Commercial Crew - Information release DISCUSSION thread

[Rocket Science]

It's not a mystery what happened after touchdown. I'm glad SNC isn't releasing the juicy disaster footage.

It looks like some people are treating space travel as NASCAR: going mostly to watch the destruction...

And make sure they have multiple angles in the footage... 

[Lars_J]

Sometimes I wonder what the ultimate goal is, what people are truly asking for.

Ed early in the thread (or the other thread) posted an example video of the first drop test of Enterprise. But was all data collected in that test made public at the time, even though it was a NASA project? No. But we got to see a video... So I guess that makes it OK? That's enough to satisfy our curiosity? Just a video?

Sometimes I do wonder if (as Robotbeat pointed out) we are just dealing with a very superficial NASCAR "oh boy I hope I get to see it" mentality. 

[eeergo]

Your agreement is neither requested nor required.

Not believing I'm *entitled* to, but just believing it's the right course of action.

They disagree, and it's their video.

Well, since you appear to be pretty bright in other threads, I will assume you're deliberately refusing to discuss the more far-reaching arguments that me and others have brought forward in this thread about the ethical implications of this lack of openness.

Very well, but I see that as quite a simplistic reasoning that, fortunately, society as a whole doesn't appear to agree with, or otherwise private enterprises would be getting away with much more than they already do.

It's not a mystery what happened after touchdown. I'm glad SNC isn't releasing the juicy disaster footage.

It looks like some people are treating space travel as NASCAR: going mostly to watch the destruction...

Not at all. The argumentations are there to read, I would ask you not to reduce them to "morbid interest".

[QuantumG]

Well, since you appear to be pretty bright in other threads, I will assume you're deliberately refusing to discuss the more far-reaching arguments that me and others have brought forward in this thread about the ethical implications of this lack of openness.

.. or I simply don't think there are any ethical implications. So far you've failed to present arguments for any.

Very well, but I see that as quite a simplistic reasoning that, fortunately, society as a whole doesn't appear to agree with, or otherwise private enterprises would be getting away with much more than they already do.

Do tell.

Here's an idea, why don't you go start your own company and run it with your ethical openness? See how far you get.

[eeergo]

.. or I simply don't think there are any ethical implications. So far you've failed to present arguments for any.

Well, if these (just to pick a few) aren't valid arguments for ethical implications...
(shortened for brevity, in context they read much better)

[...]just releasing the bare minimum the contract stipulates, or more than that but contorted to suit corporate interests, is quite a selfish way to run high-profile programs such as these, more so when they are majoritarily funded by public money.

We are talking about showing an honest, balanced summary of their progress, not their production secrets or technical specifications[...]

Indeed, PR spin can backfire just as easily as it can lead to benefitial results for said company. [...]
I really don't think this secretive, tergiversing behaviour from private enterprises should be seen as something positive, or even neutral, much less when they have large public investment.

[...]see British Petroleum's situation in the Deepwater event - of course they would like to have kept everything in the dark, and of course they would have been within their right as long as they showed progress to responsible officials - but public pressure also counts). It's a matter of business ethics and openness towards the interested public, who also happens to be an investor.[...]

Complacency on narrowing information releases, especially coming from interested public such as people in this forum, will only lead to less openness, not more.

Capitalism doesn't come with hard commandments. You can just abide by the legalistic, there's-nothing-but-profits view (system I wouldn't want to live in) or see it as something with more hues.

[…] I feel in many cases here, if it was NASA withholding information, the situation suddenly wouldn't be so acceptable. […]

*quote author=edkyle99*

The difference is that now, for the first time, basic information is being withheld - a landing video censored - about a potential crew launch system. 
[...] If the majority is happy to object when someone calls for unleashing the horror of a video of an unmanned test vehicle flipping off a runway at speed, what other censoring will they demand when it comes to civil space exploration?  That is simply not the U.S. space program that I want to support.  If it is all subject to redaction, why bother?     

*quote author=ChrisWilson68*

1) Putting SNC's own interests above those of the country as a whole.  This might be understandable, but it's also perfectly reasonable for people to complain about this and dislike them for it.

2) Might actually not even been in SNC's own best interests because it annoys some people and blows a chance to earn goodwill.

-------

Here's an idea, why don't you go start your own company and run it with your ethical openness? See how far you get.

Since it's harder (in principle), this means balanced, honest and open releases should be avoided, and it's not something reasonable to ask for? Shouldn't goals be loftier? At least I would like to be a part of a world that aims towards that, not tergiversation for short-term profit.

By the way, if this treatment of information is a strategic diversion to avoid a short-term circumstance, I would be fine with it, as long as it eventually gets released in a reasonable timeframe. But I don't think this is the case - as hasn't been in the past.

[LouScheffer]

I worked in the semiconductor industry for many years, and folks were more than willing to talk about their failures.  By helping others in the field avoid the same mistake, you would increase the size of the overall pie.  The bigger pie would help you more than the incremental gain in reputation from concealing your mistake.

By this standard, the failure report is much more important than the video.  Anyone know if the plan to/are required to publish this?

[QuantumG]

Since it's harder (in principle), this means balanced, honest and open releases should be avoided, and it's not something reasonable to ask for? Shouldn't goals be loftier? At least I would like to be a part of a world that aims towards that, not tergiversation for short-term profit.

It's not "harder" to release a video of your vehicle flipping over and scraping down the runway so that it can be played on the six o'clock news and become the defining image of your program, if not your whole company, it's stupid.

By the way, if this treatment of information is a strategic diversion to avoid a short-term circumstance, I would be fine with it, as long as it eventually gets released in a reasonable timeframe. But I don't think this is the case - as hasn't been in the past.

What are you talking about? The "information" has been released already.

As I said, the video is nothing more than a courtesy - one which you're spitting back at them. For those of us who would like to continue receiving such courtesy your behavior is deplorable. When someone gives you a gift, you say thank you. You don't bag them for leaving out the part which makes them look bad to people who don't know better.. and those who should.

[Chris Bergin]

I think some people are still losing focus on what this test was all about. It was not a test of the landing gear, it was a test of the ETA's ability to fly and approach.

If the video was released, the crashy part would be the only segment shown in the mass media and Joe Public would be saying "Ooopsee! That went really badly!"

That reaction would be wrong, per the milestones of what this flight was actually about.

As space flight fans (which the vast majority of us are here, as we're a space flight specific site), we all desperately want to see commercial crew be successful, regardless of what vehicle ends up being selected. If not seeing that video released helps that goal, by nature of it removing a negative image of what is a good program, then that's more than fine by me.

[Paul Howard]

I think some people are still losing focus on what this test was all about. It was not a test of the landing gear, it was a test of the ETA's ability to fly and approach.

If the video was released, the crashy part would be the only segment shown in the mass media and Joe Public would be saying "Ooopsee! That went really badly!"

That reaction would be wrong, per the milestones of what this flight was actually about.

As space flight fans (which the vast majority of us are here, as we're a space flight specific site), we all desperately want to see commercial crew be successful, regardless of what vehicle ends up being selected. If not seeing that video released helps that goal, by nature of it removing a negative image of what is a good program, then that's more than fine by me.

Sorry, but if you have the video, and I suspect you do, then it's your job as a journalist to publish. I'll even join L2 if you put it there as that's worth paying for.

[Jim]

Sorry, but if you have the video, and I suspect you do, then it's your job as a journalist to publish. I'll even join L2 if you put it there as that's worth paying for.

That is simply not true.  Chris has no obligation to publish it and has withheld other similar videos in the past

[Chris Bergin]

I think some people are still losing focus on what this test was all about. It was not a test of the landing gear, it was a test of the ETA's ability to fly and approach.

If the video was released, the crashy part would be the only segment shown in the mass media and Joe Public would be saying "Ooopsee! That went really badly!"

That reaction would be wrong, per the milestones of what this flight was actually about.

As space flight fans (which the vast majority of us are here, as we're a space flight specific site), we all desperately want to see commercial crew be successful, regardless of what vehicle ends up being selected. If not seeing that video released helps that goal, by nature of it removing a negative image of what is a good program, then that's more than fine by me.

Sorry, but if you have the video, and I suspect you do, then it's your job as a journalist to publish. I'll even join L2 if you put it there as that's worth paying for.

Ok, so I'm pretty much on a 24 hour day (with naps ) and half way through an Orion article, but I've got to address this one and address it right now - because there's so many things wrong with that post.....

Firstly, it's my job to report news. When I report news it goes through the obvious process of fact checking, which includes viability to publish. There's several branches on that particular tree, most of which - especially when you're your own editor - are down to your own principles.

Principles aren't in a handbook or a manual, most of them come from experience, personal attitude and how you were trained. A lot of writers will tell you their first editor was pretty much their teacher, with my first editor being an old school, hard nosed editor (mass media too), who drummed it into my head on the importance of responsibility. "Loose talk costs lives" was his favorite saying.

Now I'm never going to be one of the top reporters for space flight news and I'm certainly not going to win any awards for writing style, but I've got a large audience as we tend to publish interesting - and different to what's already out there - articles, along with building a writer pool that has brought a lot of young talent into the mix. One of our main angles is we care about the vehicles....heck, we call half of them "shes" as if they are alive (orbiters were ) but we also care about the engineers and techs who work on them.

Read my post above about why I agree the video shouldn't be shown and tell me if you think I'd be doing "the right thing" by then publishing additional footage for the sake of a scoop? Not only would I damage SNC, I'd risk throwing away all relationships with the companies that we've been building for years....and heck, someone might even lose their career over it! I'm simply not going to ever risk that knowingly and no scoop is worth potential damage to a company I've covering! (PS I don't have an uploadable version of the video, but you can bet if I was BSing about the above, it would not be too hard to change that).

This isn't some SNC group hug. I was actually very annoyed with them over a non response earlier in the year, so this isn't back scratching, this is about sticking to editorial principles - which we've done a number of times, including turning down an ad deal that would have paid for the servers for a full year, given it had editorial caveats.

And per "I'd join L2 for that". We're not selling content here. I know, some people will join L2 for things we have in there, but the absolute founding principle of L2 is for people to support the site's costs and in return gain access to a ringfenced area that has something like 6,000gbs of content in there, which we'd never be able to allow site wide access to, otherwise the site would cost too much money to keep up in bandwidth etc.

I could go on, but it's late and I've got to get back to the Orion article.

#annoyed

[spectre9]

I don't like the implication that private companies working on NASA programs don't have to follow national space policy.

[Lars_J]

I don't like the implication that private companies working on NASA programs don't have to follow national space policy.

It's pretty amazing to see how people think that information is flowing freely just because they get to see a video of something.

[zodiacchris]

As this appears to be a ranting and raving thread, I'll add my five cents worth:

If they don't want to publish it, it is SNC's right not to. Their craft, their test, their mishap! We know the test article flared, touched down and then either flipped or rolled when swerving off the runway. Some bits fell off and others got bend, it can be rebuilt. So what if you can't see it on video? Go on YouTube and you will be able to see crashes to your hearts desire, if you can stomach that...

Just because the government does put money into the vehicle development doesn't mean it needs to be shown, NASA doesn't show everything and other agencies like the NSA are known to be rather frakked of if somebody goes public with their tax paid information.

I respect Chris for keeping a good balance between reporting and confidentiality, and that he doesn't get swayed by this childish 'But I want, want, want to see the video, I am deprived of my rights as taxpayer'.

Get a life guys! 

[ChrisWilson68]

As this appears to be a ranting and raving thread, I'll add my five cents worth:

this childish 'But I want, want, want to see the video, I am deprived of my rights as taxpayer'.

Get a life guys!  ;D

Many people have been strongly expressing their opinions here, but so far most have managed to be respectful of people who disagree with them.  Let's not lose that.

[spectre9]

I don't like the implication that private companies working on NASA programs don't have to follow national space policy.

It's pretty amazing to see how people think that information is flowing freely just because they get to see a video of something.

So what's the difference between "NASA space policy" and "United States space policy". Does it apply to NASA or does it apply to all spaceflight?

Is it simply a recommendation when they say "Space operations should be conducted in
ways that emphasize openness and transparency..." and really it should have "but only if it's good, never show the bad" tagged on?

I'm not ranting and raving. I'm discussing real policy of the U.S. government here.

[woods170]

I don't like the implication that private companies working on NASA programs don't have to follow national space policy.

Then don't like it. But you better get used to it. Because that's how this particular program operates. That's how the rules for this program were laid down.

On another notion: some folks here have implied that SNC should show the crash because the program is funded with taxpayers dollars. That's a wrong assumption. The work done by the commercial crew competitors is only PARTIALLY funded with taxpayers dollars. These companies are also inputting very substantial amounts of their own money. This is the same MO as applied to the COTS program that resulted in CRS. An example was recently given by some president of some CRS company out of some west-coast US state. They inputted over 400 million US dollars of their own money and additionally received almost 370 million US dollars of funds from NASA.

[woods170]

I don't like the implication that private companies working on NASA programs don't have to follow national space policy.

It's pretty amazing to see how people think that information is flowing freely just because they get to see a video of something.

So what's the difference between "NASA space policy" and "United States space policy". Does it apply to NASA or does it apply to all spaceflight?

Is it simply a recommendation when they say "Space operations should be conducted in
ways that emphasize openness and transparency..." and really it should have "but only if it's good, never show the bad" tagged on?

I'm not ranting and raving. I'm discussing real policy of the U.S. government here.

Emphasis mine.
Please take your discussion to the space policy section of this forum. Because this thread is NOT about space policy but about Commercial Crew Information release.

[spectre9]

Then the whole thread needs to move.

Information release is a part of space policy.

I'm done anyway. I've stated my opinion or what things mean and I think SNC is in the wrong. It might be their right to do what they like but in my opinion they're going against the national space policy by withholding the full footage.

[Garrett]

... but in my opinion they're going against the national space policy by withholding the full footage.

and that would be the national space policy of which country? Spectre9-land?