Hacker News Reader

Comment by johndhi | Hacker News Reader

One 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.

View on HN

Yeah, "no one wants to outright explain what happened" is called "chilling effects" and is one of the explicit goals of an authoritarian regime like the one we have in the US now.

Nobody wants to get fired and get death threats just for speaking plainly, so most people don't. Every once in awhile someone will decide it's worth the cost, but most people most of the time will decide it isn't.

> authoritarian regime

There was an election. Someone won. Someone lost. HN is not a place for baseless conspiracy theories. You’ve been here long enough to know better.

"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.)

>authoritarian is when the government does thing I don't like

Look as long as they keep being this salty about authoritarianism when a guy with a different letter next to his name shows up and does it, I'm fine with it.

My concern is that many won't.

Funny how all the replies to me are pure defensiveness about the word "authoritarian", rather than the point of my post (the chilling effects on speech).

Biden signed 162 executive orders.

Is Trump somehow different here?

Without any value judgement on the actual orders, Trump signed 89 since taking office this year. Biden signed 77 in his first year in office. There certainly seems to be a difference unless this is comin to a stop relatively quickly.

Yes.

How?

In many ways that you can easily find information on in other more appropriate venues.

If it's not appropriate here don't bring it up.

I brought up something different.

Is this just rage bait or a serious question? If it's the latter please explain how you see these two the same. The numbers don't match.

Executive orders in general are pretty authoritarian IMO.

Yes, because it’s actually him signing the executive order and not the autopen.

Part of the irony here is that Elon Musk himself seems to be "speaking plainly" and receiving death threats for doing so. But I assume you'd prefer he didn't speak plainly...?

I mean, if someone is saying plainly "I'm going to ruin your life and critically endanger your health." then one should expect some pushback.

"Pushback" being death threats, yes?

In what ways is Elon ruining lives and critically endangering health?

Oh this is an easy one! Ruining lives by firing lots of people while destroying the economy, and endangering health by doing things like eliminating Ebola prevention funding and totally screwing up the NIH health research structure.

Funny how the richest person in the world feels less of a chilling effect than career staff at federal agencies!

What makes you think I'd prefer that he not speak plainly?

I'd certainly prefer that he:

1. Not break a bunch of laws while running the government (while having a totally unclear official role?).

2. Not use his control of twitter's algorithm to push his own political priorities.

3. Not use his wealth and bully pulpit to intimidate people (like judges) who don't just bow to whatever he wants.

But beyond that, I have absolutely no issue with him speaking plainly. And I think death threats are bad, always.

Thanks for clarifying. I totally understand that you would feel that way and have those preferences.

I guess it depends how you define "plainly". Musk is right at the forefront of spreading exaggerated or misleading claims. Condoms to Gaza, Power's 30M, tens of millions of dead people receiving social security. He's not new to it either - remember him alleging that the scuba diver who saved those Thai kids was a paedophile?

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".

NASA is adhering to not biting the hand that feeds it, since they can no longer build their own rockets.

The need for reporting on this stems from the massive blatant lies coming from the admin backed up by the media parroting the narrative. From NASA on Aug 7, 2024:

> Wilmore and Williams will continue their work formally as part of the Expedition 71/72 crew through February 2025. They will fly home aboard a Dragon spacecraft with two other crew members assigned to the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission. Starliner is expected to depart from the space station and make a safe, controlled autonomous re-entry and landing in early September.

The only change in plan was that Crew 10 was pushed back by a month because of delays at SpaceX and a swap to an existing dragon rather than the new one as planned.

> There's actually a video of Butch, from the station, saying Musk's description was "entirely factual"

His entire career hinges on keeping musk and trump happy

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-decides-to-bring-star...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-10

The fault in the Starliner was known in June 2024 (https://www.space.com/nasa-boeing-starliner-crew-flight-test...). By August 2024, NASA said that the crew would stay until Feb 2025. That was not the original plan like you claim. See also: https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/nasa-astronauts-hea....

It's mind-numbingly obvious from context that the plan I was referring to was the rescue plan announced in August, not the starliner mission as a whole.

I see. So the timeline was:

1 Ship broken and delay announced until 2025

2 Musk offers his ship for return before 2025

3 Offer not accepted,

4 Pro-Musk claims the refusal was for political reasons, anti-Musk crowd claims it's not for political reasons but simply to comply with the original plan

Is that correct? If so, both groups agree with your comment, right?

When you have a President that fires, deports, sues, and calls for the impeachment of anyone who challenges him, why on Earth (pun intended) would you take the word of someone whose life is in his hands at face value?

Get on the ground, then tell the truth. The moment Trump politicized those astronauts they became political hostages.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com