I won't buy into it. If you want to, fine. I won't begrudge it.

But you did, though. Everyone else prior to your comment was just trying to appreciate the accomplishment of SpaceX. No one had even mentioned the car. Then you came stomping in with the Tesla part and how you don't want any part of it.

Perhaps your mistake was thinking that just because you read something about other people liking the launch, that was the same as them coming to you directly and asking you to join in liking it? Not that you're not allowed to add to a discussion, of course. But you weren't forced into it, either.

To be clear, I'm not actually mad at you, and I'm a little uncomfortable with how personal the responses got. But you seem to be under the impression that you did not instigate things, and that's not accurate.

This isn't fun, it's putting some corporate bullshit into space and asking everyone else to laugh and play along, and I won't buy into it. If you want to, fine. I won't begrudge it. But I also won't just sit here and basically let you call me an idiot for not agreeing with you.

I’m not calling you an idiot for disagreeing with me. I’m doing so because of the way you stomped into this thread and took it on yourself to be the bummer. AKA: The asshole. Do you really think anyone else here disagrees with you on the points you’ve finally gotten around to making? We don’t. But to come in specifically to try and ruin people’s excitement at something that was truly awesome... People who do that infuriate me more than just about anyone else.

You could have stated your opinion in a more tactful way and had myself and everyone else who cared to reply agreeing with everything you said. Because I totally agree with you that bad work practices should be punished. And I at least partially agree that Tesla as a car company isn’t all that great. And I even agree that putting that Tesla Roadster in the Falcon Heavy was in part a publicity stunt. We pretty much agree on everything! Except how you decided to state your opinions.

You could have made your point while joining in with our community in celebrating the awesome achievement of hundreds of hard working people. Instead, you decided to post a half-baked rant about capitalism and hating corporations and you decided to call one of the most significant rocket launches in decades nothing but a publicity stunt.

More power to ya if you like driving people away form your legitimate opinions, but please don’t come here and be “that guy” who decides he’s gonna shit on a thread because he can. That’s all I really ask.

But I don't see how putting a Tesla in it is anything but shilling for his other company, and that company sucks. I won't laugh and smile and celebrate that like everyone else wants to. I can applaud the launch itself and recognize its significance while also lamenting the shitty corporate capitalistic opportunism of using a Tesla as a payload.

Did you read ZackDark's post?

I actually understand your dislike for Tesla; I don't fully agree with it, but I understand it.

But you keep calling the car a 'shill for his other corporate interest', and I don't think it's really that at all. I think it's a personal memento, one that's pretty damn important to him. I don't begrudge him the gesture, because, after all, SpaceX IS the first private entity to accomplish what it accomplished today, and it's a thing that will benefit all of us, in the long run. I'm sorry you can't separate his success here from what he does in another business, but if you actually READ that post and ignored the substance, that seems a little unfair to Musk. (If you just didn't read it, that's a different story - but I'd be curious to know if it changes anything about your opinion once you do.)

I'll admit, I'm not very good at articulating my thoughts at the best of times, and this gets me fired up in an oddly specific way, so this entire subthread is probably a shitshow. But that's pretty par for the course around here.

No. No it is not. Go take a look at every other thread on the front page of the forums. We’ve collectively been doing pretty darn awesome as a community lately... and then you come in here and act like this. Poor show man. Very poor show. And it’s all on you.

I still love you guys.

Then show some respect and restraint when before deciding to dump on a topic!

I absolutely want to change it.

Cut the military spending budget in half and give the difference to NASA. That'd be great. Let's go to Mars in the name of humanity rather than in the name of Tesla.

You are so wrongly caught up on Tesla when it was the least important of the awesome things that happened to day in space flight.

As I said, I think what SpaceX is doing is ultimately great. I recognize that, at the end of the day, corporate interests will get more done for space exploration than the government will. I don't have to like that, though, and I definitely don't have to like Musk shilling his other corporate interests while doing it.

You don’t like getting space exploration done? Ok... that’s an interesting position.

You all can look down on me and laugh and think I'm being silly and getting worked up over a small little detail. Maybe that's true. It still bothers me. It's still some rich asshole sending a billboard for his company into space, and that sucks just on principle. It's not cute or fun. At the end of the day, it's his rocket and he can do whatever the hell he wants with it, but I'm not going to celebrate it.

You don’t have to support something or someone 100%. You can be excited or proud for a major milestone in rocketry and still be against bad labor practices. But doing it in the way you did? It just makes you look like an asshole who is arguing against legitimate accomplishment and progress. If you want to get your points across you’ll want to cut out the extremism and state them clearly without jumping in to shit on something that a good many people were rightly enthusiastic about.

My initial post was actually pretty respectful until you and Cyber jumped in and basically told me I was an idiot and I should fuck off. Get off your fucking high horse dude. Does the world look cool from up there in clouds where you apparently live?

It's not only naive, but also borderline irresponsible to not look at the negative side and to only celebrate the actual launch.

There’s a correct time, place, and way to bring up the negative side. I think your time (now) and place (here at DBO) were more or less ok. I support anyone talking about pretty much anything around here. But, your way stunk. What did you expect when you start talking about hating corporations and captialism without even expressing why your really hate them?! What did you expect for jumping in to be the bummer in a positive thread celebrating something that is legitimately positive? You have got to take some responsibility here. So far, I just see you lashing out at people who didn’t like the way you jumped in intending to ruin people’s day.

Let me be clear: I realize this is all hypocritical. There literally is no ethical consumption in our society. Every product I’ve ever bought is made by a company that undoubtedly has exploited workers and bad policies somewhere.

Whoa! I mean, I totally agree that it's a fallen world and there are bad capitalists, socialists, marxists et al. in every corner of the globe, but that's a helluva statement, cheapLEY.

And maybe slightly hyperbolic, but I don’t think so. I’m not some staunch anti-capitalist. It’s a better system than any that’s been tried so far that I know of. But I genuinely believe that capitalism, at its heart, relies on inequality. Or at least the current actual form of capitalism we utilize. For some to be rich, some others must be poor. Our economy is based on growth and only growth, and I don’t think that’s sustainable.

I don’t hate SpaceX. Contrary to what it may seem from this thread, I don’t hate Elon Musk. I just find it impossible to separate the awesome accomplishment of this launch with the gross feeling I get in my gut when I see that fucking picture of the Tesla in front of Earth. It makes Tesla the focus, and it doesn’t need to be there, and it bugs me that it is there, and it bugs me even more that someone can see it and think “Cool, a car in space!” rather than “But why?” Being in space on its own is worthy of attention, we don’t need to put a Tesla there to make it inspiring.

Or do we? I'm sure you're aware of the decline in the number of viewers watching the shuttle launches as the years went by.

Now there’s the real bummer. Maybe that’s my real problem. If being in space needs a car floating around in to be inspiring and exciting, than I actually do lament for humanity. Maybe that’s too judgmental, I don’t know.

The cameras are already dead from my understanding. Granted I saw that in a single article, saying they were running off the car battery and would last about 12 hours. That could totally be wrong, it was info from an article I skimmed.