Commercial Crew - Information release DISCUSSION thread

[edkyle99]

Showing the crash would generate more publicity than not showing the crash.  There is no such thing as bad publicity.

Very, very... incorrect. Other already noted that even if this is true, it applies to celebrites only and nowhere else. Various examples given here were about successes achieved despite faliures, not helped by them.

So, nope. This claim is ludicrous.

There is scholarly research on this subject.  The following paper in the journal of marketing science, for example:

http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~sorensen/papers/Negative_Publicity.pdf

asked “Can negative publicity actually have a positive effect?”.  The authors found that while negative reviews of new books by well known authors hurt sales, bad reviews of books by unknown authors had the opposite effect.

SNC is a "new author" in this analogy.  The unseen crash video would be the "bad review" that would help the company - and its project - by increasing awareness of their very existence. 

 - Ed Kyle

[psloss]

asked “Can negative publicity actually have a positive effect?”.  The authors found that while negative reviews of new books by well known authors hurt sales, bad reviews of books by unknown authors had the opposite effect.

If that's the actual question, that's different than the claim there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Can negative publicity have a positive effect?

is different than

How often does negative publicity have a positive effect?

(Add Richie Incognito to the list of exceptions.)

[Elmar Moelzer]

SNC is a "new author" in this analogy. 

I don't see it that way.

[Lar]

SNC is a "new author" in this analogy. 

I don't see it that way.

Me either. This seems a particularly weak analogy to me.

[neilh]

SNC is a "new author" in this analogy. 

I don't see it that way.

Me either. This seems a particularly weak analogy to me.

It's also worth remembering that Dream Chaser is only one of a large number of products SNC is working on or currently sells.

[Elmar Moelzer]

It's also worth remembering that Dream Chaser is only one of a large number of products SNC is working on or currently sells.

Exactly!

[spectre9]

I agree with Ed.

Millions of people will only see Dream Chaser for the first time if the crash video was played on their nightly news.

Now it's likely those people will never know about it and it will die quietly anyway.

[kenny008]

Right.  Millions of people's first (and possibly only) exposure to Dream Chaser will be the "crash".  All they will remember from the media report is that NASA paid them millions of dollars for a crashed baby shuttle.  "NASA blows another wad of cash on a failed space program!"

Very few of them will understand the wonderful flight and the achievement it represents.  Only those of us that know better (and don't need to see the end of the video to understand the success) would see it for the success it was.

[brihath]

I agree with Ed.

Millions of people will only see Dream Chaser for the first time if the crash video was played on their nightly news.

Now it's likely those people will never know about it and it will die quietly anyway.

So what is the expectation if millions of people see the crash video?  Are they going to rise up and write their Senators and Representatives and tell them we really need Dream Chaser?  Not likely.  It would largely have entertainment value for a few moments in the 24 hour news cycle, and probably get lots of hits on Youtube, just as aircraft crash videos do.

I don't see public support as being a mechanism for Dream Chaser's success.  Success will be based upon how well it makes it through the test schedule and if it looks attractive enough from a cost and safety perspective to make it through the next down-select in NASA's eyes. 

Keeping the video out of the public eye probably has more value for SNC as it allows them to focus on the test results and not get distracted by an event that is only marginally related to the ability of Dream Chaser to perform its mission.

[Elmar Moelzer]

"NASA blows another wad of cash on a failed space program!"

Which is exactly how I expect certain senators to present the situation for their own political gain.

[JAC]

All of you kicking commercial companies and lauding NASA. Well do you remember the Apollo 1 fire? The Apollo 204 Accident Review Board "prohibited members of NASA, the launch crew and anyone connected to the Apollo program from discussing the accident with outsiders".
This was a NASA internal investigation and not a criminal investigation. NASA implemented a blackout. Read this:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1774&dat=19670131&id=bdgeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=0WUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4600,7524316

Further more, the Apollo 1 capsule where the accident happened still exist. Never seen it except in photos? No wonder, NASA have it in storage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1#Remains_of_CM-012

[manboy]

Right.  Millions of people's first (and possibly only) exposure to Dream Chaser will be the "crash".  All they will remember from the media report is that NASA paid them millions of dollars for a crashed baby shuttle.  "NASA blows another wad of cash on a failed space program!"

Very few of them will understand the wonderful flight and the achievement it represents.  Only those of us that know better (and don't need to see the end of the video to understand the success) would see it for the success it was.

Good point.

[edkyle99]

Only those of us that know better (and don't need to see the end of the video to understand the success) would see it for the success it was.

Sure.  As long as you define success as a flight that ends in a crash landing.

Or do you believe there was no crash because you haven't seen it?

 - Ed Kyle

[kenny008]

Of course it crashed. I'm not afraid to use the word. I do believe that it was a success. 100% success?  Nope.  Met almost all of its objectives with hardware and software that will be used in flight?  Probably.
Would seeing the "anomaly" change my opinion or yours?  I highly doubt it.

[woods170]

Well, I can see there was a clear need for this thread. Summary over the first six pages:
- It still is pretty much Ed's opinion versus those of the rest.
- "Flight was a failure" versus "Flight was mostly succesfull"
- "A crash is good publicity" versus "A crash is bad publicity"
- "SNC should release the crash footage" versus "SNC should not release the crash footage"

Carry on.

[Garrett]

The problem, as I see it, is that the line has been moved, and for suspect reasons.  The old NASA would not have been afraid to show what really happened to DreamChaser.  It would show the failure, then move on and celebrate the subsequent hard-earned successes. 

Ed, your comment above is in direct conflict with Jim's comment below:

This isn't new.  I dealt with this conops of PR for more than 20 years both as a contractor and as a govt employee.  Spacehab followed this MO and NASA commercial launches have been that way for longer.

How do you reconcile both points of view? Is Jim wrong/exaggerating? Or have you just not been aware of where the line has always been?
From reading this forum over the years, my impression is that the line has not moved, but rather that with the advent of multiple "NewSpace" companies in the last decade, the line has become a lot more obvious.

// End of my two cents

[LouScheffer]

When you adopt an 80% solution mentality, you arbitrarily create something I've entitled as "The Anti-Specification".  Although this document is never written and doesn't exist... if it did, it would be an informal/flexible document that tells you everything that you do not have to do. 

Sometimes this document *does* exist.  IBM credited part of the success of the 360 line of computers to this document.   The 360 was a computer family, and a program that ran on any model should run on any other model without changes.  That was the specification, and it told in detail what each instruction should do.

There was also an explicit anti-specification, which specified what operations did *not* need to be consistent across implementations.  For example, if your program divides by zero, what is left in the register is explicitly undefined.  If a string extends out of memory, you might or might not get an interrupt.  There is an instruction called "DIAGNOSE" to help diagnose the hardware, and it is explicitly allowed to return whatever results it wants.  And so on.  By explicitly allowing undefined result in these odd cases, the implementor of each model could implement the real specification more efficiently.

[AJW]

I may have missed the comparison, but SpaceX only released a photo of the CASSIOPE first stage taken moments before hitting the water and there wasn't this outpouring of demands to see the post-impact images.  Same arguments can be made that the water impact was outside the actual flight requirements. 

[edkyle99]

The problem, as I see it, is that the line has been moved, and for suspect reasons.  The old NASA would not have been afraid to show what really happened to DreamChaser.  It would show the failure, then move on and celebrate the subsequent hard-earned successes. 

Ed, your comment above is in direct conflict with Jim's comment below:

This isn't new.  I dealt with this conops of PR for more than 20 years both as a contractor and as a govt employee.  Spacehab followed this MO and NASA commercial launches have been that way for longer.

How do you reconcile both points of view? Is Jim wrong/exaggerating? Or have you just not been aware of where the line has always been?
From reading this forum over the years, my impression is that the line has not moved, but rather that with the advent of multiple "NewSpace" companies in the last decade, the line has become a lot more obvious.

// End of my two cents

The difference is that now, for the first time, basic information is being withheld - a landing video censored - about a potential crew launch system. 

But even when it comes to unmanned systems, didn't we see vivid video of the commercial - and even of the government - launch failures of the late 1990s?  Didn't we watch that foam hit that wing about 10,000 times?  Didn't we all have that ensuring conversation where we all asked the hard question about whether Shuttle should ever fly again, and then decide based on a wealth of information provided by an Agency that did not censor?

You have to understand that when I raise this question about the Dream Chaser censoring, it isn't just about Dream Chaser.  It is about every launch and landing and mission by every system and every provider in the future.  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?

 - Ed Kyle       

[QuantumG]

Please don't abuse the word "censor". They're not censoring anyone.