By all rights, this should be something I am deeply passionate about. I’ve been in tech/engineering my entire adult life and was obsessed with NASA as a kid. I even live on the east coast of Florida and can sometimes see the launches/landings over the ocean. But I just… don’t care at all. I’m not suffering from depression or any other malaise, and generally things are fine. But I haven’t clicked on a single link or looked at a single image. I know this has not been the case for many, many people, so I’m wondering what might be different about this launch (or really the whole program in general), and curious if anyone else has found themselves feeling the same.


I get your sentiment but that’s exactly why we need space colonization.
There is a thing called translatio imperii which means that empires aren’t created nor destroyed, they just move from one location to the next, always on the frontline of humanity.
If we don’t get spaceflight, the US will stay an imperial entity for eternity. Only if space colonization succeeds, mars can become the next empire which means that the US stops being one, interestingly.
Thats actually a perfect explanation that I think is inline with this
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YfhA3KWLtFqBeFnpb/my-specific-singularity-timeline-to-utopia