I said as much on another board. Look, I love this stuff and work in the space industry myself. I watched the launch today and I watch lots of launches... especially when they are launching stuff I worked on. ;)

I think it is great that SpaceX can reach the public and get them excited about space. But really.... we did this decades ago and it has continued to this day in various forms... most recently on Soyuz. The big difference is that the USA got their car repo’d a decade ago and we’ve been walking to work ever since. Now, we got a new car again and people love the smell.

We are doing lots of cool stuff in space these days, but the stuff that gets plastered all over is the SpaceX stuff because they strap cameras on everything and make a TV show out of it. Good for them. They are doing a great job of getting their name and face plastered on the front of things and many others simply aren’t. A giant part of that is Musk’s personality vs the more traditional approach that other companies in the sector tend to take. You simply don’t see anything remotely approaching the SpaceX hoopla for Proton, Ariane, Antares, etc launches and even less about their payloads.