So it didn't bo(e)ing into the ground yet most people here shit on Elon.
I take that guy over those that killed 500 people by trying to save money on a sensor.
Crew-9 Returns to Earth
511–520 of 712 posts
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#512Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
For me all he had to do was not openly be a genocidal white supremacist. Maybe he needs a crew to help him with that, but I think there's something about that that's a bit more than "poor social skills" and I'm sick of pretending that me not knowing what to say to people at funerals is the same as him delivering multiple Nazi salutes at the presidential inauguration.
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Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The irony of billionaires deciding it's a waste of money to feed people and prevent AIDS pandemics is lost on some.
Yes, it is wild to me to see how PEPFAR was for years held up as the Republican’s flagship foreign program but so few were willing to speak up to defend it.
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#514Earlier 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…
Blaming NASA for SLS is something I keep seeing but isn't it entirely congressional pork barrel politics that makes the SLS what it is? What degree of control does NASA itself have to force a project of that scale not to devolve into such a mess despite congressional corruption?
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#515One 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.
NASA answered a number of direct questions on this during the crew-10 pressers. So they were asked directly. The problem is the Musk claim is that he took the offer directly to the White House, bypassing NASA. From the crew-10 pressers, NASA was completely unaware.
I'd read the Butch quote very carefully:
I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual. We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went. That's information that we simply don't have. So I believe him. I don't know all those details, and I don't think any of us really can give you the answer that maybe that you would be hoping for.
He makes it absolutely clear that he can't answer the question because he doesn't have any of the information. But he believes Musk and that what Musk says is "Absolutely factual".
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#516Hate all you want to Elon, you still need to credit to credit due.SpaceX did awesome Job.
> Hate all you want to Elon, you still need to credit to credit due. Under no circumstances will I agree that "Elon rescued" anyone or anything. The guy has a fetish to be seen as a rescuer. It's unseemly. > SpaceX did awesome Job. Fulfilling a contract they've executed several times before? slow clap
Yes in some sense, but they did provide additional rides to cover Boeing's shortfall on a short timeline.
The ability to ramp up services on short notice is not flexibility traditional space companies offer. Ex, if NASA begged Boeing for an extra SLS launch this year, they simply could not do it.
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#517By any reasonable definition, these astronauts were stranded. If people can be stranded in an airport due to a plane being grounded, then they can be stranded on a space station for the same reason. I mean, they're in orbit , it's not like they could simply walk home. The mental gymnastics on display in this thread reminds me of the Narcissists Prayer. The astronauts weren't stranded in space for 9 months. And if the…
The issue is the definition. "Stranded" can be made to mean a wide range of things. In this case it's clear from Trump and Musk's statements that they mean it as "abandoned" and in need of rescue. While you could argue that their situation could be described as stranded, they clearly were not abandoned or in need of rescue.
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#518Incredible story with a great ending. This used to be an apex HN discussion. It's so sad to see it devolve into a partisan flame war.
The notion of "apex HN discussion" assumes a kind of fealty to performative feuilletonism that I'm just not yet willing to submit to.
Well, it's certainly subjective, and that's how I meant it.
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> fraud Prove it. They keep saying “fraud” without proof of anything other than just spending they disagree with. Spending, I might add, which was previously duly authorized by Congress. The use of the word “fraud” is a smoke screen. To unquestioningly accept it is to be complicit in their lies. And that’s what they’re doing: lying. If there really is fraud, let’s see it prosecuted via due process, like it should be.…
> Prove it.
No one can "prove" anything without a clear goalpost that doesn't move :) That being said, there is evidence I can present from the past. Here are a couple of cases:
- https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/chemonics-internatio...
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/usaid-suspends...
Also, not exactly "fraud" in the accounting sense, but there is a slew of NGOs that purport to support foreign aid, but most of the money is paid to people in DC. Only about $5B/yr actually went from USAID to directly meet needs in other countries: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/opinion/us-foreign-aid.ht...
Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth
#520Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me all he had to do was not openly be a genocidal white supremacist. Maybe he needs a crew to help him with that, but I think there's something about that that's a bit more than "poor social skills" and I'm sick of pretending that me not knowing what to say to people at funerals is the same as him delivering multiple Nazi salutes at the presidential inauguration.
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