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.
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.
For the sake of future humanity, we must get off this rock. One not-so-very-large asteroid can end the whole of life on this planet. Besides, it is not really so difficult to imagine that once orbital and lunar/asteroid facilities are built, the cost of interplanetary, and, hopefully at some future point, interstellar, travel will become much more affordable and available. Our future is out there.
I loved "The Expanse". But notice that in the backstory somebody accidentally discovered a magical rocket drive that acted like it produced arbitrary thrust for as long as you wanted, apparently essentially for free -- and yet it *still* took a long time to go from point A to point B.
Automation is the key. If we need people in space suits welding stuff, tightening bolts, and digging holes, you are likely correct.
On the other hand, one could not just wander out to any frontier plot and start farming. Well, I suppose one _could_, but one would be unlikely to survive. Infrastructure mattered then, too. The US is blessed with the best water transport network in the world and it provided the to/from market transport required when the Appalachians were "west". What we now call "the mountain west" was not really settled until there were railroads.
Agree about automation, but that level is not close. LLMs won't cut it.
"Wander out to any frontier plot and start farming" is pretty much what Daniel Boone did. He was mostly hunting and fur-trading, not farming, but it was still living off the land. I think we underestimate how much "infrastructure" there was in our frontier in the form of water, oxygen, functioning ecosystem. Martian settlers won't have to worry about indigenes, but they can't get there by buyin' a horse.
Again, not saying we won't or shouldn't settle space. Not even denying that the time may come when it provides the same kind of safety valve for the hard-up or the visionary that the American West provided. But that's not going to be soon, Musk or no Musk. Not my lifetime, probably not Glenn's. No idea how old *you* are. :-)
Old enough that it's very unlikely to happen in my lifetime, either.
I don't think LLMs are relevant to automation. The device that follows a seam and welds as it goes doesn't need to talk. It can just wander around - Roomba like - until it finds an unwelded seam (or someone can put it next to one) and just go.
Horses are seen through fire-engine-red colored glasses ("rose" is far too kind). Horses are hugely expensive to maintain. A solar charged electric buggy will get around fine on Mars and wouldn't be that expensive - assuming it does not need to be imported from Earth. Imported from Luna might work, but I admit that's just moving the "and how do we get factories on Mars?" question back a step. It's not as if the moon is a nicer place to live.
Aww. Where's your sense of adventure? I'd bet the video of your Roomba with a welding torch mounted on it running about your house would be a viral sensation! The fire department might be less impressed.
We are living in the days of the "petty Person", and have been for some time, probably following the Columbia disaster and the fall of the Soviet Union. Columbia kick started the safety-ism movement, while the end of the Cold War removed an existential threat to western liberal democratic civilization. It allowed the "Petty People", scolds, nags "Karens" and beta-males to assert themselves and bully their betters to become ascendant, aided and abetted by left-liberal academics and politicians. The result is what we have now: a society of Men Without Chests. To paraphrase Churchill's famous quote regarding this election is not victory over wokeism( along with safety-ism, anny state-ism, etc) , it is not the beginning of the end of wokeism, but is is perhaps the opening battle of the war, and wokeism lost.
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!
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 Communists, Statists, and DEMOCRATS gain POWER by CONTROLLING who gets a share of the PIE (that they have fixed in size and keep fixed). Musk threatens that oppressive scheme.
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".
"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.
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.
We had NO IDEA what diseases and other enemies we would encounter in the New world, Martin, that did not deter the Few, the Bold, and the Brave from forging ahead. While the scared, the weak, and those lacking courage hid in their hovels burning incense.
“A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.”
Prof. Reynolds, I read Admiral of the Ocean Sea way back in 1961 as an undergraduate in Dr. Strickland’s “Renaissance and Reformation” class at MTSU. I remember it had a powerful impact on me along with JFK’s “New Frontier” ideas and policies, especially those relating to space exploration. I was only 20 and couldn’t yet vote in the ’60 election, but both Morrison’s book and JFK’s vision made me feel that what I was preparing myself to do (college teaching) was important in the overall scheme of things. JFK’s goal of reaching the moon also resonated with my love of Science Fiction. Thank God, I didn’t face the woke stuff that today’s young men face, and I was able to achieve my goals. I’m retired now after 31 years of college teaching in Tennessee and 3 in Kentucky. The fire in the gut that I felt in the ‘60s might have dimmed a little as the years wore on, but the Trump victory and his association with Musk has, believe it or not, rekindled that fire! It also reminded me again of JFK who was a very different kind of Democrat from those radical Leftists and stagnant statists who dominate the party these days. I’m rambling here too much, but to close this comment out and illustrate my point, here’s a quotation from JFK’s 4th debate with Nixon in 1960: “I think we have to revitalize our society. I think we have to demonstrate to the people of the world that we're determined in this free country of ours to be first--not first "if" and not first "but" and not first "when" but first. And when we are strong and when we are first, then freedom gains. Then the prospects for peace increase. Then the prospects for our society gain.”
The socialist/communists/totalitarians are akin to The Nothing in The Neverending Story, as they first seek to destroy hope & joy, since then, as Gmork tells Atreyu (I am paraphrasing here, I think): "Humans who have forgotten their dreams have no hope, those who have no hope are easy to control."
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.
Every century produces, maybe three true geniuses. People who change the way we look at the world. Ours has produced Musk. Hoping for more.
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.
For the sake of future humanity, we must get off this rock. One not-so-very-large asteroid can end the whole of life on this planet. Besides, it is not really so difficult to imagine that once orbital and lunar/asteroid facilities are built, the cost of interplanetary, and, hopefully at some future point, interstellar, travel will become much more affordable and available. Our future is out there.
Watch the series, "Expanse", that's our future or else its extinction. Elon can get it started and our grandchildren can run with it into the stars!
I loved "The Expanse". But notice that in the backstory somebody accidentally discovered a magical rocket drive that acted like it produced arbitrary thrust for as long as you wanted, apparently essentially for free -- and yet it *still* took a long time to go from point A to point B.
Automation is the key. If we need people in space suits welding stuff, tightening bolts, and digging holes, you are likely correct.
On the other hand, one could not just wander out to any frontier plot and start farming. Well, I suppose one _could_, but one would be unlikely to survive. Infrastructure mattered then, too. The US is blessed with the best water transport network in the world and it provided the to/from market transport required when the Appalachians were "west". What we now call "the mountain west" was not really settled until there were railroads.
I'm not sure what space-y thing would analogous.
Agree about automation, but that level is not close. LLMs won't cut it.
"Wander out to any frontier plot and start farming" is pretty much what Daniel Boone did. He was mostly hunting and fur-trading, not farming, but it was still living off the land. I think we underestimate how much "infrastructure" there was in our frontier in the form of water, oxygen, functioning ecosystem. Martian settlers won't have to worry about indigenes, but they can't get there by buyin' a horse.
Again, not saying we won't or shouldn't settle space. Not even denying that the time may come when it provides the same kind of safety valve for the hard-up or the visionary that the American West provided. But that's not going to be soon, Musk or no Musk. Not my lifetime, probably not Glenn's. No idea how old *you* are. :-)
Old enough that it's very unlikely to happen in my lifetime, either.
I don't think LLMs are relevant to automation. The device that follows a seam and welds as it goes doesn't need to talk. It can just wander around - Roomba like - until it finds an unwelded seam (or someone can put it next to one) and just go.
Horses are seen through fire-engine-red colored glasses ("rose" is far too kind). Horses are hugely expensive to maintain. A solar charged electric buggy will get around fine on Mars and wouldn't be that expensive - assuming it does not need to be imported from Earth. Imported from Luna might work, but I admit that's just moving the "and how do we get factories on Mars?" question back a step. It's not as if the moon is a nicer place to live.
Still gonna be a while before I trust my Roomba with a spot-welder. :-)
Aww. Where's your sense of adventure? I'd bet the video of your Roomba with a welding torch mounted on it running about your house would be a viral sensation! The fire department might be less impressed.
We are living in the days of the "petty Person", and have been for some time, probably following the Columbia disaster and the fall of the Soviet Union. Columbia kick started the safety-ism movement, while the end of the Cold War removed an existential threat to western liberal democratic civilization. It allowed the "Petty People", scolds, nags "Karens" and beta-males to assert themselves and bully their betters to become ascendant, aided and abetted by left-liberal academics and politicians. The result is what we have now: a society of Men Without Chests. To paraphrase Churchill's famous quote regarding this election is not victory over wokeism( along with safety-ism, anny state-ism, etc) , it is not the beginning of the end of wokeism, but is is perhaps the opening battle of the war, and wokeism lost.
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!
For another good inspiring song about humanity reaching for the stars, listen to Uplift by Vixy and Tony. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB-3tFuQwqA
First verse: Hands chip the flint, light the fire, skin the kill
Feet move the tribe, track the herd, with a will
Mankind struggles in the cellar of history
Time to settle down, time to grow, time to breed
Last verse: Light, push the sails, read the data, cities glow
Hands type the keys, click the mouse, out we go
Our voices carry round the world and into space
Send us out to colonise another place
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 Communists, Statists, and DEMOCRATS gain POWER by CONTROLLING who gets a share of the PIE (that they have fixed in size and keep fixed). Musk threatens that oppressive scheme.
WEAK MEN, they cannot create only allocate.
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".
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
Thanks for sharing that!
"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.
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.
We had NO IDEA what diseases and other enemies we would encounter in the New world, Martin, that did not deter the Few, the Bold, and the Brave from forging ahead. While the scared, the weak, and those lacking courage hid in their hovels burning incense.
“A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.”
Prof. Reynolds, I read Admiral of the Ocean Sea way back in 1961 as an undergraduate in Dr. Strickland’s “Renaissance and Reformation” class at MTSU. I remember it had a powerful impact on me along with JFK’s “New Frontier” ideas and policies, especially those relating to space exploration. I was only 20 and couldn’t yet vote in the ’60 election, but both Morrison’s book and JFK’s vision made me feel that what I was preparing myself to do (college teaching) was important in the overall scheme of things. JFK’s goal of reaching the moon also resonated with my love of Science Fiction. Thank God, I didn’t face the woke stuff that today’s young men face, and I was able to achieve my goals. I’m retired now after 31 years of college teaching in Tennessee and 3 in Kentucky. The fire in the gut that I felt in the ‘60s might have dimmed a little as the years wore on, but the Trump victory and his association with Musk has, believe it or not, rekindled that fire! It also reminded me again of JFK who was a very different kind of Democrat from those radical Leftists and stagnant statists who dominate the party these days. I’m rambling here too much, but to close this comment out and illustrate my point, here’s a quotation from JFK’s 4th debate with Nixon in 1960: “I think we have to revitalize our society. I think we have to demonstrate to the people of the world that we're determined in this free country of ours to be first--not first "if" and not first "but" and not first "when" but first. And when we are strong and when we are first, then freedom gains. Then the prospects for peace increase. Then the prospects for our society gain.”
The socialist/communists/totalitarians are akin to The Nothing in The Neverending Story, as they first seek to destroy hope & joy, since then, as Gmork tells Atreyu (I am paraphrasing here, I think): "Humans who have forgotten their dreams have no hope, those who have no hope are easy to control."