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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.
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?
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
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.
The ironic thing about this post being that SpaceX does it so much cheaper than the "socialist" option, that they are literally pissing the entire launch industry around the world off. 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. No matter how polite they are in press etc, they hate SpaceX. When a Falcon Heavy can lift nearly double the payload of a Delta IV Heavy and do it for 1/3 the cost... yeah. I have no idea what the economics will be when BFR is up and running, but if they pull it off as envisioned, it will be even cheaper by far to lift significantly more payload. And if the idea of Earth to Earth pans out, and I really hope it does, his estimated price in an astronomical conference presentation was about the cost of a business class airline ticket. It comes down to scale and he envisions a huge scale up. They already account for a significant fraction of all annual launches globally. 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. So you get a really rich guy to fund R&D and take him around the Moon. That allows you to use the money to further develop without spending your own, etc. But their end goal has always been about making spaceflight options affordable for all. Roughly as affordable as airline travel is now. I guess we'll see how it all plays out over the next decade or so, but so far he has stuck to the model and it is starting to pay off as they have a LONG waitlist of launch payloads and are ramping up production of Block 5 Falcon 9s as well as working hard to cut turn around time. They've already cut it from months to weeks. Again, stated end goal is same day relaunch.
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...
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, even brand new and little known ones like SpaceX and SNC, that sparked the development of today's low-cost access to space.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
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...
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.