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Crew-9 Returns to Earth

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Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#291

Post by nailer »

sanderjd wrote: post #285
johndhi wrote: post #275

One thing I'm confused by is that we need to do "reporting" to figure out what the truth is here. Can't we just ask the astronauts, or NASA, or something? Why is there no official statement on the matter? There's actually a video of Butch, from the station, saying Musk's description was "entirely factual" - although he then sort of backtracked that. Seems like no one wants to outright explain what happened.

Yeah, "no one wants to outright explain what happened" is called "chilling effects" and is one of the explicit goals of an authoritarian regime like the one we have in the US now. Nobody wants to get fired and get death threats just for speaking plainly, so most people don't. Every once in awhile someone will decide it's worth the cost, but most people most of the time will decide it isn't.

> authoritarian regime

There was an election. Someone won. Someone lost. HN is not a place for baseless conspiracy theories. You’ve been here long enough to know better.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#292

Post by bigtones »

pavlov wrote: post #86
pveierland wrote: post #76

Eric Berger has a good summary on the narrative: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/can-nasa-remain-nonpar...

Berger is an excellent journalist. He’s very knowledgeable about space topics, has good sources, and has been extremely fair to Musk in the past. When he says it’s a “throne of lies”, a line has been crossed.

> He’s very knowledgeable about space topics, has good sources, and has been extremely fair to Musk in the past.

None of the writers of Ars Technica are anything like fair to Musk.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#293

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

acdha wrote: post #260
pie_flavor wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to Musk's shift to the right, Ars ran frequent Musk puff pieces; post shift, they run frequent Musk hit pieces. It's just as grating, and when every other news org is reporting it more measuredly you should be very cautious before calling their summary 'good'. For example, this article claims the political reasons are unspecified, but they were in fact discussed at length (I think Musk even mentioned them on a…

I think trying to fit things into a dichotomy of puff/hit pieces is actually obscuring the truth here. Eric Berger is a space flight enthusiast and so he covered SpaceX positively when they were doing good work there, but now that Musk seems to be interested only in playing political games rather than running his companies, there isn’t much positive to report: it’s not a hit piece, just the truth many SpaceX fans did…

Fundamentally, it's the "reality has a liberal bias" problem. Accurate reporting is interpreted as a political act because it disagrees with the "alternative facts" being presented by the right wing.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#294

Post by somenameforme »

voidUpdate wrote: post #222
Y_Y wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eh, the whole space race has its origins in a propaganda war with the USSR staffed by ex-Nazi engineers. It's not more deserving of sacred purity than anything else. I certainly agree with this, but at the same time I think it's a red herring. So much good tech comes from war, but the nice thing (imho) is that it's "path independent". I'm no more going to scorn the work of Werner von Braun than I would John von Neu…

I also think that calling von Braun a Nazi isn't necessarily correct. He worked for the Nazi party, but if he didn't it probably wouldn't have worked out very well for him, and I don't think he supported their ideals all that much. He also always wanted to make his rockets, and working at Peenemünde gave him the opportunity to do that, even if it did require PoW labour. Obviously I'm not saying he was a saint, but I…

I'm not the downvoter here, but somehow this made me think of an old play on the title of a biographical film about him: 'I aim at the stars! But sometimes I hit London...'

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#295

Post by throwway120385 »

queuebert wrote: post #274
alistairSH wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you only reading every third sentence? The return vessel was docked in September. The return was always planned to be around today, not in September. Trump and Musk are lying about the astronauts being forgotten. They're lying when they claim Biden abandoned them. As far as I can tell, NASA didn't delay for political reasons. Nor did they allow the return journey today for political reasons. This was the plan all…

If that's true, why did the astronauts confirm Musk's version of the story in an interview? Genuinely asking ...

What interview? Can you link it?

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#296

Post by baxtr »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #159
ncallaway wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, from a certain perspective, it absolutely is. Where was it manufactured? What were the labor laws where it was manufactured? Was there any environmental impact in its construction? How was it shipped to you, and was there any environmental or safety impact of that transportation? If it broke the day after it arrived, would the manufacturer owe you a replacement, or would you have to replace it at your own cos…

Everything is connected to everything else. Everything anyone does continuously gets tangled with everything else, in a bubble of causality that expands at the speed of light. That's not a very useful perspective to have, though. Similarly, everything humans do has some connection to politics. For most things in most contexts, that connection is irrelevant in practice. The only reason one wants to make obviously non-…

Exactly.

That why asking "When was space not political?" is not very useful either.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#297

Post by echoangle »

somenameforme wrote: post #266
echoangle wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, they could have packed all 4 astronauts (the 2 that came to the ISS on the dragon and Suni and Butch) into the docked dragon and returned at any point. They only waited for the next dragon (crew 10) so that not only the 3 people using the Soyuz would be left on the ISS. But this would have absolutely been possible. The remaining crew would have used their Soyuz in emergencies anyways, they don’t need the drago…

There's way more than just them. Thanks to all the delays the 4-man SpaceX Crew-8 [1] stayed on the ISS until October 23rd, becoming the longest Dragon stay ever. And the 3-man crew from Soyuz MS-26 got there on September 11th, and is still there. In fact reading the Soyuz MS-26 Wiki, one of the many records this whole debacle ended up breaking is that when the MS-26 entered into space, there were more humans in spac…

Did you read my comment? Currently, there is one Dragon and one Soyuz docked to the ISS. If Crew-9 had left earlier, before the Crew-10 Dragon had arrived, there would have been only the Soyuz left.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#298

Post by gustavoamigo »

93po wrote: post #277
pveierland wrote: post #76

Eric Berger has a good summary on the narrative: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/can-nasa-remain-nonpar...

Interesting to complain about partisan politics and then write an extremely partisan article

The decision to make this political and partisan came from the Trump administration, the response to that is obviously political and it is natural that it would come from someone that is not a Trump supporter.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#299

Post by Rooster61 »

somenameforme wrote: post #268
troupo wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be a little snarky here - so Senior NASA officials: honest, Musk: liar? We know for a fact that Musk a serial liar with a very tenuous grasp of truth. Can you say the same about the Senior NASA official? Also, the burden of proof lies on Musk, not on NASA which literally has contingencies upon contingencies for such situations.

NASA in practice isn't what most people think it is. A lot of stuff they're doing is just a mixture of a terrible idea (SLS) and will never go anywhere (Artemis), amongst others. People in-the-know in space are fully aware of this, including NASA officials. But they keep cheerleading it all and pretending that everything will just be awesome. The reason is that NASA is basically forced to be political (at least their…

I don't know if I'd call the SLS a terrible idea. It's been a FANTASTIC way to enrich lawmakers, a true masterstroke in pork barrel spending.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#300

Post by TaupeRanger »

bigtones wrote: post #292
pavlov wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berger is an excellent journalist. He’s very knowledgeable about space topics, has good sources, and has been extremely fair to Musk in the past. When he says it’s a “throne of lies”, a line has been crossed.

> He’s very knowledgeable about space topics, has good sources, and has been extremely fair to Musk in the past. None of the writers of Ars Technica are anything like fair to Musk.

Do you think it's easy to be "fair" to someone who continually spouts misinformation, falsehoods, and retweets or reply-boosts such things on an almost daily basis?
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