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So far the latest from the space-side of the internet is that Elon Musk made an X post about bringing home Boe-CFT astronauts Butch and Sunny “as soon as possible”. Trump later followed up with a Truthsocial post confirming that he asked Elon to do so.
For context there is no new information here (see here for additional information w/ added opinions), as far as we can tell at this point SpaceX will likely send up a half manned Crew-9 flight in march and they will return home then. To me this is pretty much just an obvious “spin currents to dunk on the Biden Admin” post, that doesn’t really explicitly lie but it definitely distorts or conflates the truth. Now though people are in my spheres of the net are throwing a conniption, and saying that this is blatant lying. Yet I fail to see how this should be the straw that breaks the camels back especially after a rather muted response to Elon’s choice of hand gestures last week. Perhaps EDS really has infected all previous sane minds, or I simply can’t see something obviously different here?
Elon's choice of hand gestures last week were probably a spastic/autistic mistake that should be ignored, possibly a 4chan-mentality troll that should be disdained, but almost certainly not a Neo-Nazi signal that should be feared. Social skills are not up his alley and being cheered by huge crowds is a bit new to him and this isn't the first time he's flailed around on stage like a 5 year old with too much candy, it was just the first time the shape of the flailing was something that could trigger left-QAnon.
But Elon's choice of wording in that tweet, I can't think of any excuses for. Managing an orbital launch provider is up his alley. He knows those astronauts aren't stranded and are able to leave at any time (on his company's capsule!) in an emergency. He knows that when they were semi-stranded (the Starliner made it home unpiloted fine, just with a level of risk that was unacceptable for humans) it was Boeing's fault, not Biden's. He knows SpaceX was already made Plan A to bring those astronauts back, before the Biden administration ended, and they're just waiting for the next crew rotation. He knows they haven't been there "so long" compared to other ISS long-term crew stays (though this one I would just call a "distortion" rather than a lie; they have been up there quite long compared to their original quick out-and-back plans). And he knows that the last couple months of delay are due to a SpaceX delay, with the new Dragon capsule for Crew-10 taking a little longer to finish than planned.
For years Musk seemed to be somewhat resistant to even the powerful brain-melting effects of Twitter discourse. I'm not sure what combination of MAGA-inner-circle discourse and way-too-much-Twitter discourse and too-much-Ketamine discourse has finally gotten to him, but I wish he'd snap out of it and back away from whatever it is.
He’s pretty much a full time propagandist these days
How so?
Do you think a lot of the Musk coverage isn't biased?
Do you think there's a chance that you are biased?
I'm biased, in favor of Musk. I'm a huge lifelong fan of spaceflight, and I can see that SpaceX is at least a decade ahead of all its competition and that this would not have happened without Musk. At best the competition would have been mere decades further behind without SpaceX to inspire and motivate and be emulated by them, and at worst they would be infinitely further behind because they would be too cowardly to seriously pursue dreams as grand as his. He may have drastically changed human history for the better there.
But I also have a Twitter account that lets me see his posts and reposts, and the ability to count that at the moment 15 of his latest 20 are right-wing politics. "Full time propagandist" is hyperbole if you interpret it as "does nothing but propaganda", but if you interpret it as "spends 30+ hours a week on propaganda" it might be literally true right now. This isn't inherently a bad thing; "propaganda" does include the motivated spreading of true and good ideas, not just bad and false ones. But it is an actual thing, not just bias.
Yeah I gave him a lot of credit, but the evidence he got online right brainfried is rapidly mounting.
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