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.
This flyby is a necessary precursor to landing and doing those cool things.
They need to take tiny incremental steps because the cost of a fuckup is so great.
If the public has to watch someone expire in space due to a malfunction the existing candle flame of support for these endeavours would be snuffed out.
With only two seconds of ping they can work from Earth with robots. Sending people is just a dick contest.