Russia is Turning Elon Musk into Tony Stark | Hacker News Reader

Russia is Turning Elon Musk into Tony Stark

bloombergview.com

52 pointsytNumbers26 comments

> In the politically charged atmosphere of a new stand-off with Russia, however, it isn't the technology that matters so much as Musk's ability to present himself as a patriot, rushing in to save his country from malevolent Russians.

This sounds like a biased piece, with an agenda. I posit Bershidsky is not quite an impartial observer on this case. I can see how both ULA and the Russian would be chomping at the bit to make sure every news source has articles criticizing Musk.

We'll probably be seeing pieces about Musk's personal life. Maybe he smoked pot in college, and somehow, someone would remember and then make sure to write a memoir, that will make its way into the public media. With titles like "Oh, no, our great American Patriot is a pot head"

The dangerous game Musk is playing is that, besides sticking sticks in the spokes of ULA's business directly, he is painting them as unpatriotic. One thing Lockheed and Boeing don't want is to seem that. They make billions from US govt contracts. This is going to enrage them. And they might start doing shadier things than usual.

I think you misunderstood that section. I read it as an opinion of what he should do, not as a statement of fact. Every US Government contractor should always try to be/look as patriotic as possible. My mom did a ton of print work for McDonnald Douglas in the 90s to help look good during the DC -X/Venturestar cook off.

That is an excerpt from the article, the flavor of the article is not objective. It tries on the surface to support Musk. Talk about "An overweight, spiteful, nationalist Russian politician named Dmitri Rogozin". However it also on a deeper level criticizes him (and the Russians for re-acting!).

So if you read it carefully it is written to support ULA. How so? Here are few points:

* "On its merits, the injunction should not stand." and basically talks about how most space and military related Russian enterprises are state controlled so this injunction should be lifted as unrealistic.

* It is criticizing the Russians, saying they just angrily react to Musk's provocation. So it tries to shame them based on their rash decisions.

* It talks about how Musk's rockets had one failure. And they did, but how ULA has many many more successful flights.

Now some those things are not lies or fabrications. One of Musk's rockets did blow up. And Lockheed and friends did have many more successful launches. It is just the style it was written and ideas it presents seem biased to me. And on this topic, we probably won't be seeing any objective or unbiased articles. On a higher level, this makes for an interesting study in PR relations.

US-American "moguls" don't get killed as often as their Russian counterparts. And even Russia is careful about being too obvious, lest the totalitarian nature of the state becomes common knowledge outside (or beware even inside) Russia...

Is the US a semi-oligarchy wrapped up in the trappings of a republic?

"Republic" and "Oligarchy" aren't actually opposed concepts. Its possible to be both at once, without "semi" and "trappings".

Now, if you mean "representative democracy" when you said "republic", you'd have a more appropriate question.

I think it is dangerous to start such a discussion with the diagnosis of "semi-oligarchy". The first thing you should look at is that, "integrated" over all citizens (and even residents and "illegal aliens"), you won't find a country that offers much more freedom and more opportunity. You can argue if some European countries beat the US in some of these categories, but none of them are as much better than the US, than the US is better compared to Russia or China.

The US political system is designed to be rigid against change. Which is mostly a good thing, until, of course, it isn't. But this rigidity is a big strength, and accounts for much of the trust of the world economy in the US government(s).

How to choose leaders and administrators is a tough problem, and I don't have a lot of trust in people who don't actually participate in politics but believe they have a way of choosing leaders and policies that is superior to all the proven ways.

you won't find a country that offers much more freedom and more opportunity

Quite true. I'm not saying the US is bad. I'm just pointing out that it's not some kind of anointed perfection.

Re Russia and democracy -- isn't it enough to just note that Putin will never lose an election...?

Equally damning is the media control.

He's not "painting them as unpatriotic" he's responding to their points about national security.

Their (ULA) argument in a nutshell is #1 it's costly because of national security and #2 because of national security (read: important) you should stick with us as we've been successful.

Elon's argument is based around cost first, and he through in the national security part as a response to the two ULA arguments.

So basically, they started it would explain why national security or patriotism as you put it, is the topic being discussed.

Also, we're talking about launching military satellites. I don't know how national security/patriotism can't play a major part.

Isn't it patriotic to save taxpayer's money in the USA? Especially for defense spending, so that money can be used to buy more important stuff like DARPA research?

More like Howard Hughes - the 20th Century version and with aviation.

Remember the Senate hearing where Hughes fought and won against the senate's (apparently) special interest influences.

Musk's hearing video really reminds of Hughes'

Musk: http://youtu.be/he0-SP-BnCQ?t=10m30s

Hughes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7vu1dlow5A

Isn't the irony here that Elon Musk inspired the Tony Stark in the movies? http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/tesla-ceo-...

Is that irony?

No, irony^Wawesomeness is Elon Musk being inspired by Iron Man as a kid then him growing up to be a real life Tony Stark, which inspired the movie version.

>"Musk, 38, is a rocket scientist," writes Favreau. "He designed the Falcon 9...And he designed the Tesla, one of the first electric cars of the modern era."

Maybe someone better tuned to this can help: is any of this remotely true?

I know he started these companies, but can he really be credited with designing these things, or are we looking for a hero? Seems like a lack of credit is given to those doing the dirty work.

Yeah, that sounds like straight-up bullshit to me. It's similar to giving Jobs credit for the Apple II, iPhone, or Macintosh implementations.

People just prefer to have folk heroes, I guess.

He funded and lead the design effort, which may be as difficult as any particular design job involved in it. The tone of the article is a bit enthusiastic towards Musk, but in some sense, Elon Musk certainly deserves a bit of "worship".

He seems to be as intimately involved as Howard Hughes was in his various aviation efforts. I think credit is deserved even if, obviously, there is a much larger engineering team at work here.

It should have been mentioned that in fact, NASA suspended all cooperation with Russia at the end of March, except for the ISS.

Therefore it's not a unilateral action the Russians are taking here, they are merely responding to the various sanctions the US imposed on them.

I am sure, the persons involved with sanctioning Russia did know that this would be a possible reaction. It's just unrealistic that NASA could have sanctioned Russia on every aspect they don't need cooperation while expecting the Russians to keep cooperating where they need them.

Link: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/03/us/us-russia-relations-nas...

Isn't Tony Stark, the modern rendition, largely based on Elon Musk?

This title could read as:

Russia is Turning Elon Musk into Elon Musk.

>Musk should be paying the man a salary for providing him with the business opportunity of a lifetime.

Rogozin is apparently quite an idiot.

On the contrary, he's a politician riding the wave of militaristic nationalism that he helped create. Patriotism and such have nothing to do with it.

It's win win win. He gets a short term political boost, Musk gets the rocket business and the US sheds reliance on Russia.

ULA won't let this slide. This cuts into their PR image and the bottom line (having to switch to Delta rockets).

ULA will spend zero capital on PR to justify buying Russian rockets as the Russian brand will become more and more tainted as Ukraine unravels, it is a huge win for Musk, amazing considering he became a citizen just over a decade ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com