
A shadowy op-ed campaign is now smearing SpaceX in space cities - frutiger
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/10/a-shadowy-op-ed-campaign-is-now-smearing-spacex-in-space-cities/
======
bovermyer
Short version of the article:

One op-ed article attacking SpaceX's safety practices appears in the
newspapers of several space-industry-oriented cities. The article is not
written by the person it is attributed to, but rather by two people apparently
affiliated with a PR firm in Washington, DC. One of the three main clients of
said PR firm is Boeing, SpaceX's direct competitor.

~~~
smacktoward
I actually got approached myself to write something like this recently.

I blog occasionally about defense issues. I got a call out of the blue from
someone who said they liked something I'd written about the F-35 (this:
[https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/08/stovl-the-f-35-and-how-
we...](https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/08/stovl-the-f-35-and-how-were-even-
more-fed-than-david-axe-suggests/)), and would I be interested in getting paid
to write an op-ed about the current state of the F-35 program?

I'm always interested in getting paid, so I said sure, let's talk. And over
the course of ten minutes or so of conversation, it came out that:

\- What the caller really wanted was an article about all the _cost overruns_
of the F-35 program;

\- Specifically, an article that attributed those cost overruns to the rocky
development of the F-35's engine, Pratt and Whitney's F135
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_F135);](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_F135\);)
and

\- That the caller was representing a D.C. "government relations" (aka
lobbying) firm.

At that point I politely ended the conversation, because it was obvious what
was happening.

The question of what engine to put in the F-35 was the subject of a long and
bitter political battle back in the 2000s between the two big producers of
aircraft engines in the US, Pratt and Whitney and General Electric. P&W won
that battle and got their engine chosen for the F-35, but GE self-funded their
own alternative engine and then pushed hard for _years_ to get Congress to
approve funding it as an "alternate engine" \-- a sort of insurance policy
against P&W tanking the too-big-to-fail F-35 project by screwing their engine
up. The Air Force didn't want that insurance policy, but GE won the support of
a few powerful Senators on the Armed Services and Appropriations committees,
and those Senators managed to steer enough money to GE to keep the program
alive until 2011, when it was finally axed for cost-cutting reasons. (Here's
some background on this story: [https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2009/07/experts-
contractors-an...](https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2009/07/experts-contractors-
and-f-35-alternate-engine/), [https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-
Wires/2011/0217/F-...](https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-
Wires/2011/0217/F-35-jet-a-waste-of-taxpayers-dollars-say-McCain-Gates),
[https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-
room/news/157649-pen...](https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-
room/news/157649-pentagon-cancels-f-35-alternate-engine-program))

So what was going on, I surmised, was that someone with an interest in making
Congress regret the decision to cancel GE's alternate engine -- maybe GE
themselves, maybe some other company in their orbit, or maybe just someone
with a financial interest in seeing UTX (P&W's parent company) go down a few
points and GE go up -- had decided that the time was ripe to start building a
public record linking the F-35's problems to the decision to go with P&W's
engine; and they had money to spend to hire people to make that happen. (It
wouldn't even need to be _much_ money. By the standards of defense
contracting, writers are dirt cheap.) And so they had engaged this lobbying
firm, and the lobbying firm had gone looking for people who could write
knowledgeably about the F-35, and Google had led them to me.

I didn't take the gig. But it did provide an interesting case study in the
kind of maneuvering that goes on behind the scenes of the manufacturing of
opinion.

~~~
ethbro
Any comment on what price was offered?

Curious what the going cost for funding this type of activity is. I assume
drastically cheaper than desired result profits, but in comparison to
traditional advertising?

~~~
smacktoward
I didn't get far enough in this particular conversation to suss out what
they're willing to pay. Generally speaking, freelance writers are paid on the
order of pennies per word. _Writer 's Market_ has some guidelines for
freelancers on pricing their work here:
[http://www.writersmarket.com/assets/pdf/how_much_should_i_ch...](http://www.writersmarket.com/assets/pdf/how_much_should_i_charge.pdf)

~~~
fouc
Ok, given that they approached you, and based on the per project prices
suggested in that link, it could've been around $2.5k and up.

~~~
Latteland
Is is immoral to write something that you might not feel is exactly a lie but
pushes an opinion that you don't agree with very strongly? I think this is
immoral, but if someone needed the money I wouldn't quibble as much. I know
some people will just say that is PR but you can give the press a helpful to
your side view of the world without lying and creating a false perception that
someone supports something they really don't. But I'm kind of an idealist :-)

~~~
fouc
I agree it is immoral

------
Steel_Phoenix
I'm glad Ars and others are doing this kind of reporting. The populace needs
frequent reminders that ulterior motives are everywhere.

There's a nearly inevitable lack of conscience within deeply established
institutions where people, in committee, are paid to seek an outcome.

------
madrox
This is somewhat tangential to the topic, but having worked in PR/marketing
agency environments and heard stories from friends, I've found them to be the
most amoral places to work at.

The agency where I worked (social media marketing) would make outrageous
claims and give a lot of "smoke and mirror" presentations to both land clients
and give them the impression they were getting more for their money than they
were. They'd engage in astroturf, fake views, and generally do whatever it
took to deliver on the number they promised. It made me uncomfortable, but I
was young in my career and thought that's just how the world worked.
Thankfully I didn't have to stay there long enough for it to really rub off on
me. I've heard enough stories from others over the years to know this wasn't
an isolated experience.

Most agencies only have a few big customers paying everyone's paychecks, and
it's far easier to retain a client than land a new one. As a result, they're
highly incentivized to do whatever it takes to keep them. It's probably the
biggest dark side of a directly incentivized culture.

Hearing that an agency for Boeing did this doesn't surprise me. What might be
worse is it's quite possible Boeing is finding out through this reporting.

~~~
clear_dg
> What might be worse is it's quite possible Boeing is finding out through
> this reporting.

_If_ Boeing really is behind all this, they may well be unaware of the
specific details, sure. But so what? This doesn't make them any less
responsible. So I don't understand what makes this "worse".

~~~
madrox
I would personally find it distasteful if someone did something shady trying
to further my interests and find out about it in the news, which is why I find
it worse.

~~~
clear_dg
Call me cynical, but in my opinion, any company using the service of such
agencies, have to know the possibility of abuses and unethical practices that
might happen. They may even count on it, but with the great benefit that they
now have plausable deniability.

------
kevin_thibedeau
The underlying message is that Boeing isn't confident they'll beat Crew Dragon
to orbit. They've already stacked the deck with more funding due to their
"legacy overhead" but apparently even that isn't enough.

~~~
imglorp
Is Boeing having trouble competing on all of features, price, and schedule?

I think the story is more complicated as always - If you watch Scott Manley's
channel, I think there's a few mission profiles that ULA can do better than
SpaceX. One launcher can't do everything well.

~~~
Rebelgecko
I think right now Boeing is ahead schedule-wise, but it's a bit of a coin flip
for who will launch first. I wouldn't be surprised if they're within 3 months
of each other, both for the initial test and the first crewed test.

~~~
greglindahl
NASA says Boeing is behind. This press release is dated today:

[https://www.nasa.gov/feature/launch-dates-to-be-updated-
more...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/launch-dates-to-be-updated-more-
regularly-as-commercial-crew-flights-draw-nearer)

------
newswriter99
I'm curious as to whether Eric Berger (the reporter who wrote this piece) saw
the op-ed on the Houston Chronicle first (he worked for them before Ars) and
smelled something fishy.

The fact that the Chron used a screencap of Musk smoking that blunt to go
along with the anti-SpaceX op-ed is unbelievable. Letting a PR firm throw mud
at a client's competitor via a thinly-veiled op-ed is one thing, but helping
them by taking part in the propaganda machine to that extent is something else
entirely.

------
joering2
_It was a significant moment to see two of the most powerful women in
aerospace alongside one another—two fierce competitors coming together for the
good of the country._

Can someone explain me this line? What "good for the country" do they mean?

------
mLuby
Sounds like reasonably standard PR efforts for ULA. Seems like the news media
should have done a better job vetting their sources.

------
Rooster61
Seems like run-o-the-mill big corporation FUD to me, and not even particularly
well executed distribution of said FUD. Doesn't strike me as overly
newsworthy. Am I missing something here?

------
vl
But why fueling continues after crew has boarded? What is the technical
reason?

~~~
balfirevic
Crew boards while the rocket is empty, which makes it safe. After that, there
is launch escape system ready to take the crew to safety in case anything goes
wrong during the fueling or launch.

This is not considered less safe than fueling after the crew has boarded, and
NASA agrees.

------
dwringer
And yet somehow a company sharing its acronym with the name "Lying
Manipulative G's" is merely par for the course in today's world. "if you can't
beat em, join em!"

------
ejb99
If you just assume that about 100% of what you read on the internet, see on
the tv news, or read in a newspaper is bought and paid for by someone with a
economic interest in the topic, you'll probably be right about 90%+ of the
time.

~~~
cde-v
You're clearly a shill for the critical thinking lobby, GTFO.

------
thrower123
Musk seems to attract so, so many tinfoil hat type conspiracy theories. He's
veering into being almost a Hank Rearden caricature.

EDIT: The tinfoil bit was over the top, but he's such a lightning rod and
attracts so much criticism and persecution from the entrenched interests he is
trying to disrupt, that it starts to look like there is some shadowy cabal
trying to bring him down. I rather like the guy, we need some level of
technological optimism to counteract the gloom and doom that is ever present.

~~~
codeulike
A tin-foil hat isn't really required, you just need to RTFA: An article
critical of SpaceX has been repeatedly submitted to (and published in) 4
newspapers by a PR group called LMG who list Boeing as one of their major
customers. Boeing are SpaceX's only competitor in the commercial crew area.

~~~
octorian
Yet I somehow feel like the whole Commercial Crew contract wouldn't even exist
had SpaceX not paved the way.

Other space launch activities, however, have been getting their lunch eaten by
SpaceX. This is probably pissing off everyone who was comfortable with the old
approach, not just Boeing.

