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Crew-9 Returns to Earth

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Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#431

Post by jcranmer »

exodust wrote: post #364
indoordin0saur wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before he took his recent (regrettable) turn he did pour his heart and soul (and personal fortune) into SpaceX for over a decade. If it weren't for SpaceX we'd be relying on the incompetent monstrosities of Boeing or ULA.

> recent (regrettable) turn It's only regrettable through the lens of partisan politics. DOGE is undeniably a good concept. You will notice governments around the world copying the method. That is, launching initiatives to audit everything, cut wasteful spending, expose corrupt spending, and trim bureaucratic inefficiency via external oversight. It would be regrettable not to undertake the task.

If your goal is cutting waste in the government, DOGE is absolutely the worst possible way to do it.

The idea of bringing in a bunch of "whiz kids" who know absolutely nothing about the departments they're auditing [1], axing people arbitrarily (i.e., firing seemingly everybody who is "probationary"), and cutting programs seemingly purely by Ctrl-F'ing for keywords without even bothering to figure out if the keyword even means what you're looking for in context is absolute clown shoes for good governance.

The fact that they're breaking all sorts of laws in the process makes it even worse; and to top it off, they can't even bring themselves to be honest to the courts about who is responsible for their actions.

No, DOGE is undeniably a rotten concept from inception to practice.

[1] Seemingly flummoxed by the existence of things like sentinel values in databases for "we don't know," based on some of the "fraud" they've very loudly proclaimed.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#432

Post by kergonath »

davidguetta wrote: post #122
pveierland wrote: post #76

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

"Just what those political reasons were never specified. But the basic message was clear: Biden, bad; Trump, good" Bullshit. Musk was clear that the reason was that they didn't want someone pro trump having success so close to the election.

> Musk was clear that the reason was that they didn't want someone pro trump having success so close to the election.

This makes no sense whatsoever. The election was in November. If that was their calculation, they’d just have cosplayed astronaut-saving heroes before Trump had an opportunity to do so, between November and January. Musk is full of it, as usual.

It is not the first time some astronauts stay in space longer than expected and it never was controversial before. The people making noise cannot even find a single reason for Biden to do what they accuse him of doing, much less any proof that he did so.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#434

Post by nervmodem »

caycep wrote: post #418
imglorp wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DOGE saving effectiveness has been questioned. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-overstates... Of the $6.8T budget, $55B (or whatever is the truth) would amount to less than 0.9% of spending. https://usafacts.org/articles/this-chart-tells-you-everythin... Anyway, we have a Government Accounting Office already which is highly critical of waste. If anyone was earnest, they'd send them more resources. On…

Agreed, and in addition, DOGE is also on the path to be guilty of mass murder, given than historians widely consider Mao guilty of the famine from the Great Leap Forward, and projected deaths from their policies are beginning to be tabulated. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/15/opinion/forei... https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doge-rubio-usaid-mu...

[dead]

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#435

Post by acdha »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #413
imglorp wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DOGE saving effectiveness has been questioned. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-overstates... Of the $6.8T budget, $55B (or whatever is the truth) would amount to less than 0.9% of spending. https://usafacts.org/articles/this-chart-tells-you-everythin... Anyway, we have a Government Accounting Office already which is highly critical of waste. If anyone was earnest, they'd send them more resources. On…

The types of waste, fraud, and abuse matter as much as the scale. Even just a "little" (5%-10%) corruption is a moral stain on the whole thing. As it is, that "small" corruption is funding an extensive network of NGOs, nonprofits run by the families of people in government, media, etc. -- all to (a) keep a ton of money flowing to people in Washington DC and (b) protect that status quo. Politics aside, widespread corr…

> Presidential administrations have been repeatedly trying to deal with the sheer behemoth bureaucracy, the growing power of unelected officials, and all the associated corruption since the early 1960s and so far have been defeated every time

Clinton cut the size of the government considerably – 400k federal workers! – but you probably didn’t hear a lot about it because it was a thoughtful process designed not to impact the ability of the government, and because it undercuts the narrative that Democrats increase spending which is popular in right-wing propaganda. What DOGE is doing locks in as much cost and disruption as possible while minimizing benefits because that’s not the actual goal (scoring political points against what’s perceived as a democratic stronghold).

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#436

Post by imglorp »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #413
imglorp wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DOGE saving effectiveness has been questioned. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-overstates... Of the $6.8T budget, $55B (or whatever is the truth) would amount to less than 0.9% of spending. https://usafacts.org/articles/this-chart-tells-you-everythin... Anyway, we have a Government Accounting Office already which is highly critical of waste. If anyone was earnest, they'd send them more resources. On…

The types of waste, fraud, and abuse matter as much as the scale. Even just a "little" (5%-10%) corruption is a moral stain on the whole thing. As it is, that "small" corruption is funding an extensive network of NGOs, nonprofits run by the families of people in government, media, etc. -- all to (a) keep a ton of money flowing to people in Washington DC and (b) protect that status quo. Politics aside, widespread corr…

Citizens United v FEC is probably the fattest root cause of it. Of course, no one on the gravy train will vote to limit their own bribery.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#437

Post by sambeau »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #375
ta1243 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seemed to all start going wrong with "pedo guy". Before then Musk was doing great things at Tesla and SpaceX. After that he started getting more and more unhinged, leading through to buying twitter, then trying to get out of it, then doubling down.

If Elon recognized that he had the social skills of an NPC and had hired a PR team, we would probably all still adore him and likely he would still just be doing engineering company stuff. Take heed, if you have money, power, and poor social skills, hire people to manage it for you.

He had a PR team. It all started to go wrong after he fired his PR team.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#438

Post by scryers_bloom »

nailer wrote: post #370
sanderjd wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Authoritarian" is a philosophy of how to govern. It is orthogonal to whether the government was fairly elected. (It's true that many authoritarian regimes seek to eliminate or corrupt elections, but being fairly elected is compatible with being authoritarian.)

[flagged]

I'm not sure if he's arguing that they were not fairly elected.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#439

Post by acdha »

nervmodem wrote: post #434
caycep wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and in addition, DOGE is also on the path to be guilty of mass murder, given than historians widely consider Mao guilty of the famine from the Great Leap Forward, and projected deaths from their policies are beginning to be tabulated. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/15/opinion/forei... https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doge-rubio-usaid-mu...

[dead]

I would suggest reading the links. You can question the scale but suddenly disrupting food and medical aid is profoundly disruptive and will have generational impacts if it’s not reversed or others don't step in to fill the gap.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#440

Post by robotnikman »

madeofpalk wrote: post #150
v3ss0n wrote: post #147

Hate all you want to Elon, you still need to credit to credit due.SpaceX did awesome Job.

I don't think Elon really had that much to do with this.

This right here. It was 99% the work of all the amazing engineers and support staff at SpaceX, all who deserve more credit.
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