Author Topic: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX  (Read 29862 times)

Offline Jim

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #40 on: 07/02/2015 03:38 pm »
Also, if somebody is fan of spaceflight because Spacex and not before, means they aren't really fans of spaceflight. 

Offline starsilk

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #41 on: 07/02/2015 04:28 pm »
Also, if somebody is fan of spaceflight because Spacex and not before, means they aren't really fans of spaceflight.

that's a pretty mean statement Jim.

just because SpaceX is what got someone interested in 'space', doesn't mean they're 'not really fans of spaceflight'. how people get interested in something does not determine whether they are a 'true fan' or not.

even you must have noticed that there is a lot more public interest in space than there was say 10 years ago, and a big chunk of that interest is down to SpaceX. and that's good for all of us 'true fans', because government $$$ don't get reallocated elsewhere.

Offline miscme

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #42 on: 07/02/2015 04:41 pm »
Also, if somebody is fan of spaceflight because Spacex and not before, means they aren't really fans of spaceflight.

I'm going to make my first post and refute that statement. After watching a SpaceX video on youtube I became very excited at the idea of actually sending humans to Mars in my lifetime. Trying to learn more about SpaceX led me to this forum which I read daily and though discussions here I follow many other aspects of spaceflight.


Offline Jim

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #43 on: 07/02/2015 04:49 pm »
Rovers and landers on Mars was already happening.  Much more interesting than a cargo mission to ISS or a stage landing.  Can watch videos of DC-X to see something similar.

And I don't buy the Mars in mine or anybody's lifetime.
« Last Edit: 07/02/2015 04:51 pm by Jim »

Offline te_atl

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #44 on: 07/02/2015 04:54 pm »
Also, if somebody is fan of spaceflight because Spacex and not before, means they aren't really fans of spaceflight.

I know a number of people who were disinterested in all aspects of spaceflight until SpaceX got them excited.  Now they will talk about New Horizons, Rosetta and ISS.  They follow the commercial crew and commercial cargo news.  Before they couldn't tell you anything about Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, or the Shuttle, but increasingly they are learning more about them.   I'd definitely call them fans of spaceflight now, and SpaceX got them started.

Perhaps you meant "If somebody claims they are a fan of spaceflight and only follow SpaceX, then they aren't really fans of spaceflight."

Offline sittingduck

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #45 on: 07/02/2015 05:09 pm »
Quote
Also, if somebody is fan of spaceflight because Spacex and not before, means they aren't really fans of spaceflight.

I'm not sure that's fair to say Jim.  It also happens to be an attitude regularly ascribed to musical "hipsters", people who look down upon other fans of their favorite performer because they only became fans after a surge in popularity.  Think of spaceflight as the band and SpaceX as their new hit single.  There is a reason most people are very hostile towards that attitude, because they find it pretentious and needlessly mean-spirited.

SpaceX has a media presence unlike any other launch service provider or space agency.  They've managed to present spaceflight in a way that makes it appear exactly as "cool" as it really is.  NASA on the other hand needs to go out of their way to hamfistedly generate "inspiration" rather than just doing the spaceflight that naturally inspires.

Quote
Rovers and landers on Mars was already happening.  Much more interesting than a cargo mission to ISS or a stage landing.  Can watch videos of DC-X to see something similar.

Everyone's heard about Mars landers because they've been landing at a fairly regular pace since 1997.  They *haven't* been performing rocket landings on boats with such regularity in that time period.  Try to understand how the uninitiated mind approaches these things that to them may already seem routine (personally Mars landers will always be cooler than landing rockets, but that's just me).

There was no comparable hype for DC-X because there was no Youtube/Twitter or associated flamboyant persona like Mr.Musk and it quickly disappeared as well. 
« Last Edit: 07/02/2015 07:05 pm by sittingduck »

Offline dcporter

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #46 on: 07/02/2015 05:21 pm »
I've been interested in space for years. SpaceX got me into rocket launches.

Offline Jim

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #47 on: 07/02/2015 06:41 pm »
I'm not sure that's fair to say Jim.  It also happens to be an attitude regularly ascribed to musical "hipsters", people who look down upon other fans of their favorite performer because they only became fans after a surge in popularity.  Think of spaceflight as the band and SpaceX as their new hit single. 


That is usually when the bands go downhill.  They were better when they were lean and mean.

I will fully admit I am a band snob (hipster has a different connotation for me).  I lost interest in many bands when they went mainstream.
« Last Edit: 07/02/2015 06:45 pm by Jim »

Offline wolfpack

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #48 on: 07/02/2015 06:55 pm »
Spacex Q score is higher that ULA or OSC's.

Perhaps ULA should get in on the microbrew craze. I'll bet those unused Delta II tanks could ferment quite a bit. That would get Joe's attention! :)

Offline CuddlyRocket

Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #49 on: 07/02/2015 07:01 pm »
Also, if somebody is fan of spaceflight because Spacex and not before, means they aren't really fans of spaceflight. 

Presumably you're not including those who were too young to become fans of spaceflight before SpaceX as the company predates them or at least their awareness! Say, anybody under 16.

Offline Dudely

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #50 on: 07/02/2015 07:19 pm »
I'm not sure that's fair to say Jim.  It also happens to be an attitude regularly ascribed to musical "hipsters", people who look down upon other fans of their favorite performer because they only became fans after a surge in popularity.  Think of spaceflight as the band and SpaceX as their new hit single. 


That is usually when the bands go downhill.  They were better when they were lean and mean.

I will fully admit I am a band snob (hipster has a different connotation for me).  I lost interest in many bands when they went mainstream.

Yeah this explains a LOT.

I especially love the linguistic gymnastics. "band snob" Is a term used by exactly 5 people, all of them hipsters.

Your confirmation bias is showing.



And just so it can't be said I didn't add anything to the discussion:

I was sorta into space stuff. But I was never interested enough to do something like watch a space shuttle flight live. Why? Because it's freaking boring and I don't have any time for that. College, marriage, kids, job; I just don't care if a government organization is sending up a new segment of some space station, or a new space telescope, even if I might be really interested in space, because hauling stuff into orbit is lame. I will marvel over the science done on the space station once it is there or the pictures sent back from the space telescope because I really am interested but I have no interest in following the nuts and bolts of how it all gets up there.

With SpaceX it is different. If your job is to put a satellite into orbit and use it to take cool pictures than the interesting part is always going to be the cool pictures. But if your job is JUST to put the satellite into orbit, and you are doing it with some sort of unique flair (the rockets has fins, it lands itself, the company is owned by some weird geek) then so long as you don't actively make it difficult for people to find information and follow what's going on then that's exactly what they are going to do.

Living organisms are attracted to novelty. The rise of SpaceX is no different. SpaceX is novel, so people pay attention. Humans respond to precedence and superlative. Loud noises and fire and all the other "cool" bits people think of when they think of rockets (and in this way SpaceX is no different than anyone else) have little effect on the actual number of eyeballs that look at it- it's all about novelty (and availability; Blue origins makes it difficult, so they have less fans as a result even though they are doing basically the same thing as SpaceX).

Offline mme

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #51 on: 07/02/2015 08:45 pm »
I'm not sure that's fair to say Jim.  It also happens to be an attitude regularly ascribed to musical "hipsters", people who look down upon other fans of their favorite performer because they only became fans after a surge in popularity.  Think of spaceflight as the band and SpaceX as their new hit single. 


That is usually when the bands go downhill.  They were better when they were lean and mean.

I will fully admit I am a band snob (hipster has a different connotation for me).  I lost interest in many bands when they went mainstream.
Did you happen to run into Maynard James Keenan in the early 90s?  Sometime between the release of Undertow and Ænima?
« Last Edit: 07/02/2015 08:53 pm by mme »
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Offline Jim

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #52 on: 07/02/2015 08:46 pm »
"band snob" Is a term used by exactly 5 people, all of them hipsters.


I am too old to be a hipster, not to mention that it wasn't my type of lifestyle.  The 70's Show described my adolescence closely and I lived in LA in the 80's and was more into metal and hair band scene but without the hair (I was in the USAF)
« Last Edit: 07/02/2015 08:46 pm by Jim »

Offline Llian Rhydderch

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #53 on: 07/03/2015 12:51 am »
Data on Google Ngram viewer shows that as of 2008, SpaceX had not achieved a popularity above the use of the word FORTRAN.  Very likely SpaceX is more frequently used in 2015.

Interesting.  Google ngram data is awesome but a bit old (currently, 7 years ago more) and only looks at word uses in published books.  So it misses a bit of the on-the-internet news cycle word usage.

Having said that, the use of the word "SpaceX" was beating "YouTube" through 2008, and both were just a few years old then.
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Offline philw1776

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #54 on: 07/03/2015 01:51 am »

I am too old to be a hipster, not to mention that it wasn't my type of lifestyle.  The 70's Show described my adolescence closely and I lived in LA in the 80's and was more into metal and hair band scene but without the hair (I was in the USAF)

Let me be the first to welcome you newbies to spaceflight
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Offline Galactic Penguin SST

Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #55 on: 07/03/2015 02:29 am »
I don't think this is the right place to continue pop band discussions - the party is still in action next door even with the fireworks so please move your feet to there if you like.  ;)
Astronomy & spaceflight geek penguin. In a relationship w/ Space Shuttle Discovery. Current Priority: Chasing the Chinese Spaceflight Wonder Egg & A Certain Chinese Mars Rover

Offline john smith 19

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #56 on: 07/03/2015 07:38 am »
How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX?
Don't know.

So I'd find out by doing some kind of poll (with some basic questions  on age and sex to see how the story changes) listing various statements and asking them a)Do they think a statement is true or false and b) Do they know the statement is true or false or are they guessing.

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Offline jzjzjzj

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #57 on: 07/03/2015 01:52 pm »
Ok we can rail against technical illiteracy and innumeracy media, the government, the public, but it is within our power to do something about it too. As was done with the crowd sourced video repair, we could, as a group use NSF to co-ordinate a campaign to provide mainstream media with a more accurate picture of what is going on. This would have to be done without rancour or derision. It needs to be done in 3 different streams for main stream media:

1) corrections to the authors and editorial staff of articles, this must be diplomatic but firm, and it must be as full of fact as possible and carefully constructed to be readable and understandable based on the level of writing of the original article;

2) to the management of the particular media outlet, less priority on detail and diplomacy, high level of writing skills, high level of urgency on the accuracy needed;

3) wherever a media outlet allows comments careful presentation of accurate data in the comments, here diplomacy with respect to the original articles author, and diplomatic but firm responses to the others commenting, exceptional language skills and simple but technically accurate corrections that are neither overly verbose or terse.

There are a few reasons this should be a co-ordinated effort, besides keeping from wasting effort we could in fact work on sharing writing resources however the major reason is to achieve an even coverage of the media outlets instead of overwhelming some (which might even work against our purposes making them think their misinformation was more popular than accurate information) and skipping others.

Is there any platform these kind of activities could be organized with? Since different people have different strengths, I can't see the work being done by scattered individuals.

IMO, the platform should be able to:
- track specific articles/comments (maybe just a simple user-defined list);
- host the unpublished effort (comments, emails etc.);
- make collaboration easy (think GitHub, Google Docs?);
- group users into roles (locating, writing, editing, publishing etc.);
- allow (encourage) for a rapid life-time of an "issue".

Basically, what I have in mind is similar to what certain governments/organizations do to "troll" the internet. Highly distributed troll farm with the hats being white.
« Last Edit: 07/03/2015 01:58 pm by jzjzjzj »

Offline kerogre256

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #58 on: 07/03/2015 02:08 pm »
You can notice how mass media are completely useless as source of information when they start talking in field in which you are well informed, there is no reason to believe that "any" information presented in mass media are better quality.

Offline The Amazing Catstronaut

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Re: How Joe Average Perceives SpaceX
« Reply #59 on: 07/03/2015 02:08 pm »

And I don't buy the Mars in mine or anybody's lifetime.

A tad drastic. The future is infinite and we've barely had a hundred years of air travel, let alone space travel. Look at the incredible things we have achieved in the tens of thousands of years of water travel. To say Mars will never happen in "anybody's" lifetime is to predict the extinction of humanity before humans set foot on Mars, which is a little impractical as we have past experience of landing multiple terrestrial objects on Mars, and zero experience of rendering ourselves extinct. :p

Edit:

Also, if somebody is fan of spaceflight because Spacex and not before, means they aren't really fans of spaceflight.

A bit dismissive of my point, Jim, oww! :)


The two space missions which I find personally interesting are Apollo 13 and Soyuz T-13. Mathematically, they were not the most complicated space missions executed ever and the actual trajectories involved were rather dull, so from that angle you could find some meat for your argument in calling me not a "real" fan of spaceflight. However, that is not what Apollo 13 and Soyuz T-13 are remembered for, and why they are referenced near-constantly.

You will note both of those missions have nothing to do with SpaceX - there's not even a loose connection.

You may also note that SpaceX is a company which flies stuff into space, and thus an interest in SpaceX = an interest in spaceflight, whichever way you shake it.

Edit edit:

I was drawn into spaceflight by a fascination with capitalist philanthropy, private enterprise, aerodynamics and model rocketry. SpaceX enticed me into a wider fascination with aerospace because it showed me the parallels. Not a fan, my proverbial.

Edit edit edit: And as Joes go, I'm as average as they come. No engineering background.
« Last Edit: 07/03/2015 02:23 pm by The Amazing Catstronaut »
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