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Linda Mitchell, KCMO's avatar

Good morning all! I admit that my take on all of this is going to be idiosyncratic, but when is it not?!

Firstly, the space program of the 1960s. My father was an aeronautics engineer who designed telecommunications satellites--most of which are the ones folks in the developed world (and beyond--he had a very interesting career!) have used since the 1960s for fun stuff like telephone calls. For us the space program was central to our lives and I followed it closely. My dad was also a raging lefty--which could make it hard to work for some of the people who paid his salary--and I think the thing that disappointed him most about the direction the space program went after 1968 was the fact that despicables like Nixon and Reagan were in charge of it after the hopefulness of the Kennedy years. My sorrow at the death of Robert Kennedy in 1968 and my disgust that Nixon got to be the one to congratulate the Apollo team still resonates in me: it was a pivotal moment in my life.

Secondly, the current space programs, both publicly funded and private (i.e. Bezos and Branson and their ilk): The USA has done a terrible job of maintaining and expanding a responsible and useful space program. The fact that there has never been a good replacement for the space shuttle; the fact that the decision to abandon deep space development for decades while littering our near-space environment with junk has hampered the growth of a responsible program: these are elements of shortsightedness that generations of Republican administrations (and arses like Clinton, whose programs were driven by popularity ratings) have wrought. The most innovative stuff is coming out of the three private companies--Space-X, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin--because these sociopaths (and really, they are all three sociopaths) have enough money to be able to throw it around with wild abandon, while the USA pinches pennies and lets its own citizens starve and struggle. I know that a robust NASA will not solve world hunger, but again: isn't that the job of government, not private individuals?

Thirdly, Bezos and Amazon: I admit I am conflicted. The guy is remarkably weird. But he also had a model to get, initially, books and information out to places where there was a dearth of both and he was willing to lose money like it was sludge going downstream for years in order to make that happen. I taught for almost 2 decades at a university in a part of the country that had virtually no bookstores for 100 miles in any direction and the public libraries were terrible. I was dependent on Amazon--especially in the long winter months when travel to a Barnes and Noble or Borders was almost impossible--as were all my students and colleagues. And Bezos was losing money for all those years but kept doing what he was doing, patiently building up his retail model. Is he deeply strange? Yes. Is he tone-deaf? Yes. Should he be paying a s***-ton more in taxes? Oh my goodness, yes. But in many parts of the country, his company was a lifeline, and it remains one of the better-paying jobs for a whole lot of people.

What I don't understand is why people rail about Bezos but not about the Walton family, whose business model did more to kill off Main Street, USA than Amazon ever did. Perhaps because Bezos is in-your-face strange, and the Waltons seem so, um, homey? I buy from Amazon because I refuse to give the Waltons any more of my hard-earned money.

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daria (MID)'s avatar

I have paid zero attention to the Bezos/Branson space race, mostly because, these days, my vision of space travel and space life is influenced by of the post apocalyptic/dystopian fare I've consumed throughout my life. Bezos's thanking the little people who work for him, buy from his Amazon, and read his newspaper reinforces my belief that the class and caste systems that plague us on earth will surely follow us into the heavens. That's no way to live.

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