Three Congressmen Are Using Red Tape to Bind SpaceX to Earth | Hacker News Reader

Three Congressmen Are Using Red Tape to Bind SpaceX to Earth

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I can't understand this author's spin. The memo -

http://coffman.house.gov/sites/coffman.house.gov/files/docum...

is a request to NASA for un-redacted information about the SpaceX failures. They're not asking for an investigation or delays (as far as I can tell), they just want disclosure. How is making failure information public going to slow down progress?

Is it just me or is that memo cut off after 1 page? Kinda hard to see what they're asking for.

The memo is two pages long, and the request for un-redacted information is present on the second page.

byerley is right though -- I don't see anything asking for an investigation or some other show-stopper.

This is the status quo for politics these days. Our elected officials are masters of the switcheroo. They ask innocent, logical sounding questions to pry for information they will then use to destroy something they don't like.

You can't ask "what's wrong with this request" anymore. You have to ask "why would they be asking for this? What do they get out of this information?"

Elected officials can certainly be two-faced.

However, I think criticizing their decisions while everyone is still in the information gathering stages is taking vigilance way too far. Politicians are people too and you have to give them a fair shake at doing their job before you can lament the result.

It's a first salvo. Coffman and Brooks both serve on HASC and on the HASC Oversight and Investigations subcommittee; Brooks is vice-chair of the House science committee's Space and Aeronautics subcommittee. Whatever NASA provides is going to be grist for investigations into SpaceX and possibly legislation crippling it (and potentially other small competitors) in favor of the big aerospace employers in the reps' districts.

In particular, this is probably an attempt to force NASA into selecting Boeing's CST-100 as the agency's new orbital vehicle. Boeing's option certainly has fewer operational "anomalies" than SpaceX's Dragon, because it hasn't even made it to orbit yet -- but don't expect politically-motivated Congressmen to admit that Boeing is a higher risk than a proven, if upstart, solution.

Ah yes, Republican congressmen trying to harm a private company because it's doing better than a government funded program.

Pot, kettle, yada yada.

They are the big government they claim to want to eliminate.

They always have been. It's only "big government" when it benefits their mates and future board positions.

There's a missing negation unless I'm misreading your comment: it's only big government when it doesn't benefit their mates.

or "their" can refer to democrats.

They only complain about regulations when someone they know, or want to be on the board with, wants that regulation to go away. It's exactly the right size government when it happens to be a massive handout to those same people, or buys off a social group who literally do want to control what you do in the bedroom, for example.

The point is, its all misdirection anyway - the correct question about governments is always to focus on issues and results. When someone has to declare ideology as a motivator, and can't imagine step-wise plans or trials, then they should be ignored.

Ah yes, an obviously left leaning author accuses several of is local representatives of wrong-doing. Lets take it as cannon and use the opportunity to pile on an bash them Republicans. After all, it is the severity of the accusation that matters, right?

Can't attack the message, attack the messenger.

Didn't get the memo? Both sides are exactly the same.

Oddly enough I didn't get that memo. Could you explain it for me?

Context matters. I see a lot of talk on this thread about the motives of Congressmen who are going to attack a company so they can make their big donors happy.

How about we flip the script and put the same argument to the author: What gets funding for scientists in need of public grants? Maybe attacking opponents in an election year will get you good favor of those who control said public funds?

I doubt either is true (the author having funding motivations behind the article, or the representatives out to kill a business for their lobbying group).

From direct observation, that appears to be a playbook straight out of the Republican camp.

Doesn't matter to me if they have an R or D after their name, if they're doing this, it's wrong.

Well, ultimately they're trying to help out Boeing and other major contractors, right? It's not about big government versus private industry, it's about private industry defended by lobbying and pork-barrel concessions versus private industry that doesn't have those things.

Not that that's better.

It's worse, actually.

I'd argue SpaceX is very likely getting into the lobbyist game, too. The major difference is that the United Launch Alliance consists of big defense players whose collective clout and spending on political donations and lobbying makes SpaceX look like a joke.

Also, the top military contractors have been convicted on numerous occasions of deliberately defrauding taxpayers without losing contracts over this behavior. This can only continue to happen if they're being protected by powerful people. The military procurement industry is a notoriously corrupt circle which rewards the largest and most inept, as the Joint Strike Fighter proves.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/fraudu...

You're right, of course. This is the sort of thing that Eisenhower foresaw when he warned against the military-industrial complex, but even with the benefit of hindsight I don't know what we could have done about it. Everyone's incentives are aligned, and in the wrong direction.

I think that focusing on the illusory party division is exactly the wrong approach to this. Both Democrats and Republicans are the problem, and both parties have essentially the same agenda.

What needs to happen is the elimination of government interference, not calling out some perceived hypocrisy.

That doesn't work, though. The only time anyone really cares about your opinion is when you're in the voting booth and any concern directed at you at any other time is solely with respect to the voting booth. And in the voting booth you can only choose between two parties. You either make the best out of it or you don't.

How doesn't it work? As far as I know, it's never been tried.

It has been tried, by everyone who votes for a third party.

@MadManE: Somalia has tried it for the last few years. No pesky government interference there.

Yeah, that terrible Somalia place, with its dropping infant mortality, increased life expectancy, massive increase in adult literacy, fledging and competitive telecommunications market and thriving economy sectors like livestock.

Or maybe this is just biased reporting from that anti-government rag, the BBC[1][2].

And none of this matters, because taking Somalia as the standard for anarchy is no more valid than using Nazi Germany has the example of the result of democracy[3].

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12278628

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12285365

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_March_...

"It's a bit less shitty" really doesn't help your argument all that much. I'd still rather not live there.

And I'd rather not live in North Korea, even though it has a stable government.

The fact that a place is both (more or less) stateless and a hard place to leave doesn't mean that the former necessarily causes the latter, any more than having a government necessarily means it'll be a murderous dictatorship.

You have an interesting definition of "stable government" if North Korea is one. They're one death away from complete chaos - if Kim Jong-Un dies, it's probably all-out civil war.

You are correct but there are third party options. Voting for the "lesser of two evils" is poisonous and the public should be made aware of third++ parties.

They already are aware, and correctly dismiss them as pointless. Third parties cannot accomplish anything in a first-past-the-post election system like we have. Any vote for one will essentially be a vote for whichever big party you agree least with. Changing that would require changing the whole government over to a parliamentary system.

Yeah, what the US really need is a proportional voting system where x% of the federal/national votes means x% (+/- rounding error) of the parliamentary seats, with no voting districts or any other excuses. So what's needed is to convince the ruling classes that switching to such a system is worth potentially ruining their and their friends' careers. Luckily, this is not my problem, but it is pretty frustrating to hear Americans discuss politics.

I wouldn't quite say that we really need to switch to proportional or something else just yet. These type of fundamental changes have the potential for huge unintended consequences, and need to be looked at carefully from every angle.

One of the properties of our system the way that it is is that all "radical" elements, where radical is anything outside the national status quo, must join one of the big parties and appeal at least somewhat to all of the interests in that party to get anything done. Going to this sort of proportional system breaks that, for all such radical interests.

Sure, being able to vote for a useful Libertarian party, or a tech and science party, sounds nice. But there would also be the radical Christian party, the drug warrior party, the foreign policy hawk party, the isolationist party, union party, big business party, etc, and none of them will be moderated by the need to appeal to the rest of a large party.

I also think that everyone is justifiably worried about what a major rewrite of the US constitution, which is what doing that would require, would look like right now.

The alternative to change is that nothing changes. Anyway, the number of parties are constrained by how many parties can be fitted on a TV screen or in the national consciousness. The rest are condemned to fringe status. A more formal solution are minimum percent requirements (5% in Germany, for example), but the problem then is that all votes for parties below the limit are thrown away. Last election in Germany, 15% of the votes were thrown away for this reason. Some parties narrowly fell short - most notably the liberal party.

Perhaps "aware" was a poor choice of words. Fact is, you can break this down many ways but it almost always boils down to money and who is contributing how much to who else. Visibility is costly.

Which, not to lose sight of the article. "You want us to contribute to you getting elected monetarily and with our employees/unions, you'll do what we want."

I just hope a majority wakes up one day and votes like me.

I agree with your entire comment, but the last sentence stands out as the one thing that everyone agrees on.

"I just hope a majority wakes up one day and votes like me"

Outside of local government, voting for third party is the equivalent of pissing in the wind. It accomplishes absolutely nothing. Even if you do manage to get a third-party representative elected to Congress, they will still have to ally themselves with either side to be able to get anything done.

This is the reality of American politics: it's a two-party, winner-takes-all system. The third party is like a catch-all "else" branch that never runs.

We get the governments we elect. If we pick our candidates poorly, it's our own fault (including if we don't exercise our right to vote).

It most all cases though it is a heads I win tails you lose situation.

Do you have any idea how hard it is for non-major party candidates to get on the ballot.

This hard http://www.illinoisherald.com/articles/2014/q3/illinois-gop-...

That's great - when I actually get to pick my candidate. Most of the times, it's the party (or candidates' money) choosing for me - then I get to choose which of the parties' candidates I vote for. Third party candidate? Not going to ever work with FTTP [1] voting.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

You don't vote for a Third Party Candidate. You vote for a Third Party Platform. Once the Platform gains the support of a few percent of voters, it is adopted by the major parties. This is how every progressive agenda from the abolition of slavery to marijuana reform has gained traction.

Since I don't live in a swing-state (or the swing-county of a swing-state) I feel like voting for Third Party Platforms is the best way to make my vote heard.

This. OMG 1000 times this. I simply cannot understand why so many intelligent people still allow themselves to be divided like this. How can they not see that the politicians are playing them?

With the current state of politics in the US, I'm not surprised by this. A successful privately owned company being the target of "red-taping" since I doubt SpaceX provides the political donations that a company like Boeing does.

This is unfortunate and hopefully it goes no where. Sounds like Elon needs to get the Tesla lawyers who have reversed states' legislation against selling cars directly to start working on this too.

Oddly enough, I tried out Greenhouse -- http://allaregreen.us/ -- (the plugin that gives you donor information for congress persons) on the four different people cited, and big donations from defense contractors and aerospace only figured for one of them, so it's not quite as simple as I thought. Or perhaps the money is more cleverly disguised.

I wouldn't put much stock in that information. It is really easy to just put down anything on the donation form. You need to actually go look at the names of the people who made the donations and see what they are connected to.

From the article: "As one might expect, government officials who have such contractors in their own districts and states are unhappy with this."

If many local jobs are being threatened, a politician would want to be seen attempting to protect them. No bribes required.

Doesn't count PAC money. The top of the corp rarely gets attributed for the money the move around. The FEC accounting only applies to worker class.

These congressmen are representatives of their districts, so I'm not sure why we are surprised when the congressmen speak up for the people that are in their districts.

I wonder how many rolls of tape would be needed to hold a launching rocket to it`s pad? Not taking into account the heat which would probably melt it?

its pad.

A lot.

Going with the Saturn V, since information about it is widely available: 4 hold-down clamps that put out 350 metric tons each. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-4204/ch13-4.html

Best tape I can find in 20 seconds of googling: "Super Strength II: super heavy duty tape with 400 lbs of tensile strength (meets OSHA 29 CFR Part 1926.502)" http://www.reefindustries.com/barricade-tape.php

That's nearly 2000 layers of tape for each hold-down clamp, or 8000 total. How many meters of tape that is depends on how much tape is needed per layer per clamp. Lets say two meters, so we're talking 16km of this heavy-duty tape. That super-heavy duty stuff comes in 300' rolls, so you would need 175 rolls of it to hold down a Saturn V right at launch.

That is just right at launch though, when the fuel inside the rocket is doing most of the "hold the rocket down" work. As the rocket burns more and more fuel, you will need more and more tape to hold it down. A smaller rocket like the F9 will require less tape.

Excellent, well this means SpaceX is safe from govt. red-tape since the Reps will be too lazy to implement this. Thanks!

The good part about launching into space is that there are many places you can launch into space, including outside of the US. Can't they just move to another part of the world, or across some borders?

It's probably trivial for congress to classify your rocket technology as a weapons system and forbid export.

But it wouldn't be export if you're not an American company. SpaceX could move south of the border and become SpaceMeX, problem solved :)

That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.

That has already been done. It's called ITAR: http://fas.org/spp/starwars/offdocs/itar/p121.htm#C-IV

Except SpaceX is a defacto government program considering its funded by the COTS program (and other pork/favors) and its main customer is going to be the USG.

Also, the corruption works in SpaceX's favor. You have to be some blind free market type to believe that Musk isn't using the system for his benefit via the typical favor/donation system that rules Washington. Why would he leave the bed of gold we spin for him?

Space contractor in the US is a sweet gig, and Musk knows it. He's not going anywhere, especially over a over-politicized minor bump in the road such as this. This blog posting sells ad impressions and gives people their 2 minutes hate against $other_political_party, but to guys like Musk its meaningless and if it does have a cost, its washed up in the cost of doing business.

To be fair, the "blind free market types" are generally the ones who most freely acknowledge that he's using the system to his favor. The complaint is that the things that are being done in his favor are to the detriment of tax payers as, despite how awesome Space-X is, there could be other, better, cheaper programs still, if not for all the red tape.

Red tape as a corruption mechanism is there precisely to protect the incumbents. In this case Elon Musk is that incumbent. That's not a terribly prescient insight, nor is it particularly damning to free market enthusiasts, who are already well aware of this exploitation.

I'm not sure I'd say there are "many places" to do space launches. Launch Vehicles are large, and transport can be expensive. Also, eastward launches let you drop stages in the water, whereas west-coast launches have a harder time (if I recall right).

For an idea of how large Launch Vehicles are: the NASA Crawler-Transporter was the largest land vehicle in the world (until the creation of the Bagger 288[0])

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288

Pretty sure you can't with ITAR.

Given SpaceX technology, I doubt the government would let them move.

This stuff happens all the time to major government contractors, of which SpaceX is one. It's par for the course; call it a standard cost of doing business with the government.

IMO it is an example of why the U.S. system of government has lasted so long: it guides parochial self-interest and competition into constructive pathways. In this case, members of Congress want to protect their district's pet contractors, but the actual act is to request public disclosure of data. Which, in the long run, is a good thing!

Typical.

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