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Comment by evil-olive | Hacker News Reader

with every other rocket launch livestream I've watched (SpaceX, NASA, Rocket Lab, etc) when there's a delay they would announce it explicitly.

instead, it was at T-18min, they spent a few minutes talking about how fancy the engines were, and then finish with "alright, with 35 minutes left on the countdown..."

edit: they did it again. 11 minutes, they've pretty clearly told the talking heads to vamp, so they're rambling about how cool the "rocket park" is (and how they had to relocate a bunch of turtles while building it) and meanwhile the countdown disappears for a few seconds then resets to 38 minutes.

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They really need to establish communications to let the viewers know why they are adding time to the clock.

Cynically, this feels like Corporate Messaging 101: don't ever admit that anything bad happened. Ignore it if you can. If you can't anymore, spin it into something positive at all costs. If it's bad news, be as vague and euphemistic as possible.

"An error occured. Please try again later"

"An unexpexted error..."

If you skimp on testing, errors are always unexpected.

Can't use the word "error" in corp speak. "Something unexpected happened." Or maybe just "Oops."

Sometimes this extreme spin just makes me angry, to be honest.

To be fair, SpaceX did/does(?) the same thing - they use pretty opaque messaging when things went wrong early on. And do stuff like deliberately not show explosion footage on the live stream.

They do sometimes give reasons for a stopped countdown such as "an issue with a valve" or "a boat in the wrong area".

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.

"if we're adding time to the clock, it means that the team thinks that there might be a possibility that they can sort it out"

Yeah it’s really taking their audience for granted. Not a good first look

You know what's a worse look: showing your viewers 1000s of little rockets parts. Looks cool perhaps, but doesn't inspire confidence either.

But damn it's annoying those delays

Audience? You mean all the space clients like Nasa, DoD and zillions of new space satellite vendors like IceEye etc? The public stream is nice to have but not critical.

I personally felt it was obvious when the countdown was reset. IMHO the show before countdown from 10s to zero is just filler.

They have some production value in the stream though, so it looks like they’re trying to make it appealing. It’s probably a recruitment tool for them.

Audience as in taxpayers perhaps.

Whether informing the public directly or indirectly by communicating with the press about the products they want public agencies to purchase isn't critical, but it could be important. Having a public that already warmly embraces your company, or at least is warmly embraced by those that might be vocal in support or not, could make some projects easier to sell vs. a public that is indifferent or even hostile.

There was never harm in positive publicity - even though I think the ”new space” operators targets commercial payloads foremost. Blue origin would not become Boeing but a logistical service provider, something like Maersk, chugging in the background.

Literal audience. It’s a public broadcast/stream with a director and host and production design. It’s a deliberate choice to include it as part of their venture. There is value in the positive public opinion of the launch and coverage.

The alternative is to not adjust the clock and let it run out and not launch at all then?

Do you really think that’s better?

I don’t.

The alternative is simply to adjust the clock and say why.

> The alternative is to not adjust the clock and let it run out and not launch at all then?

holy false dichotomy, Batman

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