I’ve definitely turned into the paranoid nutcase within my friend group in recent years, I hate that everything is “smart” nowadays requiring an app/internet connection & account, just to do basic things that didn’t require any of that before.
What’s some things currently making you ramble like an old man?
Anti-space/science rhetoric on the left.
A lot of it comes from people who are anti-Elon and are against everything he touches. So they become anti SpaceX. Then they become anti-aerospace.
They don’t understand, or even want to understand, the science and importance behind it’s advances. The thought process just goes Musk Bad>SpaceX Bad>Aerospace Bad.
Remember how in Interstellar, there’s that teacher who was casually teaching that the moon landings were fake? Like, society had reached a point where they cared so little for space, that they actively turned a blind eye towards its accomplishments or just straight up dismissed them? I feel like that’s the path we’re on. Because of people’s blind hatred towards a rich douche, an entire EXTREMELY IMPORTANT industry is becoming reviled through sheer ignorance.
Communists love tech, Soviet culture was dominated by futurists and despite being destroyed 3 decades ago still hold the world record for most space launches.
The disgust towards SpaceX is also based on a love of technology. Mediocre Internet isn’t worth rendering our observatories useless and polluting prime orbital lanes.
Chinese socialism is also obsessed with tech, megaprojects everywhere, highly resilient public GMO crops massive investments in green energy and novel production techniques. Most of the CPC leadership have engineering degrees. Xi specifically engineered an off-grid bioreactor for winter heating (using animal waste no less) during his volunteer service at the countryside, he was in his 20s and almost got blown up while repairing it.
We’re going to make ourselves go extinct, outer space exploration fantasies can go on hold.
No, they are making us go extinct (while ironically living their outer space exploration fantasies)
Depending on what you mean by “left”, i think its more of a “whitey’s on the moon” position, than Musk. Space exploration has led to many scientific advances, the USSR’s space program and the modern day PRC’s shows the left has been and still is commited to space exploration.
But in the US in particular its another example of money going to anything but dealing with the ravages of capitalism in the population: homelessness, hunger, lack of medical care, poor education, etc.
Drives me wild that all these lefties have those dumb signs that say “I believe in science” but balk when the science doesn’t agree with whatever political slogan they parrot around says.
If you believe in science, it means you believe in the process of science, and are open minded enough to change your ideas or beliefs if the science goes against that. It also means it’s possible for current results to be proven otherwise in the future
I have a feeling the “lefties” you’re talking about aren’t actually leftists in any real sense.
I don’t think it’s just Musk, there was a lot of pushback towards the moon landings in the 1960s-70s as well. People then felt that funds used in these programs would have been better spent on stuff like social programs and improving infrastructure, criticisms that fit pretty well today too. But we could probably have been to mars and back twice if NASA had like even a quarter of the military’s budget too 💀
Whitey on the moon