Comics and books inspire people to get traits and achieve things like the characters from the stories. As an example: Elon, because of reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation and other sci-fi books, got inspired to do space stuff. Not to become a sci-fi writer (although that could have happened as well)

Many scientists and engineers have been inspired this way when they were kids.

This reminds me of founders with a legitimately cool product being floored by their lack of sales and marketing efforts translating into a lack of sales.

Nothing sells itself. If we want astronauts, we need to keep the astronaut brand in schools. Art is a proven way to do this.

Now watching it, knowing what I do, it's comical. But it had a big part in getting me interested and in the door.

It's the with any media or entertainment. You can't take kids to space, but you can make a book, movie or comic book where they can dream about doing it when they grow up.

Put another way, it's better that kids read this comic book and not one that does nothing to develop their futures, right?

How does anyone hear about the thing you're doing or making? How do people figure out how to get involved? How do you attract different people(women, POC, etc) to your thing if they aren't already represented?

People don't just magically know about something that's interesting to them. They have to discover it.

Tons of very influential or popular figures only took their path because of things like comic books(art) from NASA. I wouldn't be an engineer today if it weren't for stuff like How It's Made or Bill Nye. Representation matters.