Image: Smithsonian
Though I am not a fan of Bob Zubrin or going to Mars I have to admit a chapter in his book “The Case for Mars” changed my worldview. The Chinese burning their exploration fleet of giant sailing ships was, for me, a very important lesson- though many of these history lessons I believe are so important seem to not impress others so much.
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-zhenge-he-treasure-fleet-elite-free-trade-2017-2
The Business Insider article tries to make a connection with Trump and infers that if China had gone Neo-liberal back in the 15th century it would rule the world now…which I think is complete garbage. I thought I would preemptively address that view because I am not talking about how great commerce and money is: I am going the other way.
For the last ten years the “NewSpace Mob” has been waging a marketing campaign that invariably portrays NASA as a corrupt wasteful organization that is keeping private industry from expanding humankind into the solar system. This is a purely Orwellian horror story the public knows very little about. The reality is NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.
The effect of this Ayn-Rand-in-space Neo-liberal con may likely end up being much like the Chinese burning their Superships. Only a state-sponsored public works project on the scale of the Panama Canal or the Hoover Dam is going to enable independent off-world colonies. The media has been completely hijacked and even public forums where critical views are supposedly allowed are now closed to any criticism of the flagship company or the NewSpace ideology. I know this well because I have been banned from almost all of these forums and the few that occasionally allow me to comment have recently stopped doing so.
If anyone reading this needs proof they need only read recent articles from sites that are essentially SpaceX infomercials.
Ars Technica has dozens of articles damning the Space Launch System https://arstechnica.com/search/?ie=UTF-8&q=SLS
There is a short list of popular space blogs and newsites of about a half dozen and ALL are in the business of damning NASA and promoting SpaceX. Some of them do this subtly and others are blatant, but they all are obviously promoting the NewSpace flagship company. Even a few that seemed neutral have recently joined the rest:
SLS: $17 Billion And Counting, with First Launch Still a Year Away
This has been going on for ten years and those who were in their early teens are now adults and completely programmed by these years of propaganda to readily agree that it would be best to dismantle the space agency and “hand it over to Musk.”
Ice on the Moon 
Why would NASA be shut down? It’s had bipartisan support in Congress for decades, and they don’t seem inclined to listen to SpaceX no matter what they do. I wouldn’t be worried about any idiot fanboys who want the agency shut down.
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Listen Greg, if Musk buys influence, just like he did in 2008, and the government decides it can save money by reducing NASA to a shell of it’s former self by “handing it over to Musk”- then with public support (or indifference) it can happen. The process of NASA bashing by Ayn-Rand-in-space libertarians has been going on non-stop, full tilt, for a decade. You can deny it but I have watched it from the beginning. The damage done by NewSpace to public opinion is vastly underestimated. That the strip mining of Earth orbit with Starlink and that monstrosity the toxic dragon is happening is proof.
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