Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Want To See A Stupid Piece On Space?

38 Comments

Here is a stupid piece on space.

I don’t even know where to begin.

On the other hand, this is a good antidote to the idiocy.

38 thoughts on “Want To See A Stupid Piece On Space?”

    1. What exactly is Salon trying to say? It’s obviously not really about SpaceX. The govt. provides some funding to develop a service they need. The company receiving the funds can use what it has learned to develop other business opportunities.

      This is somehow wrong. Why? Because running a business properly is just nasty. Better to take the money and go bankrupt with nothing to show for it.

      “You didn’t build that. You just took advantage of other people by giving them what they want… you evil business guy.”

      1. My point was that Salon is the once-semi-respected but now-insane-cesspit of the Left on the Internet. It makes sites like HuffPo and the Guardian look positively sane and reasonable. You shouldn’t waste time on it; it’s just progressive-rimming click bait.

  2. Another example: “The egregiousness is subtle…” Uh, no. It can be egregious, it can be subtle, it can be neither, but it can’t really be both. The whole point of egregiousness is that it’s not subtle.

  3. Wow … just wow … absolutely NO freakin’ clue about the history of transportation in our Nation and hell even basic economics.. that was literally brain dead writing and I am surprised they would even publish such tripe.

  4. Rand, they are totally clueless to the SAA’s and how the fixed price was for each milestone… LOL .. They thought fixed priced was a one time payment but to stupid to actually study the subject enough to understand.

    1. Well isn’t price fixing be a crime? Especially colluding to fix prices – with the Russians! It’s just another outrage by the endemic male capitalist price control regime and the aristocracy’s throbbing grip on the dominant transportation modes. *clenched fists*

      I wonder if we could hoodwink Salon into writing a whole article on Republican “perveance” without looking the word up to discover that it’s an engineering term applied to vacuum tube diodes?

      1. It’s vacuous pervs all the way down… standing on each other’s shoulders as it were.

        It’s not the justice you fight for that matters… it’s how big a like minded mob you can put together… no justice, no thought.

        You can never be sure who the bad guys are likely to be… just that they are somehow not ‘fair.’

      2. These private companies make a profit, unlike government contractors, and the worst part is that the taxpayers don’t even get any benefits from the taxes SpaceX and their employees pay. NASA should really be running things like Apple does because the iphone is divine and affordable enough for the common man. Everyone at my country club has iphones. Making iphones is what the government was created to do.

        1. Don’t know why you’re cracking on Apple. They’re a private, profit-seeking company just like SpaceX.

          I don’t like iPhones mostly because they’re bloody expensive. They’re not for everyone, but I will acknowledge that they are very good designs for the most part.

          Either way, Apple exists to make a profit. I fail to see any equivalence to a government operation.

  6. From Rand’s second link:
    Quickly, these rumors became articles, with several well-known SpaceX critics taking the precious few bits of information about Zuma, along with some assumptions and guesses portrayed as facts, and forging sensationalist articles touting a SpaceX mission failure and doubts about SpaceX reliability. One such article published on Forbes was even partially read into the congressional record by Representative Mo Brooks (Alabama) during a hearing regarding Commercial Crew systems development. It should be noted that Mo Brooks has been a strong defender of ULA, a competitor of SpaceX, and has even supported multi-year monopolies in favor of ULA in the past.

    Which party does the anti-free market Brooks belong to?

    1. Representative Mo Brooks is a Republican from Alabama.

      Later in the hearing, Representative Bill Foster (Democrat from Illinois) set up a question allowing Hans Koenigsmann to explain how the Dragon 2’s Launch Abort System would have saved the crew were they to experience a mishap similar to CRS-7 or (probably) Amos-6 and would also allow an abort to orbit if a problem occurred late in flight, while reiterating that the “Falcon 9 did what Falcon 9 was supposed to do” with Zuma.

      Next, Representative Dana Rohrabacher (Republican from California), used his time to act as a cheerleader for the Commercial aspects of the program. (Makes sense given his history of libertarianism.)

      And at least Rep. Brooks reading from the Forbes article gave Dr. Koenigsmann a chance to refute several of its points.

      1. Just want to add that Bill Foster is not only a Democrat but a very successful businessman (started a business at 19 years old which now has 650 employees and supplies half the theatre lighting equipment in the US), and has a Ph.D. in physics, and worked at Fermilab on the anti-proton recycler ring. So, basically, a totally awesome Democrat.

        2. If he’s so smart, why’d he belong to an anti-proton recycling ring? What if there were no protons, huh? I think it would be very negative…

    2. “Which party does the anti-free market Brooks belong to?”

      The LBJian Party.

      They learned how to milk Space to make power from the Master.

  7. Where do these idiots come from that blame capitalism on stagnant wages? Capitalism works just fine.

    There are two reasons for stagnant wages. 1) Not taking responsibility to make yourself worth a higher pay. 2) Worker supply and demand. By reducing immigration we are already seeing black and hispanic workers at a 17 year employment high.

    Of course people with the means to, will get richer. Then they die and others get the money. At no point does capitalism put a gun to anybody’s head and demand we buy their stuff… only the govt. does that, not capitalism.

    I do think anti-trust has its place, but that’s different from wealth envy.

    It’s so much easier to blame the rich and the govt. and not put the blame where it belongs, bad personal decisions (I know I can make a list.)

    1. They don’t know history well enough to know that without capitalism everyone would be doing a lot worse off, especially the poor. The rich would do just fine, as they always have and especially in socialist countries.

      Same people think living as hunter gatherers would be preferable to our living standard today and that ancient humans lived in harmony with nature.

      1. They don’t teach history or perspective in school anymore. Those are extra curricular… like the entire tribe wiped out from man, woman and child by the Sioux that I visited in the Dakotas as a kid. How many other people were completely wiped out by the more aggressive native American tribes (before they ever saw a white man?)

    1. Mike, the static fire has not happened, though they they ran a Wet Dress Rehearsal yesterday (Saturday).

      The static fire looks like it will be further delayed due to the government shutdown. The 45th Space Wing relies upon furloughed employees to support both launches and static fires. This puts a hold on the Falcon Heavy static fire attempt (most recently scheduled for tomorrow — Monday 2018-01-22) and, if it drags out past mid-week, will impact the 30 January scheduled SpaceX launch of SES-16.

      https://twitter.com/gpallone13/status/955118574988865536
      Greg Pallone, News 13, Brevard Co., FL.
      NO LAUNCHES: per @45thSpaceWing key members of civilian workforce are removed due to govt shutdown. 45th cannot support @SpaceX commerical static fire tests @NASAKennedy or launch operations

      1. That’s another reason spaceports should not operated by government- though particularly by the federal govt.

  9. It was funny to see how far out of the way Salon went to not sully Obama’s good name with expanding fixed price contracts to develop new services for the government.

  10. Perhaps we should refer to the business travelers who fly on aircraft as homeless. I’m sure they would get the joke.

  11. After reading the second article, it appears people are overly sensitive to any criticism of SpaceX. Not all of the criticism comes from ULA stooges either. Eric Berger is listed as a trusted place to read your space news and he has been plenty critical of SpaceX.

    SpaceX is relatively new and warrants examination and speculation, just as all the other launch companies do. The controversy around Zuma isn’t a big deal. People should expect a bunch of finger pointing and speculation and that most people, even in the media, wont know the gritty details of who controlled the payload adapter just as no one knows for sure what is going on. The controversy could just be smokescreen for the mission.

    SpaceX will continue proving themselves and they have a business outside of servicing the government, so the games in congress will matter less and less.

  12. Wasn’t there another stupid space piece from Salon not too long ago? Like December maybe? And I remember seeing it either via Rand’s Twitter or Transterrestrial Musings.

  13. I’m shocked! shocked! Shocked at such a sub-par piece of journalism at as prestigious a periodical as Salon!

  14. Threadjacking, I know, but: have you seen the Rocketlabs Electron launch?

    It’s really kind of shocking they got some cubesats in orbit on their second launch attempt; really good sign for robustness/simplicity of their design. Whether there’s a market for (ballpark #s?) 1/100th the capacity of a Falcon 9 at 1/20th the cost is another question, but there might be…

      1. That was a good post. Always surprising that some people grasp orbital dynamics but not economics. Cost is just one of many variables that companies compete on.

        While their niche is sun-synchronous orbits, the rest of the economic case still applies to other launch locations should they choose to expand.

  15. I kept getting distracted from the article by the rogue’s gallery representing the denizens of “Salon TV.” That top billing (or positioning) went to Dan Rather says it all…

  17. The writers are suffering from anoxia because of leaks in their Venezuelan and Cuban manufactured space suits.

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