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HN: "SpaceX Launches and Nearly Lands Starship on Its First Suborbital Flight" vs Article: "SpaceX Launches—and Crashes—Its Starship Mars Rocket"
by obilgic 6y ago
HN: "SpaceX Launches and Nearly Lands Starship on Its First Suborbital Flight"
vs
Article: "SpaceX Launches—and Crashes—Its Starship Mars Rocket"
- mlindner 6y agoYeah article has a horrible title.
- amanzi 6y agoFor whatever reason, Wired preferred the clickbait title, but the opening sentence of the article is: "On Wednesday afternoon, SpaceX successfully launched—and nearly landed—a fully-assembled prototype of its next generation Starship rocket on a suborbital flight from its facility in south Texas."
- dotancohen 6y agoThe Wired article was full of misleading information (implying that the rocket failed to reach space, when that was never a mission objective) and outright lies (stating that the Starship is a scaled-up Falcon 9, the name of the Starship+SuperHeavy combo, the number of engines that the system will have, etc, etc).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- skedaddle 6y agoNo, it's not click bait if it's what happened. And what happened is that it crashed. :P
- dwaltrip 6y agoIt's clickbait because it implies test failure, which isn't true. The test was successful, as the primary objectives were all met.
- ineedasername 6y agoGiven that it's a rocket, "nearly land" could mean it kept going in some way, towards space or simply not yet touched down. So when I read the HN title and thought "what do they mean by nearly landed?" I then saw the article and realized "oh, it crashed". I'm not sure where the balance should be... "Crash" has a negative connotation, but "nearly lands" is a pretty soft euphemism.
- ineedasername 6y agoTo add to my comment-- I think the CNN headline got it better without the softening euphemism by pointing out it was a success: "A SpaceX Mars rocket prototype just exploded. It was still a success"
- natch 6y agoI don’t think it exploded. It broke up by hitting the ground (not by exploding) which caused fuel and oxygen to leak out, which then ignited in a large fireball. But maybe this is splitting hairs. It sure looked like an explosion.
- ineedasername 6y agooxygen to leak out, which then ignited in a large fireball. That sounds a lot like a thermoberic bomb :)
- natch 6y agoLanding safely was an unexpected outcome, so it’s remarkable (thus making it into the headline) that it came close to doing so. The right wording is highly context dependent. Here the “nearly landed” phrasing appropriately acknowledges the realistic expectations for the launch by those most in the know, the SpaceX team. “Crash” would be totally appropriate in a different context with different expectations. But it would make less sense in this case.
- jawzz 6y agoHeadlines are usually written by an editor, not the writer, and chosen to generate clicks. That’s why there’s often such a contrast between the headline and the article.
- jackfoxy 6y agoIf you want to see an even worse headline along with flat-out incorrect information in the article, try this bit of journalism. https://www.the-sun.com/news/1944062/space-x-mars-starship-explodes-misses-landing-pad/ https://www.the-sun.com/news/1944062/space-x-mars-starship-e...
- airstrike 6y agoA better article: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/starship-rises-high-performs-a-flawless-flip-but-doesnt-quite-stick-the-landing/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/starship-rises-high-...
- badconvincer 6y agoWhat a stupid article headline.