreneurs are investing in technologies that will lessen the emission of greenhouse gases. Musk owns an electric car company called Tesla, is building solar and battery systems to supplement power grids, and is getting into the carbon capture business. Bill Gates is developing new nuclear power technology that is cheaper and safer than conventional nuclear power plants. Bezos, Gates, Richard Branson, Ray Dalio, Jack Ma, and Michael Bloomberg, billionaires all, are investors in a company called Commonwealth Fusion . Commonwealth Fusion, in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has recently had a breakthrough in developing a superconducting magnet that will be crucial for bringing solar power to Earth and turning it into clean, carbon-free electricity. The Biden administration seems not to have thought things through when it ventured into "soak-the-rich" territory. The proposal is obviously a sop to Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, and members of "the Squad" who have targeted wealthy, successful taxpayers as enemies of the people. However, the more money that people such as Musk, Bezos, and Gates must pay to the government, the less they will have to invest in innovative technologies that will address the problems of space travel and climate change. The situation is a feature and not a bug to Sanders. Recently he offered a bizarre tweet : “Jeff Bezos is worth about $180 billion. If he wants to go to the moon or to Mars, hey, that's his business — knock yourself out. But in my view, the taxpayers of this country do not need to subsidize his space travel.” Bezos, while he has taken a suborbital jaunt on his New Shepard rocket, has not to anyone’s knowledge expressed an interest in going to the moon or Mars personally. His proposed Blue Moon lunar lander would, if accepted, provide NASA with a second means of sending astronauts and cargo to the lunar surface. On his official website on the "Green New Deal," Sanders dismissed technologies such as nuclear power and carbon capture as “false solutions.” He seems more interested in ending the oil and gas industries than proposing real solutions to climate change, especially if they come from the hated billionaire class. Hopefully, Congress will keep in mind the Biden wealth tax’s downsides when considering it.

(Anthony, https://news.yahoo.com/spacex-smashes-reusable-rocket-record-105359373.html)

SpaceX has broken its own record for launching reused rockets after successfully completing a mission to deliver its Starlink satellites into orbit. The company launched 22 of its internet satellites aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Sunday night, before landing the first stage booster on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the 16th launch and landing for the B1058 Falcon 9 rocket booster, with SpaceX hoping it can achieve another four launches before finally being scrapped. The Starlink satellites were deployed into low-Earth orbit roughly one hour after lift-off, further boosting SpaceX’s space-based internet network. There are now more than 4,000 active Starlink satellites in orbit around Earth, delivering high-speed internet to users. The latest Starlinks are V2 Minis, which despite the name are larger than SpaceX’s previous generation Starlinks. The upgraded satellites include “4x more capacity per satellite than earlier iterations”, according to SpaceX. They are “mini” versions of the V2 Starlink satellites, which are set to launch aboard SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket as soon as it is operational. SpaceX recently completed a six engine static fire test of its Starship rocket at its Starbase facility in Texas, having failed in its first ever orbital mission earlier this year. The private space company has already secured multi-billion dollar contracts with Nasa to use the rocket as part of its Artemis lunar program, while SpaceX plans to use a fleet of the rockets to establish a permanent human colony on Mars before 2050. Shortly after the latest satellites were deployed, SpaceX boss Elon Musk provided an update for its next-generation space craft, which is the biggest rocket ever built. “Looks like we can increase Raptor thrust by ~20 per cent to reach 9,000 tons (20 million lbs) of force at sea level... And deliver over 200 tons of payload to a useful orbit with full and rapid reusability,” he wrote on Twitter. “Fifty rockets flying every three days on average enables over a megaton of payload to orbit per year – enough to build a self-sustaining city on Mars.” There is no fixed date for the next major orbital flight test of the Starship rocket, though Mr Musk has previously said that it will likely take place before September.

(Anan, https://www.benzinga.com/news/23/07/33159201/elon-musk-says-starship-will-provide-the-meaning-of-life-heres-why-the-space-entrepreneur-has-high-h)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, on Sunday, termed its Starship ‘the meaning of life' and said that it will have three more engines. What Happened: Musk shared a picture of a Starship showing its six raptor engines and said, "3 more engines for the meaning of life." SpaceX's Starship, composed of the super heavy rocket and the starship spacecraft, aims to create a fully reusable transportation system for crew and cargo missions to Earth's orbit, the Moon and Mars. According to the SpaceX website, the super heavy will be powered by 33 Raptor engines and Starship by 6. However, as per Musk's latest update, the Starship will now have 9 engines. "Looks like we can increase Raptor thrust by ~20% to reach 9000 tons (20 million lbs) of force at sea level," Musk said. He added in a later tweet that the Starship could deliver 200 tons of payload to a useful orbit, meaning they could enable over a megaton of payload to orbit per year if 50 rockets flew every 3 days on average. According to the CEO, that would suffice to build a self-sustaining city on Mars. Why It Matters: SpaceX conducted the first test launch of Starship on April 20. The rocket exploded in less than four minutes after take-off. Late last month, SpaceX said that Ship 25, the prototype that will make the second flight test, has completed a six-engine static fire test at Starbase; a key milestone before the second test flight. In a discussion with journalist Ashlee Vance, Musk said that significant changes have been made since the first test flight and he now estimates a 60% probability for the next flight to reach orbit, contingent on the success of stage separation. He then predicted the second flight test to occur in six weeks. Musk has talked about adding more engines to at least some Starship vehicles before as well. In 2021, Musk said that the Starship is being upgraded to nine engines. Starship is key to realizing Musk's dreams of making life "multi-planetary". In 2020, he said that he would send a million people to Mars by 2050 aboard Starship and that it is the key to "protecting the light of consciousness."

(Jason is editorial director of Singularity Hub. He researched and wrote about finance and economics before moving on to science and technology. 10-19)

Why blow billions of dollars on space exploration when billions of people are living in poverty here on Earth? You’ve likely heard the justifications. The space program brings us useful innovations and inventions. Space exploration delivers perspective, inspiration, and understanding. Because it’s the final frontier. Because it’s there. What you haven’t heard is anything to inspire a sense of urgency. Indeed, NASA’s struggle to defend its existence and funding shows how weak these justifications sound to a public that cares less about space than seemingly more pressing needs. Presumably, this is why SpaceX founder Elon Musk, in a fascinating interview with Ross Andersen, skipped all the usual arguments in favor of something else entirely. Space exploration, he says, is as urgent as easing poverty or disease—it’s our insurance policy against extinction. As we extend our gaze back through geologic time and out into the universe, it’s clear we aren’t exempt from nature’s carelessly terrifying violence. We simply haven’t experienced its full wrath yet because we’ve only been awake for the cosmological blink of an eye. Musk says an extinction-level event would, in an existential flash, make our down-to-earth struggles irrelevant. “Good news, the problems of poverty and disease have been solved,” he says, “but the bad news is there aren’t any humans left.’” We’ve got all our eggs in one basket, and that’s a terrible risk-management strategy. We should diversify our planetary portfolio to insure against the worst—and soon. Musk’s line of reasoning isn’t completely novel. It’s what led science fiction writer Larry Niven to say, “The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program.” And it drives Ed Lu’s quest to save humanity from a major asteroid hit. But while we may spot and potentially derail asteroids, not every cosmic threat can be so easily predicted or prevented—a blast from a nearby supernova; a gamma ray burst aimed at Earth; a period of extreme volcanism. Any of these could wipe us out. Musk says he thinks a lot about the silence we’ve been greeted with as our telescopes scan the sky for interstellar broadcasts from other civilizations. seti-fermi-paradoxGiven the sheer number of galaxies, stars, and planets in the universe—it should be teeming with life. If even a tiny percent of the whole is intelligent, there should be thousands of civilizations in our galaxy alone. So where are they? This is known as the Fermi Paradox, and Musk rattles off a few explanatory theories (there are many). But he settles on this, “If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilizations, and I mean strange in a bad way. It could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilizations.” That something strange might be an evolutionary self-destruct button, as Carl Sagan theorized. We developed modern rockets at the same time as nuclear weapons. But the Fermi Paradox and its explanations, while philosophically captivating, haven’t settled the question of intelligent life. SETI’s Seth Shostak cautions, “The Fermi Paradox is a big extrapolation from a very local observation.” That is, just because we don’t see compelling evidence of galactic colonization around here doesn’t mean there is none. But even without the Fermi Paradox, our planet’s geologic record is enough to show that, as Sagan phrased it, “Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” So, if you buy Musk’s argument—what next? Well, he didn’t start SpaceX to boost telecommunication satellites into orbit or shuttle astronauts to low-Earth orbit. SpaceX is Musk’s vehicle to another planet, and he isn’t shy saying so.

(Robert, interviewed by Charles Monroe-Kang , for the date at the end it says this Original Air Date: May 04, 2019 Post date: February 15, 2022, but its not Feb 15 yet so…)

Fear about the future of the planet keeping you up at night? Aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin has a solution: it’s time to settle Mars. "We’re entirely ready," he said. "We're better prepared today to send people to Mars than we were to go to the moon in 1961. Given a serious decision, we could have people there within 10 years." Zubrin has been trying to get to Mars for a long time. He spent decades with Lockheed Martin and Martin Marietta Astronautics, working on knotty problems in space propulsion and making plans for interplanetary colonization. At 67, he’s putting his hope in Elon Musk’s Space X program. "If it keeps moving forward at the rate it currently is" Zurbin told Charles Monroe-Kane for "To The Best Of Our Knowledge," "I’d say they’ll land before the end of the 2020s." His prediction? It’ll be the best thing that could happen to Planet Earth. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length. Charles Monroe-Kane: What’s in this for Earthlings? Why colonize Mars? Robert Zubrin: A number of reasons. There’s the one NASA gives — for science. There’s the positive stimulus of the challenge, especially for the youth. But here’s the thing: what is the greatest danger humanity faces? What caused the disasters of the 20th century? Bad ideas! In particular, variants of one continuous bad idea, which is that there isn’t enough to go around, so we have to push other people aside and even exterminate them in order to take what there is. I know for a fact — because I've spoken with them — that there are people in the Pentagon who look at the rise of China and say "this has got to be stopped; if they all become middle class, there won’t be enough oil in the world." If that kind of thinking prevails, it will lead to more wars. Human exploration and settlement of Mars is a disproof of this theory. We can open up whole new worlds of resources if we exercise our creativity. It’s the only positive answer.

(CHRISTIAN BRITSCHGI is an associate editor at Reason. https://reason.com/2021/07/12/billionaires-spending-their-own-money-to-go-to-space-has-progressives-howling-for-a-wealth-tax/ , 7-12)

The idea of billionaires launching themselves into space on their own rockets has provoked apoplexy from some progressives, who view the spectacle as an ostentatious display of economic inequality that must be fixed with a wealth tax. Witness the response to Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson's successful journey to the edge of space yesterday on his company's Unity spaceship. The flight—which carried Branson and five other crew members more than 50 miles above the Earth's surface—represents an important milestone for the nascent private space tourism industry. But several commentators were only concerned with what the British billionaire's money could have funded instead. On Twitter, Mother Jones' Clara Jeffery declared it an "advertisement for a wealth tax": Journalist Teddy Schleifer said on CNN that the press should cool its jets when covering billionaires' space travels, saying that "it's impossible to talk about the billionaire's success without talking about the system that creates this in the first place." Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) struck a familiar dyspeptic note: Here on Earth, in the richest country on the planet, half our people live paycheck to paycheck, people are struggling to feed themselves, struggling to see a doctor — but hey, the richest guys in the world are off in outer space! Yes. It's time to tax the billionaires. Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) asked, a few days before Branson's launch, whether that money could be spent on health care and education rather than "space travel fantasies." Should billionaires play out their space travel fantasies, or should we invest in schooling, provide healthcare, and create prosperity for everyone? Khanna doesn't see such a stark trade-off with the government's own resources, given his co-sponsorship of the "Endless Frontiers Act," the initial version of which would have given $100 billion to the National Science Foundation to research such sci-fi ideas as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Surely that money could be spent on health care too? And Khanna is a member of Congress' "NASA Caucus," so he isn't objecting to spending money on space exploration per se. In any case, billionaire-backed space companies—which includes not just Branson's Virgin Galactic but also Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX—can help to eliminate wasteful space spending. That's certainly the case with SpaceX. Back in May 2020, the company's Crew Dragon vehicle ferried NASA astronauts to the International Space Station from American soil for the first time since 2011, when the accident-prone Space Shuttle was retired. To develop and launch Crew Dragon, SpaceX received a $2.6 billion contract from NASA through the agency's Commercial Crew Program. In comparison, the Constellation program run directly by NASA—which had a similar goal of developing a launch system for putting astronauts in low-earth orbit—was estimated to cost closer to $34.5 billion. SpaceX was "effectively doing what the Constellation Program was doing with about the same amount of money, total, that they were burning in a single month," NASA engineer Mike Horkachuck told ArsTechnica's Eric Berger. The billionaire class is going to space decades after government did it first, using surplus resources that should have gone to finance that government but didn't, and then using that dubious achievement as proof that they are more efficient than government. — Anand Giridharadas @ The.Ink (@AnandWrites) July 12, 2021 In time, the competition between these various private ventures will put yet more downward pressure on prices while spurring the development of new, better space technology—helping the government's space efforts as well as the private sector's. Even if you aren't convinced of the value of space travel, given that we've yet to reach a utopia free of poverty, disease, and war here on Earth, there's something to be said for a private space industry soaking up the legions of engineers and other aerospace professionals who might otherwise be spending their careers designing faster-flying missiles for traditional military contractors.

(University of New South Wales, , 3-19)

Robotic mining that can provide water and fuel is the key to developing a colony on the red planet within the next 30 years. Mars will be colonized by humans by the year 2050, as long as autonomous mining processes quickly become more commercially viable. That’s the view of Professor Serkan Saydam from UNSW Sydney in the wake of the amazing landing on Mars by NASA’s Perseverance rover. Perseverance is expected to provide answers about whether forms of life ever existed on the red planet, but it is also designed to help address the challenges of future human expeditions there. Professor Saydam, from the School of Mineral Energy Resources Engineering, says the main focus in terms of creating a colony on Mars is finding water – and being able to extract it and process it using robots before humans land. “Everything is all about water,” Prof. Saydam says. “You use water as a life support, plus also being able to separate out the hydrogen to use as an energy source. “The process for having humans on Mars will be to set up operations, go there and produce water with robots first, and then be able to extract the hydrogen to make the energy ready before people arrive. “Innovation in robotics and autonomous systems are clearly important so that we have the water ready and the hydrogen separated and ready for when human beings land. “At the moment, we don’t have ability to do it. There are significant research efforts, specifically here at UNSW under ACSER (Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research), about the best way to do it, but there is no consensus yet. It also depends on how many people we expect to be living on Mars. Is it five, or 5000, or 50,000, or even more?” M Entrepreneur Elon Musk has claimed he’s confident there will be a city of 1 million on Mars by 2050, transported there by 1000 Starships proposed by his SpaceX venture, with plans for up to three rocket launches per day. Prof. Saydam says that may be unrealistic in the specific timeframe, but admits that demand for travel and a potential colonization of Mars is what’s needed to drive the technological developments required. “I think the technology is ready and we already have the knowledge, but the main problem is having the focus,” says Prof. Saydam, who is organizing an International Future Mining Conference in December 2021 that will feature former NASA astronaut Pamela Melroy and Honeybee Robotics vice-president Kris Zacny. “It’s a bigger question: ‘Why don’t we do that already on earth? Why are we still using human beings for physical work in mining here?’ We have huge experience in mining, but still heavily depend on humans. “One issue is that demand is not there. For companies to get involved in developing products (for Mars missions), they need to be able to produce minerals or something that can be used for manufacturing goods and then sell it. “At the moment, everything is just a cost and there is no revenue for companies.” However, that could be starting to change. United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing who are heavily invested in the rockets used to launch spaceships, has publicly announced they will pay $500 per kilogram for fuel – derived from water – supplied on the moon. That rises to $3000 per kilogram if the fuel is available in a low-earth orbit. “That immediately creates a market,” Prof. Saydam says. “Plus, if Elon Musk does what he says and puts people on the surface of Mars in 20 years, then that also creates a market. “I believe a colony on Mars is going to happen, but between 2040 and 2050 is more feasible. This could be shortened depending on the technological advances that can reduce the costs or from stronger motivation.

The howls chime perfectly with the leader of the Opposition's apparent longing for 'a winter of discontent'. Together they would have us believe their politically inspired feelings will tank the economy and undermine everything.

But it's a myth. Business confidence is just a one-sided opinion poll of a handful of very wealthy people.

A robust and predictable carbon price would help catalyze and efficiently allocate private climate finance flows. Private financing has a key role to play in advancing the transition (IMF 2022c). A key concern of private investors is policy uncertainty. By committing to carbon pricing, countries can increase investor confidence and enable private climate finance. While private finance cannot substitute for direct support from public sources, it is a key complement.

In Table 2, we report our results regarding the effects of key fiscal variables on business confidence.11 To start with, we note that an increase in government consumption has no significant effect on business confidence. Similar to our findings regarding consumer confidence, we find the effect of non-wage government consumption positive while that of the government wage bill negative. However, with one exception (column 8), the estimated coefficients for both wage and non-wage government consumption are insignificant. In addition, we find that government investment exerts a negative but insignificant effect on business confidence. Note here that one could have expected that the initiation of public investment projects, involving the private sector, would have a positive effect on business confidence to the extent that these public investment projects improve prospects of economic growth. Nevertheless, a contrarian view is that public investment projects do not have a direct effect on manufacturing (hence on business confidence), since they either do not involve specific products in the manufacturing sector or the “receipt of payments” might be delayed. Alternatively, according to the standard Keynesian view, an increase in government investment crowds out private investment, which will be reflected in lower business confidence. In line with the Keynesian argument we do find a negative effect, but the coefficient estimate of government investment is not significant

There are several arguments why BIG could produce an explosion of entrepreneurial energy. Firstly, it would remove some of the anxiety about failing. People are more willing to risk beginning a business if they have a safety net. Secondly, it would increase the market, particularly for businesses offering products and services to poorer people. Most of those billions would be spent within weeks, and mostly on local businesses. Some calculate that this money would circulate so quickly through the economy (the multiplier effect) that the return to the fiscus (through VAT, for example) could pay for the whole grant. Thirdly it could provide seed capital for microenterprises to emerge. Apart from friends and family, the only current source of working capital for microenterprises is short term loans, usually at very high-interest rates. That is discouraging. But if I can buy my first raw materials from my own resources, I won’t need to see my small margins disappear to the lender. The true universal basic income (UBI) is a monthly cash amount given unconditionally to everyone regardless of whether or not they have a job. Unlike the Temporary Economic Relief Scheme (TERS) it would be a permanent feature that everyone could depend on into the future.

Why Small Business Confidence In Compliance May Be Misguided

The complexity and resource-intensive nature of taxes make it clear why small businesses are heavily impacted, but the survey found that most small businesses think they’ve done everything to be compliant. How can that be? The answer is rooted in the complexity of tax.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the so-called “War on Poverty” that President Lyndon B. Johnson declared when the official poverty rate was at 19 percent. Five decades later, the poverty rate stands at 15 percent with 46.5 million people living below the official poverty line, which is about $23,000 for a family of four (2012 Census Data). More than 20 million people earn less than half the poverty line, in other words, they live in extreme poverty in the richest country in the history of the world. The statistics are even more depressing when we consider that the child poverty rate (under age 18) is an alarming 21.8 percent. Even worse, for children under the age of 5, some states register poverty rates of up to 36 percent. The failure of the so-called “War on Poverty” to actually end poverty and the socio-economic problems associated with it is due to the fact that the program was systematically aimed at fighting the poor rather than poverty and its root causes. The late economist Hyman P. Minsky exposed these flawed strategies since the early days of the war on poverty in the mid-1960s. He argued that the best way to fight poverty is to focus on ending unemployment by giving a decent employment opportunity to anyone who is ready, willing and able to work at a socially established living wage. Minsky’s original proposal follows a strong tradition of progressive thinking in the economics profession beginning with British economist John Maynard Keynes and his Cambridge University colleagues. Today, supporters of Minsky’s Job Guarantee program include L. Randall Wray, Mathew Forstater, Jan Kregel, James K. Galbraith, Stephanie Kelton, William Darity Jr., Edward Nell, Warren Mosler, Pavlina Tcherneva, Scott Fullwiler, William F. Mitchell and Eric Tymoigne (to mention a few). A recent poll by the Huffington Post reveals that 47 percent of Americans are in favor of a law guaranteeing a job to every American adult. That is to say, a law whereby the government would offer to hire anyone who is ready, willing and able to work but cannot find a job in the private sector. Minsky was not so naïve to think that unemployment was poverty’s only root cause. He also advocated for training and education as part of a Job Guarantee program. “Take workers as they are,” he said. “Jobs first, training later,” he added when he advocated for on-the-job training. Decent pay for all is a prerequisite for social and economic justice, but it is not a silver bullet to end every community’s problems, which is why he favored a participatory approach to job creation that involves local communities in identifying problems and proposing solutions. The jobs that Minsky had in mind are designed to complement rather than replace private sector jobs and traditional public works and government services. The idea is to use the existing infrastructure of local community groups and non-profit organizations as a platform for the Job Guarantee program. Community groups would identify local needs, prioritize projects and recruit unemployed individuals from the local community to implement, supervise and assess outcomes of each project. This is a decentralized participatory system of community empowerment. However, funding for the Job Guarantee program would come from the federal government in the form of grants to local community organizations. This is a sort of double-matchmaking process. On the one hand we are matching the skills of the local unemployed population with doable projects that are needed by the community, and on the other hand, we are matching federal government funds with a wide range of heterogeneous job creation programs that would be impossible to identify at the national or even state level because of the diversity of the institutional history and identities of each community. This is a program of permanent full employment so that when the private sector is booming it can hire workers away for the Job Guarantee pool, and when the private sector slows down, workers are guaranteed a job and a decent quality of life in the public sector. Therefore, the program will strengthen both consumer and business confidence, enhance economic security and significantly reduce many social problems such as family breakdown, domestic violence, child abuse, substance abuse, depression, suicide, etc. Critics of the Job Guarantee program often say that “it’s going to be too expensive, we can’t offered it, the deficit is unsustainable…” so I hasten to say that in a recent study, I estimated that the annual net cost of employing 23.4 million workers (earning a living wage with benefits) would be less than $600 billion. Now, compare this to the trillions of dollars in Wall Street bailouts, the Fed’s quantitative easing program, Bush tax cuts, Obama tax cuts and supply side corporate incentives that have yet to bring the economy back to its pre-crisis employment level. The deficits that we cannot afford are the jobs deficit, infrastructure deficit, health and education deficits, innovation and creativity deficits and the overall quality of life deficits. The U.S. government enjoys full financial sovereignty with zero risk of default. The federal government’s annual deficit is simply the equivalent of the non-government sector surplus. In other words, government deficits are to be viewed as investments in our collective quality of life, but we have to ensure that those investments are decided in a participatory fashion and are evenly distributed across all social needs. Let us never forget that anything that is physically producible and technologically possible is always financially affordable. Fighting unemployment, poverty and inequality is the most pressing issue of our time, so please join me and sign the Congress: Enact a Job Guarantee” petition on www.MoveOn.org.

The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index increased 0.4 points in May to 89.4, which is the 17th consecutive month below the 49-year average of 98. The last time the Index was at or above the average was in December 2021. Small business owners expecting better business conditions over the next six months declined one point from April to a net negative 50%. Twenty-five percent of owners reported that inflation was their single most important problem in operating their business, up two points from last month and followed by labor quality at 24%.

“Overall, small business owners are expressing concerns for future business conditions,” said Bill Dunkelberg, NFIB Chief Economist. “Supply chain disruptions and labor shortages will continue to limit the ability of many small firms to meet the demand for their products and services, while less severe than last year’s experience.”

Confidence is eroding among small businesses today with owners worried over their growth prospects in an inflationary economy with soaring interest rates and workforce shortages.

That's what operators are telling American Express, which surveyed operators of small companies ranging from those with just a few employees to upward of 500 workers. It's a gloomy outlook.

The NFIB Research Center has collected Small Business Economic Trends data with quarterly surveys since the fourth quarter of 1973 and monthly surveys since 1986. Survey respondents are randomly drawn from NFIB’s membership. The report is released on the second Tuesday of each month. This survey was conducted in May 2023.

WASHINGTON, May 9 (Reuters) - U.S. small business confidence fell to more than a 10-year low in April on worries about the near-term economic outlook and persistent worker shortages, but there were few signs that businesses were having difficulties accessing credit.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) said on Tuesday its Small Business Optimism Index dropped 1.1 points to 89.0 last month, the lowest level since January 2013. It was the 16th straight month that the index remained below the 49-year average of 98.