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Comment by FourHand451 | Hacker News Reader

I've never quite understood why a lot of people found launching the car to be so egregious. The first launch of a rocket routinely carries a "test mass" of some kind, which I understood to usually be a boring hunk of metal, or at least something that wouldn't be a great loss if the rocket failed. Putting a car on there didn't seem like a frivolous waste, as it would be unlikely for a customer to put forth a serious payload for the debut Falcon Heavy launch.

Yes, it was kind of meme-y and marketing-y. But it is a business, and I also don't think being serious about something means you can never make a joke about it.

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In Canada, a few years back, disaster preparedness exercises were to be held by a branch of the government.

The point was to test emergency response, processes, etc.

To make it fun, they chose zombies as the cause. Within a week of the media hearing of it, the entire exercise was canceled.

Zombies, plague, natural disaster, nuclear accident, it mattered not, the tests were for existing response mechanisms, but oh no! Can't be fun!

Bah.

He's like Doc Brown. "The way I see it, if you're gonna make a payload out of a car, why not do it with some style?"

> But it is a business

This is why I was disappointed, because it marks a departure from things auspiciously done with consideration "for all mankind".

A publicity stunt I wasn't disappointed in, was the twitter account for the Philae Lander. It also got a lot of media coverage. https://twitter.com/philae2014

The point isn't humour, rather the context. One stunt is for the benefit of a business, with what I find dubious goals for launching a rocket to start with, the other, to promote a project for "all mankind".

I think a lot of people are just grossed out by the symbolism.

Destroying a car that retails for years of many folks' income in a flashy, ostentatious manner is going to look like lighting cigars with $100s to many people.

Except the car wasn't destroyed, it's actually flying out there - and maybe, one day in the future, someone will retrieve it.

(I could understand people complaining about symbolism of sending a sports car, of all things, to be a first private industry artifact in interplanetary space. But this doesn't seem to be a majority complaint.)

Also: even the boring test mass payload would also cost "years of many folks' income". Not even counting the integration. Big things just costs big money - that's life for you. If someone is so sensitive about this, they probably shouldn't watch anything related to rockets at all.

> even the boring test mass payload would also cost

Of course. I'm not talking about considered opinion, just knee-jerk human reactions to headlines.

You can tell people they're wrong if you want. Let me know how that goes for you.

> You can tell people they're wrong if you want. Let me know how that goes for you.

Yes, let's instead all nod and smile to people's inconsiderate knee-jerk reactions. Let me know how that goes for you.

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