As is often the case, Mark Whittington sees things that aren’t there:

Rand Simberg has a post mortem on the lost of the Falcon 1, with some links to some more. Reading it, along with stuff in the coments section, I am detecting the first whispers of back biting and second guessing of Elon Musk and his team who, the day before yesterday, were going to instantly revolutionize space travel.

Among his other annoying rhetorical tricks, Mark likes to take individual things that some individuals may have said, and conflate them with the implication that the larger group of individuals (his so-called nefarious “internet rocketeers”) believe all of these things. One never knows to whom he’s referring with these vague emanations of “back biting and second guessing,” so it’s difficult to respond to them, but if he’s talking about me, it’s nonsense (again, as is often the case).

Note that he couldn’t be bothered to actually quote anything to back up his assertion (though he at least had the decency to link to it).

Here’s what I wrote, and it ended with this:

…good luck to SpaceX. There’s no reason to think at this point that they can’t be as successful, ultimately, as their predecessors that cost much, much more to develop, but still had early failures.

Some “backbiting,” huh?

As for “second guessing,” I’m on record as always being concerned about SpaceX’s approach, from the time I first heard about them (though, as I noted at the time, that was a provisional concern, subject to change). I’ve never thought, or written, that they “were going to instantly revolutionize space travel.” And I suspect that Mark, as usual, will continue to claim that I (or some unnamed person) did so, without actually providing a citation or quote.

What I’ve always thought (or at least since learning more about them and their approach), and continue to think, is that they will, if successful, play an important role in modestly (that is, by a large percentage, though nowhere near as much as necessary) reducing launch costs, and demonstrating alternate funding and management approaches to space-transportation system development, and that’s a good thing. But I’ve also always thought, and said, that we need a plethora of approaches, and should never put all our hopes on any single player. I continue to wish SpaceX good fortune, as I suspect all of the other mythical “backbiters” do.

[Update in the late afternoon]

Mark, I never said I didn’t criticize SpaceX. I in fact said that I was an early critic. I know you have trouble getting the point, but this post was never about whether people were criticizing SpaceX–it was about your spurious and unsupported fantasy that sycophants turned critics overnight. Please learn to read for comprehension.

[Late night update]

Mark hilariously updates his second post, indicating that he remains clueless as ever, and still unable to read English, at least with comprehension:

Addendum. Rand makes my point. First he says quotes himself with this:

…good luck to SpaceX. There’s no reason to think at this point that they can’t be as successful, ultimately, as their predecessors that cost much, much more to develop, but still had early failures…

Then he retorts:

I never said I didn’t criticize SpaceX. I in fact said that I was an early critic.

So, is the supposition this: “I was a supporter of SpaceX before I was a critic?” Or maybe the other way around. Or both at the same time. With Rand, one never knows.

OK, I’ll explain to Mark one more time, and I’ll type it slowly in the hope that he might get it this time.

Mark’s original post seemed to claim that I and unnamed others had started to “second guess” and “backbite” SpaceX because of Friday’s failure. He provided zero evidence of this.

I noted that there was nothing new in any criticism I had of SpaceX–that I had done it when they first started out. I also noted that this was provisional, and could change as I got new information (I wonder what Mark does with his opinions when he receives new information?). So, yes, I was “against” SpaceX before I was for them, though my change of mind was in light of new information, and even though I still wish them well, I’m not convinced that their approach is the best one, and I continue to hope for many others, and let the best approaches win.

But as I noted in comments, Mark doesn’t do nuance, or anything other than black and white, unchanging, well.