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Duffy is a Trump appointee, so this could be part of the continuing fallout of the Trump/Elon relationship. The Republican majority Congress has also attempted

Duffy is a Trump appointee, so this could be part of the continuing fallout of the Trump/Elon relationship. The Republican majority Congress has also attempted to partially defund NASA, and the government is shut down because Congress couldn't pass a budget. On top of that, space engineering is hard. So, of course there are delays.

FloorEgg 1y ago
Elon is competing with a lot of entrenched interests that would actively try to influence Trump to undermine Elon: - oil and gas industry - ICE automotive industry - telecom industry - media industry - and of course... Aerospace and defense industry (Boeing, Lockheed, etc.) There are a lot of very rich very powerful people that want Elon to fail, and any way they can undermine him would be a win for them. I say this as someone who really tries to have a balanced opinion on Elon and the topic as a whole, including recognition of all of Elon's flaws. The military-media-industrial complex can be out to get Elon and spending a lot of money to turn the public against him AND he can have a lot of flaws AND he can be not as bad as everyone thinks because of said media influence.
- leobg 1y ago
  Brave thing to say on HN. There are a few people here who will downvote any comment that contains the word “Elon”, “SpaceX” or “Tesla” if the comment’s saltiness score is less than 8/10.
  - FloorEgg 1y ago
    Perhaps. I am doing my best to stay emotionally detached from this topic and maintain a balanced view, and very open to reasoned arguments and being wrong. Hacker News is one of the last places I feel comfortable engaging in this way, and not always (sometimes I step on a land mine and get surprised), but if it's not here, I don't know where else to go, and that feels like a shame. I don't care much about the points, so long as I can keep engaging. So I do my best to follow the guidelines and have faith in the moderation to keep me and others in check, even if sometimes I slip up or encounter what seems like an unfair reaction. To censor myself from being inquisitive or rationally explore a sensitive topic in a place like this just feels too dystopian for me to accept.
- notahacker 1y ago
  Elon spends more money highlighting his own flaws than all his opponents put together, and orchestrated his own spat with the Trump administration in public on his own website; no third party PR conspiracy is necessary here. Lockheed will of course be angling for this contract for reasons which have nothing to do with "undermining Elon" and everything to do with being keen on securing themselves more multibillion dollar prestige projects, as will Blue Origin, as they would under any other government and frankly NASA is quite entitled to reopen the contract if SpaceX doesn't hit performance milestones. Whether the alternatives are any more likely to deliver adequate solutions on time, and whether the current US administration can be trusted not to make decisions one way or another for arbitrary political reasons or straight up corruption is another question entirely. (The arbitrary political reason in this case may be more a desire to do things on unrealistic deadlines to credit it as a Trump admin achievement than to punish or favour any particular individual, but it's not like they're reluctant to do that either)
  - FloorEgg 1y ago
    A conspiracy assumes secret cooperation, and I am not making any claim like that. I am merely pointing out that Elon has position himself as a rival against a lot of rich and powerful people. Rather than speculate on the specific arbitrary political reason, it might be mostly because of the underlying pressure or general anti-Elon baseline effect (and to attribute it to something more specific is a form of baseline or base rate neglect). And to your point about him spending more money then the rest combined, maybe, he did spend a lot on twitter, but I don't think any of us can actually know how much all those people are spending. It might be closer than you think. Also the anti-Elon media brigade started long before he bought twitter, it just wasn't focused on the general public, it was focused on amateur investors.
    - notahacker 1y ago
      Rather than speculate that the Trump administration might have fallen out with Elon because Trump's former right hand man loudly and publicly repudiated one of their flagship policies (he had a point...) and insinuated Trump was a paedophile, we should instead conclude that the baseline effect shifted from Trump's bestie to persona non grata that week because he was the innocent victim of underlying pressure of uncoordinated campaign by shadowy anti-Elon entities which happened to kick in at that time. rrriight.... the idea that an uncoordinated group is spending more than $44b on defaming Elon and this is what made people go out and buy the "I bought this car before Elon went mad" and not any of the things he started doing and saying on his own very public platform is also too ridiculous for even a hardened Elon stan to contemplate, never mind someone trying to maintain a "balanced view" of his positive and negative qualities.

FloorEgg 1y ago

Elon is competing with a lot of entrenched interests that would actively try to influence Trump to undermine Elon: - oil and gas industry - ICE automotive industry - telecom industry - media industry - and of course... Aerospace and defense industry (Boeing, Lockheed, etc.) There are a lot of very rich very powerful people that want Elon to fail, and any way they can undermine him would be a win for them. I say this as someone who really tries to have a balanced opinion on Elon and the topic as a whole, including recognition of all of Elon's flaws. The military-media-industrial complex can be out to get Elon and spending a lot of money to turn the public against him AND he can have a lot of flaws AND he can be not as bad as everyone thinks because of said media influence.

leobg 1y ago
Brave thing to say on HN. There are a few people here who will downvote any comment that contains the word “Elon”, “SpaceX” or “Tesla” if the comment’s saltiness score is less than 8/10.
- FloorEgg 1y ago
  Perhaps. I am doing my best to stay emotionally detached from this topic and maintain a balanced view, and very open to reasoned arguments and being wrong. Hacker News is one of the last places I feel comfortable engaging in this way, and not always (sometimes I step on a land mine and get surprised), but if it's not here, I don't know where else to go, and that feels like a shame. I don't care much about the points, so long as I can keep engaging. So I do my best to follow the guidelines and have faith in the moderation to keep me and others in check, even if sometimes I slip up or encounter what seems like an unfair reaction. To censor myself from being inquisitive or rationally explore a sensitive topic in a place like this just feels too dystopian for me to accept.
notahacker 1y ago
Elon spends more money highlighting his own flaws than all his opponents put together, and orchestrated his own spat with the Trump administration in public on his own website; no third party PR conspiracy is necessary here. Lockheed will of course be angling for this contract for reasons which have nothing to do with "undermining Elon" and everything to do with being keen on securing themselves more multibillion dollar prestige projects, as will Blue Origin, as they would under any other government and frankly NASA is quite entitled to reopen the contract if SpaceX doesn't hit performance milestones. Whether the alternatives are any more likely to deliver adequate solutions on time, and whether the current US administration can be trusted not to make decisions one way or another for arbitrary political reasons or straight up corruption is another question entirely. (The arbitrary political reason in this case may be more a desire to do things on unrealistic deadlines to credit it as a Trump admin achievement than to punish or favour any particular individual, but it's not like they're reluctant to do that either)
- FloorEgg 1y ago
  A conspiracy assumes secret cooperation, and I am not making any claim like that. I am merely pointing out that Elon has position himself as a rival against a lot of rich and powerful people. Rather than speculate on the specific arbitrary political reason, it might be mostly because of the underlying pressure or general anti-Elon baseline effect (and to attribute it to something more specific is a form of baseline or base rate neglect). And to your point about him spending more money then the rest combined, maybe, he did spend a lot on twitter, but I don't think any of us can actually know how much all those people are spending. It might be closer than you think. Also the anti-Elon media brigade started long before he bought twitter, it just wasn't focused on the general public, it was focused on amateur investors.
  - notahacker 1y ago
    Rather than speculate that the Trump administration might have fallen out with Elon because Trump's former right hand man loudly and publicly repudiated one of their flagship policies (he had a point...) and insinuated Trump was a paedophile, we should instead conclude that the baseline effect shifted from Trump's bestie to persona non grata that week because he was the innocent victim of underlying pressure of uncoordinated campaign by shadowy anti-Elon entities which happened to kick in at that time. rrriight.... the idea that an uncoordinated group is spending more than $44b on defaming Elon and this is what made people go out and buy the "I bought this car before Elon went mad" and not any of the things he started doing and saying on his own very public platform is also too ridiculous for even a hardened Elon stan to contemplate, never mind someone trying to maintain a "balanced view" of his positive and negative qualities.