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And I see that the Soyuz TMA-11 crew included Peggy Whitson. We wouldn't want the same kind of thing to happen to her twice!

(Her 2nd Axiom mission is NET November this year, so that shouldn't be affected by this change, but any subsequent Axiom missions might be.)

Only yesterday I was here objecting to large expenditures on debris mitigation (specifically, to the "US De-Orbit Vehicle" for the ISS), so I guess I'd better be consistent (regardless of down-votes)!

If I was advising SpaceX, I'd tell them to go with this West Coast plan.

If I was advising humanity as a whole, I'd point out that despite our evolved psychology as a species, we are sometimes still capable of behaving rationally. And if the expected value of any particular iniative to make some space industry debris less likely to do harm to people/property is less than the actual cost of that initiative, it probably shouldn't go ahead.

Also, I'd be interested to see how this changes the Loss of Crew probability. Presumably it's less risky to do trunk separation prior to the deorbit burn, because if the separation process encounters any problems, there is much more of an opportunity for troubleshooting.

We’ll move a Dragon recovery vessel to the Pacific some time next year

What do you think will happen to the other one? Do you think they'll maintain a Florida splashdown capability indefinitely, as a backup (e.g. in case of bad weather in all the new West Coast splashdown zones)?

Or just keep it going for a while, until they're happy with the new arrangements? Would they then decommission the other recovery vessel? (There are just two of them, right?) Or move it to the West Coast to join its sister?

We've all heard of BEAM (Bigelow Expandable Activity Module). Now here comes the BOOOOM (Boeing Overstaying Overpriced Orbital Operations Module) ...

I interpret the figurative use of the word "stomped" the same as I do for "wrecked" or "destroyed" or "annihilated". Basically, 'to beat easily/substantially'.

Do you have any examples of cases where it has been used to imply underhand behaviours? (Obviously if a SpaceX employee literally stomped on a competitor's prototype, that would be an example! But I assume that's not what you mean.)

Uncontrolled re-entry of a single large object would, I think, be preferable to re-entry of dozens of them.

I guess the opposite. It won't be a single object for long, after the final re-entry has started, so I say give the breakup process a headstart! (Well, I don't actually. I actually assume it's a bad idea, and would like to know why. Geopolitics not included.)

No agreement would have any effect on the headlines saying “US allows its spacestation to crash on city, killing 800 people”.

Agreed. However, I'd bet my life that this wouldn't happen. Both literally (though I'd need good odds, and a high valuation for the value of my life!), and in the sense that I (and all my loved ones) live under the ISS's flight path.

I estimate (partly based on this) that less than 0.6% of the earth's surface is "built-up". (Though the ISS doesn't fly over it all equally, so call it 1%.)

For what it's worth (nothing?!), I used that figure, and some other guessed figures, to guess that the expected value of the number of people killed per uncontrolled ISS reentry is 0.05, so on average needing 20 space stations to kill 1 person.

Cost Plus contracting (including hybrids thereof) should probably be banned (in anything other than a war economy).

If companies can't compete and that's undesirable, subsidize them - but be up front about it.

One option would be to have them bid as normal, but then have central government pay X% of the money so that it doesn't come out of the budget of the specific department (e.g. NASA), if the struggling company wins the contract. And so the department would be incentivized (and required) to treat the struggling company's bid as if it was actually X% lower.

Keep increasing X until you're satisfied with the level of dissimilar redundancy.

But later on the SpaceX person is asked about launch and just says something about the "Falcon product line", IIRC.

There’s a lot of evidence that he’s an ass-hat

That's a separate question from the one I thought we were discussing.

But equally unverifiable evidence that makes him look like a kind of crazy genius is A-OK?

It's all unverifiable to us. But at that point you have to remember the elephant in the room: his companies' multiple successes, pushing forwards the state of the art, in multiple domains, in a commercially viable way.

I'll remind you that my previous comment used wording such as "I suspect", and "you can imagine". I'll now, off the top of my head, put a number on it. I'm 85% confident that the primary explanation for his otherwise unlikely run of successes, is that he's a genius of an engineering manager.

What's your primary explanation, and confidence level?

Which makes sense, given that the folks that adore him are also into conspiracy theory nonsense.

I consider myself anti- conspiracy theory. When I encounter them in various comment sections, I quite often briefly reply, politely correcting people. My guess would be that such people are more likely than average to dislike Musk.

As for me, I don't adore him. And I have multiple criticisms, and things I'd want to learn more about before judging him too positively overall.

There have been tons of reports of his subordinates having to manage him.

I've seen rumours like that online, but I doubt there are tons of reliable testimonies. (Though if you feel like spending the time digging some up, I'd be happy to go & read them, and update my views accordingly.)

But perhaps there's no smoke without fire, and I do see how his style could lead to rumours like that.

I'll start by mentioning a couple of his edicts.

1. Something like "try deleting the part or process" [from your design]. He had some rough metric like "if you aren't finding that 10% of the parts you try deleting end up needing to be added back in [to the design], then you haven't been deleting aggressively enough".

2. Something like "assume the requirements [that you have been asked to meet] are wrong". Talk to the other teams, and the people designing your interface or creating your requirements. Push back.

These both seem plausibly correct to me, and it's these - and perhaps many dozens of other similarly 'weird' aspects of his approach that he has adopted over the years - which are why I suspect his multiple successes are not a fluke.

And then, you can imagine a similar type of thinking applied in a 'meta' way. Basically, if Musk isn't finding that at least 10% of his crazy edicts are getting significant push-back from his teams, and eventually get dropped, then maybe he's not being crazy enough. And that certainly means there'll be examples that could lead, sometimes with some embellishment, sometimes not, to the kinds of rumours you allude to.

says they have to change a design because he thinks it doesn’t look cool

Well, yes, he's definitely weird in this way sometimes. Often placing value in aesthetics, and sometimes comedy. (Like with the "make the rocket more pointy" thing.) But seemingly not enough to cause his projects to fail. (So maybe that's ultimately a good thing too; a bit of quirkiness to remind himself and others not to take things TOO seriously.)

For a bit of context, Give Well reckons there's at least one charitable programme where it only costs $5000 to save a human life.

Also, the total budget request for this deorbit plan (including launch and operating costs, etc.) is more like $1.5 billion.

And again, I know something like this US Deorbit Vehicle is the only realistic option. But if I was Bill Nelson I'd at least be writing a quick letter to the UN; let them be the ones to make this (probably) wrong decision.

I think he's a genius. Not on this issue, of course (though if he's read any of the Cass Review he's way ahead of the people down-voting me for accurately quoting it).

But probably the best engineering manager there's ever been.