Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: You are looking at a live view of the Falcon Heavy.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, Elon Musk's company SpaceX launched a rocket
Speaker 1: from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida under blue skies
Speaker 1: streaked with clouds. A giant white rocket attached to two
Speaker 1: smaller white boosters stood perched on the launch pad.
Speaker 3: All systems are Golfer launch.
Speaker 1: A crowd assembled at mission control giddy and loud. This
Speaker 1: was the company's splashiest launch yet of its biggest rocket
Speaker 1: built for a Mars crossing orbit.
Speaker 2: Stacked inside the firing is Elon's cherry red Tesla Roadster.
Speaker 1: Then there was the payload described by SpaceX in its
Speaker 1: live broadcast.
Speaker 2: And inside of it a passenger. His name is Starman,
Speaker 2: but don't worry, he's not human.
Speaker 1: There was also an arc, a sort of Noah's Ark
Speaker 1: of an archive on a space Proof Courts compact disc.
Speaker 2: On the arc that's being launched today. The Foundation has
Speaker 2: stored Isaac Asimov's classic sci fi series, the Foundation Trilogy.
Speaker 1: One objective of this test flight was to put a
Speaker 1: Tesla Roadster carrying the works of Isaac Asimov into orbit
Speaker 1: for a billion.
Speaker 4: Years three two.
Speaker 1: Welcome to X Man The Elon Musk origin story. I'm
Speaker 1: Jill Lapour. I'm a professor at Harvard. I'm a US
Speaker 1: political historian, and for a long time I've been studying
Speaker 1: the relationship between technological and political change. I'm fascinated by
Speaker 1: visions of the future in political discourse, in literature and
Speaker 1: science fiction, and even common bucks. The series, I'm exploring
Speaker 1: a new kind of capitalism, call it Muskism, extravagant extreme capitalism,
Speaker 1: extra terrestrial capitalism, where stock prices can be driven by
Speaker 1: dreams and fantasies that come from science fiction. Last episode,
Speaker 1: I looked at Musk's early life in South Africa, growing
Speaker 1: up reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He ended
Speaker 1: up in Silicon Valley in the nineteen nineties, founding a
Speaker 1: company called x dot com that merged with PayPal. eBay
Speaker 1: bought PayPal for one point five billion dollars. Musk use
Speaker 1: that money to start SpaceX. He also started talking about
Speaker 1: very big plans for the future of humanity.
Speaker 5: When I was in the university, I thought about what
Speaker 5: would most affect the future of the world, and the
Speaker 5: three areas that I came up with the Internet, sustainable
Speaker 5: energy and making life multiplanet.
Speaker 1: Terry Musk began to argue that his plan was to
Speaker 1: save the human race, including by going to Mars. But
Speaker 1: why future of humanity questions used to belong to religion
Speaker 1: and philosophy. Under Muskism, they belonged to engineering and entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1: How did that happen? This episode of X Man is
Speaker 1: called Planet b strap in to head to Mars, which
Speaker 1: is where Elon Musk was headed before he took a
Speaker 1: detour to the White House. In twenty sixteen, the year
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was elected president for the first time, Musk
Speaker 1: spoke to an audience at a SpaceX event about the
Speaker 1: ship he'd like to take to Mars.
Speaker 5: I think like maybe the name of the first ship
Speaker 5: that goes to Mars.
Speaker 6: My current favorite is Heart of Gold from The Hitchhiker's
Speaker 6: Guide to the Galaxy, and.
Speaker 5: I like the fact that it's driven by infinite improbability.
Speaker 5: I think ourship is also extremely improbable.
Speaker 1: One pretty useful way of understanding Musk's vision for SpaceX
Speaker 1: is that it's Douglas Adams fan fiction. Or you could
Speaker 1: make a fair argument that SpaceX's inspiration comes from the
Speaker 1: Foundation series.
Speaker 7: Titally Foundation author Isaac Asimos Encyclopedia Galactica one hundred and
Speaker 7: sixteenth edition.
Speaker 1: This Encyclopedia Galactica runs through all the Foundation Series, and
Speaker 1: if that sounds familiar, that's because the Hitchhiker's Guide is
Speaker 1: a lampoon of it.
Speaker 8: The Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the Great Encyclopedic Galactica
Speaker 8: as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom because,
Speaker 8: although it has many omissions contains much that is apocryphal
Speaker 8: or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older,
Speaker 8: more pedestrian work in two important ways. First, it is
Speaker 8: slightly cheaper, and second, it has the words don't Panic
Speaker 8: inscribed in large, much friendly letters on the cover.
Speaker 1: That Tesla roadster that must send up into space had
Speaker 1: a copy of Asimov inside, and it also had don't
Speaker 1: Panic on its dashboard. Asimov's Foundation Series revolves around a
Speaker 1: scholar named Harry Selden.
Speaker 9: W Nine hundred and eighty eight years of the Galactic
Speaker 9: Event died twelve sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Birthplace Heliconnor of Toardus sector. Harry Selden is responsible for
Speaker 1: the future of humanity. His plan Engineers will save us
Speaker 1: Selden knows that the Galactic Empire will soon collapse, after
Speaker 1: which the galaxy will endure a dark age. He's got
Speaker 1: a plan to hide away two sets of experts, one
Speaker 1: at each end of the galaxy, the two Foundations, to
Speaker 1: store the knowledge of civilization. Elon Musk read the story
Speaker 1: as a kid, and later said that the lesson he
Speaker 1: drew from it was that you should try to take
Speaker 1: the set of actions that are likely to prolong civilization,
Speaker 1: to minimize the probability of a dark age, and reduce
Speaker 1: the length of a dark age. If there is one
Speaker 1: anxiety about the imminent end of civilization. Existential catastrophism is
Speaker 1: an essential feature of Muskism. Humanity, in this understanding of
Speaker 1: the world is always at risk of extinction. Entrepreneurs and
Speaker 1: engineers are trying to save us.
Speaker 10: All.
Speaker 1: I got to wondering where this idea came from. When
Speaker 1: did people begin worrying about human extinction?
Speaker 9: That's a good question, So it depends on what you
Speaker 9: mean by worrying.
Speaker 1: That's Thomas moynihan, author of the twenty twenty book X Risk,
Speaker 1: How Humanity Discovered its own extinction. I called it moynihan
Speaker 1: to ask him about the history of the panic. Don't
Speaker 1: panic about human extinction, which is different from a religious
Speaker 1: worry about the coming apocalypse.
Speaker 9: The apocalypse scures a senseiment ending, where extinction anticipates the
Speaker 9: ending of sense.
Speaker 1: According to Moynan, people started worrying about human extinction sometime
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century during the Enlightenment, partly because scientists
Speaker 1: studying fossils had begun to observe and to document the
Speaker 1: extinction of other species, like dinosaurs. This fascinated romantic poets.
Speaker 9: Byron himself refers to using steam engines to deflect incoming
Speaker 9: asteroids and stop them from wiping out humanity.
Speaker 1: Mary Shelley, a decade after she wrote Frankenstein, wrote The
Speaker 1: Last Man, the first novel in English that imagines human
Speaker 1: extinction by way of a global pandemic. By the end
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, you get science fiction that imagines
Speaker 1: a risk coming from other planets.
Speaker 11: Nothing out of the shadow, like a gray snake.
Speaker 1: Martians came to Earth in H. G. Wells's eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight novel War of the World, But as morning Hand
Speaker 1: points out, Wells also thought of other plants as a
Speaker 1: way to avoid human extinction.
Speaker 12: Thankies a gentleman, sind describers, I can highly force myself
Speaker 12: to keep.
Speaker 9: Working at it. At the end of War of the
Speaker 9: World's he mentions that humanity might be able to migrate
Speaker 9: to Venus in the long term, and that would somehow
Speaker 9: prolong the lifespan of civilization.
Speaker 1: But of course, early science fiction emerged during an era
Speaker 1: of imperialism. After all, as Cecil Rhodes himself said, I
Speaker 1: would annex the planets.
Speaker 12: If I could.
Speaker 13: HG.
Speaker 1: Wells wasn't actually promoting a colony on Venus. He was
Speaker 1: opposing British colonies on Earth. He began War of the
Speaker 1: Worlds by talking about British colonial expansion into Tasmania, writing
Speaker 1: that the Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were
Speaker 1: entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination
Speaker 1: waged by European immigrants in the space of fifty years.
Speaker 1: Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain? And
Speaker 1: if the Martians warred in the same spirit, the line
Speaker 1: from Welles to Musk is a line of rupture to
Speaker 1: recycle age of imperialism. Science fiction absent the criticism of
Speaker 1: imperialism is to erase history. Moynan argues that in the
Speaker 1: middle decades of the twentieth century, fears of human extinction
Speaker 1: got ratcheted up after Harshima and during the Cold War,
Speaker 1: with its concern about nuclear armageddon. The danger was an
Speaker 1: alien invasion, the danger was us. By the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: people concerned about what's come to be called existential risk,
Speaker 1: especially people fighting for arms control, came up with some
Speaker 1: fancy calculations to try to win the argument.
Speaker 9: We shouldn't be thinking about human extinction as just the
Speaker 9: death of the seven billion people that are currently alive.
Speaker 9: We need to think about it more as the foreclosure
Speaker 9: of all the future generations of people that could have been,
Speaker 9: who could have had worthwhile lives.
Speaker 1: This idea really took off. This to me strange calculation
Speaker 1: by which our lives, the lives of everyone here on Earth,
Speaker 1: just don't amount too much compared to the lives of
Speaker 1: all the future beings who won't live if we don't
Speaker 1: establish colonies on other planets. Then, in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: moynihan says, a lot of tech people involved in early
Speaker 1: message boards came together to really panic about a long
Speaker 1: list of existential risks.
Speaker 9: Asteroid or comet impact, super volcanic eruptions, stellar explosions, nuclear war,
Speaker 9: climate degradation, and then one that also gets a lot
Speaker 9: of attention as well is artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: At the time this list was growing on tech message boards,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk was in college and then in Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: developing his sense of mission. A few years back, Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders tweeted, We're in a moment in history where two guys,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, own more wealth than the
Speaker 1: bottom forty percent of people in this country. Musk tweeted back,
Speaker 1: I am accumulating resources to help make life interplanetary and
Speaker 1: extend the light of consciousness to the stars. Not everyone
Speaker 1: thinks Musk and Bezos are heroically saving humanity from extinction.
Speaker 1: My question is why do they think they're doing that.
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos was born in New Mexico in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 1: Both he and Elon Musk grew up on stories about
Speaker 1: the Apollo eleven moon landing. The US ended its moon
Speaker 1: program in nineteen seventy two, Bezos, a Star Trek fan,
Speaker 1: always wanted to go back to the moon. Musk tells
Speaker 1: a story about how, as a kid he went to
Speaker 1: the NASA website to look up the schedule for going
Speaker 1: to Mars, and was disappointed to find there wasn't one.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty four, NASA had launched the Mariner for Probe,
Speaker 1: the first spacecraft to fly by Mars.
Speaker 14: The great question is what will matter no reveal, of course,
Speaker 14: the possibility of life on Mars has been debated for
Speaker 14: many years. A faint lines seen on the surface have
Speaker 14: led to the idea that these were canals dug by
Speaker 14: the Martians. But I don't think anybody gives that far
Speaker 14: these days.
Speaker 1: The Probe sent back twenty one photographs unveiled at the
Speaker 1: White House before Lyndon Johnson, but the photographs revealed a barren,
Speaker 1: dusty wasteland, all but crushing any hope. As Johnson said
Speaker 1: that there was life on Mars, it may be.
Speaker 12: It may just be that life as we know it,
Speaker 12: with its humanity, is more unique than many have thought.
Speaker 1: That view of Mars started to change in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: which marked a convergence. Tech types had become consumed with
Speaker 1: the possibility of human extinction. Jeff Bezos and e On
Speaker 1: Musk were starting to make millions, even billions of dollars
Speaker 1: and writers and scientists had begun to imagine ways Mars
Speaker 1: could be made habitable. The science fiction writer Kim Stanley
Speaker 1: Robinson published the Mars Trilogy, in which scientists from Earth
Speaker 1: have terraformed Mars. In nineteen ninety eight, an aerospace engineer
Speaker 1: named Robert Zubrin published a book called The Case for Mars.
Speaker 9: There's three reasons why Mars.
Speaker 2: Should be the goal of our space program, and in short,
Speaker 2: it's because Mars is where the sciences, it's where the challenges,
Speaker 2: and it's where the future is.
Speaker 1: Bezos founded his space company Blue Origin in the year
Speaker 1: two thousand. Musk started SpaceX two years later. In the
Speaker 1: two and a half decades since, despite painful setbacks, SpaceX
Speaker 1: has been an engineering wonder, a juggernaut revitalizing space exploration.
Speaker 1: But even as the richest men on this planet were
Speaker 1: thinking about traveling to other planets, more and more Earthlings
Speaker 1: where we'reried about life here on Earth.
Speaker 11: Five million students around the world took to the streets
Speaker 11: and a climate strike Last Friday. Students flood of the
Speaker 11: streets with a clear message, there is no planet B.
Speaker 1: Well, Musk and Bezos were building rockets. There is no
Speaker 1: planet B. Became the motto of the environmental movement, a
Speaker 1: way for people to say that space exploration not only
Speaker 1: fails to address the risk of human extinction, but is
Speaker 1: instead part of the problem. Even Kim Stanley Robinson took
Speaker 1: this line.
Speaker 10: I still speak positively about us going to Mars and
Speaker 10: even perhaps some day terraforming Mars, but it's a project
Speaker 10: for like the year three thousand a d. What I
Speaker 10: feel I have to say now is to remind people
Speaker 10: there is no planet b. It's not simple, it's not fast,
Speaker 10: it isn't going to happen anytime soon, and so we
Speaker 10: can't be thinking that Earth is disposable.
Speaker 1: About twenty years ago, Elon must began to change the
Speaker 1: way he talked about going to Mars.
Speaker 6: Have we screwed it up so badly here on this
Speaker 6: planet that our only hope is to build a new
Speaker 6: civilization out there? No, not at all. I Actually I'm
Speaker 6: quite optimistic about the future of humanity on Earth. So
Speaker 6: what is the benefit to humanity then to inhabit Mars. Well,
Speaker 6: I think if you consider two paths, one where we're
Speaker 6: forever confined to Earth, and the other where we are
Speaker 6: space frank civilization out exploring the Stars. I think the
Speaker 6: latter is far more exciting.
Speaker 1: SpaceX is about taking science fiction stories and turning them
Speaker 1: into fact. But what if SpaceX is actually fulfilling the
Speaker 1: vision of dystopian science fiction by way of Muskism, not
Speaker 1: only as extraterrestrial capitalism, but as a new political order.
Speaker 1: Isaac Asimov's Foundation series first appeared as a book in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one, but a more prophetic science fiction story
Speaker 1: about money and politics and the future of humanity came
Speaker 1: out in nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 7: Merchants, Frederick Poles and C. M. Cornbliss's modern classic about
Speaker 7: the future when the wizards of high pressure salesmanship take over.
Speaker 1: The Space Merchants is dystopian science fiction, later made into
Speaker 1: a radio drama. The story opens on a blighted, depleted,
Speaker 1: overcrowded Earth had a board meeting of an advertising agency
Speaker 1: called Fouler shockun.
Speaker 7: Associates, gentlemen, Good morning, good morning.
Speaker 12: That's the shotgun.
Speaker 7: Now sit down, sit down. I'm going to stand for
Speaker 7: a moment. I have just come back on the Moon rocket.
Speaker 7: As you know, I want to streatch my legs.
Speaker 12: How he alright, there's a shockun.
Speaker 7: Gentlemen, I am proud, and I'm humble when I say
Speaker 7: it's successful. The mining ventures are bringing the people here
Speaker 7: on Earth many of the metals our forefathers exhausted long ago.
Speaker 7: The colonist seemed quite untouched by the Kanci revolutionists, only
Speaker 7: six instances of kanci' sabitage in the past week.
Speaker 1: On this desperate, dying earth, Fowler Shakun is worried about
Speaker 1: Conci's conservationists, or what we'd call environmentalists gentlemen.
Speaker 7: On my trip back from the Moon, I begin to
Speaker 7: wonder are we getting soft? But now I've decided, Fowler
Speaker 7: Shotgun Associates is not soft, that it's ready to meet
Speaker 7: a challenge greater than our development of the Moon, the
Speaker 7: greatest challenge the world of advertising and promotion has ever met.
Speaker 7: The colonizing of Beabus.
Speaker 1: The Space Merchants wasn't the first version of this dystopian vision.
Speaker 1: In his story from nineteen oh one with the excellent
Speaker 1: title to Mars with Tesla, that is, with Nikola Tesla,
Speaker 1: a guy advertising a rocket trip to Mars turns out
Speaker 1: to be a con man. In twenty twenty two, in
Speaker 1: Fowler Shokun Fashion, SpaceX was involved in the first fully
Speaker 1: private entirely for profit mission to the International Space Station.
Speaker 1: It carried three space tourists, paying fifty five million dollars
Speaker 1: each for a seven seventeen day trip. The Washington Post
Speaker 1: has reported that SpaceX might be involved in a project
Speaker 1: to build the first hotel in space. Next up, the
Speaker 1: Red Planet buzzed back to the past to the US
Speaker 1: presidential election year of twenty twelve. During that year's contest
Speaker 1: for the Republican nomination, moderates like Mitt Romney said a
Speaker 1: plan to go to the Moon was crazy.
Speaker 8: I spent twenty five years in business.
Speaker 14: If I had a business executive.
Speaker 3: Come to me and say they want to spend a
Speaker 3: few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on.
Speaker 14: The Moon, I'd say you're fired.
Speaker 3: The idea that corporate America wants to go off to
Speaker 3: the Moon and build a colony there.
Speaker 14: It may be a big idea, but it's not a
Speaker 14: good idea.
Speaker 1: But far right Republicans like Newt Gingrich endorse this idea.
Speaker 13: I'll tell you I do not want to be the
Speaker 13: country that, having gotten to the moon first turned around
Speaker 13: and said it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 7: Let the Chinese dominate space.
Speaker 13: What do we care?
Speaker 1: During the US residential election year of twenty sixteen. Gingrich
Speaker 1: was one of Trump's closest advisors. Then, in the weeks
Speaker 1: between Trump's election and his inauguration, Elon Musk and Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos both went to see him in Trump Tower. In
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, after Trump took office, people started talking about
Speaker 1: moon fever. As one commentator put it, Trump wanted to
Speaker 1: make the Moon American again. Americans, though, weren't much behind
Speaker 1: this project. A poll found that sixty three percent of
Speaker 1: Americans wanted NASA to focus instead on climate research. Only
Speaker 1: thirteen percent favored another trip to the moon. But this
Speaker 1: didn't stop Trump.
Speaker 13: Thank you very much, Vice President Pence for helping. Where's
Speaker 13: our vice president? Great job? To restore American leadership in space.
Speaker 1: Trump directed NASA to alter its schedule and make a
Speaker 1: priority of sending Americans.
Speaker 10: To the Moon.
Speaker 13: Our journey into space will not only make us stronger
Speaker 13: and more prosperous, but will unite it us behind grand
Speaker 13: ambitions and bring us all closer together.
Speaker 10: Wouldn't that be nice?
Speaker 12: Can you believe that space is going to do that?
Speaker 1: At the end of twenty seventeen, at the White House,
Speaker 1: Trump made a formal announcement of a new destination.
Speaker 13: This time, we will not only plant our flag and
Speaker 13: leave our footprint, we will establish a foundation for an
Speaker 13: eventual mission to Mars and perhaps someday to many worlds beyond.
Speaker 1: It wasn't only about science, he said.
Speaker 13: Space has so much to do with so many other applications,
Speaker 13: including a military application.
Speaker 1: What he meant by that became clear A year and
Speaker 1: a half later.
Speaker 13: We're gathered here in the Rose Garden to establish the
Speaker 13: United States Space Command. It's a big deal. Spacecom will
Speaker 13: soon be followed very importantly by the establishment of the
Speaker 13: United States Space Force as the sixth branch of the
Speaker 13: United States Armed Forces.
Speaker 1: Space isn't so much the next frontier as the next battleground,
Speaker 1: and Elon Musk and his dream of a multiplanetary civilization
Speaker 1: that is being funded by American taxpayers. SpaceX and Space
Speaker 1: Force are two sides of the same bitcoin. SpaceX's military
Speaker 1: projects have included manufacturing missile tracking satellites and new rockets
Speaker 1: for Space Force, and developing a rocket capable of delivering
Speaker 1: weapons anywhere in the world. By twenty twenty four, SpaceX
Speaker 1: had received nearly twenty billion dollars in government contracts Trump
Speaker 1: vowed to increase that funding. We approached SpaceX for a response,
Speaker 1: but at the time of recording we hadn't received a reply.
Speaker 1: There is a politics of space. Lately, it looks less
Speaker 1: like the politics of star Trek, a jfcase New Frontier
Speaker 1: of exciting science and good government, then like the politics
Speaker 1: of star wars, a swaggering generals and imperial death stars.
Speaker 1: There's also something of a party politics of space, and
Speaker 1: in the US it's been generally Republican and conservative. This
Speaker 1: was true long before Musk became a Trump supporter and
Speaker 1: the GOP's most generous donor in the Senate. The race
Speaker 1: to space was, for a long time most fiercely endorsed
Speaker 1: by the Texas Senator and one time presidential aspirant Ted Cruz.
Speaker 4: No longer is space just an uninhabited void or a
Speaker 4: scientific novelty.
Speaker 1: That's Cruz in twenty nineteen, sharing a hearing on the
Speaker 1: emerging space environment. Cruz grew up reading the science fiction
Speaker 1: of Robert Heinlein, a noted libertarian and author of The
Speaker 1: Man Who Sold the Moon. Heindline's estate awards the Heinland
Speaker 1: Prize for Space commercialization. Both Musk and Bezos have won it.
Speaker 4: By some estimates, the space sector will grow to nearly
Speaker 4: three trillion dollars in value in the next three decades alone.
Speaker 4: It is also my belief that the world's first trillionaire
Speaker 4: will be made in space.
Speaker 1: One purpose of Space Force is to protect the space merchants.
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders wasn't the only person on the left to
Speaker 1: notice the ironies here this daggering inequalities. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: Trevor Noah, the mixed race South African who hosts the
Speaker 1: Daily Show on Comedy Central in the US, pictured Elon
Speaker 1: Musk bringing colonists to Mars.
Speaker 7: You gotta admit it would have been kind of funny
Speaker 7: if Elon Musk waited until they landed on Mars to
Speaker 7: be like, oh, I forgot to mention you are my
Speaker 7: space slaves. Now get to work building my base, because
Speaker 7: then uralize all those rich white people would be slaving
Speaker 7: away on the Martian fields.
Speaker 14: They'll be singing their old Caucasians virtuals.
Speaker 1: Trevor Noah tied race to space, but they got tied
Speaker 1: together again. In twenty twenty, George Floyd was killed in
Speaker 1: Minneapolis on May twenty fifth, a Monday. Protests began in
Speaker 1: Minneapolis that night. By Wednesday, they'd begun to spread across
Speaker 1: the country. On Thursday, the governor of Minnesota called in
Speaker 1: the National Guard. On Friday, Trump delivered an ultimatum, tweeting
Speaker 1: when the looting starts, the shooting starts. That night, as
Speaker 1: protesters gathered near the White House, the Secret Service rushed
Speaker 1: the President to an underground bunker. The next day, May thirtieth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, Trump boarded Air Force one. But where to?
Speaker 3: And now it's my high honor and distinct privilege to
Speaker 3: introduce to you the man whose vision and relentless leadership
Speaker 3: brought us to this historic day, the forty fifth President
Speaker 3: of the United States of America, President Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Trump hadn't flown to Minneapolis to talk to protesters. He'd
Speaker 1: flown to Florida to the Kennedy Space Center to watch
Speaker 1: the long scheduled launch of SpaceX's first manned mission, the
Speaker 1: first time a commercial space corporation carried people into.
Speaker 13: Space, Ignition LPDOT at the balcon nine.
Speaker 6: And got.
Speaker 3: It.
Speaker 1: Was a weird freak of timing this history making moment.
Speaker 1: Nearly four years ago, the George Floyd protests and SpaceX's
Speaker 1: triumphant launch.
Speaker 13: Big day is a big day.
Speaker 1: It wasn't unfortunate freak of timing. Trump took to the
Speaker 1: stage to his trademark walk on music at the Space
Speaker 1: Center and started out talking about the protests.
Speaker 13: My administration will always stand against violence, mayhem, and disorder.
Speaker 1: And it was a hard turn to get to the rocket,
Speaker 1: but Trump tied the two together. He said, raceso's division.
Speaker 1: Space brings unity.
Speaker 13: Moments ago, as we witnessed the launch of two great
Speaker 13: American astronauts into space, we were filled with the sense
Speaker 13: of pride and unity that brings us together as Americans.
Speaker 1: For Trump, SpaceX meant America first. Then he introduced an
Speaker 1: American entrepreneur.
Speaker 13: He's a little different than a lot of other people.
Speaker 10: He liked rockets.
Speaker 13: Elon Musk, congratulations. Congratulations.
Speaker 1: That's Trump basking in Musk's space glow. Since then, SpaceX
Speaker 1: has created the largest and most powerful spacecraft ever built.
Speaker 1: It's become the world leader in space exploration, and Trump,
Speaker 1: after his defeat in twenty twenty and his failed attempt
Speaker 1: to overturn the election, has come back to power to
Speaker 1: winning re election decisively, this time with Musk at his side,
Speaker 1: his own rocketman SpaceX's engineering accomplishments are incredible, But what
Speaker 1: about the costs? What about the risks? Not the existential ones,
Speaker 1: but the ordinary ones. Watching the SpaceX launch that day
Speaker 1: almost five years ago, now, all I could think about
Speaker 1: was a poem by Gil scott Heron from nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: about the Apollo mission. It's called Whitey on the Moon.
Speaker 7: One such poem concerned the fact that millions and millions of.
Speaker 12: Dollars are continually sent into out of space while we
Speaker 12: continue to face the same problems here on the ground.
Speaker 1: Scott Heron was writing about everyone left behind, the poor,
Speaker 1: the needy, and their suffering. His sister bit by a
Speaker 1: rat getting sicker and sicker, and him with no money
Speaker 1: to pay the doctor's bill while Whitey's on the Moon.
Speaker 1: I listened to that poem that day, while Trump and
Speaker 1: Musk watched that launch. It's still ringing in my ears
Speaker 1: all these years later, as Trump and Musk dismantle USAID,
Speaker 1: ending American aid programs around the world while ratcheting up
Speaker 1: the MARS program. People have been trying to escape to
Speaker 1: Planet B for a long time. That doesn't make it
Speaker 1: the right thing for Planet A. Next time, on X,
Speaker 1: man Muscism here on Earth, and the story of how
Speaker 1: the man who sold the Moon became Iron Man.