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Comment by runarberg | Hacker News Reader

> A huge part of this program is to generate buzz and interest in the public about the human space program.

Perhaps this is an impossible task. Humans don’t care about space explorers. We continue to have fun with sci-fi, but when we actual humans going to space in real life, it turns out they are just rich ass-holes that we all commonly hate.

Compare this with actual useful robotic missions like the James Webb Space telescope, which sparked huge interests and a ton of excitement.

I think the era of human space exploration died in the 1970s, and any effort to try to revive it are futile.

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Very few people who have gone to orbit (actual space) were anywhere near 'rich'.

The reason rich people are the ones funding current space companies is because they are literally the only ones that can do it, other than the largest governments.

SpaceX has generated more buzz than recent NASA work (except maybe Webb) and that will continue once Starship begins ferrying passengers into space.

The high profile cases of recent human space travel is the Blue Horizon which generated a ton of buzz, mostly from people complaining (justly) about how out of touch these people are. I think the sentiment of human space travel extends from there. People cringe from seeing Jeff Bezos spill his champagne after landing and then if they hear about some people going to the ISS they ask: “whats the point?” I think this is a just question and a logical extensions.

Now for the excitement around SpaceX. There was also a ton of buzz around Perseverance. And think people were also quite excited—though not as much—about the Parker solar probe. For future missions I think more people are excited about getting back mars samples from Percy the rover, and about a hypothetical mission to use gravitational lensing from the Sun to photograph surfaces of exo-planets. The hype around Starship seems to me to be inflated by marketing, when talking to space nerds around me there isn’t really that much excitement about what we can achieve with a SpaceX Starship that we can’t with a regular old robotic state funded mission.

Maybe you’re talking to the wrong space nerds? I, for one, am extremely excited for Starship being able to lift relatively huge amounts of mass to orbit per dollar.

> > Very few people who have gone to orbit (actual space) were anywhere near 'rich'.

> Blue Horizon[sic] ... Bezos

Blue Origin has never been to orbit. It's a glorified carnival ride and nobody who knows anything about space or rocketry could mistake it for anything else. Among rocket fans, these 21st century suborbital launches are a laughing stock. Even the 20th century suborbital Mercury-Redstone launches were arguably a pathetic response to Yuri Gagarin's pioneering orbital flight.

No household-name rich person has ever been to orbit.

Lance Bass almost made it!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Bass#:~:text=Bass%20was%....

> when we actual humans going to space in real life, it turns out they are just rich ass-holes that we all commonly hate.

Like who? Don't think I've met anyone who hates astronauts nearly as much as you seem to?

Search for Jeff Bezos space flight, look at news discussions and social media posts, and you will find more haters.

Billionaires flying into space is the minority compared to scientists and astronauts.

Astronauts have spent >736,000 hours in spaceflight, risking their lives for humanity, but the parent believes a 10-minute stunt flight carrying an irrelevant passenger is all that matters. I suppose they also dislike the imaginary adorers, and yet they are no different.

Jupiter’s grand tack left us with an asteroid belt right in the middle of the solar system. All our civilizational wealth derives from matter and energy, both of which we find in our cosmic backyard. Billionaire space tourism is a blip on the path to space industry.

As per the below poll, some people do care, but yes not the overwhelming majority.

https://morningconsult.com/2021/02/25/space-force-travel-exp...

Weird interpretations from these results to say the least. “Space Dominance” is nowhere mentioned except in the headline, yet the headline claims that’s what people want (!)

Seeing the results though I see that human space exploration is in the lower tier, just like my previous post was suggesting. More people would rather prioritize normal robotic missions as it seems. More people seem to put some importance to Conducting research to understand space then don’t. This is reverse (i.e. more people don’t think it important to) Research space travels health effect.

I think you are overusing the term "we."

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