"Most of the time, watching a rocket launch as a grown-up fills me with the same feelings I had when I saw my first as a kid - fear, glee, wonder and excitement - as a spaceship makes its way into a largely foreign environment."
"I should be happy, right? Yeah, um, no. I have been a space fan for pretty much all of my life, yet I couldn't find the enthusiasm even to watch the launch and mission unfold."
"Space obsessed since I watched Apollo as a five year old. Space mad. Read every book I could, built my own rockets, named a child after a cosmonaut, cried the whole way around [Kennedy Space Center] - and I just feel nothing."
Longtime rocketry enthusiasts once traveled to Starbase in Texas to witness SpaceX launches in person. Elon Musk's alignment with bigoted right-wing politics has transformed that joy into grief for many former fans. Emily Carney, a space historian and author, described childhood feelings of fear, glee, wonder and excitement at launches but felt dejected after the tenth Starship test flight despite its success. Many other space fans on Instagram Threads described lifelong devotion to space yet reported numbness and inability to celebrate recent achievements. Some commenters sought solace in the long-term dedication that preceded Musk's political shift.
Read at Futurism
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