We are one step closer to a libertarian, private, for-profit utopia on Mars. Well, pretty much anyway. This week, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories asked private space companies to outline how they would complete one of four different missions to the Red Planet, Ars Tecnica reported yesterday.
Such missions would include one to deliver a small payload of miniature satellites to Mars, one to deliver a larger orbital spacecraft, one to deliver an orbital imagery maintenance spacecraft, and one to establish a years-long communications relay between Mars and Earth.
Companies would be paid $200,000 to study one of these missions or $300,000 to study two.
NASA is already making heavy use of private capital to reach orbit. Starting in 2020, the agency began sending its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) via rockets owned and operated by SpaceX.
That first Crew Dragon mission was the first time a private spacecraft carried humans into orbit. Once a headline-grabbing event, private human spaceflight has almost become routine, judging by the lower profile of each subsequent SpaceX launch. Just last month, SpaceX flew its first all-European, commercial crew of four to the ISS on a mission paid for by a private space company.
NASA is also relying on private space companies to deliver payloads to the Moon and develop spacecraft and other technologies for an eventual human return to the lunar surface.
This is not necessarily free market capitalism. The government is still paying contractors with taxpayers’ money. But the growing use of private contractors for space missions opens the door to more completely private, for-profit spaceflight.
“In recent years, NASA has evolved from ‘owning’ all the rockets and spacecraft it uses to explore the Solar System to a more service-based model,” he writes Ars TecnicaIt’s Eric Berger. The agency invests some of the money needed to develop privately owned spacecraft, which can then be hired by the government or private sector.
Republicans are trying to save their slim House majority by expanding the dreaded SALT deduction. The state and local tax (SALT) deduction does what it sounds like; allows people to deduct state and local taxes from their federal tax bill.
It is used almost exclusively by high-income taxpayers in high-tax Democratic states, effectively subsidizing those states’ high tax rates and shifting the federal tax burden to everyone else. The 2017 GOP tax reform bill imposed a $10,000 cap on the SALT deduction, much to the chagrin of some Democrats who favor the policy.
But with the House Republican majority dependent on a handful of vulnerable Republican-held seats in New York, today’s GOP is also moving closer to the SALT deduction.
On Thursday afternoon, Republicans on the House Rules Committee advanced a bill that would increase the SALT deduction limit to $20,000 for joint filers earning less than $500,000.
“This is about fairness, as our constituents are double taxed,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), for Politic. “This is pro-family. This is about ensuring that married couples aren’t penalized by the tax code.”
Americans are going back to work. The January jobs report released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the U.S. economy added 353,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate remained stable at 3.7%.
These numbers go beyond the projections of many analysts, who had predicted that the economy would add 160,000 to 275,000 jobs. That’s enough of an error to cause journalists to describe the jobs report as “stunning” and “incredibly strong.”
Scenes from DC
Pro-Palestinian protesters are winning hearts and minds by blocking traffic in front of the DC Holocaust Museum.
Protesters block the road in front of the Holocaust Museum pic.twitter.com/BxoSYvDwiU
—Boris Zilberman (@rolltidebmz) February 1, 2024
The nation’s capital obviously has a strong tradition of protest, from civil rights marches to Juggalos civil rights marches. The courteous thing to do is to limit the demonstration to the National Mall, which is made for this sort of thing. Monuments provide great optics for your issue too, whether you love or hate abortion, want America out of a war, or want it more involved in a war.
Disruptive street blockers typically argue that their cause is so important that it requires shaking ordinary people out of their apathy by extraordinary means. The opposite could easily be argued; that a truly urgent moral emergency requires effective activism and message discipline so as not to alienate ordinary people who could easily give a damn.
This is something that those trying to clear Gaza from the street in front of the Holocaust Museum should consider for their next protest.
Quick links
- New York, New York, the largest city in the world and the largest in America, is testing a new pilot program in which people put their trash in a bin instead of throwing it on the street. We’ll see if it sticks.
Here’s a demo of New York City’s new automatic side-loading garbage truck that lifts large street containers. A pilot program is expanding throughout Community Board District 9 in West Harlem. pic.twitter.com/d9NmXaupOC
— Emma G. Fitzsimmons (@emmagf) February 1, 2024