It is clear that many people only saw a chance to pile on Elon Musk from the Starship explosion last week, and that's a shame.
Because, whatever I might feel about Elon Musk, Starship is the most innovative and potentially disruptive technology in the #Space industry for decades. And this is an industry that desperately needed the shake-up.
So I'm going to talk about why. It may take awhile, because there's a lot to cover.
#SpaceX is really being run mainly by its COO, Gwynne Shotwell.
You should read about her a bit -- she's a pretty impressive human.
I knew engineers at her previous company, Microcosm, which pioneered some challenging tech, but which was, like most independent space companies, severely under-capitalized.
What Musk mainly brought was The Money. And that has always been a major issue in this business.
@evan Not especially. We looked into it, but the company that offered "environmentally responsible" electricity also required you to have an excellent credit rating and we didn't qualify.
I frankly have some resentment about that kind of thinking and what it says about the sincerity of such companies.
But OTOH, much of the power in this area is nuclear and wind, anyway, rather than fossil fuel.
There's a difference between being responsible (having the obligation to take action) and being at fault (being the one who actually made the bad decisions that led to the situation you're in).
Most of the decisions that led to this situation were not made by me.
And the few cases where I'm genuinely implicated are 'trolley problems' set up by people who are more directly responsible, because they are more powerful.
The most effective response is probably political action.
@smallcircles@aral I'm ambivalent about the notion, but one COULD write "boost bots" with similar algorithmic promotion that one could follow, if one wanted.
But we have filters, following people who boost, and even hashtags to provide that now. Curation DOES exist here.
I'm not at all convinced that an AI could do better.
Fan of space, film, free/open-source software and free culture. Former pro astronomer. Writer, blogger, editor, visual artist. Occasional free-software developer. (Personal Account)