Comment by tareqak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tareqak | Hacker News Reader

I am genuinely confused by the sentiment of my fellow commenters saying that this press release sounds like “satire”, “butt-hurt”, “whiny”, “sour grapes”, and “aggressive” [0][0][1][2][3].

I have the following questions for you all if you have the time to answer them.

1. What should an official press release from an leading official of a country’s national space program read like? If you have one or more examples, then please do share.

2. Should this official press release make mention of the opinions of foreign space scientists / foreign space officials and address those opinions, or should this official press release make no mention of them?

3. If one of the long-term goals of space travel is to colonize another planet in order to avoid human extinction in the case of a catastrophic world war, then is not nationalism in human space flight antithetical to that goal? Quote from Elon Musk: “If there’s a third world war we want to make sure there’s enough of a seed of human civilisation somewhere else to bring it back and shorten the length of the dark ages” [4].

4. One of the shortcomings of Soyuz seems to basically come down to some form of “it is old”. Given that this forum is Hacker News and we routinely have posts about how some specific instances of old technology have no modern viable successors with similar track records, or old ideas being rediscovered in newer technology (e.g. language features that existed in Common Lisp for decades), why does the sentiment for Soyuz so differently with with that of old technology like older programming languages or older but still used chip designs?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478044

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478215

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478087

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478013

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/11/elon-musk...

Did you read it? Pretty ironic you are decrying nationalism when these comments from Rogozin came across as very nationalistic, effectively "you guys don't appreciate how much Russia has done for you – oh and by the way our rockets are still better than yours even though they are clearly not". There were also a lot of things that I found pretty petulant in tone. This one stood out to me:

> America is a very large country, and a large country should be benevolent and noble. However, some of my colleagues (not me, of course — I have no illusions about the partners after working as Russia’s representative to NATO) did not receive any words of gratitude or professional noble response, although they could fully count on that.

If that's not the kind of comment that discourages collaboration, I don't know what is. I mean it doesn't even make sense – what does a country's size have to do with "being noble"?

I read it. Here is one quote

> In this connection, I note another strange moment seen in not only the ‘expert’ statements, but also coming from the side of NASA officials — such as Stephanie Schierholz, who have already started making wreaths to bury the Russian Soyuz spacecraft alive.

Stephanie Schierholz is Lead Spokesperson, Public Affairs Specialist for Human Spaceflight for NASA. I am trying to find evidence for this Soyuz wreath, or if it was a different event that was misunderstood.

I would have expected a sportsman-like congratulation to the NASA and SpaceX, maybe followed by some intelligent and good-mannered trolling.

Something along the lines of Apple's "Welcome IBM. Seriously" ads.

This boring and aggressive piece of Cold War rhetoric definitely fits into the recent trend of worsening international relationships (of course the current US administration has its own part in this). But it's still extremely disappointing, no matter which side.

He did so in a different press release / tweet here: http://en.roscosmos.ru/21497/ and https://www.twitter.com/Rogozin/status/1267101204674478080 . Full quote below:

> Dear @JimBridenstine , it's safe to congratulate you at this point with a successful launch and docking. Bravo! I know how anxious you were for this major event to become a success. I wish @NASA team to successfully finish up reconstructing its national space transportation system

Another member of Roscosmos, Sergei Krikalev, also congratulated the Crew Dragon mission here http://en.roscosmos.ru/21495/ along with a YouTube video https://youtu.be/gu6r46gJ2g0. Full quote below:

> I would like to greet our American colleagues – this launch marks the beginning of another test cycle of the crewed spacecraft. The vehicle has already flown uncrewed – but this is a very important and crucial moment with people flying aboard the new spacecraft, and a new stage in crewed flights program begins – including world crewed flights program and International Space Station program where the vehicle went to. This means new opportunities, new reserves – and I am sure that the success of the mission will provide us with additional opportunities that will benefit the whole international program.

Krikalev is a legend of course, I wouldn't have expected anything but sportsmanship of him :)

I cannot see how you'd be confused, read the article and it seems very clear that the tone is negative, but still I'll bite.

1) Congratulate your fellow scientists for their achievement.

2) It can mention opinions from other scientists, but again, the tone should be at least a little bit less "us vs them".

3) Absolutely, which is why this article is so out of place, the author does even try to give a thumbs up to SpaceX for their work and just rambles about USA/NATO vs Russia.

4) Fair point, but no new developments and improvements mean that the price stays high. Reusable rockets mean that costs will go down and will become more accessible.

I read the article. I associate the negative tone with a defensiveness that comes from feeling as if one is under attack, which I would attribute to lingering Cold War rhetoric repurposed for modern-day politics.

1) I posted links to the congratulatory tweets and press releases here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23479424 . For whatever reason, this press release was chosen to be submitted instead.

2) I posted what seemed to the response to an attack here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23479344 . I have not found evidence of the attack after I spent some time searching, so I do not know what event is being referenced.

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