🛰 Why a SpaceX bankruptcy would hurt the global poor
Also: The promise of geothermal energy 🌋
“Anticipation is a mode of control by a central mind; efforts are made to predict and prevent potential dangers before damage is done. . . . Resilience is the capacity to cope with unanticipated dangers after they have become manifest, learning to bounce back.” - Aaron Wildavsky, Searching for Safety
In This Issue
Micro Reads: Omicron vaccine; gene synthesis; literacy and economic growth; and more . . .
Short Read: The promise of geothermal energy
Long Read: Why a SpaceX bankruptcy would hurt the global poor
Micro Reads
🦠 Moderna: A three-pronged approach to address the Omicron variant - Goldman Sachs | From a November 26 research note:
The Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) of SARS-CoV-2 that originated in South Africa has recently been classified as a variant of concern (VOC) by the World Health Organization (WHO). We note the ~50 mutations, with ~30 on the Spike protein and ~10 on the receptor binding domain (RBD), that include ones seen in the Delta variant believed to increase transmissibility and seen in the Beta and Delta variants believed to promote immune escape. MRNA is taking three parallel approaches to address the Omicron variant should the authorized 50µg booster dose of Spikevax prove insufficient to boost waning immunity against Omicron, with data on the first two expected in the coming weeks: 1) evaluating whether a higher dose booster of Spikevax (100 µg) can neutralize the variant, 2) studying two multi-valent booster candidates (mRNA-1273.211, which includes several mutations in Omicron also present in the Beta variant and mRNA-1273.213, which includes many mutations also present in the Beta and Delta variants) in the clinic designed to anticipate mutations such as those that have emerged in the Omicron variant, and 3) advancing an Omicron-specific booster candidate (mRNA-1273.529). Notably, the flexibility of the mRNA platform, also leveraged by PFE/BNTX, would support a swift transition to produce a new formulation of the vaccine if needed.
🧬 The Gene-Synthesis Revolution - New York Times | I recently podcasted with Beth Shapiro, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, about the potential of synthetic biology. But the reason there is syn-bio is because of gene synthesis. From the piece:
Most of the companies — excepting those working on the coronavirus — are in experimental phases; their applications have yet to return conclusive results. Still, the possibilities captivate both investors and scientists, whether they are fabricating microorganisms to produce industrial chemicals or engineering human cells to treat medical disorders. If even a small percentage of these efforts succeed, they could lead to trillion-dollar markets. The analogy frequently used by biotech venture capitalists is that we are in the Apple II days of synthetic biology, with the equivalent of iMacs and iPhones still to come. It’s a grandiose claim — but not implausible, especially now that Covid has battle-tested some of the underlying technologies. Personal computing created our digital lives; reading and writing DNA could mean control over our physical ones.
⚛ The catch with Germany’s green transformation - Politico | Japan’s Fukushima reactor meltdown in March 2011 was a key moment for Germany’s anti-nuclear movement. Indeed, many pro-nuclear politicians, including Angela Merkel, switched sides. Within a few months, parliament voted to phase out nuclear power. And now this: “But clean energy won't be enough to cover demand by 2030, and that means the coal phaseout will oblige Germans to embrace two things they love to hate: Russian gas and French nuclear energy.”
📖 Assessing the Economic Gains of Eradicating Illiteracy Nationally and Regionally in the United States - Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, Gallup | From a 2020 paper: “This analysis finds that getting all U.S. adults to at least a Level 3 of literacy proficiency would generate an additional $2.2 trillion in annual income for the country. That is 10% of the gross domestic product.” (Thanks to Eli Dourado for the pointer.)
🚧 Years of Delays, Billions in Overruns: The Dismal History of Big Infrastructure - New York Times | You have to read to almost the end of this piece to get to the good stuff, IMHO:
A key factor is the amount of time federal agencies spend to review environmental reports and issue records of decision, said [Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who formerly oversaw Transportation Department research and technology and now is a George Washington University adjunct professor]. In many cases, she said, projects are put on hold for years, while agencies review voluminous documents. . . . The environmental review process has become so complex, in part to defend against inevitable lawsuits, that neither state agencies nor federal departments can write and review the documents without teams of outside consultants.
Short Read
🌋 The promise of geothermal energy
Is there an energy source in the United States with a greater mismatch between potential and interest than geothermal? First, the potential. Extracting “just 0.1 percent of the heat content of Earth could supply humanity’s total energy needs for 2 million years,” according to the US government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy. Effectively, geothermal is a clean, inexhaustible energy resource. “The sun beneath our feet” as proponents often put it.
Especially American feet. The US accounts for a fifth of global geothermal production, more than any other country. And as Daniel Oberhaus and Caleb Watney note in the new Progressive Policy Institute policy paper on geothermal, “The United States, and particularly the western United States, is a hotbed of geothermal energy that could meet the electric and thermal energy requirements of the entire country many times over.” (Unless otherwise noted, the graphics and stats in this post are from that PPI analysis, “Geothermal Everywhere: A New Path For American Renewable Energy Leadership”.)
Still, conventional geothermal — tapping natural hydrothermal reservoirs near the Earth’s surface — accounts for less than 0.5 percent of US electricity generation annually. Nor does Washington seem particularly excited about doing R&D that could help spur advanced geothermal technologies that would allow energy extraction in places other than those optimal, naturally occurring hotspots. Since 2006, Oberhaus and Watney note, the Department of Energy has allocated just under $1 billion to geothermal R&D, adding that in 2008, the DOE budget “proposed entirely defunding the U.S. Geothermal Technologies Office.” The recently passed infrastructure bill allocates $84 million to geothermal energy R&D through 2025.
That said, advances in drilling technology due to the Shale Revolution have given the sector the potential to move beyond merely taking advantage of what Mother Nature gives us. Enhanced geothermal systems would create artificial hydrothermal reservoirs. Another option is to use horizontal drilling and pipes to run fluid through “closed-loop systems” that simply circulate fluid from the surface deep into the Earth and back through a pipe system. The fluid picks up heat when it is deep underground, and this heat energy can be extracted and converted into electricity back at the surface. This is technology that could be used almost anywhere on the planet.
But moving forward in both conventional and enhanced geothermal requires deregulation and more R&D, especially in materials science for tougher pipes and drill bits. Here is the Oberhaus-Watney agenda, in brief:
Streamline the federal permitting process for geothermal projects.
Increase the federal budget for large scale geothermal R&D projects, particularly those led by public-private partnerships.
Create incentives for geothermal generation in state electricity markets.
Establish federal innovation prizes (or related mechanisms) for the development of key geothermal technologies.
Reskill oil and gas workers for geothermal projects through federal jobs programs and private investment.
Something there for everyone: more spending for the left, deregulation for the right, innovation prizes and skill training for folks across the political spectrum,
Long Read
🛰 Why a SpaceX bankruptcy would hurt the global poor
Last week, there was a CNBC report about a shake-up at Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company. Will Heltsley, vice president of propulsion, and Lee Rosen, vice president of mission and launch operations, were out. More context on those departures might be found in a new report from Space Explored, with this headline: “Elon Musk says SpaceX could face ‘genuine risk of bankruptcy’ from Starship engine production.” More from the internal Musk email obtained by the space news site:
The consequences for SpaceX if we can not get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can’t fly Starship, which means we then can’t fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1, by itself, is financially weak, while V2 is strong.
(Starship is SpaceX’s massive, next-generation rocket meant to launch cargo and people on missions to the Moon and Mars, and each will require a few dozen Raptor engines.)
I don’t have enough deep knowledge about SpaceX’s business or financials to reliably gauge the actual bankruptcy risk here, and the piece’s reporter is skeptical. I will note, however, that although the company is currently valued at around $100 billion, the bank Morgan Stanley assigns it a valuation “of somewhere between $5bn and $200bn, with uncertainty about its success accounting for the wide range,” according to The Economist. Starship and Starlink are key to that upper bound. (Also: A Morgan Stanley survey of “institutional investors and industry experts” expect SpaceX to become more valuable than Tesla, currently a trillion-dollar company. We’ll see.) So it’s not surprising that Musk emphasizes the importance of the Starlink internet satellite venture here, especially its next incarnation.
Now go and Twitter search on the terms “Musk,” “ruining,” and “sky,” and you’ll find plenty of complaints about the Starlink constellation — with currently more than 1,700 satellites in low-Earth orbit. For many of these keyboard critics, Starlink is nothing more than an uberbillionaire's reckless effort to become an even wealthier uberbillionaire. Or maybe it’s just another Muskian vanity project, like building rockets to Mars. Either way, these diehard anti-Muskers see a cluttered sky for visual astronomers, both amateur and professional, as a horrific tradeoff just so the entrepreneur can sell global internet access.
Now, the extreme version of this critique is unserious, little more than anti-billionaire emoting. The profit potential of Starlink is unclear, though it seems to be Musk’s goal that the telecom business will one day help fund his Mars ambitions. But the venture isn’t there yet. Last summer, Musk estimated that Starlink would likely need between $20 billion and $30 billion in investment. "If we succeed in not going bankrupt, then that'll be great, and we can move on from there," Musk said. For now, Starlink aims to add another 1,000 satellites a year, even more when Starship is operational. That is, assuming Starship become operational.
But the astronomy issue is a real one, as SpaceX has acknowledged. And after astronomer complaints about the brightness of the first group of 60 satellites launched in 2019, SpaceX developed a work-around to minimize the glare from solar reflection on subsequent launches. Of course, some scientists don’t want to rely on the goodwill of SpaceX and other satellite companies. They see an international regulatory agreement, perhaps a new protocol under the Outer Space Treaty, as a necessity. But as such an add-on is unlikely to happen anytime soon, notes The Economist, “not least because other issues raised by the mega constellations, such as risks from debris, will doubtless seem more pressing.”
Here’s one of the many pictures floating around the Internet showing the impact of Starlink satellites — “the 333-second exposure shows at least 19 satellites passing overhead” — on astronomical observations, via the IFLScience website:
Of course, framing the trade-off as the above picture vs. “better global internet” doesn’t quite capture the benefits of the latter. And they are considerable. There remains a stark digital divide in global internet access. As the World Economic Forum notes: “Globally, only just over half of households (55 percent) have an internet connection, according to UNESCO. In the developed world, 87 percent are connected compared with 47 percent in developing nations, and just 19 percent in the least developed countries.”
It seems pretty clear that broadband internet access brings considerable economic gains, particularly to poorer countries. (Musk has specifically said this is a goal of Starlink.) Here are a few examples from the August 2021 analysis “The Economic Impact of Internet Connectivity in Developing Countries” by Jonas Hjort (Columbia University) and Lin Tian (INSEAD):
Quite a few studies convincingly estimate the effect on consumption of specific internet-enabled technologies (rather than internet connectivity itself) through model-based approaches, and a few do so more directly. Jack & Suri (2014) show that access to mobile money decreased consumption poverty by two percentage points in Kenya. In contrast, Couture et al. (2021) finds that expansion of e-commerce in China has little effect on income to rural producers and workers.
Different areas of Sub-Saharan Africa got access to basic internet at different times starting in the early 2000s. Exploiting variation arising from the gradual arrival of submarine cable connections and using nighttime satellite image luminosity as a proxy for economic activity, Goldbeck & Lindlacher (2021) estimate that basic internet availability leads to about a two percentage point increase in economic growth.
As we briefly discussed in Sub-section 3.1.1, Bahia et al. (2020) show evidence that the gradual roll-out of mobile broadband in Nigeria between 2010 and 2016 increased labor force participation and employment. The paper also shows that household consumption simultaneously increased and poverty decreased. Households that had at least one year of mobile broadband coverage experienced an increase in total consumption of about 6 percent.
Masaki et al. (2020) document a similarly striking result. Combining household expenditure surveys with data on the location of fiber-optic transmission nodes and coverage maps of 3G mobile technology, they show that 3G coverage is associated with a 14 percent increase in total consumption and a 10 percent decline in extreme poverty in Senegal. Finally, Bahia et al. (2021) use a similar empirical approach to study the effect of mobile broadband roll-out in Tanzania and find a comparable increase in household consumption and decline poverty in this setting.
the eventual endgame here is that there are going to be many tens of thousands more satellites in orbit, enabling total global internet coverage. And they will be joined by all manner of human-occupied installations for tourist, commercial, and scientific endeavors. (You may have missed the late October announcement that Blue Origin, the space company owned by Jeff Bezos, is teaming up with other firms to build a space station in Earth orbit.) Stargazing from Earth will never be the way it used to be. Then again, people still complain about shadows from skyscrapers even as humanity continues to build them.
But recall one of the running themes of this newsletter: Technology solves one problem, creates another, then solves that one — rinse and repeat — even as the overall direction is forward. More astronomy in the future will be space based. And if all those space objects and structures make even low-Earth orbit astronomy difficult, more of it will need to be performed further out, as with the James Webb Space Telescope. Or maybe via telescopes on the Moon, such as the proposed Lunar Crater Radio Telescope, which would deploy robots to transform a half-mile wide crater into an observatory by attaching a wire mesh along the crater walls. And once there are lots of satellites around a fully colonized Moon, off to Mars — which might be accessible thanks to Starlink funding Musk’s deep-space ambitions. Meanwhile, there will be a lot less global poverty here on Earth than otherwise.
Keep an eye on Dr Eric van Oort of University of Texas - he did a lot of the modeling showing that closed-loop geothermal is viable. I believe he's working on a project in Japan right now to prove it. Seems important.