
SpaceX cleared for US military launches - jamesmoss
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32894760
======
nraynaud
I like the old school dogma underlying the whole thing. Russia is bad, private
enterprise is good, the US wants to put weapons in space, and Michael Jackson
is rocking the world with Thriller.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>Russia is bad, private enterprise is good

Considering Putin is playing politics with space, namely limiting critical
RD-180 sales after the west criticized his illegal annexation of parts of
Ukraine, as well as funding and arming rebels who are purposely targeting
civilians, well, what exactly do you want us to say here? Engage in more
mindless political correctness? Sing kumbaya around the campfire as to not
offend Russiophile HN'ers?

Putin's Russia is bad. They're dishonest partners and the US should keep its
space policy under its national borders for sanity reasons. Look at the early
retirement of the ISS. Russia is taking its modules and leaving the project in
a few years, again as punishing the west for criticizing their illegal
annexations. Previous to this the ISS was thought to be a project with a
decade or two of service left.

Also, Putin's mismanagement of his economy means he just cut the Russian space
program by a third and what's left is good at flying Soviet-era Soyuz and
building Soviet era RD-180's but can't keep post-Soviet Proton-M's from
exploding. From a practical stand-point, ignoring everything else, we simply
don't need or want their tech now that the RD-180 based rockets are being made
redundant/replaced and Orion/Dragon flying astronauts in the next 3 or so
years.

~~~
nraynaud
the US invaded Iraq, and kill people everywhere in the world on a regular
basis too, overthrow governments, helps dictators and lie to people all the
time. Nobody gets ahead when you only look for scapegoats and with Manichaeism
as a policy.

We are bringing back the world into the 20st century, this will be a big
problem.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
That's fine, you are very welcome not to buy our rockets, iphones, software,
and processors if you want to protest our foreign policy. We're not buying
Putin's stuff, so don't buy ours.

I don't see a problem with this.

>overthrow governments

The middle east is migrating to democracy and has the least amount of
dictators in charge in my lifetime, thanks to US foreign policy. While I think
foriegn policy is hard to judge, annexing land Russia-style for "fuck you"
reasons is very different than overthrowing dictators murdering their people
and those people begging for US/NATO/UN intervention, which we sometimes
provide. The world tried non-interventionism and it got us WWII. Better the
US/NATO making these calls than autocratic powers with annexation agendas like
China or Russia.

~~~
ryanlol
>The middle east is migrating to democracy and has the least amount of
dictators in charge in my lifetime

How's that democracy working out in Libya and Syria?

Many (probably pretty much everyone actually familiar with the situation)
would argue that things were better under those dictators.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>How's that democracy working out in Libya and Syria?

How was India immediately after its colonial rule? Or South Korea after the
war?

Its incredible how people conveniently forget how long transition periods are
for societies that were previous non-democratic to a democratic one. Ten to
fifteen years from now it will be a very different picture. Migrating to a
democratic capatalistic economy is an incredible thing. GDP comparision
between North and South Korea below:

[http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/default/files/image...](http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/chart_content/Institutions%20Matter%20Real%20Per%20Capita%20GDP%20in%20North%20and%20South%20Korea.JPG)

It was rough for the South Koreans until the 1970s then its been all gravy.
They went from war ravage rural wasteland to the most envious economy in about
20 years.

~~~
foobarqux
There is no population on earth that has been grateful for "democracy bombs"
to have been dropped on them.

------
Fuxy
So really this is a more of necessity not to encourage competition.

They need a replacement for the Russian rocket engines and SpaceX is the only
good alternative.

~~~
dimitar
Competition is about alternatives - the Air Force could have just trusted the
Lockheed-Boeing venture to do it. F-35 comes to mind and not in a good way.

~~~
engi_nerd
I'm not seeing the connection to the F-35. I guess you know there was a
competition for the right to build the JSF. Both aircraft met all the
requirements for the competition. So can you please clarify?

~~~
pyre
The F-35 continuously overruns budgets and gets more and more money poured
into it. I think this is the what is being referred to.

~~~
engi_nerd
It has a history of overrunning budgets, yes, but the per-aircraft cost is
declining and should continue to decline. I thought parent might have been
referring to budget issues but I'm not really grasping how that's relevant.

~~~
ceejayoz
The per-aircraft cost is still 3x or more that of the F/A-18, and the costs of
operating it are also dramatically higher.
[http://breakingdefense.com/2014/09/gao-draft-
slams-f-35-on-u...](http://breakingdefense.com/2014/09/gao-draft-
slams-f-35-on-unaffordable-costs-8-8b-over-legacy-fighters/)

~~~
engi_nerd
[http://www.bga-aeroweb.com/Defense/F-18-Super-Hornet.html](http://www.bga-
aeroweb.com/Defense/F-18-Super-Hornet.html) F-18E/F: $65.3 million (flyaway
cost) or $80.7 million incl. support costs. You'll see a number of places
quoting slightly different per unit costs for an F-18E/F, but they cluster
around that figure. The cost of an F-35 in the latest LRIP lot (8) was as
follows:

[http://www.janes.com/article/46129/pentagon-
finalises-f-35-l...](http://www.janes.com/article/46129/pentagon-
finalises-f-35-lrip-8-contract) "The US buy is for 19 F-35A conventional take-
off and landing aircraft at USD94.8 million apiece; 6 F-35B short take-off and
landing aircraft for USD102 million each."

That does not include an F-135 engine for each jet, which is anywhere from $10
to $15 million depending on the variant.

So while the F-35 is more expensive than the F-18, I do not believe the
figures bear your "3x or more" assertion.

Also it's difficult to compare the operating costs of a fully mature aircraft
like the F-18 with the F-35, which is still being tested and developed. I
don't think that is an apples/apples comparison.

Disclaimer: all opinions my own, not those of my employer, etc.

~~~
ceejayoz
Sorry, I was going off F/A-18D unit costs from Wikipedia rather than the Super
Hornet. Still, ~2x the unit cost plus a 79% increase in support costs is
nothing to sneeze at.

~~~
engi_nerd
Well keep in mind that we are still in a low production rate situation.
Production will ramp up greatly in the next few years, driving costs down
further.

~~~
seanflyon
I'm pretty sure those costs are estimates based on a high production rate.

~~~
engi_nerd
The costs I gave are the costs as contracted for LRIP lot 8, which consists of
43 aircraft. There are two more LRIP batches after LRIP 8, and then full rate
production begins.

------
neolefty
I assume this is for the Falcon 9 especially; will they need to certify the
Falcon Heavy as well, and will it take as long as the F9 certification?

~~~
ohitsdom
Could be wrong, but I thought it was approving SpaceX as a company- evaluating
their methods and processes.

------
kaolinite
Is anyone else becoming a touch bothered by the large number of BBC news
articles that are being submitted to Hacker News? I love the BBC and BBC News
is - for the most part - very good. However, the articles on their website are
often lacking in detail and when talking about technology, they are often
wrong or show a misunderstanding on the behalf of the reporter. The BBC News
definitely has a place - I'm just not sure that it's on Hacker News.

I don't mind one or two articles - and I don't mind articles from mainstream
news publications - but there are a _lot_ of articles being published from the
BBC. Here's the past 24 hours:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=bbc&sort=byPopularity&prefix=f...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=bbc&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=last24h&type=story)

All of that said, they keep getting upvotes - so enough people clearly want
them on Hacker News.

~~~
ColinWright
Not necessarily statistically significant, but of the past 1000 articles
submitted:

    
    
          8 (bbc.co.uk)
          9 (techcrunch.com)
         10 (arstechnica.com)
         14 (nytimes.com)
         14 (theguardian.com)
         16 (washingtonpost.com)
         16 (youtube.com)
         18 (wsj.com)
         32 (medium.com)
         46 (github.com)
    

Of the past 10,000:

    
    
         40 (kickstarter.com)
         40 (reddit.com)
         40 (theatlantic.com)
         44 (forbes.com)
         46 (bloomberg.com)
         46 (securityaffairs.co)
         47 (theverge.com)
         56 (bbc.co.uk)
         62 (washingtonpost.com)
         68 (arstechnica.com)
         69 (bbc.com)
         70 (businessinsider.com)
         74 (wired.com)
         82 (wikipedia.org)
        102 (wsj.com)
        105 (theguardian.com)
        157 (nytimes.com)
        159 (techcrunch.com)
        163 (youtube.com)
        339 (medium.com)
        485 (github.com)
    

In case you're wondering, I have a file of all submissions listing ID, userid,
URL, and title. Then I did this:

    
    
        $ tail -n 10000 records   \
            | gawk '{print $NF}'  \
            | sort                \
            | uniq -c             \
            | sort -n             \
            | grep -n .           \
            | tac                 \
            | head -21

~~~
kaolinite
Wow, thanks Colin - really cool information. Where do you get the contents of
'records' from? Do you have a script that crawls occasionally?

If we merge bbc.com and bbc.co.uk, we end up with 125 / 10,000. I suppose that
isn't that many compared to others, but it's still higher than I think it
should be. ArsTechnica (which often runs the same articles, such as this
SpaceX one) only has 68 / 10,000 and the articles are written with a lot more
technical detail.

Nevertheless, I'm not really sure what can be done about it. We can't ban the
BBC from HN, as with BuzzFeed, because that's over the top - there's some good
content. A nice solution might be to remind people, on the submission page,
that it's better to go to the source - or at least a good, technical write-up
- rather than a news post that is written for the general public.

~~~
ColinWright

      > Where do you get the contents of 'records' from?
    

I download the "newest" and "news" pages every 15 minutes or so, then collate
the data.

    
    
      > If we merge bbc.com and bbc.co.uk, we
      > end up with 125 / 10,000.  I suppose
      > that isn't that many compared to others,
    

It's less than some, but not as many as, say, nytimes.com or techcrunch.com.
But it's a major news site, so I'm not surprised people read it and go "Oh,
that's interesting, I'll click the HN bookmarklet and submit it."

    
    
      > ... still higher than I think it should be.
    

What do you think it "should be?"

    
    
      > A nice solution might be to remind people,
      > ... that it's better to go to the source ...
    

I personally find it useful to read a non-technical overview, and then if
interested, go and find the technical version. Often the article with
technical details borders on unreadable.

------
shiggerino
What exactly are the national security implications of using Russian engines?
That it will combine and burn fuel and oxidizer like a stinking, dirty commie?

~~~
sparky_z
[http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/15/world/the-bugged-
embassy-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/15/world/the-bugged-embassy-case-
what-went-wrong.html)

It's not wise to trust Russian-built anything, especially with diplomatic
relations in their current state. Just like how foreign intelligence services
shouldn't trust American-built computers.

What could go wrong? I'm not sure. But why make your attack surface larger
than it has to be?

------
chinathrow
Welcome to the military/industrial complex. Something you can be really proud
of!

------
higherpurpose
I would've preferred if SpaceX didn't become a Defense contract. Now I'm
worried about military/NSA influence (in order to get these contracts)
spilling over into Elon Musk's satellite Internet business.

~~~
alexcroox
I see it more as using some of that outrageous budget on space tech advances,
relevant (old) image:
[http://f.cl.ly/items/1x2y2m1Q421H0B0g0Y1P/Screen%20Shot%2020...](http://f.cl.ly/items/1x2y2m1Q421H0B0g0Y1P/Screen%20Shot%202015-05-27%20at%2012.59.44.png)

------
wahsd
This seriously compromises the integrity of SpaceX.

Even if they were to only support "national security" there is absolutely zero
chance they can know whether they are actually supporting national security or
global surveillance and oppression of human rights.

What people don't realize is that we, SpaceX and Musk, are really no different
whatsoever than any of the companies that have been chided for "working with
the Nazis" or "supplying the Nazis". The US Government and military are
nothing remotely even close to "a force for good". A force for good does not
support totalitarian dictators, overthrow governments, spy and surveil their
"friends", assassinate scientists, support racist regimes, invade and collapse
societies leading to the formation of ISIS, use government powers to support
corporate private interests, shield, hide, and protect tax evaders, etc. The
dirty laundry list is looooong.

~~~
mikeash
There's no comparison. The US is not trying to conquer the world and the US is
not committing genocide.

Yes, the US government does lots of bad things. It also does lots of good
things. It's a vast collection of sometimes loosely affiliated organizations
with lots of competing interests and there's no reason to expect consistency.
But there's no sensible comparison to the Nazis.

~~~
shit_parade2
How many deaths constitute a genocide because hundreds of thousands of middle
eastern civilians have been killed during our 14 year war on Islam.

EDIT: down votes? Can't argue the truth so better to bury it.

~~~
mikeash
"Genocide is the systematic destruction of all or a significant part of a
racial, ethnic, religious or national group." From
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide)

There's no systematic destruction of any such group that I'm aware of. I won't
deny that lots of middle-eastern civilians have been killed, but it's not any
systematic attempt to eliminate them all, which means it's not genocide.
(Especially since a large proportion of those deaths are caused by internal
fighting which, while arguably the US's fault for going in without a plan for
how to deal with existing tensions, is not what genocide looks like, at all.)

~~~
shit_parade2
Much of the middle East is chaos and death. Millions have fled their homes,
museums and other priceless artifacts are destroyed or gone missing.

An entire generation is coming to age knowing only war. Sounds like systematic
destruction of a significant racial, religious, and national group to me.

Iraq as a country is dust, so too Libya, Syria is also soon to follow. Sounds
like genocide by your definition.

~~~
mikeash
Genocide is not "an entire generation is coming to age knowing only war." It's
more like "an entire generation is murdered."

These disruptions do not threaten the continued existence of the Arab people
or the Muslim faith. They do not threaten the continued existence of the
shared culture. And they are not _systematic_ i.e. done deliberately as part
of a methodical plan to wipe out these groups.

And just to be clear, because I know people love to misinterpret this stuff
whenever it's at all possible: the above is not in any way a defense of US
actions in the middle east, but merely an argument that these actions fall
into the broad category of "not genocide."

~~~
shit_parade2
Your definition includes nationality. Libya, Iraq, and Syria are essentially
gone.

I was never claiming the US has committed genocide, I simply asked how many
deaths do you need to define one. WWII killed 6 million Jews, were only about
an order of magnitude away and our current war has now gone on longer with no
end in sight.

EDIT: I'm using _your_ definition dude, I don't think it is genocide, yet, but
by your definition it certainly is.

~~~
mikeash
Your question is based on false premises because genocide isn't about raw
numbers. It's based on a number of other things which don't fit the situation
in the middle east.

How can you say "I was never claiming the US has committed genocide" while
simultaneously, just one sentence before, saying that these countries should
qualify?

------
throwaway12357
Somewhat ironic that Elon Musk's SpaceX whose ultimate goal is to make life
multi-planetary, is now collaborating with agents that may as well be
responsible for triggering a Kessler syndrome. Not to mention the fact their
business very much implies the termination of human life -- if for the greater
good that is left for discussion on a case by case basis.

~~~
datamingle
"their business very much implies the termination of human life" .. you are
assuming a perfect world where no other entity wants to harm human life. Also,
GPS satellites were created for the military. They are fundamental for our
daily lives around the world now.

~~~
stefantalpalaru
Don't forget how much better the GPS could have been without the military
putting the breaks on civilian uses and competitors:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_%28satellite_navigation...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_%28satellite_navigation%29#Tension_with_the_United_States)

~~~
datamingle
A free service to the world, paid for by American tax payers out of the
military budget. Kind of hard to complain.

~~~
stefantalpalaru
I can complain because it prevented (or significantly delayed) much better
services through some arm twisting and corruption paid for by American tax
payers out of the military budget.

~~~
datamingle
Where is the corruption? Galileo (Euro planned system) was going to use the
same frequency as GPS. So, during conflict areas the US could not jam Galileo
without also affecting GPS. So the US military probably made plans on
destroying satellites if it was determined that the enemy was using Galileo.

The Euro group decided instead to use another frequency than the GPS
frequency. Now....

"Galileo will start offering first services from 2015.[11] Full completion of
the 30-satellite Galileo system (24 operational and 6 active spares) is
expected by 2020."

I fail to see any corruption.

~~~
stefantalpalaru
A different frequency means that all the existing GPS hardware won't work with
the new network.

> I fail to see any corruption.

[http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/wikileaksdokumenter/221020...](http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/wikileaksdokumenter/22102009-OHB-
SYSTEM-CEO-CALLS-GALILEO-A-WASTE-OF-GERMAN-TAX-PAYER-MONEY-5106942.html)

[http://www.itworld.com/article/2792924/data-
center/secret-u-...](http://www.itworld.com/article/2792924/data-
center/secret-u-s--letter-could-spell-death-for-galileo.html)

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/dec/08/world.internationa...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/dec/08/world.internationaleducationnews)

[http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1145904](http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1145904)

~~~
datamingle
Yes, if you want to use a new network operator you would need to purchase new
hardware for it. That happens all the time everywhere. I don't see the big
problem.

All of those links do not point to any corruption. Budget overruns that are
usual with large govt. contracts. And other links with hard negotiations with
US officials over the already resolved issue with Galileo wanting to use the
same frequency. They have already moved on to use another frequency.

~~~
stefantalpalaru
> All of those links do not point to any corruption.

What, you think the CEO of a company benefiting from a project would go
badmouth it to the project's enemies without any incentive? The guy was sacked
the minute that embassy cable came out: [http://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-12212525](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-12212525)

Why do you think that the disapproval of the US Deputy Secretary of Defense is
enough to almost kill a EU project? Those sons of bitches had our sons of
bitches by their short and curlies. And it's not for any military alliance
reason, because the US doesn't have allies - only enemies it kind of
tolerates.

Read those links, they paint a pretty clear picture.

~~~
datamingle
badmouth? Seems like he was saying what he truly felt without being biased
because his company benefits. Actually being truthful against his own
company's interests. I read all the links.

> quoted the OHB-System chief as saying, "I think Galileo is a stupid idea
> that primarily serves French interests", and, in particular, French military
> interests. Berry Smutny denied making the comments attributed to him in the
> US cable. Mr Smutny was further reported to say that Galileo was "doomed for
> failure" or would "have to undergo drastic scalebacks for survival".

Saying the government project won't be on budget and not efficient. Over
budget and needing scale backs to be affordable is par for course for most
government contracts. These links are benign nothing unusual, nothing special.

