Agree with most of this David, except the central tenet and or premise.

That said, none more wasteful, with OPM, than spending propping up coal fired power/antique power stations that spend more downtime for repairs. Than operational time!

Particularly when, cheaper than coal thorium and median prices of $1.98PKH beckon.

Of note in this morning's news, was a desire to spend more OPM on an aerospace industry.

Well if I were in charge of that and actually concerned about OPM. I'd build a sram powered, delta winged shuttle and launch it uphill, with a really big, entia overcoming rail gun, until there was enough forward momentum to fire up the locally invented scrams.

The top potential speed of a rail gun, just below light speed!

Then, after launching and high enough, launch a satellite carrying manned or unmanned rocket from the bomb bay doors.

The rocket already nearing terminal velocity inside the belly of the beast before launching. And therefore overcoming most of the prevailing inherent inertia!

And able to complete the mission as a single stage recoverable rocket carrying a satellite payload. We would need a cost effective, long life reactor! And a dedicated recovery vessel. And, a walk away safe, thorium reactor to provide the long life space batteries, the energy for the electrically powered rail gun.

And via the catalytic cracking of the water molecule. Liquid hydrogen and oxygen, i.e., fuel for both the rocket and or the scram once it had reached maximum, natural aspiration, altitude.

After initial build program, with most of the costs upfront. Ongoing outlays could be maintained as quite reasonable and cost effective levels!

In fact, we could if intelligently led, lead the world in affordable satellite launching and where necessary, recover those whose decaying orbits made them a navigational menace for all space programs.

And if we were to provide such service? Such recoverable science as that might reveal, would also be ours?

Q:Add liquid oxygen, hydrogen, to a scramjet and what do you get?

A: A rocket able to achieve moon orbit!?
Alan B.

All politicians love spending other people's money, including this bloke, who thinks that he is better than the others.

Hey Alan B.
You've you seen this amateur video on Molten Salt?
http://youtu.be/PDRWQUUUCF0

I've thought along the same lines for space launches.
Maybe some kind of electromagnetic launcher that would get the shuttle to speed and at a higher altitude before it actually used its own power or needed to use rocket engines...
But I'm no engineer...

Sadly, the moral aspect is missing in this article.

"Nobody spends money more carefully than its owner. This is why it is more efficient, as well as right, for people to be allowed to keep their own money."

NO. This is NOT the reason for people to be "allowed" to keep their own money: the true reason is that taking other people's money is a theft and stealing is immoral!

Even if by some rare chance people happened to be more efficient with other people's money, still it would be just as wrong to steal!

In my Hindu tradition, non-theft ('Asteya') is the third-most important restraint after 'Ahimsa' (non-violence) and 'Satyam' (truthfullness). In the Judeo-Christian tradition, this is the eighth commandment: "Thou shalt not steal" (Exodus 20:15).

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Dear Ttbn,

Let us not condemn the good Senator by automatically assuming that he helps himself to the tax-payer's money (say in salary or perks).

Yes, IF he does (which is yet unproven), then he is a thief like all the others.

If you followed this argument to its "logical" conclusion. Every single person living in their own self-created protective castle (of illusions) would have to provide quite literally everything that they need to merely survive, including ALL of the infrastructure that makes modern civilized life possible.
It is a benighted paradigm for the war-of-all-against-all survival of the fittest (fattest).
Perhaps the good senator should really put his actions where his mouth is and stop living high-on-the-hog off of the public purse. At the very least he should surrender ALL of the very generous government contributions to his superannuation, and ALL of the parliamentary pension that he will get when he retires from parliament.

Doesn't this Senator realise that the money he talks about is made and printed by the Royal Australian Mint? It doesn't come from the Government!

Well, the cat is well and truly out of the bag! Leyonhjelm has exposed himself as having no concept of community or commonwealth. He is a self proclaimed promoter of small government that would not collect taxes because doing so is theft. The poor will be left to starve, the rich would be left to accumulate more and more and society would be unrecognisable from what we now experience. And all because of the idea of the immorality of spending other people's money. This is about as right wing as you can get

Dear Peter,

«And all because of the idea of the immorality of spending other people's money.»

You must be referring to my comment rather than to the author, because Leyonhjelm never mentioned even a word on morality or immorality - he only discussed inefficiency.

Well, if done without consent then it is not only immoral, but it also goes against the eighth commandment.

It is quite possible to have a legitimate community and to spend other people's money without breaking the eighth commandment: all it takes is to allow individuals to opt out of paying tax.

I believe that since people are essentially good, only very few will opt out and the resulting budget-deficit will not be significant - consider both the sense of community and the great spiritual advantage once people are allowed to express the goodness of their heart by paying their taxes voluntarily!

Talk about snouts in the public money trough of spending other peoples money.
A quick search reveals that the good senator owns his own property in Canberra and that he also claims the very generous $273 overnight allowance when he stays in Canberra for parliamentary business.
I wouldnt be at all surprised if he has also used all of the various tax breaks for people who own or buy properties, including (possibly) the first home-owners grant.

Armchair: What I'm proposing is a endlessly reusable MLD. With an electrically fired railgun between the electromagnetic assembly And then utilise the nine tons of repelling force per magnet! To lift the spread weight of the piggyback vehicle.

With friction removing acceleration while still earth bound via an ion drive in the nose cone.

The shuttle reliant on an electrically powered rail gun for that forward acceleration that allows the scramjet to fire up. And could include airlocks vacuums and what have you, as endlessly reusable structures/launch facility?

And if we were ever attacked able to be deployed from relatively safe hidden facility, for retaliatory missions? Several times a day?

An off the grid walk away safe, molten salt thorium reactor central to the base and launch facilities plus fuel creation via catalytically assisted, water molecule cracking.

A small iron drive in the nosecone of the shuttle, would help reduce speed robbing friction. as would titanium oxide ceramic tiles fastened to leading edges.

We could print those tiles on demand. On the base, using electrically powered 3D printers? And much of the rest of the moldable, reusable, recoverable inventory?

Given graphiele is the strongest material in the world and we have a commercially viable, huge, almost pure deposit of the same. A reinforced inner hull could be made of it, then covered with carbon fibre and copper skins, so as to become completely invisible on hostile radar screens.

One could even use landmarks like reinforced lava tubes and or, a remote northern mountain with a near road op one side? Or a vertical tunnel through the middle? As the guided to terminal velocity, semi permanent launch pad?

Or, we could just pick up where with left off in the 80's? Burning OPM. Two or three times a year in typical for both sides of the aisle, penny/cent wise pound/dollar foolish outcomes, one might expect from your local council? Maybe? Rather than alleged national governments!

Do it right and do it once, the first time! Or just don't do it at all!
Alan B.

Armchair, I've looked at videos and PDFs until I'm blue in the face. Some are useful and explanatory! Others just spin from a, 3 trillion a year fossil fuel, big nuclear, opposition? Feeling threatened with elimination?

Type, the case for thorium, into your search engine. Then scroll down the page to an informative, peer reviewed, highly rated, top doc, where the principal presenter, scientist Kirk Sorensen will educate entertain and inform!

Look for the gold stars that tells one, Google has rated it suitable for validated, authoritative, Google tech talks!

That said, beware the alleged nuclear expert, who claims? I intend to authoritatively refute thorium as a fuel in solid fuel reactors?

And almost clever obfuscation, given any proposal to use thorium as solid fuel in conventional reactors, is not made and a nonsense!

Moreover, the net is full to overflowing, with such dubious/BS articles/claims!
Alan B.

Yuyustu. I had some well heeled Canuck friends as a young man, who came over to holiday with us one year. Then halfway through that stay, announced plans to urgently return for their, well worth the extra there and back airfare, for their share of the communal dividend, the government earned as the operator/manager of state operated, social credit enterprise.

And where the state paid surplus to needs income back to the people. i.e., the state paid a tax to the people as it were, from income earning, communal assets and enterprise.

And economic heresy in the land of the dollar bill!

Successful social credit, relies on a relatively small population occupying a relatively large, well resourced land mass! And therefore impossible here!?

As for decent folk, like say Donald, voluntarily paying a fair share of a common burden? Ha, Ha, he, he, ho, ho, ha, ha, he, he. Oh my aching ribs, stop, enough already! You're killing me! Ah, Ha, ha, ha! Trump that!

Q: What did the blind horse say to the one legged jockey?
A: how are you getting on?
Alan B.

Yes David but the expansion of direct welfare programs is only part of the expanding interventionism the whole country's sprinting ahead with. It's a self fueling fire.
Barely a month goes by where we don't hear of some new law or regulation that takes control over your property and what you can do with your property as well as what you may own and in the worst cases what you're required to own. That's a direct form of spending other peoples money that's worse because it prevents economic activity and increases the cost of everything.
There's no sign of it slowing down. Elections don't seem to be having any effect.
The increasing monetry reward parlimentary service has awarded itself is a problem IMO. It's created the wrong motivation. Suspect that influences the tendency to say yes to those rent seekers that walk into the office.
Don't know the answer. There's a place for the state. We probably had it closer to the right place thirty years ago. Trouble is we've got a generation voting now who've never known any different to what we have now and can't see any problem with it.

Dear Alan,

Yes, but how many Donalds have you met?
How many blind horses? How many one-legged jockeys?

What about yourself? Would you not pay your taxes if they were voluntary?

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Dear Jamo,

«Don't know the answer. There's a place for the state. We probably had it closer to the right place thirty years ago.»

The root problem is overpopulation.

Thirty years ago we had fewer people on this planet.

The more people being squeezed on the same land, the more regulations are needed to keep them from stepping on each other's toes. Also the more rent-seekers need an office to survive. Also the more technology is needed to keep them alive, thus more regulations of that technology are also needed.

It is very sad and doesn't get any better.

The good news is that within a few decades, we personally will no longer be here to endure it.

If you want the world to be better and freer, don't bring any new humans into it!

The best political quote I have heard about opm was by Tony Abbott, when he said, and I quote "the law makers have to understand that the decisions they make and the laws they pass, don't have any real effect on their lifestyle choices" end quote.
Never has a truer word been spoken because for someone who needs 100% of their income, just to survive, can not find that extra 20 bucks a week.