We accepted the outif motive industry as private enterprise. But we have not accepted that until very recently, that that's the case with space exploration. It's just a complete subversion of our notion of space exreration as a public good. There was not a vote held when people decided that this would be subjected to the laws of the market. The world's likely first trillionaire funding this and now saying he doesn't need to pay taxes because he's bringing the light of human consciousness to the stars.
When it comes to Elon Musk, it can be hard to separate the man from the myth. But in her new podcast, “The Evening Rocket,” Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore manages to see through Musk’s mystique, explain his worldview, and decipher his visions of the future by going back to the sci-fi stories he grew up on — stories, Lepore says, that Musk sometimes misread.