Comment by sjsdaiuasgdia
4 days ago
What specific expertise does SpaceX have in the air traffic control realm? What was the bidding process like? Do other regions / nations have more advanced ATC than we do, and what can we learn from them? Is there a problem statement beyond "it has some old bits"? What are the specific goals?
Just feels like corruption, tbh.
> Just feels like corruption, tbh.
If a democrat did this, it would (rightly!) be seen as a front-page scandal on the scale of Teapot Dome if not worse.
...it's literally seen as a front-page scandal on HN and the linked source though.
Where is the outrage from the one group that can actually do anything about this: Republican members of congress and Republican senators?
There's already been a handful of impeachment-level events, such as the blatant quid pro quo of the Adams corruption charges dismissal which resulted in a series of DoJ resignations reminiscent of the Saturday Night Massacre. You know, a critical event that shifted public and Republican opinion of Nixon, leading to his resignation under the threat of impeachment.
Democratic congresspeople and senators can't do much without at least some of their Republican colleagues standing up to the bullies currently running the party.
And no, Susan Collins' inevitable but ineffectual "concerns" isn't the kind of outrage I mean.
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I only found this thread by searching new and going back a couple pages
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This article isn't on the front page, it was flagged.
On page 3 now.
SpaceX has no experience with air traffic control. It's just more corruption. We definitely don't want a startup that "moves fast and breaks things" having anything to do with air traffic control.
Why is everyone assuming SpaceX is getting paid for this by the government? The article doesn't even say that SpaceX is getting paid by the govt for it, they just put it in the headline and use weasel words in the story to make people come up with assumptions that may not be true.
The govt can be paying those folks directly or Musk himself can be paying them like he did for some DOGE team members.
Great. Lets just have "someone" do "something" while they "might" get paid by "someone".
Sounds like the ideal government...
But isn't SpaceX money coming mostly from the government anyway? So still your pockets getting emptied, only over two extra hoops which each take their share as well. All this to bring the magic solution called software engineering because we all know how software consultants always save the business.
No it isn't. Most of their revenue comes from starlink and rocket launch services that they sell in open markets.
Significant improvement in cost and capabilities over competition that enabled SpaceX to capture so much of the market has massively driven prices down and certainly saved taxpayers a lot of money for the services.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...
SpaceX does get government grants of course like most companies. It's by far not most of their revenue though, and generally competitively available and tied to particular goals. Investing and supporting in high tech, high value industries like this is often a good thing and returns more than cost to the country, as it certainly has with SpaceX. So it's the opposite of pockets getting emptied.
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Because getting more money and power are what Elon is after and embedding his companies in the government is an effective way to do that.
Tesla stock roughly doubled following the election! That's obviously not because Trump is going to be a champion for electric vehicles and green energy, he couldn't be more hostile to them. Investors know that Elon is going to suck insane amounts of money out of the government with his new level of access and most of that will flow through his companies.
Like how, for example? Serious question.
If SpaceX has the best, most economical, and safest route to space, why would Nasa and DoD not use them? Who else is there? Blue Origin's not there yet; others are in the works but not there yet. SpaceX is proven; it does a good job and has brought manned space flight back to the U.S. Has nothing to do with whether Musk & his team are close to Trump or not.
More to the point, the DoGE audits are projected to save the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars, which should significantly reduce the deficit which is currently projected at two trillion dollars.
Even if we assume the worst, most absurd and political stance that Musk is in it for the money and influence, saving $500 billion or more is still worth it. And, in reality, Musk's political activity is costing Tesla a lot of sales; Tesla's sales numbers are in decline, actually.
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article didn't they they got the project and any project would take months/years even with the best and brightest on the project
> get a firsthand look at the current system, learn what air traffic controllers like and dislike about their current tools, and envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system
based on this they can come in to scope out a project and send it out for bidding
where have they indicated that they will open this up for bidding?
An article 3 months from now...
"According to Musk, the efficiencies gained by leveraging the exposure of the assessment team make SpaceX the only viable vendor. 'A bidding process to select the only possible applicant would be silly.'"
> What specific expertise does SpaceX have in the air traffic control realm?
None?
> What was the bidding process like?
What bidding process? Remember when it's the "special WH employee" hiring his own company that's all fine and dandy
> Is there a problem statement beyond "it has some old bits"? What are the specific goals?
Every system can be improved, but I think the current issues with ATC in the US are not of a technical nature per se
ATC is much more than controllers watching planes on radar screens
Also remember this is a system that has been continuously evolving since WWII pretty much (and possibly before) and that one of the recent "breaking backwards compatibility" was NDBs being decommissioned in the US (bit by bit)
> Remember when it's the "special WH employee" hiring his own company that's all fine and dandy
Source that SpaceX was hired for this? The article makes no such claims and has no sources saying that.
> Do other regions / nations have more advanced ATC
According to Trump, yes. This is what he said:
> When I land in my plane, privately, I use a system from another country because...I won't tell you what country... because the captain says this system is so bad, it's so obsolete, that we can't have that.
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2025/02/06...
I think the intro explaining that this is not true and Trump was most likely misunderstanding his pilot's comments about onboard electronics is the key bit of that article...
Fits in with the first term in which Trump baffled airline executives by assuring them that he'd help solve the problem with the airports giving them the wrong equipment[1], also based on apparently failing to understand an anecdote from his private pilot
There is actually a very long term project to modernise US ATC (less on safety grounds and more on congestion minimization grounds) it's even one in which theoretically a satellite constellation operator could have some involvement as a data provider. But but it's something of an understatement to suggest that this is unlikely to be advanced by an administration lead by someone who thinks he understands aviation based on misunderstanding his pilot and someone whose first foray into improving the FAA was to arbitrarily fire hundreds of FAA staff and whose main goal for the FAA is to deregulate space launches...
[1]https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/re...
> someone whose first foray into improving the FAA was to arbitrarily fire hundreds of FAA staff
400 non-ATC, non-safety related probationary new hires, out of 45,000.
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That article says Trump is confused.
> Trump ... seemed to mix up a plane’s onboard electronics system with the federal air traffic control system.
Because software developers have never worked in an unfamiliar domain, which necessitated interviewing the subject matter experts to gain perspective on their problems and needs.
History is absolutely replete with "technologists" underestimating the difficulty of transforming complex government systems. Health, education, why not add aviation safety to the list.
There is no more thought process than: "Elon smart and hard working. Government employees dumb and lazy (and also woke)"
Bidding process? Learn from other nations? Problem statement? Goals?
The problem statement is: I don't own this yet. And the goal is: I run everything now.
It IS blatant corruption. A foreign national is using his private enterprises to take over government agencies and is backed by a traitor who only cares about his own money and power.
If there ever was a more blatant episode of corruption it's what's going on in the US right now.
I agree with everything else you’ve written, but Musk is an American citizen, since a couple of decades.
He is also has a special Chinese status and large interests there. See for example https://newrepublic.com/article/191265/elon-musk-us-china-us...
How can anyone take this post seriously when it gets basic facts wrong.
People take Musk seriously and he gets basic facts wrong constantly
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https://imgur.com/gallery/doge-math-wow-very-bad-much-corrup...
Wait. So with a straight face, you're telling me that Musk - a non-elected billinaire - firing people who are investigating his companies, are totally fine?
Trump won in big part because he said he was going to bring Elon in to fix the government.
Just because you don't like Trump and Elon doesn't mean that democracy isn't working as intended.
Yes the people who were suing SpaceX for not hiring enough immigrants while SpaceX was also required to hire US citizens should be fired. This is what we voted for. If you don't like it you should support a candidate that doesn't focus on identity politics and win the next election, then that candidate can focus on lawsuits and regulations against the greatest innovator alive.
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If things felt corrupt before, why not improve the processes? Why keep doing the same but with the companies the administration in turn likes the best?
Removing the process is the improvement. This is what we voted for. Less processes not more and actual results.
Ask ChatGPT to compare and contrast Kamala Harris's effectiveness as "broadband Tzar" as compared to SpaceX Starlink.
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Trump hands over government services to his biggest donor with zero accountability, transparency, and oversight. That is not corruption? What an Orwellian world.
SpaceX bid and won projects. Did they win via corruption as well?
Reread everything and cross out through names and see if you feel the sams.
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What specific expertise does SpaceX have in the air traffic control realm?
Building software which respect to probabilistic risk analysis. This includes techniques such as abstract interpretation and theorem for for the logic of dynamical system etc. I guess spacex expertise in these realm is quite advanced and they do something useful.
So in other words, you don't really know.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150904-how-spacex-and-b...
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