A professor says to stop doing it, because it’s “imperialist.”

I do sort of agree with this, though: “Mandel said the space industry is ‘highly bureaucratic, highly politicized, and highly technical,’ and the more she learned the more she began to question the utility of continued manned space operations.”

She’s not wrong about that; I question its utility, the way NASA continues to go about it. It certainly doesn’t seem worth the money to me. But that’s a separate issue from SpaceX’s methods and goals which, unlike the government human-spaceflight program, which is run primarily as a jobs program, are focused on actually moving humanity into space in a serious way. But she seems to be damning all of human spaceflight with the bad example set by NASA. And I’m sure that she thinks that Elon is even more “imperialist” than NASA.

[Late-morning update]

Don’t be a puddlefish:

The first entity to establish a Mars colony will be the universe's first trillionaire.

Lately, we've had a lot of puddlefish whining about how "we" shouldn't go to Mars.

Some of them actually think they get a vote, based on economic illiteracy and the delusion that SpaceX is… https://t.co/7dCy04qecV

— Devon Eriksen (@Devon_Eriksen_) October 2, 2024