SpaceX pushed “sniper” theory with the feds far more than is publicly known

"It came out of nowhere, and it was really violent."

See full article...

 

[deadman12-4]

It seems like the more intelligent someone is, the more likely they are to see patterns where there are none. Musk appears to suffer from this as well. What makes Musk different is his ability to sway people to his way of thinking and his exceptionally large audience.

the second part is true - that musk is amazing at convincing people to believe what he says.
No doubts he has genuine talent in that arena.

That first part where its because he is so smart? Thats just simping bullshit. Listen to the creep talk, its painfully obvious he has no clue what the hell he is saying, as he desperately tries to remember what his people told him to say earlier that day.

edit: intelligent people understand they can make a mistake. Musk will ruin people's lives to deny the fact that he was wrong about something. Heck, look at his crocodile tears over people calling him a nazi (which he obviously is).

 

[NW]

Great catch -- thanks for the correction.

Can you maybe change theory to hypothesis? It’s not exactly supported by evidence.

 

[ModeratelyMotivated]

Ok call me old fashioned but these things happen with cutting edge rocket science its called learning from your mistakes




Or maybe as with JFK was there a grassy knoll involved.

ULA should have renamed that building "The Grassy Knoll".

 

[NOT_RICK]

Dmitry Rogozin (when he was head of Roscosmos) ,made the accusation and it's subsequently become something of a meme

Ah thanks for the context. Completely unsurprised Dmitry made such a wild statement; hes full of them. Considering he's now a "senator" in occupied Zaporozhye... who's the war criminal again? If only that shrapnel hit a different spot...

 

[DarthSlack]

I don't think it's power that's driven him mad but a long history of working (by his own admission) 16 hour days. That might theoretically mean 8 hours of sleep, but we all know you don't go straight to sleep after stopping work. He's also spending time on "not work" things, which means that my guess is that he's been getting consistently less than 6 hours of sleep a night for decades now. That's near guaranteed to result in issues.

I think you're discounting that he's become an adulation junkie. And, as a result, he's gotten bored with things that don't give him that rush he loves. That's led him to where Tesla is now just old and boring, and SpaceX is only exciting when Starship is involved. And the cycles of that aren't fast enough or dramatic enough to keep him really interested. Gutting the Federal government was great fun until he realized that he had become the villain and the adulation was drowned out by the criticism.

So now he's back to shitposting on X to get his fix. And not much else.

 

[ranthog]

I really wish this was one of the more deranged things that a Musk company had ever done. I remember it was just bizarre how many people seemed to think this was plausible. Instead of it just being a problem with the rocket or the new procedure.

What is wild is that I didn't know that SpaceX was privately pushing this theory as much as Musk was talking about it. I didn't figure the serious people were wasting their time on this.

 

[ArbiterOfTruth]

I was thinking a Barret similar

Since no one on Ars apparently has any experience with long distance shooting, giving incorrect information makes someone sound well-informed around here.

The. 408 CheyTac (Cheyenne Tactical) is an ELR cartridge that's been around for a little over twenty years. Barrett is a firearms company that produces bolt-action and semi-auto .50 BMG rifles (with a few other competing cartridges as well here and there).

It's worth pointing out that the DOD adopted the Barrett M82A1 back in 1990, and it was explicitly deployed in Desert Storm for the purpose of covert sniper deployments against Iraqi SCUD missile sites from extreme long range (1+ mi). There's a very obscure book from 2000 called Hard Target Interdiction that's essentially a 500-page textbook for how to shoot large vertical missiles from extreme long range.

Considering what local terrain looks like around the launch site at KSC (and safety considerations for the shooter), it would indeed be logical to engage from a rooftop. For the sort of large caliber platform needed to make that sort of shot, the only real options are a muzzle brake or a silencer. The former is going to generate a significant muzzle flash even in daylight, while the latter often eliminates a visible flash. However, availability of large caliber silencers circa 2009 was relatively low - they existed but were quite uncommon. Conventional flash hiders provide no recoil mitigation, which is mandatory with a cartridge the size of a .50 BMG.

It's worth noting that a F9 is essentially a 12-foot-diameter target. Even at a distance of two miles, that's still 4+ minutes of angle, a relatively healthy target size. Very few targets could reasonably be expected to be hit at that distance with effective (read: catastrophic) results, and an F9 is one of them.

Basically, it's an entirely plausible shot for a decent skilled individual to make, with a rifle system that had been deployed by the military for twenty years with the explicit purpose of blowing up large missiles at long distances, and a how-to guide commercially available for the prior decade.

 

[Steve austin]

Elon Musk also spent 50 grand on a private investigator to allegedly look into the professional rescue diver he'd called a "pedo-guy" for no reason, and see if there was any substance to his own baseless allegation. This all happened after the rescue diver had waved off Elon's stupid steel coffin to rescue the trapped Thai soccer team from an underwater cave.



Donald Trump famously said (read: lied) he'd paid a private investigator to investigate Barack Obama's birth certificate after baselessly spreading racist lies about the incumbent presidential candidate not being born in America, with zero evidence to prompt or sustain such an allegation.

It's no surprise that when something embarrassing happens, people like Musk and Trump will throw a ton of emotional investment into an absolute bullshit answer they think will either exonerate them, or flood the zone and keep at least some sort of alternative narrative to their own dishonesty or incompetence floating around for their supporters to latch onto against the overwhelming sea of facts.

It doesn't matter how ridiculous or implausible the idea is, as long as it sounds exciting and might throw some people off the trail.

This is just one of the reasons why no, I don't feel like the "smart money" is to bet on Elon Musk. That's been apparent even before he decided to put together a crack ket team of racist 4chan script kiddies to dismantle the government from the inside out.

[emphasis mine]
As was obvious to anyone who saw Terry Moran of ABC’s Trump interview last week, when Trump insisted for seemingly 10 minutes that the “MS13” that was clearly photoshopped onto Abrego Garcia’s knuckles was real. Or that the Sharpie marked up hurricane map was real. Or Musk’s insistence that his Nazi salute was really a “from the heart” gesture. Or Musk’s statement that he couldn’t be a Nazi because the only issue with Nazis was that they killed people and he never had. The list goes on.

 

[blackhawk887]

Since no one on Ars apparently has any experience with long distance shooting, giving incorrect information makes someone sound well-informed around here.

The. 408 CheyTac (Cheyenne Tactical) is an ELR cartridge that's been around for a little over twenty years. Barrett is a firearms company that produces bolt-action and semi-auto .50 BMG rifles (with a few other competing cartridges as well here and there).

It's worth pointing out that the DOD adopted the Barrett M82A1 back in 1990, and it was explicitly deployed in Desert Storm for the purpose of covert sniper deployments against Iraqi SCUD missile sites from extreme long range (1+ mi). There's a very obscure book from 2000 called Hard Target Interdiction that's essentially a 500-page textbook for how to shoot large vertical missiles from extreme long range.

Considering what local terrain looks like around the launch site at KSC (and safety considerations for the shooter), it would indeed be logical to engage from a rooftop. For the sort of large caliber platform needed to make that sort of shot, the only real options are a muzzle brake or a silencer. The former is going to generate a significant muzzle flash even in daylight, while the latter often eliminates a visible flash. However, availability of large caliber silencers circa 2009 was relatively low - they existed but were quite uncommon. Conventional flash hiders provide no recoil mitigation, which is mandatory with a cartridge the size of a .50 BMG.

It's worth noting that a F9 is essentially a 12-foot-diameter target. Even at a distance of two miles, that's still 4+ minutes of angle, a relatively healthy target size. Very few targets could reasonably be expected to be hit at that distance with effective (read: catastrophic) results, and an F9 is one of them.

Basically, it's an entirely plausible shot for a decent skilled individual to make, with a rifle system that had been deployed by the military for twenty years with the explicit purpose of blowing up large missiles at long distances, and a how-to guide commercially available for the prior decade.

It's only 1.18 miles (1900 meters) from the VIF to pad 40.

 

[Thinker_in_TX]

It would not surprise me in the least if some of the rocket hardware at either Starbase or McGregor has been shot.

Boeing occasionally finds bullet holes in new 737s after the train ride from Kansas to Seattle.

Makes me curious how Boeing deals with the bullet holes. Do they just replace the whole panel? Depending on the panel size, it could be either "a minor job" to replace it, but a patch could/should cause a whole bunch of stress analysis needed to determine if it's safe. I wonder if they have a standard bullet hole patch? Aircraft have a surprisingly small "safety factor", or "factor of ignorance" as one of my professors called it. Or just put a piece of duct tape inside to seal the air leak and Bondo over the hole

 

[LeftCoastRusty]

What? Elon promoted a baseless conspiracy theory?

Film at 11.

 

[Eurynom0s]

Quite often, I've noticed people project their own intentions onto others...so am not surprised that a certain somebody thought malfeasance was afoot...

If they'd gone to the effort of getting a sniper, surely they'd have made sure the muzzle flash was suppressed - with a suppressor or just inside a hide?

Edit: grammar

It's not just that, from some of his baby momma texts that got made public, he'd gone full paranoid that there's swarms of people out there eager to kill him even before November 5. We also saw this with nonsense like the "assassination coordinates" thing.

 

[jock2nerd]

Damn. I was hoping for some actual technical details of the investigation, rather than just a gov't report saying "we checked, move along now, nothing to see here". Maybe it is as simple as 'security cams show nobody on top of the building'. But it could have been something interesting about getting image analysis of the flash of light, or subtle system clock differences making the flash of light seem timed right, etc. It's all a big COPVout...

Remember it is inherently difficult to prove a negative.

 

[randomcat]

It seems like the more intelligent someone is, the more likely they are to see patterns where there are none. Musk appears to suffer from this as well. What makes Musk different is his ability to sway people to his way of thinking and his exceptionally large audience.

"Seeing patterns where there are none" is not associated with intelligence, it's associated with madness.

 

[bramrie]

Glad to see ULA is staffed by upstanding professionals, no doubt pillars of their communities.

They used to mock us all the time, bht better believe they stopped their cars in the street and lined the fence the first time we raised the rocket on the pad.

But if them acting that way bothers you then you’re gonna hate hearing stories of what the spx CEO has been up to!

 

[Derecho Imminent]

The shot that killed JFK didn’t come from the Dallas sixth floor but came from a NASA launch tower in Cape Canaveral. See NSAM 271 and also the Torbitt document.

Or a LEO pedo-sat.

 

[Jeff S]

So in summary, on the direction of Musk safety was intentionally ignored in the name of speed, then when a predictable accident happened he blamed some vague outside evil influence out to get him, not the clear and obvious mistakes.

/another person dies from "Full Self Driving"

Did we read the same article? He didn't blame some "vague outside evil influence" - he blamed his biggest competitor, which would be super convenient for him. When he likes an idea, he falls hard to confirmation bias - wouldn't it be WONDERFUL for him if he could have his biggest competitor embroiled in a criminal investigation, with bad headlines in the news, while at the same time being able to deflect blame away from his or his subordinates' bad decisions, and maybe even be able to sue his competitors for billions of dollars of damages?

That would be so AWESOME for him, it HAD TO BE TRUE, right!?

Everyone loves a scapegoat, as long as it's not them. Doubly so for people who embrace a fascist worldview where everything bad is always someone else's fault.

 

[SomewhereAroundBarstow]

Glad to see ULA is staffed by upstanding professionals, no doubt pillars of their communities.

Have you seen the kind of shenanigans SpaceX's CEO gets up to?

 

[clackerd]

In the deep body of evidence of elon tomfuckery, I had forgotten about this outright insane gem. In hindsight, was this around the time he started to let the mask slip and began embracing conspiracy theories?

 

[EllPeaTea]

Time-travel typo?

Nope. The contract was awarded to ULA in the early 2010s, and the contract period extended into the early 2020s.

 

[lonerwithaboner420]

My sentiments exactly.

I feel the same way about theories surrounding the origins of COVID.

It almost seems like it is human nature to look for scapegoats.

For example, the 'Spanish Flu' was known by different names...depending on the nationality of the publication.

The origins of COVID aren't even terribly important. The right is just using it as a way to cover for Trump completely and unequivocally fucking up the USs response to it.

 

[Jimmy the Geek]

Well, [remainder snipped]

Username checks out.

 

[raschumacher]

I don't think it's power that's driven him mad but a long history of working (by his own admission) 16 hour days. That might theoretically mean 8 hours of sleep, but we all know you don't go straight to sleep after stopping work. He's also spending time on "not work" things, which means that my guess is that he's been getting consistently less than 6 hours of sleep a night for decades now. That's near guaranteed to result in issues.

And by now the ketamine probably doesn't help.

 

[SomewhereAroundBarstow]

They likely never identified it, but keep in mind that this was a flash seen in the distance from a single camera. My uninformed guess would be the sun glinting off some random crap on the building. Either because of its movement through the sky off a fixed object like a window or a piece of metal, or because something up there could move enough in the wind to reflect the sun. A sign on a pole that can move slightly or an unsecured latch on an AC unit or whatever would do the trick.

Without seeing it or knowing what the camera was that recorded it, it's also possible it was just a simple video glitch. The flash might have only been a single pixel being excited by something for some small percentage of 1/30th of a second, which could have been actual light reflected off something entering the optics, an internal voltage fluctuation, or even a solar particle strike.

 

[graylshaped]

It is so fascinating to read people still carrying water for Musk's crackpot theory.

Nothing like a good JAQ session in the morning...

 

[SomewhereAroundBarstow]

My god Musk musk think Hanson’s razor is a dull as his personality.

Thanks to one typo I will now spend the rest of the day with "Mmm Bop" in my head.

 

[ridgeguy]

Musk is probably at effect of (at least) major narcissistic personality disorder. I think his presentation has been complicated, perhaps aggravated, by excessive weed and ketamine use. And that's just the medical aspect.

He's further impaired by years of freedom from fiscal limits, which has allowed him to insulate himself from critical feedback he'd rather not hear. His circumstances and choices don't seem to be good ones - probably for him, and certainly for the rest of us.

 

[redbeardthepirate]

Is the bullet (that might not have been fired at the SpaceX rocket) fired from the same rifle that killed JFK?

 

[dzid]

[emphasis mine]
As was obvious to anyone who saw Terry Moran of ABC’s Trump interview last week, when Trump insisted for seemingly 10 minutes that the “MS13” that was clearly photoshopped onto Abrego Garcia’s knuckles was real. Or that the Sharpie marked up hurricane map was real. Or Musk’s insistence that his Nazi salute was really a “from the heart” gesture. Or Musk’s statement that he couldn’t be a Nazi because the only issue with Nazis was that they killed people and he never had. The list goes on.

Given that Musk's number one agency target was USAID, I would argue that he is responsible for many deaths already, and who knows how many more to come.

 

[qchronod]

"Florida man shoots at rocket" is a pretty believable headline.

Yeah, but this is more like what I'd expect from that headline:

"Jimmy Bobby Jimbob was arrested last Tuesday and charged with discharging a firearm in public. Three county sheriffs were dispatched after several calls came in about gunshots in the area. When they encountered Mr Jimbob, he was standing on the roof of his trailer firing a bolt action rifle into the sky. IN his statement, he claimed that he was "gots to stop the guvment sprayin them chemtrails into space. They're trying to turn my alligators gay!" The officers also found 37 baby alligators through-out the trailer and in the bed of his pickup. Animal Control was called in to collect them all and determine what should be done with them. It hasn't yet been determined if he will be charged with violating state pet licensing, or he was trying to breed them illegally."

 

[raschumacher]

My god Musk musk think Hanson’s razor is a dull as his personality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

 

[SomewhereAroundBarstow]

"Florida man shoots at rocket" is a pretty believable headline.

Not to give credence to the sniper theory but I once got a tour of a Goodyear blimp (while it was moored to the ground, alas) and they have a plexiglass dome that they use for visual inspection of the inside of the envelope, mostly to spot light coming in through holes. And most of those holes are caused by people shooting at it. And many, maybe even a majority, of the 737 fuselages that arrive in Washington state by train from Boeing's Kansas facility have bullet holes in them that need to be patched.

Yahoos with guns isn't just a Florida thing.

 

[Snark218]

In this direction, about one mile away, lay a building leased by SpaceX's main competitor in launch, United Launch Alliance. A separate video indicated a flash on the roof of this building, now known as the Spaceflight Processing Operations Center. The timing of this flash matched the interval it would take a projectile to travel from the building to the rocket.

A sniper on the roof of a competitor's building—forget the Right Stuff, this was the stuff of a Mission: Impossible or James Bond movie.

The cinematic allusion is appropriate, because one gets the impression that some of the folks involved in this story have lost the ability to distinguish between fiction and nonfiction.

The number of people capable of hitting a target with a rifle from a mile or more away is not large, and rifles capable of not only hitting a target a mile away but penetrating several layers of metal and pressure vessel are large, very noisy, and unsubtle - something like a .50 cal Barrett. If there were anybody at all within a thousand feet of the Spaceflight Processing Operations Center, they'd have heard an extremely loud rifle shot. Call me very dubious, without multiple additional lines of corroborating evidence. I think FAA gave this precisely the attention it merited.

 

[Snark218]

I don't think it's power that's driven him mad but a long history of working (by his own admission) 16 hour days. That might theoretically mean 8 hours of sleep, but we all know you don't go straight to sleep after stopping work. He's also spending time on "not work" things, which means that my guess is that he's been getting consistently less than 6 hours of sleep a night for decades now. That's near guaranteed to result in issues.

Power and wealth have been empirically shown to affect your ability to feel empathy and restrain impulses. It's not an either/or. All of the above can be true and probably are, along with several more, such as substance abuse, online and self-radicalization, and a psyche that probably wasn't that stable right out of the box.

That said, nobody can spend as much time on Diablo II and Twitter shitposting as he does and actually work 16 full hours a day, so while I believe he's occupied 16 hours a day, I don't believe he's working all that time.

 

[Snark218]

Damn. I was hoping for some actual technical details of the investigation, rather than just a gov't report saying "we checked, move along now, nothing to see here". Maybe it is as simple as 'security cams show nobody on top of the building'. But it could have been something interesting about getting image analysis of the flash of light, or subtle system clock differences making the flash of light seem timed right, etc. It's all a big COPVout...

Precisely how much time does the FAA need to spend justifying and explaining a negative conclusion, particularly to put to bed a wild conspiracy theory pushed by someone with a deep interest in any conclusion that doesn't cast doubt on his company's quality and safety culture, and who is known to display paranoid tendencies?

 

[eAbyss]

How much did he waste getting the government to investigate his idiotic conspiracy theory? If Elon wants to find waste and fraud in government, all he has to do is look in a mirror.

 

[isage]

So what was this flash? If the FBI believed there was no evidence -- sure, they would know -- but what was this identified as?

A fish. Definitely a red one.

 

[AusPeter]

Read the article. Berger's FOIA request just came through.

I doubt he will. Moonshark just had a tasty snack.