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SpaceX cleared for US military launches

bbc.co.uk

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Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#31

Post by datamingle »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #28
datamingle wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A free service to the world, paid for by American tax payers out of the military budget. Kind of hard to complain.

I can complain because it prevented (or significantly delayed) much better services through some arm twisting and corruption paid for by American tax payers out of the military budget.

Where is the corruption? Galileo (Euro planned system) was going to use the same frequency as GPS. So, during conflict areas the US could not jam Galileo without also affecting GPS. So the US military probably made plans on destroying satellites if it was determined that the enemy was using Galileo.

The Euro group decided instead to use another frequency than the GPS frequency. Now....

"Galileo will start offering first services from 2015.[11] Full completion of the 30-satellite Galileo system (24 operational and 6 active spares) is expected by 2020."

I fail to see any corruption.

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#33

Post by drzaiusapelord »

nraynaud wrote: post #3

I like the old school dogma underlying the whole thing. Russia is bad, private enterprise is good, the US wants to put weapons in space, and Michael Jackson is rocking the world with Thriller.

>Russia is bad, private enterprise is good

Considering Putin is playing politics with space, namely limiting critical RD-180 sales after the west criticized his illegal annexation of parts of Ukraine, as well as funding and arming rebels who are purposely targeting civilians, well, what exactly do you want us to say here? Engage in more mindless political correctness? Sing kumbaya around the campfire as to not offend Russiophile HN'ers?

Putin's Russia is bad. They're dishonest partners and the US should keep its space policy under its national borders for sanity reasons. Look at the early retirement of the ISS. Russia is taking its modules and leaving the project in a few years, again as punishing the west for criticizing their illegal annexations. Previous to this the ISS was thought to be a project with a decade or two of service left.

Also, Putin's mismanagement of his economy means he just cut the Russian space program by a third and what's left is good at flying Soviet-era Soyuz and building Soviet era RD-180's but can't keep post-Soviet Proton-M's from exploding. From a practical stand-point, ignoring everything else, we simply don't need or want their tech now that the RD-180 based rockets are being made redundant/replaced and Orion/Dragon flying astronauts in the next 3 or so years.

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#34

Post by drzaiusapelord »

throwaway12357 wrote: post #9

Somewhat ironic that Elon Musk's SpaceX whose ultimate goal is to make life multi-planetary, is now collaborating with agents that may as well be responsible for triggering a Kessler syndrome. Not to mention the fact their business very much implies the termination of human life -- if for the greater good that is left for discussion on a case by case basis.

>Kessler syndrome

The largest and most optional cloud of space junk was a propagandist military display by the Chinese Communist Party in 2007 to show the world where their missile tech is going.

http://www.space.com/3415-china-anti-satellite-test-worrisom...

>The satellite's destruction is now being viewed as the most prolific and severe fragmentation in the course of five decades of space operations.

SpaceX works for the CCP now? Oh, right, mindless anti-US hyperbole that is upvote bait for anti-US HN'ers.

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#35

Post by varjag »

yc1010 wrote: post #16
nraynaud wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Putin, Andropov, Chernenko, same stuff.

Not really. I was born and lived during the dying days of the USSR in 80s (left in mid 90s) Under communism everyone knew the system was a failure and everything was a sham, hell the jokes being made were hilarious. Now on the other hand in last few years everything in Russia under Tsar Putin went full retard mode with people actually believing the unashamed propaganda that the state controlled media puts out. Many R…

Indeed, in late USSR, the power rested on subtle balance between Party, KGB and Army elites. Now the Party has been eliminated, and KGB subjugated the Army.

If you follow the developments of Russian WW2 themed motion pictures you'll notice the corresponding shift. Nearly every movie now features an NKVD or covert ops protagonist. Action TV series are also largely about cloak and dagger types.

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#36

Post by wahsd »

This seriously compromises the integrity of SpaceX.

Even if they were to only support "national security" there is absolutely zero chance they can know whether they are actually supporting national security or global surveillance and oppression of human rights.

What people don't realize is that we, SpaceX and Musk, are really no different whatsoever than any of the companies that have been chided for "working with the Nazis" or "supplying the Nazis". The US Government and military are nothing remotely even close to "a force for good". A force for good does not support totalitarian dictators, overthrow governments, spy and surveil their "friends", assassinate scientists, support racist regimes, invade and collapse societies leading to the formation of ISIS, use government powers to support corporate private interests, shield, hide, and protect tax evaders, etc. The dirty laundry list is looooong.

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#37

Post by engi_nerd »

ceejayoz wrote: post #26
engi_nerd wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has a history of overrunning budgets, yes, but the per-aircraft cost is declining and should continue to decline. I thought parent might have been referring to budget issues but I'm not really grasping how that's relevant.

The per-aircraft cost is still 3x or more that of the F/A-18, and the costs of operating it are also dramatically higher. http://breakingdefense.com/2014/09/gao-draft-slams-f-35-on-u...

http://www.bga-aeroweb.com/Defense/F-18-Super-Hornet.html F-18E/F: $65.3 million (flyaway cost) or $80.7 million incl. support costs. You'll see a number of places quoting slightly different per unit costs for an F-18E/F, but they cluster around that figure. The cost of an F-35 in the latest LRIP lot (8) was as follows:

http://www.janes.com/article/46129/pentagon-finalises-f-35-l... "The US buy is for 19 F-35A conventional take-off and landing aircraft at USD94.8 million apiece; 6 F-35B short take-off and landing aircraft for USD102 million each."

That does not include an F-135 engine for each jet, which is anywhere from $10 to $15 million depending on the variant.

So while the F-35 is more expensive than the F-18, I do not believe the figures bear your "3x or more" assertion.

Also it's difficult to compare the operating costs of a fully mature aircraft like the F-18 with the F-35, which is still being tested and developed. I don't think that is an apples/apples comparison.

Disclaimer: all opinions my own, not those of my employer, etc.

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#38

Post by Ntrails »

ColinWright wrote: post #29
kaolinite wrote: post #14

Is anyone else becoming a touch bothered by the large number of BBC news articles that are being submitted to Hacker News? I love the BBC and BBC News is - for the most part - very good. However, the articles on their website are often lacking in detail and when talking about technology, they are often wrong or show a misunderstanding on the behalf of the reporter. The BBC News definitely has a place - I'm just not s…

Not necessarily statistically significant, but of the past 1000 articles submitted: 8 (bbc.co.uk) 9 (techcrunch.com) 10 (arstechnica.com) 14 (nytimes.com) 14 (theguardian.com) 16 (washingtonpost.com) 16 (youtube.com) 18 (wsj.com) 32 (medium.com) 46 (github.com) Of the past 10,000: 40 (kickstarter.com) 40 (reddit.com) 40 (theatlantic.com) 44 (forbes.com) 46 (bloomberg.com) 46 (securityaffairs.co) 47 (theverge.com) 56…

Could we get some kind of simple mean/variance analysis on "upvotes" by site.

Clearly the BBC isn't being spammed to generate upvotes

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#39

Post by drzaiusapelord »

gexla wrote: post #27
nraynaud wrote: post #3

I like the old school dogma underlying the whole thing. Russia is bad, private enterprise is good, the US wants to put weapons in space, and Michael Jackson is rocking the world with Thriller.

The article doesn't go into much detail. In this case, Russia is "bad" because of the uncertainty of the relationship relying on something so important to be considered national interests. The decision to develop rockets at home was made around the time when someone in Russia made a comment to the effect of "maybe they should use trampolines to get into space."

This. If this article was about China or Russia doing something to get off a US product or service, HN would be cheering. When the US protects its own interests, especially its world class space programs, suddenly the tone turns towards, "EVIL US NOT PLAYING NICE!" Sadly, that narrative is upvote heaven here on HN.

Re: SpaceX cleared for US military launches

#40

Post by kaolinite »

ColinWright wrote: post #29
kaolinite wrote: post #14

Is anyone else becoming a touch bothered by the large number of BBC news articles that are being submitted to Hacker News? I love the BBC and BBC News is - for the most part - very good. However, the articles on their website are often lacking in detail and when talking about technology, they are often wrong or show a misunderstanding on the behalf of the reporter. The BBC News definitely has a place - I'm just not s…

Not necessarily statistically significant, but of the past 1000 articles submitted: 8 (bbc.co.uk) 9 (techcrunch.com) 10 (arstechnica.com) 14 (nytimes.com) 14 (theguardian.com) 16 (washingtonpost.com) 16 (youtube.com) 18 (wsj.com) 32 (medium.com) 46 (github.com) Of the past 10,000: 40 (kickstarter.com) 40 (reddit.com) 40 (theatlantic.com) 44 (forbes.com) 46 (bloomberg.com) 46 (securityaffairs.co) 47 (theverge.com) 56…

Wow, thanks Colin - really cool information. Where do you get the contents of 'records' from? Do you have a script that crawls occasionally?

If we merge bbc.com and bbc.co.uk, we end up with 125 / 10,000. I suppose that isn't that many compared to others, but it's still higher than I think it should be. ArsTechnica (which often runs the same articles, such as this SpaceX one) only has 68 / 10,000 and the articles are written with a lot more technical detail.

Nevertheless, I'm not really sure what can be done about it. We can't ban the BBC from HN, as with BuzzFeed, because that's over the top - there's some good content. A nice solution might be to remind people, on the submission page, that it's better to go to the source - or at least a good, technical write-up - rather than a news post that is written for the general public.

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