Elon a threat to national security?

[Tom]

They ran from Europe to new world, that worked out pretty good.
Space is our new world, our Lousiana purchase, our gold rush days.

Our destiny is to explore and expand.

[MargieRose]

Originally Posted by Tom

That opinion piece on Biden and SpaceEx is from Feb 2021.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2022/11/galaxy-31-32/

They just had a launch.

You are correct, and as I discovered, it was, apparently, a bad article.

I did some fact-checking myself and came across the following (https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservativ...mment/gptsq2h/):

Heart-Key
· 2 yr. ago

• The thing that the article states was cancelled (SN9 Hop) happened literally before the article was released.
• The total delay associated with the FAA review was ~4 days.
• The FAA review goes back to the SN8, which was in December, back when Trump was still in power.
• In general, a lot of dumb stuff.

To begin a brief explanation of the FAA SpaceX situation.

So with SN-8, SpaceX had to submit some analysis about the far field blast overpressure to get the waiver to launch which they skipped and launched SN8 on December 8. This led to the FAA reviewing their safety culture. This review hadn't finished up by the time that they wanted to hop SN9 (Jan 29), which led to a bit of minor conflict. It finished up by Feb 2, and the hop was later that day. So a delay of like 3-4 days with an issue that dates back to when Trump was still in power. Since then, SpaceX and FAA have been grooving well enough.

Now a more in depth analysis of the article.

The first part is alright if a bit hyperbolic.

"Beijing wants control of the vital orbits around the Earth"

You can't really control orbits practically speaking.

"Not only does China plan on beating the Americans to the Martian surface by the end of the decade"

"And as the ongoing race to Mars between the United States and China intensifies"

There is no race between China and US for Mars. Neither country (government wise) plans to send humans there for like at least 2 decades. Like China might consider going there in the 2040s. The closest thing we'll have to a race is Mars sample return, with both missions happening at probably the same time, but thats just science and a little bit of competition; it's not deciding fate of universe. And landing humans on Mars won't decide the contest for deep space.

"Sadly, the visionary goal of getting Americans to Mars first came crashing down when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which, under the Trump administration had allowed for SpaceX to conduct their important test flights, ordered Mr. Musk to cancel the Starship prototype test."

It was a 3-4 day delay. Getting to Mars is like a decade long project. It's insignificant and using terms like crashing down is just painful.

"It’s likely that the FAA’s decision to cancel the launch is part of a wider Biden administration effort undo the Trump administration’s vibrant space policy"

Trumps space policy has been solid and Biden hasn't messed with it really. He isn't trying to undo anything there.

"The “GameStonk” event... Because of Mr. Musk prestige and his vocal support for the Redditors who helped to take down Melvin Capital, it is possible that the Biden administration was punishing Mr. Musk by canceling the Starship launch at the last minute."

Yes, Biden got the FAA to delay the flight of a prototype Starship by 3-4 days to show him whose boss and that supporting Gamestop was crossing the line. I swear this article is satire.

There are points in the article I agree with. However the core of it, that Biden admin delayed SN9 hop for whatever reason is laughable and the fact that it was published is dumb. And the problem is people only read the headline and because space is an obscure subject, most people don't have the knowledge base to know wiser. So you get a bunch of people who read the headlines and are now convinced that Biden will result in the end of the space program.

To finish, here's an excerpt from Eric Bergers recently released book on SpaceX.

"Musk traveled to his South Texas rocket factory in mid-September 2019 to track progress of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle, the culmination of nearly two decades of effort to move humans from Earth to Mars. Weeks earlier, Starhopper soared into the clear skies above the coastal scrubland, located just this side of the Mexico border. And then, it very nearly crashed. Luckily, the Federal Aviation Administration had restricted the flight’s maximum altitude to five hundred feet, so when engineers lost control during Starhopper’s descent its landing legs merely crushed through the pad’s steel-reinforced concrete, rather than erupting into a ball of flame. Musk laughed at this thought. For much of SpaceX’s lifetime he has fought against regulators, always seeking to go faster, to push higher. “This time,” he quipped, “the FAA saved us.”"