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A Shadowy Op-Ed Campaign Is Now Smearing SpaceX In Space Cities (arstechnica.com)
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.
Whats the conspiracy theory here? These Political thinktanks openly admit what they do. Hell, its their marketing pitch.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
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.
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WTF, have you whack jobs never heard of syndication of content? Almost every story will appear in many different sites across the country and the world, it isn't a fucking conspiracy it is how content is produced and sold nowadays, a single site cannot afford to make all their own news content so it is licensed from others and what they produce is resold.
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.
Bruce Perens.
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".
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.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
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)?
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.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
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."
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.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
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.
They're russian hackers, soon to be bringing novichik to your town.
This is why, despite potential failures with any type of fueling, you are wrong
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:
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?...
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.
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.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
He's not lying! He is just trying to "shift the narrative in a changing world"
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
> 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.
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.
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.
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 still lining up to buy them. As for SpaceX, yes he launches government satellites and works closely with NASA. So what? So does every other launch company because governments are who launch such devices and NASA is in charge of that sort of business. Furthermore SpaceX has SAVED public money on such launches by lowering cost to orbit. Would you prefer the tax payers pay ULA's jacked up rates instead? Or maybe you would prefer we pay the Russians instead of a US company? SpaceX also has a large launch manifest of non-government clients too which you conveniently ignore. Furthermore please find me a large company that doesn't take full advantage of tax laws and government contracts whenever feasible for them to do so. I think you are being rather selective in your focus on thinking Musk run companies are somehow unusual in that regard.
I also hate cults.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I think he is a disgusting human being.
Maybe he is and maybe he isn't but you seem a little fixated. Did Musk pee in your breakfast cereal or something? Let it go dude. Nobody cares if you like him or don't but at least he's doing something creating value in the world. What have you don't that makes you such a moral paragon that we should give a shit about your opinion of Musk?
That's not what the article says. The articles says nothing on whether Hagar wrote the op-ed, it says he didn't submit all of them to the numerous newspapers that published it. Essentially he submitted it to one or two newspapers, and then this PR outfit appears to have pushed it out to other newspapers, with or without his consent.
Here's what the article says (my bolding):
He didn't submit many of the op eds - his authorship is not in question, just whether he submitted the op eds to the papers that published them. He didn't submit many of the op eds - the fact he submitted some is not in question either.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It's not syndication, Ars Technica was able to track down who submitted it to various newspapers, and instead of finding the papers themselves or a syndication outfit, found instead both the original author (for one or two), and a lobbying company.
It's interesting, but this is the way things work these days. As someone who's provided so much ammunition to anti-train groups who lobby using his bullshit arguments behind the scenes, it's nice to see Musk on the other end for once.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.