We are all caught up in the heady minutiae of winning an important election, but Glenn is right to suggest we step back and look at the big picture. A hundred years from now, it might be obvious that unfettering Musk and SpaceX was the most consequential result of the 2024 election.
The most important takeaway here is that if reinstating Mc'Donald's all day breakfast becomes unfeasible to do here because of corporate red tape maybe one could be opened on Mars as a beta test?
More importantly, RFK has bootstrapped the conversation of getting the fries back to being cooked in beef tallow vs. the chemical mess they have been using since the late 80's. Remember when they had a crisp outside, soft potato inside and tasted GOOD?
I just read this while taking a lunch break at Blue Origin's Rocket Factory on Merritt Island. The workers here are mighty stoked, let me tell you, even if I'm an auditor examining their work.
Great post. Enabling space mining is my guess for the most influential long term impact of SpaceX, BTW.
Also if you want to read a great sf novel in which a character who is obviously based on Elon Musk helps save all of humanity: Neal Stephenson's "Seveneves".
Musk's troubles with would be US regulation might be over, but not with the EU. I'd also urge caution about colonization of the solar system in the near future. Exposure to harmful levels of ionizing radiation beyond our atmosphere and transiting through then beyond the VA belts is a hazard that i have not seen adequately addressed anywhere. Without adequate shielding, space flight is a ticket to high levels of radiation exposure
We also have no idea how much gravity is required for humans to thrive or even survive. There is much to learn, but if we do not do things in space, we will not learn things about space.
If the last 50 years of "space is for a handful of researchers" has not answered these questions, another 50 years of the same will not, either.
Nice job of helping us see the Big Picture, Glenn. Your Columbus example from 500+ years ago is spot on.
Here is another “See the Big Picture” example:
In the late 1860s, an Iowa farmer watched the construction of the transcontinental railroad near his fields. After seeing the track laid and a locomotive steam through, he thought,
“So that’s what railroading is all about: tracks and trains.”
What didn’t he see?
That he could get his products to more markets more quickly, and that once there they would have to compete against products from many more places.
That people could travel from coast to coast in less than a week.
That more ideas would be shared, and that different people would meet and get married.
He saw the steel and the wheels, but he didn’t see the consequences.
"The first-order effect is that the campaign of bureaucratic harassment aimed at Musk under the Biden Administration, which likely would have escalated, will now recede."
Having been raised on the California coast north of Santa Cruz, and seen property owners slapped down by the Coastal Commission for hundreds of miles north and south, I'm hoping that Mr. Musk's lawsuit puts a stop to the Commission's most egregious abuses of its unelected powers. It'll probably take a turnover of California's fanatic blue-state arrogance to achieve this, but the new Presidential installation should start making a long-term dent in such misgovernance.
I’m 100% pro-space and pro-Elon. But I think you’re kidding yourself if you think space will deliver anything like a “frontier mentality” for many decades or more. The American frontier was sui generis, a way for a single family or even a single man to make a modest investment and build a new life. It’s hard to imagine that freedom-granting dynamic off-planet, maybe ever.
To quote the late and much lamented Andrew Breitbart--I knew him, Horatio!--"Politics is downstream of culture". Many so-called conservatives were chastising Trump for pushing "cultural issues" like boys in girls' sports and countering the trans hysteria, but he was absolutely right to do so.
Here's something else that's really important to men: we like a joke. We love comedy, it's an escape from endless rounds of political indoctrination at work. The joke about Puerto Rico? Our younger son, still living with us (sigh), only now starting to show interest in political issues, went on YouTube yesterday to find actual PBS footage of Puerto Rico's garbage crisis! He gets it!
We are all caught up in the heady minutiae of winning an important election, but Glenn is right to suggest we step back and look at the big picture. A hundred years from now, it might be obvious that unfettering Musk and SpaceX was the most consequential result of the 2024 election.
The most important takeaway here is that if reinstating Mc'Donald's all day breakfast becomes unfeasible to do here because of corporate red tape maybe one could be opened on Mars as a beta test?
More importantly, RFK has bootstrapped the conversation of getting the fries back to being cooked in beef tallow vs. the chemical mess they have been using since the late 80's. Remember when they had a crisp outside, soft potato inside and tasted GOOD?
If there is life on mars kill it and use the blubber for the fries!
It's important to note that all day breakfast being taken away is that little garbage weasel Fauci's fault. Like for serious. Look it up.
Fauci should be tried for genocide. He made 20 million Democrat voters disappear.
Due primarily to lack of the nutrients provided by all day breakfast.
Obviously.
The Democrats' "message-control" strategy? that's a pretty mild euphemism for "propaganda and censorship", isn't it?
I just read this while taking a lunch break at Blue Origin's Rocket Factory on Merritt Island. The workers here are mighty stoked, let me tell you, even if I'm an auditor examining their work.
Great post. Enabling space mining is my guess for the most influential long term impact of SpaceX, BTW.
Also if you want to read a great sf novel in which a character who is obviously based on Elon Musk helps save all of humanity: Neal Stephenson's "Seveneves".
Musk's troubles with would be US regulation might be over, but not with the EU. I'd also urge caution about colonization of the solar system in the near future. Exposure to harmful levels of ionizing radiation beyond our atmosphere and transiting through then beyond the VA belts is a hazard that i have not seen adequately addressed anywhere. Without adequate shielding, space flight is a ticket to high levels of radiation exposure
We also have no idea how much gravity is required for humans to thrive or even survive. There is much to learn, but if we do not do things in space, we will not learn things about space.
If the last 50 years of "space is for a handful of researchers" has not answered these questions, another 50 years of the same will not, either.
Nice job of helping us see the Big Picture, Glenn. Your Columbus example from 500+ years ago is spot on.
Here is another “See the Big Picture” example:
In the late 1860s, an Iowa farmer watched the construction of the transcontinental railroad near his fields. After seeing the track laid and a locomotive steam through, he thought,
“So that’s what railroading is all about: tracks and trains.”
What didn’t he see?
That he could get his products to more markets more quickly, and that once there they would have to compete against products from many more places.
That people could travel from coast to coast in less than a week.
That more ideas would be shared, and that different people would meet and get married.
He saw the steel and the wheels, but he didn’t see the consequences.
At the following site is a video of a song about the importance of the humans going into space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZCh31v0vgU
"The first-order effect is that the campaign of bureaucratic harassment aimed at Musk under the Biden Administration, which likely would have escalated, will now recede."
Having been raised on the California coast north of Santa Cruz, and seen property owners slapped down by the Coastal Commission for hundreds of miles north and south, I'm hoping that Mr. Musk's lawsuit puts a stop to the Commission's most egregious abuses of its unelected powers. It'll probably take a turnover of California's fanatic blue-state arrogance to achieve this, but the new Presidential installation should start making a long-term dent in such misgovernance.
I’m 100% pro-space and pro-Elon. But I think you’re kidding yourself if you think space will deliver anything like a “frontier mentality” for many decades or more. The American frontier was sui generis, a way for a single family or even a single man to make a modest investment and build a new life. It’s hard to imagine that freedom-granting dynamic off-planet, maybe ever.
Every century produces, maybe three true geniuses. People who change the way we look at the world. Ours has produced Musk. Hoping for more.
To quote the late and much lamented Andrew Breitbart--I knew him, Horatio!--"Politics is downstream of culture". Many so-called conservatives were chastising Trump for pushing "cultural issues" like boys in girls' sports and countering the trans hysteria, but he was absolutely right to do so.
Here's something else that's really important to men: we like a joke. We love comedy, it's an escape from endless rounds of political indoctrination at work. The joke about Puerto Rico? Our younger son, still living with us (sigh), only now starting to show interest in political issues, went on YouTube yesterday to find actual PBS footage of Puerto Rico's garbage crisis! He gets it!