[spaceheretostay]

> people are amazed by it.

Being 'amazed by it' isn't equivalent to fully realizing what SpaceX's achievements imply: specifically tracking the progress of SpaceX means counting down the years until you can buy a ticket to Mars.

Do most people realize that these launches are primarily done to create Mars colonies? Do most people realize that the goal of SpaceX is to terraform Mars into a planet livable like Earth? Do most people really grasp all this?

I haven't met a single person (aside from existing friends) IRL that understands any of this. It seems to be mostly "cool, rockets!" to most people - none of the full understand of what each success is to SpaceX: money in the bank for Mars development and experience launching rockets to colonize space.

The vertical landing via rocket is to make it easy to launch and land on any solid surface in the solar system. Do most people realize the impact of this? I would be shocked.

[starpilot]

The only thing that kind of annoys me in the back of my mind, is that these guys are aiming to save humanity, but the average Facebook engineer figuring out how exploit users better is probably being paid 2-3x as much as the average SpaceX aerospace engineer. But that's what the free market is rewarding right now.

[nightski]

Save humanity? From what global warming? Global warming is nothing compared to Mars. If we can terraform mars into a beautiful landscape then climate change isn't really an issue on earth...

Going to Mars for scientific research would be an incredible step forward for man kind. But the feasibility of space still holds a lot in question. It is exciting, but let's not call it "saving humanity".

[Zanni]

Save humanity from an extinction level event. Think asteroid impact or global nuclear war rather than climate change. Musk has been pretty explicit about his intention to make humanity a multi-planetary species. [0]

[0] https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/space.2017.29009...

[icebraining]

What nightski is saying is that achieving a truly independent colony on Mars, which can survive the destruction of Earth, is much harder than just putting people there.

[foota]

Mars might an interesting playground for testing climate engineering, since it'd be hard to mess it up more than it is now. That said though, it's hard to imagine fixing things like the lack of atmosphere without a lot of investment.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

While I agree that less effort should be spent on what Facebook wants to achieve, there are way more engineers that would rather work on space stuff than positions so of course they are going to pay less. So the market is functioning as it should.

[icebraining]

"Should" is a subjective moral/ethical evaluation. The market is just functioning as predicted (which is still nice).

[ekianjo]

do you have any source for spacex engineers salaries vs Facebook ones?

[saagarjha]

I don't see us terraforming Mars anytime soon.

Also, just FYI, your comment comes across as incredibly elitist as well, which is made even worse because the so-called "implications" don't actually follow from what we saw today, or do so only barely.

[spaceheretostay]

Oh I agree, it won't be soon! But that's the real goal of today's launch: to learn more about the technology that will enable the technology to terraform Mars (and to bank money to fund it).

I think that is lost on most people. There's no point in today's launch for SpaceX if they don't get closer to colonizing and then terraforming Mars. They don't care otherwise - that is the goal.

Edit: Not sure what you mean by elitest, but okay. Every SpaceX launch, including today's, works towards this goal: this is what watching SpaceX launches is about for a lot of people, maybe most who watch.

[saagarjha]

Your comment sounds like you're calling "most people" stupid for failing to grasp the "true significance" of this launch (but you and your friends, obviously, were able to). I'd suggest tweaking it if that wasn't your intention.

[electriclove]

I think the comment is pretty spot on and I also think most people are stupid and they don't grasp the significance of what Musk is trying to do. I don't know the OP but wouldn't mind being his/her friend.

What can be done to get more people to grasp the significance here? Or is this pattern just human nature?

[greeneggs]

I'm a big SpaceX fan, and I don't think most people are stupid. For more people to care, SpaceX needs to launch more significant payloads. A communications satellite is humdrum. Shooting a car into space is about as cool as dumping a car into the ocean.

Space telescopes, Mars rovers, Moon missions, these are the cool parts. Exploration! If SpaceX lowers costs enough to give of us more of these missions, then people will care. They've only maybe just started to make an impact, with Beresheet.

[spaceheretostay]

Sure, not my intention - I think most people don't care. It's not a judgement about them. I just think they don't grasp it because they don't care and that's okay.

[foobarian]

There may be a large group that does care, does grasp it, but is skeptical because the claims are fantasy. Consider that terraforming Mars is way harder than terraforming Earth's deserts, and yet even that is not being done. Also consider the little bit of terraforming mankind managed to do since the start of the industrial revolution, and what kind of resources it took to do it. It doesn't really translate to Mars.

[neltnerb]

I think that fundamentally people are conservative when it comes to new technology. That's all.

If the rocket puts a car into space, we have the ability to put a car into space. If the rocket lands and is reusable and cheap, we have that ability. If we send colonists to mars, we can send colonists to mars.

Until it's done, people won't worry about it or incorporate it into their worldview. Short of offering to help, what's the point in worrying about it until there's something new that I can do? There are way too many things to worry about them all, I just care when a new thing is actually available.

[whatshisface]

Mars colonization isn't a worry, it's a hope.

[standardUser]

We can't seem to manage maintaining this place as a livable planet, let alone a planet we have yet to even retrieve a rock from.

But yes, SpaceX is doing a lot to make spaceflight more accessible, and that will yield many benefits and opportunities down the road.

[spaceheretostay]

It is extremely short-sighted, how we have treated our planet. With oil and gas companies lying to the public about their research for 50 years, and politicians intentionally taking stances that we should pollute more (just because we can), the main issues on Earth are around decision making.

It will not be technology that solves climate change; it will be a reigning in of externalities, correctly pricing pollution into corporate development and taxation, and the recovery of truth into politics and decision making.

It should be common knowledge that most corporations are trading our long-term health for short-term profits; if only the corporations could wait 5-10 more years for profits, they could be had sustainably for centuries, rather than all in a burst today.

We need better decision making on Earth - and better technology. But it's hardly SpaceX's fault that we haven't solved our Earthly crises yet.

[DennisP]

I guess that's why Musk also has a company doing electric cars and solar roofs.

[onion2k]

Do most people realize that these launches are primarily done to create Mars colonies?

Sure, in the same way that I'm building the next Facebook because I've registered the domain name I'm going to use.

[TomMarius]

Sorry, but no. Musk said he wants to go to Mars and thus he founded SpaceX (and the other companies). Musk has already delivered - it's not there yet but you can't deny the guy's wide-ranged success in his mission.