Robert Morningstar, critic of Applied Physics Laboratory

        The psychologist Robert Morningstar had this to say about the computer overload that temporarily put New Horizons into safe mode two days ago, as it approached Pluto.

"Aren't we getting tired of this "Lame Excuse" ??? How many times have they arrived somewhere and report "Lost Contact with ....". Only to regain contact "miraculously" a few months later? "

        So here we have a psychologist — whose ignorance of space technology is so profound that he often says the Apollo astronauts were not aware their conversations behind the Moon were recorded^{note 1} — criticizing the management of a mission that is now five billion km from Earth.^{note 2}

        Here we have a psychologist, and frisbee expert, expressing his opinion that deep space missions frequently go missing and re-appear suspiciously a few months later. I can't actually think of a single example of that. I believe AM* has invented this from his own imagination.

        I'm very much aware that Mr. Morningstar is one of the NASA haters. I don't think he has any actual rational reason for his hatred, I think he's just blindly copying Richard Hoagland (an exceptionally foolish thing to do.) I don't think he has a clue what it takes to manage a deep space mission. I also think he's so ignorant of space affairs in general that he doesn't even realize that New Horizons is managed by Johns Hopkins APL, not NASA.

Update:
        Meanwhile, over on that other collection of ignorant commenters on things space-related, The Hidden Mission Forum, we find Keith Laney posting this:

"looks to me like both Dawn and New Horizon teams have been given a warning. I'm so sick of these clods stifling what we get to see and know... they would rather cause the crafts to malfunction and fail than allow us to know what they're really seeing."

        So, according to Keith, some mysterious other-force has caused temporary glitches in the New Horizons and Dawn missions, but AT THE SAME TIME the mission management has caused these glitches deliberately. I like Dee's comment  "How deep can the bar still sink?"


=======================
[1] See this blogpost, Note 1.
[2] The transit time for messages to and from the spacecraft is now 4.5 hours