i enjoy a good "kick them while they're down" post, and the elaborate "nasa is huffing paste with their latest moon shot" essay is as good an example as any—even if the essay is from mr centrist himself.
the "i've got a great idea to build worker solidarity, may 1st seems like a good date. nothing happens then" guy, turns out he can still post. ish.
anyway.
the essay is all fun and good, but it's peppered with the usual nostalgic takes about "when real engineering was done", which happens to coincide with when the author was 8-13 years old and very excited about space.
there's your usual takes about apollo that gently skip over the whole "three astronauts burned to a crisp" bit, plus the ever present "the space shuttle was incredible engineering" take. which is true, in that they solved many problems they'd created for themselves
anyway
it would just be nice to season such takes with the occasional "nasa started life as a means to employ german war criminals to develop long range icbms" along with classics like "and every two decades management negligence kills another crew" or "we don't do it because it is easy, we do it because it lets us put more money into defence contracting"
sometimes it feels like nasa's greatest achievement has been the whitewashing. putting a badge saying "i fucking love science" on the side a nuclear payload delivery vehicle
