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@@PhilEdwardsInc I think you're underestimating just how far off the rails one party has gone. A guy that starts an Internet company, and parlays that into an electric car company and rocket company, and dreams of going to Mars, and sells a flamethrower on a lark, isn't exactly the kind of "modern man" that believes in "trust and safety" when it comes to online speech.
@@chrimony oh i mean id say the cynical interpretation is that he wanted to control politics and speech to build more rockets (which i sort of believe). like a paper clip maximizing ai....
@@chrimony Where did Phil say anything about trust and safety and online speech? *IF* you work under the premise that Elon is doing everything that he is because his one singular goal is Mars - it's incredibly easy to justify his purchase and treatment of Twitter. It allows him to control the narrative, it allows him to use one the largest social media platforms on the internet to spread whatever message he wants. He can use it propagandize, he can use it to help the political party he's hitched his wagon to - in hopes of, I suppose, gaining more control in government to enable his end goal...Which is Mars. Now personally I think Elon is entirely bought in to the culture war, and most of his actions can be explained by his completely unreasonable and irrational fear of "wokeness", but I wouldn't at all be surprised if he so strongly attached himself to Trump because he thinks he can have out sized influence that way. He obviously doesn't see Trump as the threat that many of us do, but being the richest man in the world helps in that regard...
@@PhilEdwardsInc "The bean counters told me we literally could not afford to buy seven dollars worth of moon rocks, much less seventy million. Bought 'em anyway. Ground 'em up, mixed em into a gel. And guess what? Ground up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill." Cave Johnson lives rent free in my skull and sometimes he comes out. This is such an occasion. Thank you for the reminder folks.
Actually, the comparison of Musk to VonBraun is perfect, (hu)men so single minded in their desires that they would compromise _literally_ everything else to achieve their own goals with wonton disregard to anyone with any different views and any legitimate concerns.
Musk isn't single-minded about space. He is single minded about HIMSELF. Everything he does to enrich himself and amplify himself. Von Braun literally was a rocket scientist. Musk is a billionaire that buys up existing companies, slaps his name on them, usually runs them into the ground, and then pats himself on the back. Kind of like Trump.
I intensely dislike Musk and Sam Altman, one of Altman’s comments really makes some sense: “Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it.”
@@a-_-s YAWN. Musk was great enough when his politics aligned with yours. The moment that stopped, then the "good people" became deranged and then projected that insanity onto Musk.
11:45 "For size purposes, the lunar rover popped out of the lunar module. It unfolded. Everyone was hoping that the industry would expand in the same way. Start small, but get bigger when it was needed." My girlfriend often says the same thing about me.
Small correction: dead reckoning is a navigation term used across the military. In the army dead reckoning applies to land navigation by taking a known point and your speed and taking the straight line distance to your destination. I personally like using terrain association whenever I have to do land nav in the army but I do not think that will work with rockets.
I don’t think this is a hot take at all. Political and financial motives are really the only drivers for doing things in space. I’m such a space nerd-I follow it all. Most of the channels I subscribe to on this platform exclusively report on space topics. I’ve been saying all along that there are two main reasons Elon is doing what he's doing. The first is regulations. He’s supporting the candidate who promises him the power to slash regulations and weaken regulators like the FAA and EPA. Did you see that full-page statement Elon had SpaceX post on their website? To quote, "The FAA has stifled progress of both SpaceX and NASA with needless environmental impact statements and other regulations." So, when a presidential candidate says he’ll make Elon head of some committee or group overseeing “government efficiency,” of course Elon is going to support that candidate. That’s his main political motivation. The second reason is financial. He’s aware of the promises that same candidate has made about cutting taxes for big companies and wealthy individuals. So, just like von Braun used the Nazi party to advance his rocket research before switching to the U.S. government to continue it, Elon is using a presidential candidate to further his own goals. I’m not saying any of this is good or right-I really dislike what Elon has become. But it was probably inevitable. I also make a point of separating Elon from his employees. Whenever I post about SpaceX, I always get a few comments like, "How can you support that man?" I’ve started replying with an analogy: "Blaming the employees, engineers, and scientists at SpaceX for Elon’s actions is like blaming Amazon warehouse workers for something Jeff Bezos said or did." Your take is spot-on, in my opinion. Awesome video, as always.
And, yes, I refused to say his name. He's just "the candidate" to me. He is also so selfish that he doesn't even see that Elon is using him. Anyway, I don't want to get _too_ political. But yes, I went out of my way to avoid boosting the candidate's name in any kind of algorithmic metric.
Well, I think your estimation of Elons motivation to throw all his weight behind a dangerous candidate is more generous than mine, but definitely fascinating story about the rovers!
Another factor behind the lunar rover was p.r. Even as an elementary school kid in 1971 I was aware that people were getting bored with the moon landings. When they unveiled the lunar rover it felt a lot like they'd added a new character to the show to keep the ratings from sagging. As your video reflects, it was sold to us as the first step toward permanent colonies on the moon. Which never happened because unless your plan is to terraform the moon or use it as a launchpoint to Mars-both unlikely and prohibitively expensive-there is no reason to live on the moon, unless it's for the great view of Earth. So yes, I do see your point about Elon Musk-he does have the spirit of Von Braun in him, in more ways than one. But I don't believe Mars is his ultimate objective. Rather, like Von Braun, he has two separate agendas that have found a way to serve each other. One is the urge to dominate space, the other is to dominate folks on Earth. This guy talks to Putin every day, and something tells me they're not just talking about Mars. Utopians and totalitarians get along a lot better than is healthy for the rest of us: the connecting thread is the will to direct history instead of simply letting people go about their lives. Of course, like Von Braun, Musk is blandly indifferent to consequences: as Mort Sahl quipped, the title of Von Braun's memoir should have been "I Aim For the Stars, But Sometimes I Hit London."
As a space nerd, and also a politics nerd you've hit the nail on the head. There is (probably) small subsect of space enthusiasts online who support elon (and by extension trump) because he is getting stuff done in space.
wish everyone would understand that Elon is larping as an engineering, stop giving him so much credit, he's a nepo-investor, give props to the actual engineers who have to put up with his ego-fuelled strolls around the facilities
B-b-but, the moon landing was faked by NASA, and Elon Musk will get us to land on the moon for real this time! Also, Elon invented electric vehicles and totally didn't steal Tesla away from the two EV engineers who actually created the company!
Yeah but, Phil has a point, and it doesn't contradict _your_ point at all. He's LARPing as an engineer. So he's throwing in with the shitheads, just like von Braun did. Because Musk thinks that's what you have to do to be successful.
If it weren't for his suggestions and ideas and knowing who to hire, you'd end up with a company like blue origin, which was made before SpaceX with considerably more funding and government support from the get go; see where they both stand now.
I was literally sitting down with my dinner like "damn I really fancy a vid by that guy who did the Mcdonalds fries video whose name I keep forgetting". lo and behold, you deliver! (sorry, I'm terrible with names lol)
Giant rides are what you take, driving on the moon. I hope my wheels don't break, driving on the moon. We could drive forever, driving on the moon. We could live together, driving on, driving on the moon.
I think you're really missing something when you view the rockets as Musk's goal not a tool for other goals. He grew up in rich apartheid South Africa, goes on about breeding and has a lot of kids, starts an impossible gadgetbahn project because he thinks trains might hurt his car sales, and keeps trying to make everything about him when the actual work is done by the engineers that he dictates to (badly, no deluge system?). He's a megalomaniac that thinks he has a magic brain who wants to recreate society the way he thinks it should be and knows he can't legally or physically do that here, so off to Mars for your weird polygamist eugenics cult.
On Apollos 15-17, the film canisters were stored in the service module and couldn't be retrieved from the cabin. So they had to do deep space EVAs to retrieve them to bring them back to earth, and the astronauts are just NOT attached to anything aside from their life support umbilicals. Those are truly the most stressful manned space videos I've ever seen.
Interesting hot take on Elon. Hard to know at what level he is evaluating any given topic/decision. The products and systems his companies are building are incredible. The man, his actions, and behavior are a little more challenging to accept.
@@PhilEdwardsInc that’s fair I guess. He and Von Braun are to me amoral chaotic, also conventionally called evil. It helps to have a thought for good vs evil, even if at time that’s a simplistic worldview. I think a lot of people are over-complicating both men’s motivations and goals, maybe because they don’t know the biographies deeply. For Elon, Jill Lenore did an outstanding ten-part audio biography of Elon’s family for BBC a few years ago, which is well worth the time invested.
I joined a Spaces event with him and Cathy Wood and he tied every single point about crypto back to space somehow. It was his number one thing on his mind the entire talk and the talk had nothing to do with space.
For both Musk and von Braun, I believe you are brushing over the extent to which they participated in the political parties they have aligned themselves with. It can be argued that Von Braun didn't need to join the SS to continue building rockets, and for Musk, by aligning himself with the anti-trans-rights crazies and adopting their ideology, his daughter has cut ties with him. I don't think it makes sense that either of them made those moral sacrifices simply for the pursuit of technological progress.
The reason Musk is political is all of the lucrative government contracts, and the protection from litigation/regulation desperately needs. Not to mention he's a proud racist and right wing nut.
I’d never thought about Von Braun having these similar points with Musk, but I definitely see your point, thank you for making this Phil! Very cool video! Fun thing is as we explore what navigation on the Moon & Mars for any future missions, dead reckoning is basically still where we’re at, until we send navigation satellites
About the hot take, I think there is something to what you're saying, but Musk has clearly expressed political views that arguably have nothing to do with rockets, like his public feud with his trans daughter, or what he has said and done with Twitter. As someone who has been (probably a bit too foolhardily) ride or die for Mars for decades, I'm really struggling with Musk. I'm genuinely excited about Starship and the potential to unlock the solar system, but I'm sickened by Musk's actions and words (and not just that he has affiliated himself with the Trump campaign-most billionaires have for obvious tax and regulatory reasons), he does appear to be on the faschy side of politics. Okay so hear me out. I do believe there is such a thing as Martian politics. It's nascent of course, but there has been a community advocating for human colonisation of the Moon and Mars for decades. I joined the Mars Society as a founding member in 1998, though I haven't been active in a long while. At the founding convention, there was an open mic night, and I brought up to the group (several hundred people) that space exploration and colonisation needed all sorts of people. I was in a room of like 95% white men, most over the age of 40. I was 22 at the time, and I got soundly booed for suggesting that the group reach out for a little more diversity. My main point was that this should be a project for humanity, and not a specific and narrow demographic of people. Luckily the creator of the Mars Society, Robert Zubrin, promptly backed me up, and the crowd instantly grew thoughtful because they all admired him, but I'm not sure that made a lick of difference in the long term. I was also there to present a paper on the ethics of terraforming, where I took a 'conservative' view. We should not embark on extensive terraforming until we have thoroughly surveyed the planet for microbial life so that we know what impact we might have, and make an informed decision about what to do next. Again, not received well. I was and am in the Red 'conservative' camp, against 'progressive' Greens (Musk is probably here) who want drive straight and fast to a colonised solar system. It's not a huge political rift yet, but it is a rift and will probably map out the political divide people will be on once (and if) colonisation begins in earnest. And in this context, Musk scares me. There is not a lot of introspection on his part. He has made his decision about what direction he is going to go in, and isn't looking back, and he has no one to tell him 'no'. Which...is fine for SpaceX now. But what happens in the future if one or a few (very capitalistic) companies control the colonisation process? What happens to workers on Mars or the Moon or Titan? What happens to colonists under a system where they are controlled entirely by oligarchs? It can't just be a handful of voices making decisions. I know a lot of people think colonisation is silly and improbable (or resources should not be devoted to it at all), but this does appear to be happening. Do we really want the process to be solely in the hands of filthy wealthy oligarchs?
The idea of a new frontier on Mars has an incredible historical parallel with the discovery and emigration to the New World, America. So much perceived potential and freedom, albeit at enormous cost and technical difficulty.
Excellent timing on the video, I was just showing my dad the video about the Americans suburbs. He found it pretty hilarious, but then again, my hasn't been around the world to know enough and found such a concept bizarre.
I have to ask because I've rewatched the ending five times. So, we didn't go back to the moon after three space missions with a new technology that allowed us to travel further because they realized it was a waste of money and time after those trips? We didn't learn anything new beyond what we already knew? Did I understand that correctly? My interpretation is that, after so many trips to the moon, we hit a wall in terms of what we could learn with the resources we had. Spending more money on space/moon exploration became useless since it didn’t benefit the country or its citizens or society as a whole.
@@PhilEdwardsInc the soviets actually kept going until 1974, it was mainly Nixon, public support, and the vietnam war that killed NASAs moon landing program
There is clearly something going on with Musks Mars obsession, it's the whole reason for creating SpaceX. Even in the book Liftoff, about the really early years of SpaceX, he is already talking about Mars. But there is also so much more to this guy, it's really hard to say where this sudden political activism comes from.
Wonderful storytelling as always. I was not aware of the business driven aspect of some of the early space programs. Interesting to learn. It’s also funny to me that we’ve had people saying “we’ll have people living on the moon/mars” for decades, but nothing has happened. Maybe Artemis will actually change that? But I also wonder whether we actually NEED to go multi-planetary. Cody from Cody’sLab just uploaded a nice thought piece video about this recently!
Can't disagree with this conclusion. It is easy to limit the definition of "political" when immersed in a single spectrum of it (especially in an election year). But nearly everything defining what we call "civilization" IS in fact "political" (in its broadest, yet most pure, definition), irrespective of scale, strata, or arena. Morality is at best only adjacent to relevance when trying to apply it to reality. Reality is what it is. (Also the moon is cool.)
Last week I was standing in a field in line for a haunted house (like 30 miles north of Richmond, the effects were cool). Everyone else started to look up because Starlink was passing by and I haven't felt that disgusted in a long time. In the distance we could see the green yellow glow of the city but the light pollution was low enough for stars to be visible ... only to be abruptly overshadowed by an artificial ring of satellites. If anyone else had put them up there I would have been irked but thought it was kind of cool, but because Elon put them up there it felt like a super invasive vanity project that everyone on the planet is forced to look at every few hours until they either fall out of orbit or the vanity of their creator wipes everyone off the planet. If it was ANYONE else wanting to send people to Mars It would be a slight irritant but kind of cool. As for Von Braun, sure he was a Nazi but I've never run into any evidence of him being as ethically bankrupt as Elon.
I get out watching SpaceX land the rocket in the chopsticks looked pretty cool. I just want to point out that we have been landing rockets ass down long before Elon was an adult. He also takes about 3 billion dollars every year from taxpayers. When he agreed to take that money he said that we would be on Mars by now. I'm just saying he made a timeline took a bunch of money and he's only 2% through with it when he supposed to be done with it. So no I'm not fucking impressed by him landing is rocket on the chopsticks. I wish people who had channels like yours would see that and understand that he's not doing anything great he's just wasting a shit ton of money. We could have had NASA do this for less.
For what it's worth, I've had the same hypothesis as you for at least the past week. Kind of seems like poor judgement, especially since Trump is not guauranteed to win. Not to mention, personally, the idea of having someone in charge who is _explicitly_ for sale to large donors makes me nervous.
Interesting take about Musk. Unfortunately, whether it's true or not doesn't change my view of him being extremely detrimental to the political landscape and society. And in a way, there's also an analog here to von Braun. He also said in retrospect that he wasn't a convinced Nazi and only did it for his space ambitions, but he's still responsible for many deaths from V2 rocket attacks and also construction. Hell, the Nazis used forced labor from concentration camps to build V2s towards the end of the war and von Braun was involved in that as well. So if you see him as vindicated depends on if you believe that the ends justify all means and also that he didn't just use operation paperclip as a convenient out to change his public image. Personally, I'm not really convinced the same way I'm also not convinced of Musk being a good person on the inside just doing whatever he needs to fulfill his space dreams. At the end of the day you have to judge people by their actions since you can't look inside someones head.
All we really know about the moon comes from landing sites, which are relatively few. There could be very different terrains. How does catching a booster get us closer to the Moon? Musk is behind in the HLS milestones by years. Don't get me wrong, it was cool. So was the rover. I always go back to the Apollo 17 traverse when they found orange regolith. Good video anyway, I always enjoy them.
I stopped pronouncing it Braun years ago (once I saw the light) and now my ears chafe at hearing you pronounce it that way. "Brown" is allegedly the more accurate.
Not to get too political either but if you care about the federal government putting men into space the last 30 years or so has been a really depressing time. Before Trump the last president to have done anything to further that goal was Bill Clinton and he was force into it for all the political reasons you talk of here. The last president before Trump that wanted to put men in space and did anything to make that a reality was Reagan. There was a 28 year period were the Government viewed NASA as nothing more than fat to cut out of the budget when they needed to make it look like they cared about the budget.
There’s an old Discovery Channel (or similar network) series called “Moon Machines” that had a story about how the Lunar Rover designers built a little RC model and to show it of they drove it into Werner von Braun’s office. Found the episode: ua-cam.com/video/5DwBlVM39Jg/v-deo.htmlsi=nywF0a9iKRTIL5DB
Interesting. Side note: I've yet to understand why youtubers add/keep all the puns and jokes, even those so bad they feel the need to apologize for them. Do you have stats saying this is good for the channel?
I'm sure the space aspects are a big part of it. Deregulation and removal of barriers, but there's a lot more going on there. X, Elon's weird obsession with trans people, his estranged daughter. He's pretty all over the map in a way that aligns with his endorsement - a lot of it in grotesque ways. Anyway, catching that rocket was cool.
It's my opinion Elon is making the calculation that the dems are more likely to find travel to Mars regardless however if he might curry favor with the Republican administration if trump wins, thus covering his bases regardless of the outcome. I think it's safe to say a Republican administration would be less favorable to his auto company, but perhaps he feels in a decade spacex will be the bigger jewel in his portfolio & more influential.
Oh no, another moon video 😅 The moonhoaxer might come out again soon. They can smell moondust and Cinder lake from miles away. Tnx for the interesting video with a different approach to the LRV history 😊
Have you ever looked at joining Nebula? Your content is exactly in the type of stuff they have and I think your humour would be a good addition to the platform. Also I was going to mention your lungs and that dust but I see you've replied. But also after everything, putting on a mask even for stuff like this it's almost triggering making me think of the old days so I don't put them on as much as I should.
Those Disney Nazi videos were inspiration for the Howard Stark ones huh . lolol Expo = Epcot. #ItsVeryPossibleforTonytobecomeDrDoom Stark's mother could be a von Doom. ;)
Sorry, I don't agree with the Elon angle here. I think it's more the 'art if the grift'. Everything Elon does centers around undelivered promises that are just a few years away. Some claim he's just pushing the envelope, but as time goes on and he keeps playing the same cards over and over. According to his own words Starliner should have already been to mars on cargo missions and we should be now sending people on it. Also there should have been tens of thousands of 'fully autonomous self-driving taxis' all over the country by now. All Elon has done is burn $4.5+ BILLION on 5 failed launches! By the 5th Saturn V launch NASA sent men on a trans-lunar voyage and back. On the 6th they landed. He not breaking any new ground here. Remember the Delta Clipper (DC-X)? We had already been developing a re-usable rocket that could return to a landing safely for far less that Elon has squandered. In a shortsighted decision the project was scuttled after a single failure. Elon fails fast and hard and we keep shoveling tax payer money at him and SpaceX. He's on the Billionaire's government gravy train.
That small detail about what Von Brauns Mars government would be called is infknsane but as the saying goes, the truth is often stranger than fiction...🤷🏻 I literally said wtf out loud when you said that😂😂 But as for what goes for Egon Must he's only in anything for his own personal gain, like how he manipulated crypto and so forth.. He's just another billionaire playing a philanthropist, not that I believe him for a second to be a true philanthropist, he's waaay too plasticky for that🙅🏻😂😂
Another great video! For anyone interested in learning more about the development of the LRV, I'd highly recommend this excellent short documentary that was part of the "Moon Machines" series on The Science Channel that delved into the making of various Apollo hardware that includes some wonderful interviews with the people that made it happen. ua-cam.com/video/5DwBlVM39Jg/v-deo.htmlsi=Xb12rezgckJYLIz4
This is a spectacular video. It really is a testament to the history of the US and space advancement. The good and the bad. When you dropped the bombshell that Elon is the name of the people who will lead Mars, it all clicked. I imagined Elon reading the sci-fi of a Nazi and loving it, having it inspire him. He is from an Apartheid state, after all. He is the Braun of our time.
@@PhilEdwardsInc Oh wow, you really shouldn't talk about yourself like that; negative self-talk is a real man! I promise I didn't mess that up just to make you publicly insult yourself; my bad. I'll admit it was pretty funny though.
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Me on hearin about lunar worms: We were gonna dune the moon?!?!
Elon didn't buy Twitter to go to Mars.
i wonder if he's 4d chessing it (and maybe jn a silly way of course)
@@PhilEdwardsInc I think you're underestimating just how far off the rails one party has gone.
A guy that starts an Internet company, and parlays that into an electric car company and rocket company, and dreams of going to Mars, and sells a flamethrower on a lark, isn't exactly the kind of "modern man" that believes in "trust and safety" when it comes to online speech.
@@chrimony oh i mean id say the cynical interpretation is that he wanted to control politics and speech to build more rockets (which i sort of believe). like a paper clip maximizing ai....
@@chrimony Where did Phil say anything about trust and safety and online speech? *IF* you work under the premise that Elon is doing everything that he is because his one singular goal is Mars - it's incredibly easy to justify his purchase and treatment of Twitter. It allows him to control the narrative, it allows him to use one the largest social media platforms on the internet to spread whatever message he wants. He can use it propagandize, he can use it to help the political party he's hitched his wagon to - in hopes of, I suppose, gaining more control in government to enable his end goal...Which is Mars.
Now personally I think Elon is entirely bought in to the culture war, and most of his actions can be explained by his completely unreasonable and irrational fear of "wokeness", but I wouldn't at all be surprised if he so strongly attached himself to Trump because he thinks he can have out sized influence that way. He obviously doesn't see Trump as the threat that many of us do, but being the richest man in the world helps in that regard...
@@PhilEdwardsInc That's beyond cynical into baroque conspiracy theory. Occam's Razor applies.
You miiight want to wear a mask around that moon dust…
lol i was thinking this after i inhaled it...hahaha....oh well.... (please feel free to quote this comment reply in my obituary)
We are all made of stardust.
@@PhilEdwardsInc It is super bad for your lungs (if it is a real analog). Like little knives.
@@PhilEdwardsInc "The bean counters told me we literally could not afford to buy seven dollars worth of moon rocks, much less seventy million. Bought 'em anyway. Ground 'em up, mixed em into a gel. And guess what? Ground up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill."
Cave Johnson lives rent free in my skull and sometimes he comes out. This is such an occasion. Thank you for the reminder folks.
came here to say this ], deffinitly really bad for your lungs
Actually, the comparison of Musk to VonBraun is perfect, (hu)men so single minded in their desires that they would compromise _literally_ everything else to achieve their own goals with wonton disregard to anyone with any different views and any legitimate concerns.
yeah it's tough to know what's going on in their minds, but they did strike me as having a lot in common
Musk isn't single-minded about space. He is single minded about HIMSELF. Everything he does to enrich himself and amplify himself. Von Braun literally was a rocket scientist. Musk is a billionaire that buys up existing companies, slaps his name on them, usually runs them into the ground, and then pats himself on the back.
Kind of like Trump.
I intensely dislike Musk and Sam Altman, one of Altman’s comments really makes some sense: “Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it.”
@@a-_-s Hah, that quote is spot-on.
@@a-_-s YAWN.
Musk was great enough when his politics aligned with yours.
The moment that stopped, then the "good people" became deranged and then projected that insanity onto Musk.
11:45 "For size purposes, the lunar rover popped out of the lunar module. It unfolded. Everyone was hoping that the industry would expand in the same way. Start small, but get bigger when it was needed." My girlfriend often says the same thing about me.
"don't judge me, it's cold on the moon!"
@@PhilEdwardsIncOnly in the shadows. It's a bit toasty in the sunlight with no atmosphere.
Small correction: dead reckoning is a navigation term used across the military. In the army dead reckoning applies to land navigation by taking a known point and your speed and taking the straight line distance to your destination. I personally like using terrain association whenever I have to do land nav in the army but I do not think that will work with rockets.
I don’t think this is a hot take at all. Political and financial motives are really the only drivers for doing things in space.
I’m such a space nerd-I follow it all. Most of the channels I subscribe to on this platform exclusively report on space topics.
I’ve been saying all along that there are two main reasons Elon is doing what he's doing.
The first is regulations. He’s supporting the candidate who promises him the power to slash regulations and weaken regulators like the FAA and EPA. Did you see that full-page statement Elon had SpaceX post on their website? To quote, "The FAA has stifled progress of both SpaceX and NASA with needless environmental impact statements and other regulations." So, when a presidential candidate says he’ll make Elon head of some committee or group overseeing “government efficiency,” of course Elon is going to support that candidate. That’s his main political motivation.
The second reason is financial. He’s aware of the promises that same candidate has made about cutting taxes for big companies and wealthy individuals.
So, just like von Braun used the Nazi party to advance his rocket research before switching to the U.S. government to continue it, Elon is using a presidential candidate to further his own goals.
I’m not saying any of this is good or right-I really dislike what Elon has become. But it was probably inevitable. I also make a point of separating Elon from his employees. Whenever I post about SpaceX, I always get a few comments like, "How can you support that man?" I’ve started replying with an analogy: "Blaming the employees, engineers, and scientists at SpaceX for Elon’s actions is like blaming Amazon warehouse workers for something Jeff Bezos said or did."
Your take is spot-on, in my opinion.
Awesome video, as always.
And, yes, I refused to say his name. He's just "the candidate" to me. He is also so selfish that he doesn't even see that Elon is using him. Anyway, I don't want to get _too_ political. But yes, I went out of my way to avoid boosting the candidate's name in any kind of algorithmic metric.
Explain how buying Twitter and turning it into a yt supremacist hotbed of hate and transphobia has anything to do with getting to mars.
No one read all that @@xliquidflames
Well, I think your estimation of Elons motivation to throw all his weight behind a dangerous candidate is more generous than mine, but definitely fascinating story about the rovers!
"I think your estimation of Elons motivation to throw all his weight behind a dangerous candidate "
Funny, Musk didnt support Harris.
@@WillmobilePlus exactly. You got it.
Every time Phil mentioned the Space Worm, my mind would play the Dune Theme.
Awesome Video :)
Another factor behind the lunar rover was p.r. Even as an elementary school kid in 1971 I was aware that people were getting bored with the moon landings. When they unveiled the lunar rover it felt a lot like they'd added a new character to the show to keep the ratings from sagging. As your video reflects, it was sold to us as the first step toward permanent colonies on the moon. Which never happened because unless your plan is to terraform the moon or use it as a launchpoint to Mars-both unlikely and prohibitively expensive-there is no reason to live on the moon, unless it's for the great view of Earth.
So yes, I do see your point about Elon Musk-he does have the spirit of Von Braun in him, in more ways than one. But I don't believe Mars is his ultimate objective. Rather, like Von Braun, he has two separate agendas that have found a way to serve each other. One is the urge to dominate space, the other is to dominate folks on Earth. This guy talks to Putin every day, and something tells me they're not just talking about Mars. Utopians and totalitarians get along a lot better than is healthy for the rest of us: the connecting thread is the will to direct history instead of simply letting people go about their lives. Of course, like Von Braun, Musk is blandly indifferent to consequences: as Mort Sahl quipped, the title of Von Braun's memoir should have been "I Aim For the Stars, But Sometimes I Hit London."
Loving these Sunday stories 😁
As a space nerd, and also a politics nerd you've hit the nail on the head. There is (probably) small subsect of space enthusiasts online who support elon (and by extension trump) because he is getting stuff done in space.
2:54 you fit perfectly into the nasa engineer look :)
If anyone is under the misconception that Elon is capable of playing 4D chess, they haven't looked beyond the marketing.
I think you were off in just one aspect: Monetary incentives are not tantamount to the political aspects. They take precedence.
wish everyone would understand that Elon is larping as an engineering, stop giving him so much credit, he's a nepo-investor, give props to the actual engineers who have to put up with his ego-fuelled strolls around the facilities
B-b-but, the moon landing was faked by NASA, and Elon Musk will get us to land on the moon for real this time! Also, Elon invented electric vehicles and totally didn't steal Tesla away from the two EV engineers who actually created the company!
It seems that reality is coming to light as the years go on.
Yeah but, Phil has a point, and it doesn't contradict _your_ point at all. He's LARPing as an engineer. So he's throwing in with the shitheads, just like von Braun did. Because Musk thinks that's what you have to do to be successful.
If it weren't for his suggestions and ideas and knowing who to hire, you'd end up with a company like blue origin, which was made before SpaceX with considerably more funding and government support from the get go; see where they both stand now.
@@Philly_Willy you mean if it weren't for his massive inheritance to throw at any engineers who signed on? Not his suggestions? Lol
Phil’s content is always out of this world.. 🌙
That was a SMOOOTH ad transition.
You even lamp-shaded that it does not fit in with the overall tone of the video!
I was literally sitting down with my dinner like "damn I really fancy a vid by that guy who did the Mcdonalds fries video whose name I keep forgetting". lo and behold, you deliver! (sorry, I'm terrible with names lol)
lol i will take the fry guy moniker
I suspect my Grandpa is somewhere in that photo at Huntsville.
Giant rides are what you take, driving on the moon. I hope my wheels don't break, driving on the moon. We could drive forever, driving on the moon. We could live together, driving on, driving on the moon.
I really hope that dust isn't as dangerous as real moon dust
same
I think you're really missing something when you view the rockets as Musk's goal not a tool for other goals. He grew up in rich apartheid South Africa, goes on about breeding and has a lot of kids, starts an impossible gadgetbahn project because he thinks trains might hurt his car sales, and keeps trying to make everything about him when the actual work is done by the engineers that he dictates to (badly, no deluge system?). He's a megalomaniac that thinks he has a magic brain who wants to recreate society the way he thinks it should be and knows he can't legally or physically do that here, so off to Mars for your weird polygamist eugenics cult.
could be!
I don't think Von Braun had much of a choice about joining the SS. Thankfully our political climate is different than being under a tyrant.
Pretty sure Andy Griffith went back up there and brought the rover home..
Love the add length bar. Bless you
On Apollos 15-17, the film canisters were stored in the service module and couldn't be retrieved from the cabin. So they had to do deep space EVAs to retrieve them to bring them back to earth, and the astronauts are just NOT attached to anything aside from their life support umbilicals. Those are truly the most stressful manned space videos I've ever seen.
Yes, sadly the three Astronauts who did these unique EVAs are no longer with us.
Interesting hot take on Elon. Hard to know at what level he is evaluating any given topic/decision. The products and systems his companies are building are incredible. The man, his actions, and behavior are a little more challenging to accept.
yeah i agree - ultimately the inner lives of him, von braun (everyone) are kinda opaque. i just wanted to at least mash some puzzle pieces together
@@PhilEdwardsInc that’s fair I guess. He and Von Braun are to me amoral chaotic, also conventionally called evil. It helps to have a thought for good vs evil, even if at time that’s a simplistic worldview. I think a lot of people are over-complicating both men’s motivations and goals, maybe because they don’t know the biographies deeply. For Elon, Jill Lenore did an outstanding ten-part audio biography of Elon’s family for BBC a few years ago, which is well worth the time invested.
I LOVE THE MOON I MUST EAT THE MOON TO SURVIVE
so tru
1:59 "No sir, I didn't see you playing with your dolls again!"
I joined a Spaces event with him and Cathy Wood and he tied every single point about crypto back to space somehow. It was his number one thing on his mind the entire talk and the talk had nothing to do with space.
One interesting thing is where they bought titanium for those rivets
For both Musk and von Braun, I believe you are brushing over the extent to which they participated in the political parties they have aligned themselves with. It can be argued that Von Braun didn't need to join the SS to continue building rockets, and for Musk, by aligning himself with the anti-trans-rights crazies and adopting their ideology, his daughter has cut ties with him. I don't think it makes sense that either of them made those moral sacrifices simply for the pursuit of technological progress.
We left the car for the aliens to laugh at
4:16 Phil Prime cinnamon-challenging the regolith, lol.
Man, now I gotta re watch 'For All Mankind'
The reason Musk is political is all of the lucrative government contracts, and the protection from litigation/regulation desperately needs. Not to mention he's a proud racist and right wing nut.
I’d never thought about Von Braun having these similar points with Musk, but I definitely see your point, thank you for making this Phil!
Very cool video!
Fun thing is as we explore what navigation on the Moon & Mars for any future missions, dead reckoning is basically still where we’re at, until we send navigation satellites
What a great subject! Loved it.
About the hot take, I think there is something to what you're saying, but Musk has clearly expressed political views that arguably have nothing to do with rockets, like his public feud with his trans daughter, or what he has said and done with Twitter. As someone who has been (probably a bit too foolhardily) ride or die for Mars for decades, I'm really struggling with Musk. I'm genuinely excited about Starship and the potential to unlock the solar system, but I'm sickened by Musk's actions and words (and not just that he has affiliated himself with the Trump campaign-most billionaires have for obvious tax and regulatory reasons), he does appear to be on the faschy side of politics.
Okay so hear me out. I do believe there is such a thing as Martian politics. It's nascent of course, but there has been a community advocating for human colonisation of the Moon and Mars for decades. I joined the Mars Society as a founding member in 1998, though I haven't been active in a long while. At the founding convention, there was an open mic night, and I brought up to the group (several hundred people) that space exploration and colonisation needed all sorts of people. I was in a room of like 95% white men, most over the age of 40. I was 22 at the time, and I got soundly booed for suggesting that the group reach out for a little more diversity. My main point was that this should be a project for humanity, and not a specific and narrow demographic of people. Luckily the creator of the Mars Society, Robert Zubrin, promptly backed me up, and the crowd instantly grew thoughtful because they all admired him, but I'm not sure that made a lick of difference in the long term. I was also there to present a paper on the ethics of terraforming, where I took a 'conservative' view. We should not embark on extensive terraforming until we have thoroughly surveyed the planet for microbial life so that we know what impact we might have, and make an informed decision about what to do next. Again, not received well. I was and am in the Red 'conservative' camp, against 'progressive' Greens (Musk is probably here) who want drive straight and fast to a colonised solar system. It's not a huge political rift yet, but it is a rift and will probably map out the political divide people will be on once (and if) colonisation begins in earnest.
And in this context, Musk scares me. There is not a lot of introspection on his part. He has made his decision about what direction he is going to go in, and isn't looking back, and he has no one to tell him 'no'. Which...is fine for SpaceX now. But what happens in the future if one or a few (very capitalistic) companies control the colonisation process? What happens to workers on Mars or the Moon or Titan? What happens to colonists under a system where they are controlled entirely by oligarchs? It can't just be a handful of voices making decisions. I know a lot of people think colonisation is silly and improbable (or resources should not be devoted to it at all), but this does appear to be happening. Do we really want the process to be solely in the hands of filthy wealthy oligarchs?
i think its really cool that you advocated for those things in the face of dissenting voices back then. its kinda inspiring to me
LMAO ok, when you started talking about a worm on the moon, I thought you were kidding.
Someone at NASA was a Dune fan obviously
gaze upon the contractor proposal in all its glory: ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19660022562
Nope dune buggy. Fan. They designed and built rover in 17. Months at GM
@@gerry-p9x I'm talking about the worm
@@PhilEdwardsInc This is incredible 😂
The idea of a new frontier on Mars has an incredible historical parallel with the discovery and emigration to the New World, America. So much perceived potential and freedom, albeit at enormous cost and technical difficulty.
I love those videos on space exploration
Excellent timing on the video, I was just showing my dad the video about the Americans suburbs. He found it pretty hilarious, but then again, my hasn't been around the world to know enough and found such a concept bizarre.
This is by far the most thought-provoking video of yours I've had the pleasure to watch. I'll be thinking about this for days
thanks appreciate it
Great, as always
Cool, always thought it was just to get around faster.
i know i'd never considered the life support issue
I have to ask because I've rewatched the ending five times. So, we didn't go back to the moon after three space missions with a new technology that allowed us to travel further because they realized it was a waste of money and time after those trips? We didn't learn anything new beyond what we already knew? Did I understand that correctly? My interpretation is that, after so many trips to the moon, we hit a wall in terms of what we could learn with the resources we had. Spending more money on space/moon exploration became useless since it didn’t benefit the country or its citizens or society as a whole.
yeah in the most blunt tldr way possible, i think it's that the soviets wound down their moon efforts so the us did too
@@PhilEdwardsInc Thanks appreciate it, so it goes back to being a political issue more than anything else.
@@PhilEdwardsInc the soviets actually kept going until 1974, it was mainly Nixon, public support, and the vietnam war that killed NASAs moon landing program
There is clearly something going on with Musks Mars obsession, it's the whole reason for creating SpaceX. Even in the book Liftoff, about the really early years of SpaceX, he is already talking about Mars. But there is also so much more to this guy, it's really hard to say where this sudden political activism comes from.
A lesson as to why one shouldn´t think and arrive. What am I saying? _Of course_ we should go -- in style!
The second 'T' in Mars Attacks is slightly misaligned
i have a script that wobbles every letter
Wonderful storytelling as always.
I was not aware of the business driven aspect of some of the early space programs. Interesting to learn.
It’s also funny to me that we’ve had people saying “we’ll have people living on the moon/mars” for decades, but nothing has happened. Maybe Artemis will actually change that? But I also wonder whether we actually NEED to go multi-planetary.
Cody from Cody’sLab just uploaded a nice thought piece video about this recently!
Because in this single case mass transit wasn't a better option
I was surprised to find out that it wasn't due to US ambitions to create suburban sprawl and a propping up of the Tesla space-car industry.
gm was involved!
@@PhilEdwardsInc Who Killed the Electric Car (Moon edition)!
:puzzled: You’re just now seeing it? Musk thinks he’s the hero of a Heinlein novel.
Can't disagree with this conclusion. It is easy to limit the definition of "political" when immersed in a single spectrum of it (especially in an election year). But nearly everything defining what we call "civilization" IS in fact "political" (in its broadest, yet most pure, definition), irrespective of scale, strata, or arena. Morality is at best only adjacent to relevance when trying to apply it to reality. Reality is what it is. (Also the moon is cool.)
please keep us updated if you get sick from moon dust 😬
🤮🌕
Obviously, there are more important things to do. Elon, one person, has enough money to end world hunger, but he doesn't.
Last week I was standing in a field in line for a haunted house (like 30 miles north of Richmond, the effects were cool). Everyone else started to look up because Starlink was passing by and I haven't felt that disgusted in a long time. In the distance we could see the green yellow glow of the city but the light pollution was low enough for stars to be visible ... only to be abruptly overshadowed by an artificial ring of satellites. If anyone else had put them up there I would have been irked but thought it was kind of cool, but because Elon put them up there it felt like a super invasive vanity project that everyone on the planet is forced to look at every few hours until they either fall out of orbit or the vanity of their creator wipes everyone off the planet. If it was ANYONE else wanting to send people to Mars It would be a slight irritant but kind of cool. As for Von Braun, sure he was a Nazi but I've never run into any evidence of him being as ethically bankrupt as Elon.
i saw this as well- was confused completely before i knew
@PhilEdwardsInc apparently it goofs up telescope calibration when it crosses in front of them.
I get out watching SpaceX land the rocket in the chopsticks looked pretty cool. I just want to point out that we have been landing rockets ass down long before Elon was an adult. He also takes about 3 billion dollars every year from taxpayers. When he agreed to take that money he said that we would be on Mars by now. I'm just saying he made a timeline took a bunch of money and he's only 2% through with it when he supposed to be done with it. So no I'm not fucking impressed by him landing is rocket on the chopsticks. I wish people who had channels like yours would see that and understand that he's not doing anything great he's just wasting a shit ton of money. We could have had NASA do this for less.
We drove on the Moon because Americans always drive instead of walk. It is who we are.
For what it's worth, I've had the same hypothesis as you for at least the past week. Kind of seems like poor judgement, especially since Trump is not guauranteed to win. Not to mention, personally, the idea of having someone in charge who is _explicitly_ for sale to large donors makes me nervous.
cool video as always :)
Nice!
Interesting take about Musk. Unfortunately, whether it's true or not doesn't change my view of him being extremely detrimental to the political landscape and society. And in a way, there's also an analog here to von Braun. He also said in retrospect that he wasn't a convinced Nazi and only did it for his space ambitions, but he's still responsible for many deaths from V2 rocket attacks and also construction. Hell, the Nazis used forced labor from concentration camps to build V2s towards the end of the war and von Braun was involved in that as well. So if you see him as vindicated depends on if you believe that the ends justify all means and also that he didn't just use operation paperclip as a convenient out to change his public image. Personally, I'm not really convinced the same way I'm also not convinced of Musk being a good person on the inside just doing whatever he needs to fulfill his space dreams. At the end of the day you have to judge people by their actions since you can't look inside someones head.
$40M isn't that much for a space car. Or is that 1960's dollars...
That's in 1972 dollars, or $289M in 2024.
All we really know about the moon comes from landing sites, which are relatively few. There could be very different terrains. How does catching a booster get us closer to the Moon? Musk is behind in the HLS milestones by years. Don't get me wrong, it was cool. So was the rover. I always go back to the Apollo 17 traverse when they found orange regolith. Good video anyway, I always enjoy them.
ABout your hot take: it might be right or wrong but I respect your decision to put it out there. Mad props for that.
I stopped pronouncing it Braun years ago (once I saw the light) and now my ears chafe at hearing you pronounce it that way. "Brown" is allegedly the more accurate.
my southern accent doesn't help i'm afraid
@PhilEdwardsInc Keep on doing what you're doing! Always enjoy digging up more moon dirt!
Not to get too political either but if you care about the federal government putting men into space the last 30 years or so has been a really depressing time. Before Trump the last president to have done anything to further that goal was Bill Clinton and he was force into it for all the political reasons you talk of here. The last president before Trump that wanted to put men in space and did anything to make that a reality was Reagan. There was a 28 year period were the Government viewed NASA as nothing more than fat to cut out of the budget when they needed to make it look like they cared about the budget.
WAIT BUT WHAT ABOUT THE WORM!?
abandoned in favor of gm ☹️
There’s an old Discovery Channel (or similar network) series called “Moon Machines” that had a story about how the Lunar Rover designers built a little RC model and to show it of they drove it into Werner von Braun’s office.
Found the episode: ua-cam.com/video/5DwBlVM39Jg/v-deo.htmlsi=nywF0a9iKRTIL5DB
I think it’s still on UA-cam. They even show the actual model I mentioned which I would love to have driven.
Don't make excuses for Elmo. He is an awful person.
The fuck are we going to do on Mars? There is nothing there! We already have everything here, how about we dont fuck it up instead?
It’s a barren wasteland without any life. There’s nothing to fuck up? The planet doesn’t matter.
At 1:45, is the rotating star field behind the word Regolith taken from the 1980s Sylvester McCoy era titles for Dr. Who?
ha no i made it
@@PhilEdwardsIncgood work! the moment I saw it I heard the theme tune in my head.
don't show Musk that book
Interesting. Side note: I've yet to understand why youtubers add/keep all the puns and jokes, even those so bad they feel the need to apologize for them. Do you have stats saying this is good for the channel?
Was it to cut mad hoops in lunar regolith?
this sounds like the first line of an mf doom
I'm sure the space aspects are a big part of it. Deregulation and removal of barriers, but there's a lot more going on there. X, Elon's weird obsession with trans people, his estranged daughter. He's pretty all over the map in a way that aligns with his endorsement - a lot of it in grotesque ways.
Anyway, catching that rocket was cool.
yeah it's tough to know what's going on (and how cynically to view any of it)
It's my opinion Elon is making the calculation that the dems are more likely to find travel to Mars regardless however if he might curry favor with the Republican administration if trump wins, thus covering his bases regardless of the outcome. I think it's safe to say a Republican administration would be less favorable to his auto company, but perhaps he feels in a decade spacex will be the bigger jewel in his portfolio & more influential.
Oh no, another moon video 😅
The moonhoaxer might come out again soon. They can smell moondust and Cinder lake from miles away.
Tnx for the interesting video with a different approach to the LRV history 😊
Have you ever looked at joining Nebula? Your content is exactly in the type of stuff they have and I think your humour would be a good addition to the platform.
Also I was going to mention your lungs and that dust but I see you've replied. But also after everything, putting on a mask even for stuff like this it's almost triggering making me think of the old days so I don't put them on as much as I should.
maybe! and i seem to be ok so far...lung wise...
you might be spot on, just a weird partnership that makes sense that way
Elon Musk isn't that smart to do something like that.
To get to the other side.
17:24 SpaceX's rocket fuel is in fact, super chilled liqid methane/kerosene.
Impossibruuuuu!
ugh please no more elon
Team lunar worm. 🤚🖖
Yeah, great story, Phil. Kind of an unfortunate name for your sponsor, when you are still trying to grow your subscriber base, though.
Those Disney Nazi videos were inspiration for the Howard Stark ones huh . lolol Expo = Epcot.
#ItsVeryPossibleforTonytobecomeDrDoom
Stark's mother could be a von Doom. ;)
oh i think they've even said old disney vids were inspiration
Sorry, I don't agree with the Elon angle here. I think it's more the 'art if the grift'. Everything Elon does centers around undelivered promises that are just a few years away. Some claim he's just pushing the envelope, but as time goes on and he keeps playing the same cards over and over. According to his own words Starliner should have already been to mars on cargo missions and we should be now sending people on it. Also there should have been tens of thousands of 'fully autonomous self-driving taxis' all over the country by now. All Elon has done is burn $4.5+ BILLION on 5 failed launches! By the 5th Saturn V launch NASA sent men on a trans-lunar voyage and back. On the 6th they landed. He not breaking any new ground here. Remember the Delta Clipper (DC-X)? We had already been developing a re-usable rocket that could return to a landing safely for far less that Elon has squandered. In a shortsighted decision the project was scuttled after a single failure. Elon fails fast and hard and we keep shoveling tax payer money at him and SpaceX. He's on the Billionaire's government gravy train.
That small detail about what Von Brauns Mars government would be called is infknsane but as the saying goes, the truth is often stranger than fiction...🤷🏻
I literally said wtf out loud when you said that😂😂
But as for what goes for Egon Must he's only in anything for his own personal gain, like how he manipulated crypto and so forth..
He's just another billionaire playing a philanthropist, not that I believe him for a second to be a true philanthropist, he's waaay too plasticky for that🙅🏻😂😂
Another great video! For anyone interested in learning more about the development of the LRV, I'd highly recommend this excellent short documentary that was part of the "Moon Machines" series on The Science Channel that delved into the making of various Apollo hardware that includes some wonderful interviews with the people that made it happen. ua-cam.com/video/5DwBlVM39Jg/v-deo.htmlsi=Xb12rezgckJYLIz4
i wish i could get excited about SpaceX, but until Musk gets kicked out of the company i just cant do it. At his core hes just a conman fascist
👍👍👍
This is a spectacular video. It really is a testament to the history of the US and space advancement. The good and the bad. When you dropped the bombshell that Elon is the name of the people who will lead Mars, it all clicked. I imagined Elon reading the sci-fi of a Nazi and loving it, having it inspire him. He is from an Apartheid state, after all. He is the Braun of our time.
19:23 So, are you the baby in this scenario? ;P
i think i'm the baby stained bathwater
@@PhilEdwardsInc Oh wow, you really shouldn't talk about yourself like that; negative self-talk is a real man!
I promise I didn't mess that up just to make you publicly insult yourself; my bad. I'll admit it was pretty funny though.