Comment by dotancohen
6 days ago
It also took SpaceX some time to figure out how to communicate scrubs to the viewers. I think they guy's name was Inspruker who did a really good job of keeping us up to date even when he was lacking official information. This was back before they were landing the rockets, when we'd wait literally months between Falcon launches.
So SpaceX has had a decade of figuring out what, and how, to inform the viewers. Blue Origin might not be comfortable with that yet.
SpaceX still insists on being cagey too. I watched a launch a while back where the center stage failed to land itself, and the hosts pretty obviously were instructed to beat around the bush and pretend nothing was wrong ("A telemetry failure" as you could see it in the video footage belly flopping into the ground) and do literally anything other than admit the center stage had a minor failure that resulted in it's loss. Like it's not even a big deal, the boosters were right then having a picture perfect landing.
But a profit driven company cannot be honest about anything ever. Honesty is never as profitable as being extremely controlling about the information you share.
I consider this a huge negative of the privatisation of space. When the Shuttle killed people, we could expect great transparency and a general peeling back of the curtain. The public got to learn that their government agency was suffering from management failures by loser managers unwilling to face reality.
We will not get that same transparency when a SpaceX rocket inevitably kills someone. Especially with Musk hanging around the oval office.