A thing that depresses me and that of course I’ve lamented before about my generation vs. the one before it is that Challenger was a heartbreaking disaster for late Gen X/some early Millenials, but Columbia was just another exploding plane to middle Millenials

I was at a *science fair training* when Columbia exploded and people were nagging me for being too upset about it and checking the news

I was hanging around with science nerds and I was the only one devastated that we lost another shuttle & crew

Because I grew up on my brother’s mass media, I still saw things where exploring space was presented as cool, and desirable

Space Camp and Explorers were life changing. The idea that it wouldn’t be awe-inspiring to see the Earth from space mostly died with Millenials

It’s one reason Interstellar was such a big deal, there were very few movies between the late 80s and 2014 that presented the desire to go to space as an explorer as worthy and heroic and *understandable to the average person*

So I spent a lot of time growing up annoyed that nobody else seemed to care that human spaceflight was stalled

Come at me with whatever about how human spaceflight is a vain dream when we don’t have socialism, I don’t care

The continued existence of humans without ever leaving this planet feels depressing. Did Cold War propaganda create that? Maybe initially, but keep in mind that things like Star Trek and 2010: The Year We Make Contact and also REALITY showed space travel was a tool for diplomacy

The US and USSR shared a *space station* in the *1970s*. It was a symbol for something we could all cooperate on.

And then we just gave up.