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Comment by n4r9 | Hacker News Reader

Exploiting and lying about the monumental efforts of a pioneering industry for cheap political points certainly feels like a line to me.

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Let's not forget that right now it seems that only SpaceX is putting in the "monumental efforts" to advance the "pioneeribg industry", being responsible for the vast majority of launches, the only safe crewed spacecraft, as well as pushing the frontier of space travel with ambitious new projects such as Starship.

Does that justify blatant lies?

I'm worried spacex will end up a bit like Tesla, largely abandoned for Musk to go off on some political weirdness.

Doubt it. Musk only owns something like ~15% of Tesla, and owns about 50% of spacex. He knows tesla is overvalued immensely and wants to deeply integrate himself with government to make sure spacex becomes the de facto space org. for the United States (possibly).

What "blatant lies" though? The question hasn't really been answered. The user wrote:

>Exploiting and lying about the monumental efforts of a pioneering industry for cheap political points

I don't know what this means. When someone tells a blatant lie, it would be easy to quote them for a start. What 'monumental effort' was lied about? If it's about Boeing then I have to say I too think the company is doing a terrible job and if anyone is lying about the effort it's them, there have been numerous whistleblowers who came out and talked about the coverups at Boeing.

I didn't personally use the word "blatant", but when I said "lying" I was referring to claims that:

* The Biden administration either forgot about or deliberately chose to leave astronauts in space for political reasons.

* Trump's request accelerated the decision to bring the astronauts home.

"Monumental efforts" was a more general comment about the space industry, including the activities of both NASA and SpaceX. Bringing astronauts home from space when equipment has gone faulty is a challenge I do not envy whatsoever. For Trump to claim credit in the venture is bordering on obscene.

Just last year NASA launched the largest ever interplanetary space-craft, and hopefully the first craft to approach and conduct scientific studies on Europa. SpaceX is almost entirely focused on getting humans into space - which is great - but NASA's work is not to be discounted.

The Europa Clipper is really cool. I think the Cassini Huygens that launched in 1997 has greater mass though.

SpaceX isn't entirely focused on getting humans to space since they launch the vast majority of satellites thanks to great innovations in reducing the cost of launches, such as reusable rockets. But there are some competitor launch vehicles coming soon that could be interesting as well.

Europa Clipper is 6.1T whilst Huygens was 5.6T: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heaviest_spacecraft . Also worth mentioning that Jupiter is much further away on average.

I got my numbers mixed up --- you're right, the Europa Clipper is bigger by all metrics.

NASA didn't launch it? it was on a falcon heavy

NASA built the probe, but SpaceX launched it. [1] I don't think you were suggesting otherwise, but somebody who did not know as much would probably misunderstand what you're saying.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper#Launch_2

Thanks, you're right I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

This is simply not true. SpaceX is today one of many space companies pushing the boundaries.

There is also Rocket Lab, Stoke Space and Blue Origin.

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.

On the other hand, the sheer lying about everything is exhaustive and corrosive to the public sphere.

(also while dealing with the villain of the week we've forgotten about the previous villain responsible for this situation, Boeing)

> 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 Neumann.

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 don't think he was as "evil" as some people make him out to be, and I don't think many people came out of the war with clean hands. He just really liked making rockets

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...'

Don't say that he's hypocritical- say rather that he's apolitical. 'Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down - that's not my department' says Werner Von Braun.

Some have harsh words for this man of renown. But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude, like the widows and cripples in old London town who owe their large pension to Wernher von Braun

Tom Leher, "Werner Von Braun"

FWIW I didn't mean to make any accusations about von Braun's character. I was taking "ex-Nazi engineer" to mean someone to had been an engineer in the Nazi regime. In fairness though, he was an NSDAP member.

Sorry, I didn't mean it to come off as disagreeing with you, I think you're right, this is just a topic that's been on my mind recently and I wanted to express my own thoughts on it =) And yeah, he's not perfect, he was directly and indirectly responsible for some bad things happening, but a lot of people on the "good" side were too

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