Is it just me or is anyone else baffled why Musk chooses to put one of his cars into space and not something else that
would maybe benefit mankind. I know it's his money and he can stroke his ego any way he wants, but cmon, really.
Sure it was a great step forward in space travel but a car? Stupidest thing ever.
It did do "something for mankind"; it made hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people smile. It caused some to get tears in their eyes, it mesmerized others. The image of the entire planet Earth reflected in the paint job of a car, and in the visor if it's driver is something that made space real for thousands of people who have never seen it in that context before. It is something they can relate to placed into an environment that they previously could not. To thousands of people, the reality of Elon's car in space, the image of driving over Earth, just made their video game world seem pretty cheesey. Space just became a real place, somewhere you could go, rather than just a backdrop for slaughtering thousands of lizard aliens. I think that is good for mankind.
The images coming from that car, high above Earth, just caused more kids to want to be involved in the
reality of space and science than ten-thousand "outreach programs", even at the most over-optimistic predictions of their success. The pictures from a real car on it's way to Mars (even if we know it isn't really going there), just sparked more imaginations than any rover than NASA has ever actually landed there. The idea that Mars is a real place and that there is a mechanism that has the potential to get real people there just shifted thousands of potential college students away from default I.T., business admin. and ancient Egyptian women's studies majors over to math, engineering and physics. I think that is good for mankind.
The idea of flinging a car out to a heliocentric orbit is fun. The rocket needed to carry some form of ballast, why not make it something cool? We need to get over this idea that just because something is fun it is somehow inferior to things that are "serious" and therefore of lesser value. Fun motivates people. It is thousands of times more motivating than being admonished for not doing things in a serious manner. If something is fun, it becomes more accessible, more desirable to people and more folks want to participate. Besides all that, it's fun! Fun is to be looked forward to! It makes us laugh and relieves stress. I think that is good for mankind.
Our society has bought in to the notion that if we are not stressed, tired, concerned, worried and aware over things that other people are doing, we are not doing our part for humanity. Notice that none of those things involve us directly as individuals. We are concerned judges of what others are doing, not doing or should be doing, with no responsibility for actual involvement on our part. If you actually help one person with something today (even if it was something fun) you have done one hundred percent more than a thousand people who said "someone should do something"... We need less concern over the activities of others and more participation in the activities of others. Life, even with all the ups and downs, is fun and should be shared! I think that would be good for mankind.
So if we find ourselves concerned over what others are doing for mankind, I suggest that we skip the next three launches and give our motor money to charity. Better yet, go to the launch and help out the new guy or give some of the spectators a play by play of what is going on. The joy and camaraderie that we provide will be good for mankind, even if it is only a few of them at a time.
After all, some folks would think that using rather expensive rocket motors to shoot cardboard tubes up in the air is the stupidest thing ever. (It's not. it's real and it's FUN... See paragraph three...)
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