SpaceX i rastuća tuga među ljubiteljima svemira
Mnogi zaljubljenici u raketnu tehnologiju nekada su putovali do najjužnijeg dijela Teksasa da uživo gledaju lansiranja u Starbaseu. Međutim, zbog kontroverznog javnog ponašanja Elona Muska, radost praćenja SpaceX lansiranja pretvorila se u žaljenje kod bivših poklonika.
Kako je Starship ostvario jedan od svojih najuspješnijih testnih letova krajem avgusta, umjesto oduševljenja neki su osjetili prazninu. "Most of the time, watching a rocket launch as a grown-up fills me with the same feelings I had when I saw my first as a kid — fear, glee, wonder and excitement — as a spaceship makes its way into a largely foreign environment," "It really never gets old."
Jedan dugogodišnji fan je napisao: "I should be happy, right? Yeah, um, no," "I have been a space fan for pretty much all of my life, yet I couldn’t find the enthusiasm even to watch the launch and mission unfold." Drugi je dodao: "It’s very sad how SpaceX probably has had its biggest success tonight with Starship and I, a space freak for nearly 44 years, couldn’t be bothered to watch it,"
Mnogima je teško odvojiti nauku i program Starship od političkih i moralnih postupaka osnivača. "This is how I feel," "Space obsessed since I watched Apollo as a five year old. Space mad. Read every book I could, built my own rockets, named a child after a cosmonaut, cried the whole way around [Kennedy Space Center] — and I just feel nothing."
Neki pokušavaju da se podsjete da su decenije posvećenog rada i nauke ugrađene u program Starship: "I’m trying to take comfort in the fact that a lot of good, heartfelt effort and dedication have gone into the Starship program long before Musk became whatever the pure awfulness he is today," "Science, NASA, and the space program will succeed and continue in spite of him. He’s definitely ruined much of the joy and tainted this for so many though."
I dok SpaceX nastavlja sa lansiranjima Starshipa, brojni fanovi svemira osjećaju specifičnu vrstu tuge: "A considerable part of the space fandom is experiencing a specific kind of grief," "when the thing you most enjoyed is now associated with other things that are irretrievably dark."
Osim toga, važna politička pitanja povezana s odlukama o budžetima i pomoći imaju stvarne posljedice za milione ljudi, što dodatno utiče na percepciju javnosti o kompaniji i njenom lideru.
