You could get a person today who invents a way to print new organs using 3D print technology and progenitor cells cloned from the patients own DNA. Drop of blood, send it in, and poof, 28 days later a new kidney. That person would be vilified, in some measure, because someone would find a reason that it is objectionable, unholy, ruins the transplant industry, or god forbid, makes even a cent of profit to put back into their company to move the bar.
You post a lot of stuff I disagree with, but this is absolutely not one of those things.
I strongly dislike Musk in politics, he's not made good decisions in his personal life, he is annoying a lot of the time, etc. but even as a "hater" I think SpaceX is amazing. SpaceX is allegedly kind of a terrible place to work, but they're also building rockets and a global internet infrastructure that simply seemed like science fiction
not that long ago. So too is Tesla a revolutionary organization. Tesla (even though probably it's in spite of Musk) has remade the world of EVs and I just saw like 5 Tesla's on my morning walk. Yeah, they catch on fire occasionally, and homie never really delivered FSD, but electric vehicles being crazy futuristic nonsense has been a trope since I was a kid, and now we live among them. I'm not going to buy one, but I'm definitely going to give credit where it's due. Tesla basically made it practical for a great many other companies to even consider EVs an option.
These seem like objectively "good" things to me even though Elon is an ass a lot of the time. There are a LOT of reasons why the world isn't as black and white as we all want it to be. Henry Ford was an antisemitic lunatic, but also, modern society would be vastly different without him. I have a hard time believing we would have kicked the • out of the nazis without Ford's factory in Ypsilanti blasting out B24s. At least it would have been more complicated. Not saying I'd want to hang out with Ford, I'm just saying that the nuance of this big world is probably more important than people give it credit.
This isn't to say that "all advances are good" or "ignore the ethical implications" but I have become tired of people with no skin in the game, no real accomplishments, and no motivation to do anything beyond exist, consume, and be entertained screaming into the void about how
bad something is that they don't understand. mRNA vaccines are a perfect example of this - they're amazing, and you've got a bunch of uneducated Luddite dumbasses talking about how bad they are. Read a single scientific paper on the subject - this stuff is borderline miraculous.
I pretty much delete those people from my list of "knowledgeable and trustworthy sources" when I hear a lot of the nonsense that gets bandied around these days. If you're not doing that, I recommend it, its really freeing.
Saying that we shouldn’t give up our national space program to private entities is an entirely separate argument from whether or not Musk is a douchebag. Although Musk being a volatile douchebag does highlight one of the risks of letting a private corporation run your space program.
I actually have some mixed thoughts about this. I think we
should have a sort of national space exploration program that's pushing the boundaries of what's possible, etc.
and think we should have chartered/publicly funded private organizations that can do the flying too. I want NASA making up cool as missions and providing guidance for them then making absolutely crazy ideas reality by throwing money at it. "I want to see humans on Titan by the end of the decade! Not because it's easy, but because a planet covered in volatile hydrocarbons would be awesome to see!" SpaceX can build the rockets, I don't care, hell, it's not like NASA actually built the LEM, that was a Grumman project, but they set really bold ideas down, then we (collectively) funded the • out of it. That's what I want. Let's mine asteroids and bring in abundance to the whole world - and not like some neo-lib • of abundance, but like, literally, "yeah, the price of everything is in freefall."
I suspect from my time in government thus far that NASA is probably like the FAA which is probably like us (though I think we're a little more nimble at our level). I wouldn't want the FAA running all the air taxis in JNU, though. It'd probably be a lot safer, but that's because you'd need to file 30 pieces of paperwork to fly at all, there'd have to be an airplane usage steering committee meeting, you'd have to involve Karen and Russ in accounting (and their schedules are packed packed packed and you can't takeoff without them signing off on the manifest no later than 23 minutes before departure).
I guess what I'm saying is I applaud private efforts even though the people who direct them (Musk, Bezos, etc.) tend to be insufferable, while at the same time I want NASA out there doing amazing • too.
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