Quick Facts
Biography
Andy Pasztor is a journalist with the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of the 1995 book "When the Pentagon was for Sale: Inside America's Biggest Defense Scandal."
Journalism controversies
Burt Rutan
On February 24, 2010, Andy Pasztor wrote an article titled "Space Pioneer Burt Rutan Blasts New NASA Plan," claiming that Burt Rutan had written a letter to Congress sharply criticizing President Obama's plans to turn over portions of its human spaceflight program to commercial providers. A couple days later Burt Rutan released a statement saying that "the WSJ chose to cherry-pick and misquote my comments to Cong Wolf."
SpaceX
Immediately following SpaceX's inaugural launch of the Falcon 9 rocket, Andy Pasztor wrote in a WSJ article titled "SpaceX Illustrates Privatization Risk" on June 7, 2010 alleging that SpaceX claimed it would require $1 billion to build a launch escape system for its rocket, and that the company would likely require future assistance from US taxpayers. When asked about this, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded saying:
- "Andy Pasztor’s article in the Journal was, I’m sorry to say, rife with errors. He was off by a factor of ten on what it would cost SpaceX to develop a launch escape system. Also, under no circumstances would SpaceX be seeking a financing round from the taxpayers. That doesn’t make any sense."
Despite that statement by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, subsequently in 2011 and 2012, SpaceX did receive additional funding from U.S. taxpayers through NASA. In May 2011, it was revealed in a Government Accountability Office report, "Commercial Launch Vehicles: NASA Taking Measures to Manage Delays and Risks"that starting in November 2011 SpaceX had, in addition to its award of $278 million, been awarded $118 million for additional COTS risk reduction milestones, bringing the company's total COTS award to $396 million. In April 2011, SpaceX was awarded $75 millionas a participant in NASA's CCDev2. In August 2012, NASA announced that, as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Integration Capability program, SpaceX was awarded $440 million.