A Shadowy Op-Ed Campaign Is Now Smearing SpaceX In Space Cities (arstechnica.com) 264
Last month when Boeing and SpaceX announced the first astronauts who will fly on their commercial crew spacecraft, several newspapers across the U.S. began publishing an op-ed that criticized the process by which Boeing competitor SpaceX fuels its Falcon 9 rocket. "The first op-ed appeared in a Memphis newspaper a week before the commercial crew announcement," reports Ars Technica. "In recent weeks, copies of the op-ed have also appeared in the Houston Chronicle, various Alabama newspapers, Albuquerque Journal, Florida Today, and The Washington Times." Ars Technica reports: All of these op-eds were bylined by "retired spacecraft operator" Richard Hagar, who worked for NASA during the Apollo program and now lives in Tennessee. (Based upon his limited social media postings, Hagar appears to be more interested in conservative politics than in space these days). Each op-ed cites Hagar's work on NASA's recovery from the Apollo 1 fire and the hard lessons NASA learned that day about human spaceflight. The pieces then pivot to arguing that SpaceX's load-and-go fueling process -- in which the crew will board the Dragon spacecraft on top of the Falcon 9 rocket before it is fueled -- ignores the lessons that Hagar's generation learned during Apollo.
"It's concerning to learn that some of the newer private space ventures launching today don't appreciate the same safety standards we learned to emphasize on Apollo," the op-ed states. "I suppose for Mr. Musk, inexperience is replacing the abundant safety protocols drilled into us after witnessing the Apollo 1 disaster. Astronaut safety is NASA's number one priority on any space mission. There is no reason it should not be for private space travel, but commercial space companies like SpaceX play by different rules."
There are some factual inaccuracies here. For one thing, SpaceX does play by the same rules as Boeing for commercial crew -- astronaut safety rules that NASA itself wrote. Moreover, NASA has already provisionally cleared load-and-go for Falcon 9 launches that will send the Dragon spacecraft into orbit. To try to understand his viewpoint, Ars attempted to reach Hagar by phone and email in September. In the course of this process, we learned that he did not actually submit many of these op-eds. In fact, based upon our research, at least four of the six op-eds that we located were submitted by two people with gmail.com addresses. Their names were Josh Brevik and Casey Murray. Further research revealed that two people with these names worked as "associates" at a Washington, DC-based public relations firm named Law Media Group or LMG. LMG's website says they are a 15-year-old firm that "develops and executes public-, Hill-, and agency-facing issue advocacy campaigns that shift the narrative in a changing world." The SourceWatch website more bluntly "calls LMG a 'secretive Washington DC public affairs firm' with a history of placing op-eds, and it seeks to mask the op-eds' financial sponsors," reports Ars.
"It's concerning to learn that some of the newer private space ventures launching today don't appreciate the same safety standards we learned to emphasize on Apollo," the op-ed states. "I suppose for Mr. Musk, inexperience is replacing the abundant safety protocols drilled into us after witnessing the Apollo 1 disaster. Astronaut safety is NASA's number one priority on any space mission. There is no reason it should not be for private space travel, but commercial space companies like SpaceX play by different rules."
There are some factual inaccuracies here. For one thing, SpaceX does play by the same rules as Boeing for commercial crew -- astronaut safety rules that NASA itself wrote. Moreover, NASA has already provisionally cleared load-and-go for Falcon 9 launches that will send the Dragon spacecraft into orbit. To try to understand his viewpoint, Ars attempted to reach Hagar by phone and email in September. In the course of this process, we learned that he did not actually submit many of these op-eds. In fact, based upon our research, at least four of the six op-eds that we located were submitted by two people with gmail.com addresses. Their names were Josh Brevik and Casey Murray. Further research revealed that two people with these names worked as "associates" at a Washington, DC-based public relations firm named Law Media Group or LMG. LMG's website says they are a 15-year-old firm that "develops and executes public-, Hill-, and agency-facing issue advocacy campaigns that shift the narrative in a changing world." The SourceWatch website more bluntly "calls LMG a 'secretive Washington DC public affairs firm' with a history of placing op-eds, and it seeks to mask the op-eds' financial sponsors," reports Ars.
NASA Brings billions of federal dollars in (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:NASA Brings billions of federal dollars in (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't like the idea of space travel becoming a rich man's club. I want a public option.
When was the last time *you* got into space with your public option?
Re:NASA Brings billions of federal dollars in (Score:4, Insightful)
For me it was when I was reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress at the public library.
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Socialism is government control of the means of production.
No it isn't. It is the people being in control of the means of production. Your definition can apply iff the people are in control of the government.
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I guess that's one of the problems with modern discourse on the subject, nobody is working from the same definition. Even if you look on wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] mentions at least four different versions in the introduction. I think it is likely most people who think of themselves as socialists (and I do, to some extent) are cherry picking the bits that they like and/or make sense to them. I, for example, think Marx's elimination of markets and trade is sheer lunacy.
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Re:NASA Brings billions of federal dollars in (Score:4, Interesting)
Let NASA do the stuff they're good at.
Let them just be the boffins, thinking shit up, trying stuff out. Don't push them to build rockets, it just ends up with parts spread all over the country in various states.
Let them focus on research (or sprinkling funds around to various outside parties for research, spaceX included), deep space exploration, and the tech to help enable that. They can be the enablers for so many things if they're allowed to be.
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Technology choices versus progam choices (Score:5, Insightful)
You think the SLS is using solid fuel because it's the best option?
I think the SLS is using solid fuel boosters because they've already done a lot of the work courtesy of the Space Shuttle program and it's easier to adapt existing tech than to develop brand new tech. Plus the infrastructure to build and service the things is already in place with existing suppliers. It's why the Soyuz system is still in place after all these decades even though it's possible to develop something that outperforms it. Sure it also functions as pork to keep politicians happy but that is an argument against the program not against the technology itself. There is no single right answer to the technical question of what is the "best" option. There are pros and cons to every possible choice. It may very well be that the SRBs were the best option given the constraints NASA had to work with for the program goals. Change the goals and then maybe the choices need to change too. Let's say NASA goes with a blank canvas liquid fuel design instead. Now they have a MUCH bigger and likely more expensive engineering task to develop and prove a new system which they have to do under the exact same budget. It's not like Congress is anxious to increase their budget either so what choice would you make?
Engineering and program management aren't always about finding the ideal technical solution. Economics and sometimes politics play a role too. Sometimes you are better off dusting off a proven technology because it costs less or because it's less risky or because it's less costly. It's about making sure perfect isn't the enemy of good. There are more factors to consider than merely what is the current state of the art technology and using only that.
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I'd say in this case they are totally at odds with one another, and politics is winning. Is there any less economical way to get people into space than SLS?
SLS versus the world (Score:2)
Is there any less economical way to get people into space than SLS?
Yes. I refer you to the Space Shuttle, the Apollo program, and pretty much any other heavy launch vehicle NASA has developed. The cost per Apollo launch was (inflation adjusted) about $1.2 billion per launch. The SLS is projected to cost considerably less than that though like most programs still in development the real numbers are still a bit fuzzy. It's also unlikely that the SLS would cost more than the Space Shuttle launches since it uses a lot of the same tech but is a notably less complex design.
Re:NASA Brings billions of federal dollars in (Score:5, Informative)
And who around the whole sows discord in the US? (Score:4, Insightful)
> SpaceX does it so much cheaper than the "socialist" option, that they are literally pissing the entire launch industry around the world off.
Yeah and we know one group *around the world* who has felt threatened by competing with the US in space travel, and their strategy for competing has been to sow discord and disharmony in the US with secret media campaigns. The more we're busy arguing with each other, the less we are able to beat them, they figure.
Sour grapes (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a good friend who works range optics at Vandenberg and knows a lot of people from the various launch teams. He says the ULA people hate SpaceX.
Sure, they had a comfy cozy little business and suddenly they've been exposed for the incompetent leaches they really are. I bet they don't like SpaceX but that's just sour grapes and I really don't give a shit. They had decades to do better and they sat on their asses. Now SpaceX is handing them that fat complacent ass and they don't like it? Cry me a river.
SpaceX has never been about being a rich mans game. He is using sort of the same model he did with Tesla where you build the expensive one and use the money generated from the sales for that to fund the next round, and repeat, getting cheaper and scaling each time.
Yep. Literally every business Elon has done since PayPal has been basically about bringing economies of scale to a business or business segment that did not have them before and driving costs down. It's not easy to do but when it succeeds the rewards are immense. He's moved several industries more in the last 10 years than they have moved in the last 50. It's why I wish the guy well... not because I care about Elon but because if he forced GM to make a better EV or ULA to make a cheaper launch vehicle or gets solar panels on every roof then that benefits us all. We need people who are change agents like that driving inefficiency out of industries that have gotten complacent.
Don't need Mars (Score:2)
Musk is all about Mars. EV is for Mars. Boring is for Mars. SpaceX is for Mars.
Maybe so but that matters little in the here and now and none of what he is doing actually requires going to Mars. What Musk's companies are doing has immense value even if we never send so much as another probe to Mars. Electric vehicles area good idea even if we never go to space again. SpaceX lowering cost to orbit has huge value far beyond anything relating to Mars. Better and more efficient tunnel making can make our current 2D infrastructure 3D which we desperately need in many densely populated p
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Much of the work that Space X does is for the government. To be socialist it doesn't have to have the development done by the government, in fact NASA never really did that... It just needs to be funded and directed for the public good, rather than for purely commercial interests.
Space X does it "Cheaper" (Score:2)
Re:NASA Brings billions of federal dollars in (Score:5, Insightful)
if we privatize space travel that all goes away. Personally I don't want it to. Stuff like NASA is the closest thing to socialism we can get in the US. I don't like the idea of space travel becoming a rich man's club. I want a public option. But then again I also want public transit for my streets (that doesn't run one bus every 90 minutes) and I can't get that either.
I'm having a hard time processing this comment. You seem to be suggesting that NASA is supported by a nascent socialist agenda, and that without it access to space would be too expensive for anyone but the super wealthy... when in fact, it was NASA's attempt to foster free-market competition between all launch providers [wikipedia.org], even brand new and little known ones like SpaceX and SNC, that sparked the development of today's low-cost access to space.
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Sounds pretty socialist to me. Government pumps money into the economy via public projects that are contracted out. Even the USSR had RKK Energia design most of their rockets, for example.
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If Musk wanted to spend his own money or the private capital of others to get into space, that's his own business. Once the government starts deciding what and what doesn't get funded, it starts turning into corporate hand outs. I have a strong feel that you wouldn't view the government hand outs to oil companies as socialism. You wouldn't even dare phrase that as "pumping money into the economy", which is itself a
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Some of your comments are brilliant and others just make me scratch my head.
It sounds like you like the pork-barrel spending directed towards NASA. Other agencies receive federal funding and do basic research and other cool things. There are larger programs like Social Security that are much closer to being socialist programs. Right now, you have to be in the military and be lucky to be chosen to be an astronaut, dollars don't get you into space. A couple space tourists went to the ISS, but not recently, an
NASA's mission is research - not bus service (Score:2)
NASA Brings billions of federal dollars in. if we privatize space travel that all goes away.
Your argument is that federal pork on an interstellar bus service is somehow a good thing? What do you think NASA actually does? They aren't an interstellar bus service and they should not be. Their work with stuff like the Apollo program and Space Shuttle and ISS are high profile but it's only a fraction of what they do. Most of what NASA does is research and engineering. Contracting private companies to handle the actual transit duties actually frees NASA to do their primary mission since a lot of th
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I don't like the idea of space travel becoming a rich man's club.
Too bad NASA's shown that, with Congress at the wheel, it wasn't going to become anyone's club.
conspiracy whack jobs seem to run this place now (Score:4, Insightful)
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You're so focused on the syndication aspect that you missed the fact that the reference in the by-line claims not to have written any of the content. You're complaining about the wrong conspiracy.
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And, in point of fact (Score:2)
The method they use to fuel their rocket *is* stupid, or at least willfully ignorant, as are several aspects of their launch sequence - particularly the static test with the payload stacked. The one that resulted in the payload being destroyed, completely unnecessarily.
Re:And, in point of fact (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm curious as to why you think that manning and then fuelling/launching is worse than the other way around.
In SpaceX's case, you put the people into an empty and generally inert rocket, strap them in, turn on the launch escape system, get everyone else back to the bunker, then fuel it up and launch. In NASA's case, they fuelled the rocket, then, while a whole bunch of simmering cryogenic liquids and fuel was just sitting there, a bunch of people approached the rocket and strapped everyone in over the course of half an hour or so, then everyone left and they launched the rocket.
Problem with SpaceX rocket pre-launch? Nobody else is around to worry about, so the Astronauts (or computer) activates launch escape sequence and you're 1500ft away from the rest of the rocket in seconds.
Problem with NASA rocket? Either it goes boom during fuelling and nobody gets hurt, or something happens and half-a-dozen people have to slowly egress from the tower (as in, over the course of 10-15 seconds best case, minutes worst-case if you're strapping an astronaut in) all the while hundreds of tons of LOX and fuel is partying it out right next to them.
So - in my opinion - the SpaceX approach expects failures and has a better way of handling them, while the NASA approach reduced the chance of failures with a poor way of handling them. In general, with risk x consequence and all that, the long-term actual cost in human lives might wind up the same.
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The flip side is that load-and-go causes extreme thermal and pressure transients to the rocket. So the question is what is riskier.. Being near a fully fuelled and reasonably static rocket, or sitting on one that you put through the stresses of fuelling.
Re:And, in point of fact (Score:4)
A cryogenic system in a room temperature environment is never really "static" though. But you're right about sitting through the stresses of fuelling. If you have a functioning launch escape system, is the risk mitigated enough?
Anyway, one hopes that enough people have looked at this from all angles. Seeing as NASA has approved load and go in principle for their astronauts launching on SpaceX hardware, I guess we'll wait and see.
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This is why, despite potential failures with any type of fueling, you are wrong [youtube.com]
SpaceX vs. NASA, ULA, Boeing, Lockheed, etc. (Score:5, Informative)
SpaceX charges about 1/3 what everyone else does for a commercial satellite mission and is a bargain for government missions too, despite their increased paperwork. Previous to SpaceX, the United States had a horrible situation where there was a space monopoly made of Boeing and Lockheed, previous competitors who got tangled in an industrial espionage situation and merged their space business rather than have the lawsuit of the century. The US Government and citizens lost, because they ended up having an expensive monopoly and on top of it they had to pay 1 Billion per year to the monopoly to assure they'd stay in business.
So far, SpaceX looks like they have the most viable path to space. There are a lot of "old space" businesses and government agencies that can't compete, so they FUD.
In theory, a rocket that cost 3 times as much (or more than that, in the case of the Shuttle) could afford to be safer for manned missions. In practice, it hasn't been.
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Re:SpaceX vs. NASA, ULA, Boeing, Lockheed, etc. (Score:4, Informative)
Well, they have sent a couple of objects off to beyond LEO/GEO - Elon's roadster, currently well outside Earth's sphere of influence, and that sat that sits at one of the lagrange points. But their core business is LEO/GEO at present because that's where the money is.
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Oh, so this is one of those kinds of threads, where logic and reasoned debate take a back seat?
Ok, bye.
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Logic and reason are in the front seat, but they're floating through space in Musk's used car.
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Oh, so this is one of those kinds of threads, where logic and reasoned debate take a back seat?
Ok, bye.
As opposed to what? I thought that was the only kind of thread we have around here.
It takes money to save the world (Score:2)
Yeah, so cut the crap about Musk trying to save the world. He is just another guy grabbing money.
Making money and "saving the world" are not mutually exclusive. And frankly to do much that really matters you need money to do it. There are legitimate criticisms you can make about Musk but I don't think this one is among them. If all Elon cared about was money he sure as hell wouldn't have started SpaceX or Tesla. The guy has taken HUGE risks which he didn't have to with those companies. He could have just checked out after the PayPal buyout if money was all that mattered to him.
I've never seen so many people taken in by such a cult leader.
As opposed to you w
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Obsess much? (Score:3)
It is because I think the is a scam artist who takes public money to enrich himself which convincing all of his followers he is out to save the planet and take them to Mars.
This argument is just ridiculous and stupid. First off Tesla isn't taking any public money. The got a loan a while back (far less than GM incidentally) which they repaid quickly. The tax incentives for purchasing their vehicles don't bring a dime directly to Tesla and frankly probably don't have more than a marginal effect on sales. People who buy $100,000 cars aren't doing it for the tax writeoff and in any case Tesla has burned through the tax rebates available to their customers and yet people are st
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It's a recyclable launch vehicle, easily upgraded to handle manned payloads. No spacecraft have every been recyclable: the Spache Shuttles required so much overhaul between flights that each launch was of a genuinely distinct spacecraft. I think we can call that a revolution in spacecraft.
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It's a lot like the mini-computer revolution really. Launches have become cheap enough that not only really large institutions can do it but even universities could launch large satellites if they wanted to.
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What do you consider space then?
DSCOVR is currently 1 million miles away, launched by SpaceX Is that space enough for you?
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DISCOVR is at the L1 Lagrangian point, in deep space. I watched the Falcon 9 launch that. There have been a number of geosynchronous or geostationary satellites, as well, and the car is in a trans-martian orbit.
Re:SpaceX vs. NASA, ULA, Boeing, Lockheed, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)
Elon is not only changing America, but the world, to being better. I suspect that every nation on this planet would LOVE to have elon and his companies move there.
The fact is, that Tesla and SpaceX have made massive changes to our society.
In the next 5 years, DECENT EVs will costs 10-15K. Yes, EVs, once batteries are developed, will be much cheaper than ICE.
Then we have SpaceX forcing the price of launches way down. America was out of the industry. Now, we are the industry.
However, Musk will continue to force this down further and make it economically possible to go to the moon, and mars.
And yet, we see so much trash ripping into these companies.
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The price of constructing EVs might be low enough that they could be sold for $10k, but without competition they'll be sold for the price people expect to pay for a vehicle. Also at the annual 3% battery improvements, the weight/kWh should only come down by ~17% total, so I don't see how $20k will be shaved off just due to that (compared to a base Model 3).
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And if they're sold for much more than they could be if they had competition, then other companies will say "we need to get us some of that Free Money" and start building their own EV's.
Which will drive the price of an EV down to the point where noone is making any more profit on an EV than they do on a conventional auto.
Re: SpaceX vs. NASA, ULA, Boeing, Lockheed, etc. (Score:2)
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but without competition they'll be sold for the price people expect to pay for a vehicle.
And, IMO, that's the big part of what Tesla has done. They demonstrated to other automakers that there actually is a very large market for electric vehicles.
So now those automakers are creating their own vehicles to complete with Tesla (and each other), and we get competition to drive prices down. (And yes, I think that poster is overly optimistic about price unless we accept drastically reduced range)
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The vehicles will be accord or smaller, maybe like Smart (ugh), but I think that it is TOO small.
Regardless, battery energy density is increasing, while prices are dropping. And I expect that others will follow tesla and drop the cobalt out of their batteries.
That will lower the price a great deal.
Re:SpaceX vs. NASA, ULA, Boeing, Lockheed, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)
The cost difference is actually really simple to explain - just ask anyone who ever worked in or around government procurement (as I have). It's simply bureaucracy. The government employs an army of bureaucrats, who justify their existence (and their little empires) by imposing insane paperwork requirements on contractors. So the contractors have to employ their own army of paper-pushers to deal with those requirements. Essentially none of this has anything to do with actually getting work done.
I remember one memorable situation: We (I was on the government side) had put out a small project for bid. A small company, expert in the field, came in with an offer at about 1/3 the cost of the next best offer. The thing was: they had never before had a government contract. My boss took the CEO out for coffee, discovered that he really had no idea what things were going to be like. My boss quietly told him to double his bid, to pay for all the people he would have to hire to deal with all the crap.
For larger projects, you then get the political aspects. The prime contractor must hire subcontractors, even if the prime contractor could do the work. This massively increases overhead costs yet again, but it is essential for two reasons: it distributes the financial gains among the political districts of the relevant Congresscritters - the subcontractors, of course, donate a portion of the largess to political campaigns. And second, political correctness: a certain portion of the subcontractors must be owned by people of the right minorities. Sometimes these subcontractors are only shells (with overheads, of course) that pass the actual work on to sub-subcontractors.
That's why ULA is expensive. I'm sure SpaceX has to play at least some of the same games, but obviously a lot less so.
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Liars for the Military Industrial Complex ... (Score:2, Informative)
Space Ex is only cheap because they lose money on every flight and cut corners with safety.
That's a blatant lie.
Lockheed Martin has been wasting tax money with corner cutting and failures for decades [wikipedia.org]:
Just one example, and far from an isolated incident:
Investigation showed that Titan K-17, which was several years old and the last Titan IV-A to be launched, had dozens of damaged or chafed wires and should never have been launched in that operating condition, however the Air Force put extreme pressure on launch crews to meet program deadlines. The ultimate cause of the failure was an electrical short that caused a momentary power dropout to the guidance computer at T+39 seconds. After power was restored, the computer sent a spurious pitch down and yaw to the right command. At T+40 seconds, the Titan was travelling at near supersonic speed and could not handle this action without suffering a structural failure. In any case, the Titan's fuselage was filled with numerous sharp metal protrusions that made it nearly impossible to install, adjust, or remove wiring without it getting damaged. Quality control at Lockheed's Denver plant, where Titan vehicles were assembled, was described as "awful".
Here, watch for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The stuff (Score:1, Flamebait)
Let me guess, this guy was a blue collar worker who thinks he is an engineer, and now lives in the south and thinks he actually knows better.
This is the exact kind of people you would expect to support Trump - opinionated, wrong, and with years of mediocre experience doing stupid shit like driving a truck or working construction.
I don't have a problem with these idiots. I have a problem with people who would listen to them, and whatever fake news organization staffed by similar mediocre types who would publ
so.. 4 out of 6 'conservative-leaning' newspapers. (Score:3)
publish similarly-leaning op-eds without verifying the submitter and without obtaining permission from the actual author of the piece. surprise, surprise.. if they treat the easy (to confirm and verify) content pieces like this, how shitty is their actual 'news' sourced and backed (or not)?
Smear is probably Boeing (Score:1)
Theyâ(TM)ve a long history of dubious and illegal practices.
Space Cities (Score:1)
Trump/Musk in 2020 (Score:2)
I want to see Musk run as President Trump's VP in 2020. Establishment flaks will have a conniption fit and probably shit themselves.
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He wasn't born in the USA so don't think he's even eligible for VP. I'm sure he'd rather not get bogged down in politics any more than the time it takes to tell a lobbying group what he wants.
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Nothing in the Constitution says he can't be VP.
That said, he can't replace the President if the Pres were to die, since he'd have to meet the Presidential requirement to be a Citizen to do so.
Which means, for practical purposes, he won't be picked to be VP, since noone wants the House to pick the new President if the old one kicks the bucket. Well, noone outside the House, anyways....
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Nothing in the Constitution says he can't be VP.
Article 1, Section 2: No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President;
Amendment 12: no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
nas (Score:2, Insightful)
They're russian hackers, soon to be bringing novichik to your town.
Don't Nasa me, bro! (Score:2)
I've been wondering about this kind of stuff since the week Taser was to go public, and suddenly stories started appearing how it was really very deadly.
While that could be a real concern, the timing suggested someone was trying to force the IPO valuation down.
Pretty sure Seattle is the space city (Score:2)
After all, we make them. You guys just party a lot.
Why NASA no longer puts people into space (Score:2)
Astronaut safety is NASA's number one priority on any space mission.
If safety is above mission success then we all are just hiding under our beds. There's a safety risk in everything, and launching people outside the atmosphere will carry all kinds of risks we would not have otherwise. If safety is above getting people into space then we never go to space. Safety cannot ever be the number one priority, safety needs to be second or third on the list if we are going to space. First priority is success. Second priority, in the case of private space programs, will be profi
Re:"Conspiracy theories for the nuts" (Score:5, Insightful)
Whats the conspiracy theory here? These Political thinktanks openly admit what they do. Hell, its their marketing pitch.
Re:"Conspiracy theories for the nuts" (Score:4, Insightful)
Whats the conspiracy theory here? These Political thinktanks openly admit what they do. Hell, its their marketing pitch.
If that was true, why were they lying about who wrote it, and if it was a paid position piece or an op-ed by a retired subject expert?
I don't see how you can square, "they lied about who wrote it in order to get it published in disguise by people who otherwise wouldn't publish a press release as an op-ed" with "These Political think-tanks openly admit what they do."
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I don't see how you can square, "they lied about who wrote it in order to get it published in disguise by people who otherwise wouldn't publish a press release as an op-ed" with "These Political think-tanks openly admit what they do."
As long as you keep the two ends of the business well separated, there's no problem. Keeping this separation is their expertise.
Re: "Conspiracy theories for the nuts" (Score:2, Interesting)
What's so farfetched about SpaceX's competitors hiring a firm to conduct a PR campaign? There are firms that offer such services because there's a market for it. Talk up your client's company or spread FUD about their competition. You see it all the time in big ticket defense contracting.
The only thing that's a bit melodramatic is calling it "shadowy" or regarding it as somehow especially dirty pool.
Voters in places with a lot of space jobs are important political constituencies for space contractors,
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Re:Not Tesla (Score:5, Interesting)
It was never about Tesla. The SEC is going after his ass because of SpaceX being a threat to the political class that's in bed with all those government contractors (his competitors).
There is a constituency of businesses disrupted by Musk who don't mind using social engineering to attack all things Musk and pollute the mindspace with their propaganda, or buying Congressmen to oppose his efforts. As we learned from the Manafort drama, such work has highly paid experts eager to receive that deposit into their offshore accounts.
But this is Musk's game too. He has skills in this regard or such FUD would have killed his prospects already years ago. He's taking on Boeing, Ford, GM, Fossil fuels (Saudi, BP, Exxon), nuclear power, etc. And all the nations with launch business (Russia, China, India, etc). His enemies list is pretty much the Fortune 500 and every country on Earth. If he goes missing the police are going to have a harder time finding non-suspects than suspects.
And he's fine with that. It's all going to plan. He knew when he set out to save his species from extinction that his works were not going to be popular, or they would not be necessary. We are more 100x more predisposed to extinction than the dinosaurs were, as they made it 100 million years and we seem unlikely to crack the million years mark.
What's remarkable to me is how much he seems to be enjoying making fools of them all. Stoking their ire and poking the bear as if building a self sustaining colony on another planet was insufficiently challenging and he wanted to inspire the opposition to step up their game.
I don't know why he has a problem with the short sellers. A short sale is a gamble that his stock will go down, which cannot possibly exist unless there is a counter party willing to take the other side of that bet and put their money on his stock going up. Many people who believe he cannot possibly fail buy stock in his companies and then rent out their shares to his naysayers and use the money they earn in that way to buy more shares. The long and short interest in Musk stocks is a self-reinforcing commitment to volatility against a predictable trend. Long and short sellers are gambling on whether they can predict the direction of motion and attracted because he is generating a lot of motion (volatility). They are drawn like moths to his flame for no other reason than that he is succeeding in being disruptive and controversial - which are primary goals of his. It's probably an ego thing he hasn't considered: for every stupid person willing to offer their money to bet against him there is a smart person willing to take that bet, and so there is balance in the bets that moves money from the stupid to the smart and he is the conveyor belt.
Hubris is a sin and he's guilty it. I can hope there is no human living who can make him do penance for this sin because that would be the end of Mankind. If he fails to deliver an interplanetary human species there will be no other, more capable human to repeat the attempt. And that means that eventually the last of my offsprings' heirs will die without issue, my genome will become dust as yours will, all the history struggles art and works of Men throughout all time will come to nought as the passage of time erases all evidence that we ever did exist.
/My first /. post in 4 years. Things have changed around here, so be gentle.
Musk as a disruptor? Yes, but... (Score:2)
...Musk is in trouble with the SEC because he lied, period. Markets have rules, and one of the rules here is "Don't misrepresent your intentions." With that said, your hagiographic defense of Musk is admirable, because we need forward thinkers and doers like him if we are going to think ourselves out of the crapsack world we are heading towards. But we don't want to cure the disease by killing the patient. Musk has some really good ideas, but he also has some really dated (read: flawed) ideas about the
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Read the article. The guy didn't even write the op-eds.
READ
THE
ARTICLE
BEFORE
TYPING
A
POST
Re:Oh no... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, some PR firms writing and publishing articles under the name of someone who might actually know something.
RTFS: "Ars attempted to reach Hagar by phone and email in September. In the course of this process, we learned that he did not actually submit many of these op-eds"
All of this, despite the fact NASA are signing off on the procedures of both Boeing and SpaceX, which are both going to use "load-and-go".
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RTFS: "Ars attempted to reach Hagar by phone and email in September. In the course of this process, we learned that he did not actually submit many of these op-eds"
I can hope that Ars follows this up with the news organizations that published the editorials under his byline. As a fellow news organization, they may actually be able to draw attention to this, and the organizations that were suckered might delve into the financial backers who are pushing this agenda.
Dollars to donuts it's the companies involve
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Who the fuck is Rei, and how does Musk's latest dumb antic on dumb social media have any bearing on whether or not there's an organized disinformation campaign against SpaceX?
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Do you ever get bored of being so boring? (Score:2)
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REI is an outdoor equipment store for yuppies. Polyester, mostly.
Paid shills? Riiiiiight... (Score:2)
"Rei" is a Slashdot account run by a bunch of paid Musk shills
I'm always amused when people make the idiotic argument that Slashdot matters enough to draw "paid shills". It certainly has enough crazies saying stupid things (exhibit A above) but it's pretty safe to say neither Elon Musk nor anyone he employs have time or money to give a shit about what some random idiot message board bloggers say on slashdot. Slashdot hasn't been relevant for YEARS and even at it's peak it didn't matter much. It's mostly a bunch of folks like me who hang around and argue for old time
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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Speaking as a 66-year-oldfart, going out in a sheet of flames in the one of the worlds fastest aircraft looks a lot better than shitting myself in a nursing home. Go ahead, let people take the risk if they want.
Hell it's either that or live long enough to watch the idiot snowflake generation destroy the country and western civilization, I'd take my chances going into space in a heartbeat.
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Instead, they need to pre-fuel the rocket and have it boiling off cryogenics while they have far more people working around it that don't have the convenience of a launch escape system?
That sounds far more dangerous to me.
Load up the payload, whether it be breathing or not, clear the pad, pump in the fuel, launch. If anything happens while pumping fuel, the only people around have a solid rocket motor to lift them away from the danger and deposit them out of harm's way.
Why is this a difficult concept?
Re:liars and paid shills for defense contractors.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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McDonnell Douglas ruined Boeing.
You're not kidding. This article was from 18 years ago, and is still true today:
http://archive.fortune.com/mag... [fortune.com]
"McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing's money."