Concerns Over SpaceX as a Credible Launch Provider
October 15, 2024 10:09 AM Subscribe
The successful launch and recovery of the Heavy Booster (with a subsequent planned water landing of Starship) has provided SpaceX with very positive press and enthusiasm from the public. What remains, however, are significant issues that undermine the credibility of not just the Heavy Booster development program but SpaceX as a credible launch provider more widely.
Last month, the FAA, the controlling authority on commercial spaceflight, recently hit SpaceX with a potential fine, focusing on improper control room procedures, and perhaps more concerning, insufficient handling of explosives (note that the Super Heavy is the largest spacecraft launched to date with twice the thrust of a Saturn V.
In response to the potential FAA fine, there has been an official statement from SpaceX, saying the company “forcefully rejects the FAA’s assertion that it violated any regulations.”
Unlike founders of traditional launch providers like the ULA and its predecessors, Elon Musk has struck back on social media, personally attacking US Government officials, saying “There need to be resignations from the FAA leadership.”
Elon’s personal, separate involvement in the situation comes amidst a background of problematic actions by the billionaire, such as the rocky acquisition of Twitter (now known simply as X), with observations by the ADL of an increase in hate speech on the platform, and by racist and Nazi slurs.
Musk’s family situation has been under significant scrutiny, with his transgender daughter cutting ties and openly discussing his transphobia and drug use and serial adultery, and his celebrity ex-partner Grimes attacking the SpaceX founder and his businesses in various forums.
Despite these very public, regular controversies about its founder, SpaceX is continuing to successfully develop its space transportation business, launching various key satellites (e.g., NOAA’s GOES-U weather satellite).
Nevertheless, in the end, followers of the industry worry what impact such a problematic and prominent figure will have in a company attempting to court major US Government acquisitions planning to carry forward most US human spaceflight launches, with US Government officials such as Senator Jeanne Shaheen stating Musk’s ‘rhetoric and behavior undermines his credibility and reliability on a global scale.”
In response to the potential FAA fine, there has been an official statement from SpaceX, saying the company “forcefully rejects the FAA’s assertion that it violated any regulations.”
Unlike founders of traditional launch providers like the ULA and its predecessors, Elon Musk has struck back on social media, personally attacking US Government officials, saying “There need to be resignations from the FAA leadership.”
Elon’s personal, separate involvement in the situation comes amidst a background of problematic actions by the billionaire, such as the rocky acquisition of Twitter (now known simply as X), with observations by the ADL of an increase in hate speech on the platform, and by racist and Nazi slurs.
Musk’s family situation has been under significant scrutiny, with his transgender daughter cutting ties and openly discussing his transphobia and drug use and serial adultery, and his celebrity ex-partner Grimes attacking the SpaceX founder and his businesses in various forums.
Despite these very public, regular controversies about its founder, SpaceX is continuing to successfully develop its space transportation business, launching various key satellites (e.g., NOAA’s GOES-U weather satellite).
Nevertheless, in the end, followers of the industry worry what impact such a problematic and prominent figure will have in a company attempting to court major US Government acquisitions planning to carry forward most US human spaceflight launches, with US Government officials such as Senator Jeanne Shaheen stating Musk’s ‘rhetoric and behavior undermines his credibility and reliability on a global scale.”
According to Wikipedia, Elon Musk owns 49% of SpaceX and controls 79% of the voting rights.
You can pretend all you want that it's really Shotwell's organization and that they know how to "handle" Musk by keeping him at arm's length, but at the end of the day they're all working for him and their achievements are Musk's achievements. There are some pretty talented people at SpaceX doing amazing things, but their success is what keeps Musk in the business of being Musk, and Musk is a fascist.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:40 AM on October 15 [25 favorites]
You can pretend all you want that it's really Shotwell's organization and that they know how to "handle" Musk by keeping him at arm's length, but at the end of the day they're all working for him and their achievements are Musk's achievements. There are some pretty talented people at SpaceX doing amazing things, but their success is what keeps Musk in the business of being Musk, and Musk is a fascist.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:40 AM on October 15 [25 favorites]
Related to this topic: Cards Against Humanity is suing Elon Musk because they owned a plot of land they were trying to defend against Trump's wall and it was sandwiched in between SpaceX land and so SpaceX just sort of completely bulldozed it and used it like it was theirs.
posted by foxfirefey at 10:44 AM on October 15 [22 favorites]
posted by foxfirefey at 10:44 AM on October 15 [22 favorites]
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch
Eponhysterical!
posted by doctornemo at 11:00 AM on October 15 [5 favorites]
Eponhysterical!
posted by doctornemo at 11:00 AM on October 15 [5 favorites]
Yarp, this is a big question mark. It's a major strategic question: will there be ubiquitous LEO broadband in even the most remote and underdeveloped areas of the world?
If the answer is "yes, but controlled by an unstable cryptofascist man-baby'" then that is actually a No, and lots of major investment hangs on the question.
posted by ianso at 11:10 AM on October 15 [10 favorites]
If the answer is "yes, but controlled by an unstable cryptofascist man-baby'" then that is actually a No, and lots of major investment hangs on the question.
posted by ianso at 11:10 AM on October 15 [10 favorites]
I think that funding campaigns that intend to prevent the peaceful transfer of power should disqualify you from a government defense contract. It's like the government is paying to coup itself.
posted by tofu_crouton at 11:20 AM on October 15 [16 favorites]
posted by tofu_crouton at 11:20 AM on October 15 [16 favorites]
How SpaceX became the MyPillow of government contractors
Consider the rocket situation. For NASA, Musk is the only game in town besides Boeing, and he knows it. He also knows that even if he publicly misbehaves — smokes weed, for instance — NASA will do nothing punitive. And I do blame the brain geniuses at NASA. Instead of having in-house rockets for launching our spy satellites, we’re now dependent on Boeing (lol, lmao), the United Launch Alliance (a joint venture that includes… Boeing), and SpaceX. (Sure, Jeff Bezos’ also-ran Blue Origin exists, I guess, but come on.) By outsourcing its engineering, NASA put the national security apparatus at the whims of contractors gone wild.posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:27 AM on October 15 [17 favorites]
Outsourcing engineering skills from the civil service is a thing that's been going on for a long time. I'm getting close to Social Security eligibility, and have spent most of my career doing things as a contract software engineer that should have been the job of a civil servant engineer.
The Reagan-era hysteria about how big the Federal workforce was getting was really just an applause line to the Republicans but Bill Clinton took it seriously and actually started the process. But it turned out that most Federal headcount was involved with doing stuff that needed being done and if you weren't going to pay a civil servant X dollars to do it, you would pay a contractor 2-3 times X instead. Overall this has been a terrible deal for the American people but a great one for the contractor firms.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 11:41 AM on October 15 [31 favorites]
The Reagan-era hysteria about how big the Federal workforce was getting was really just an applause line to the Republicans but Bill Clinton took it seriously and actually started the process. But it turned out that most Federal headcount was involved with doing stuff that needed being done and if you weren't going to pay a civil servant X dollars to do it, you would pay a contractor 2-3 times X instead. Overall this has been a terrible deal for the American people but a great one for the contractor firms.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 11:41 AM on October 15 [31 favorites]
Though in counterpoint to the above, as an old "hard SF" kid, I kind of would like for there to be a private industry that builds spaceships, much as there is one for cars or airplanes.
Being willing to blow up rockets while testing them seems like a reasonable approach to doing rocket science, but Musk's record suggests that sooner or later there's likely to be an operational catastrophe.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 11:51 AM on October 15 [4 favorites]
Being willing to blow up rockets while testing them seems like a reasonable approach to doing rocket science, but Musk's record suggests that sooner or later there's likely to be an operational catastrophe.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 11:51 AM on October 15 [4 favorites]
One section of beach is not necessarily interchangeable with others for launching a rocket, and neither is one section of beach interchangeable with another for birds. The Texas coast is in the path of two major migration routes for birds. The ability of birds to safely travel through south Texas affects ecosystems as far north as arctic Canada and as far south as the southern tip of Chile. The wetlands are also the native home of many species of animals; wetlands tend to be higher in biodiversity and there's real danger in the fact that climate change is rapidly shrinking the U.S. wetlands. (I highly recommend Annie Proulx's Fen, Bog, and Swamp on this.) Dumping a bunch of fuel exhaust-tainted water into the region could substantially speed up the "sixth extinction." If we can't explore space without ruining our existing home, it would be logical not to.
posted by tofu_crouton at 12:20 PM on October 15 [14 favorites]
posted by tofu_crouton at 12:20 PM on October 15 [14 favorites]
with twice the thrust of a Saturn V
As someone who watched quite a few Apollo (and a couple of shuttle) launches from 1-3 miles away and experienced the almost unimaginable waves intense deep sound reverberating through my entire body even at that distance, this blows my mind.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:24 PM on October 15 [2 favorites]
As someone who watched quite a few Apollo (and a couple of shuttle) launches from 1-3 miles away and experienced the almost unimaginable waves intense deep sound reverberating through my entire body even at that distance, this blows my mind.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:24 PM on October 15 [2 favorites]
NPR: SpaceX wants to go to Mars. To get there, environmentalists say it’s trashing Texas
posted by tofu_crouton at 12:27 PM on October 15 [4 favorites]
posted by tofu_crouton at 12:27 PM on October 15 [4 favorites]
And I do blame the brain geniuses at NASA. Instead of having in-house rockets for launching our spy satellites
Someone doesn't seem to know that NASA isn't directly in the rocket business because it isn't allowed to be in the rocket business.
Gimme 20 minutes and I can give you a nice long list of things NASA does wrong or poorly that are NASA's fault, but not making its own rockets isn't one of them.
posted by tclark at 12:28 PM on October 15 [12 favorites]
Someone doesn't seem to know that NASA isn't directly in the rocket business because it isn't allowed to be in the rocket business.
Gimme 20 minutes and I can give you a nice long list of things NASA does wrong or poorly that are NASA's fault, but not making its own rockets isn't one of them.
posted by tclark at 12:28 PM on October 15 [12 favorites]
There's a twitchy, conspiritorial corner of my brain that wonders if this jackass isn't just another useful idiot CIA asset in the Howard Hughes mold. Maybe buying Twitter was this era's Glomar Explorer and the Super Heavy is the... Spruce Goose?
posted by St. Oops at 1:19 PM on October 15 [2 favorites]
posted by St. Oops at 1:19 PM on October 15 [2 favorites]
Musk would have a much harder time if Boeing weren't scoring end-goal and after end-goal. Turns out people will forgive almost anything if you're the main alternative to a company who appears unable to keep a century-old business off the rocks.
posted by MattD at 1:54 PM on October 15 [3 favorites]
posted by MattD at 1:54 PM on October 15 [3 favorites]
Musk is a fascist.
Repeated for truth.
Dumping a bunch of fuel exhaust-tainted water into the region...
...Musk's record suggests that sooner or later there's likely to be an operational catastrophe.
“Privatizing profits and socializing losses”
Once again, a rich asshole can ignore the law with impunity. Fines for the rich are just a cost of doing business.Maybe we should just give Musk more money while he thumbs his nose at the rest of us.
posted by BlueHorse at 2:15 PM on October 15
Repeated for truth.
Dumping a bunch of fuel exhaust-tainted water into the region...
...Musk's record suggests that sooner or later there's likely to be an operational catastrophe.
“Privatizing profits and socializing losses”
Once again, a rich asshole can ignore the law with impunity. Fines for the rich are just a cost of doing business.Maybe we should just give Musk more money while he thumbs his nose at the rest of us.
posted by BlueHorse at 2:15 PM on October 15
And I do blame the brain geniuses at NASA. Instead of having in-house rockets for launching our spy satellites, we’re now dependent on Boeing (lol, lmao), the United Launch Alliance (a joint venture that includes… Boeing), and SpaceX. (Sure, Jeff Bezos’ also-ran Blue Origin exists, I guess, but come on.) By outsourcing its engineering, NASA put the national security apparatus at the whims of contractors gone wild.
NASA has never had "in-house" rockets. The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo rockets were all built by contractors... as was all the space shuttle hardware.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:07 PM on October 15 [1 favorite]
NASA has never had "in-house" rockets. The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo rockets were all built by contractors... as was all the space shuttle hardware.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:07 PM on October 15 [1 favorite]
From a non-American perspective...it's all just the American military-industrial complex maintaining US global hegemony and strategic air and space superiority to me. Always has been.
posted by other barry at 3:36 PM on October 15 [2 favorites]
posted by other barry at 3:36 PM on October 15 [2 favorites]
NASA has never had "in-house" rockets
This is more or less true, and yet, if you look up those rockets on Wikipedia, they're referred to as "developed by NASA" (Saturn V), or with their organization as "NASA" (Project Gemini), or "operated by NASA" (the Shuttle). By comparison, both the Super Heavy and the Dragon Capsule, just as a quick comparison, are listed as developed and produced (and I should point out operated) by SpaceX.
These are not the same things in terms of NASA involvement. The loss of the Space Shuttle program was a tremendous loss in jobs for people who (whether contractors or actual Government employees) were working for NASA.
Today, we have two different crewed spacecraft developers designing, building, and operating their programs all on their own (and many other rocket developers running their own programs), with new workers knowing that NASA is no longer a place to go for such jobs.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 3:40 PM on October 15
This is more or less true, and yet, if you look up those rockets on Wikipedia, they're referred to as "developed by NASA" (Saturn V), or with their organization as "NASA" (Project Gemini), or "operated by NASA" (the Shuttle). By comparison, both the Super Heavy and the Dragon Capsule, just as a quick comparison, are listed as developed and produced (and I should point out operated) by SpaceX.
These are not the same things in terms of NASA involvement. The loss of the Space Shuttle program was a tremendous loss in jobs for people who (whether contractors or actual Government employees) were working for NASA.
Today, we have two different crewed spacecraft developers designing, building, and operating their programs all on their own (and many other rocket developers running their own programs), with new workers knowing that NASA is no longer a place to go for such jobs.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 3:40 PM on October 15
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posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 10:27 AM on October 15 [2 favorites]