| > "a glamorous effort led by a hype man" > "This has the effect of turning technical discussions into debates over the character and achievements of Elon Musk— just the way he likes it." > "But their founder is who he is, and what he has publicly shared is not so much a blueprint as an inspirational poster." While I valued many of the thoughts in this post, it made me think of the meme "I choked on a carrot this afternoon and all I could think was 'I bet a donut wouldn't have done this to me.'" Putting aside the argument of whether or not scientific research, especially in space, is a proper role of government/politics, it is disappointing to see what I believe is an intellectual defect to undermine inspiration for human achievement with ad hominems in the context of a collapsing culture lacking meaningful debate on significant government war funding power delusions and destruction. Conquering technical achievements in any form (e.g., "port-a-potty chemistry," getting "to watch someone remotely operate a soil scoop from Mars instead of Pasadena") vs. conquering people is, IMO, a more appropriate intellectual debate. I'll turn my computer speakers up to 100% for inspiration by Elon any day to drown out the human destructive philosophies of the politicians this author appears to support. [1] I think Ayn Rand said it well [2]: "The most inspiring aspect of Apollo 11's flight was that it made such abstractions as rationality, knowledge, science perceivable in direct, immediate experience. That it involved a landing on another celestial body was like a dramatist's emphasis on the dimensions of reason's power: it is not of enormous importance to most people that man lands on the moon, but that man can do it, is." [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20211003211306/https://techsolid... [2] https://newideal.aynrand.org/ayn-rand-on-apollo-11/ |