I am currently wishing we produced a weekly show because this past week has been full of news that is surreally relevant to both Space Exploration and the elections. We’ve seen Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, Amazon, and aerospace company Blue Origin, have his News Paper not run a candidate endorsement to protect his federal contracts. We’ve seen SpaceX owner Elon Musk seemingly break election law by paying people to be registered voters willing to make certain promises…. And we’ve seen SpaceX continue to break the Clean Water Act… as he funds Trump’s campaign through a Super Pac to the tune of millions of dollars.
This is an election where the billionaire aerospace company owners are protecting their interests in ways we’ve never seen before.
I could rush an article on this topic that some of you will see before you vote, but instead we’re going to watch what happens and bring you a longer story once we’ve come to understand more about the situation.
Instead, this week we’re going to look at the next generation of Dark Matter and Dark Energy detecting telescopes that are being build to explore from on the ground and in space… and we’re going to take a closer look at the light pollution optical and radio telescopes on earth are now having to contend with from the megaconstellations of communications satellites that have been getting launched this year.
And the weird thing is, I have no idea which story will matter more a year from now: The story I am writing on mega constellations or the story I’m not writing on Billionaire aerospace company owners. We live in weird times.