William Shatner to blast off on Bezos rocket to become oldest person in space (opens in new tab)

(theguardian.com)

7 pointscnfernandes4y ago4 comments

4 comments

Jeeeeeeezzzzzuuuusssss... and I thought I was cynical. But all the "this is just a PR stunt" comments and commenters focusing on "how much did Bezos pay Shatner" comments really pain me. Is that really the main takeaway here or the only thing people can choose to fixate on?

Sure, it was a "PR stunt". But I posit that it is incorrect to say that it was just a PR stunt. I believe that the symbolism involved in "Captain Kirk goes to space FOR REAL" is immensely inspirational for many people. I mean, heck, I find it inspirational enough that I know it's a "PR stunt" in a sense.

But to my way of thinking, if this "PR stunt" helps serve to get even a few more people excited about space exploration, and science/engineering in general, then that is unequivocally a Good Thing. I mean, given the number of people these days who seem quite content to abandon science/logic/reason and embrace various forms of Magical Thinking, I'm all in favor of anything that works to counter that trend.

mindcrime4y ago

Wow, total brain fart writing that above. Too late to edit now, so I'll just say:

s/enough that/enough, even though/

quijoteuniv4y ago

To me this seems PR organised. He is/was on the "good guys" list. For me the only thing Bezos is going to achieve, is to empirically prove how far can selfishness (an other adjectives) travel.

cnfernandesOP4y ago

The one thing I've learnt from Musk and Bezos needling each other like six-year-olds is that 200 billion dollars is not sufficient to make one have an innate sense of self-worth.

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