"Schneider's glasses"
Private space
In his latest column, author Robert Schneider looks at Elon Musk's ambitions in space. He can understand why the entrepreneur and billionaire is sending satellites into space. But not the excitement surrounding the first privately financed spacewalk.
I am suspicious of Elon Musk's space ambitions, apart from the 42,000 Starlink satellites that he intends to send into space in the coming years and use to provide fast Internet access all over the world.
It's all about money, power and control. I can understand that. But to want to land on the moon again, set up a habitat there and then travel on to Mars is incomprehensible to me. Such a dream should actually be over.
Not for Musk. Years ago, he stated on the US talk show "60 Minutes" that astronauts Neil Amstrong and Gene Cernan were among his greatest "heroes", only to be told by those very heroes that they had no expectations of a commercial conquest of space.
That moved Musk to tears at the time. It must have been a déjà vu experience for him, a childhood moment where the son is humiliated by his father and has to realize that he will always be in his shadow, no matter what he achieves in life.
Last week, Musk's SpaceX, i.e. the crew of the Polaris Dawn mission, successfully completed its first EVA, i.e. an extravehicular activity or spacewalk. However, the Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov already undertook this in 1965, lashed to a four and a half meter long safety line. In the same year, the American Edward H. White followed in his footsteps on the Gemini 4 mission.
How does Musk celebrate the maneuver, which has been common practice for decades and doesn't really draw anyone out from behind the stove? "SpaceX" announces: "It's the first privately funded spacewalk in the history of space travel." Is this about space or about private or public money? Where is the sensation?
This article has been automatically translated,
read the original article here.
Kommentare
Willkommen in unserer Community! Eingehende Beiträge werden geprüft und anschließend veröffentlicht. Bitte achten Sie auf Einhaltung unserer Netiquette und AGB. Für ausführliche Diskussionen steht Ihnen ebenso das krone.at-Forum zur Verfügung. Hier können Sie das Community-Team via unserer Melde- und Abhilfestelle kontaktieren.
User-Beiträge geben nicht notwendigerweise die Meinung des Betreibers/der Redaktion bzw. von Krone Multimedia (KMM) wieder. In diesem Sinne distanziert sich die Redaktion/der Betreiber von den Inhalten in diesem Diskussionsforum. KMM behält sich insbesondere vor, gegen geltendes Recht verstoßende, den guten Sitten oder der Netiquette widersprechende bzw. dem Ansehen von KMM zuwiderlaufende Beiträge zu löschen, diesbezüglichen Schadenersatz gegenüber dem betreffenden User geltend zu machen, die Nutzer-Daten zu Zwecken der Rechtsverfolgung zu verwenden und strafrechtlich relevante Beiträge zur Anzeige zu bringen (siehe auch AGB). Hier können Sie das Community-Team via unserer Melde- und Abhilfestelle kontaktieren.