Cape Canaveral, Fla. Shawn Insanity reporting for SOB - Spoof On Business. You might wonder why Spoof On Business is covering the now scrubbed SpaceX Dragon launch to ferry two astronauts to the Space Station. Not a mystery if you were watching Fox News Channel's hours-long ode to private enterprise, entrepreneurship and commercialism, which passed as news coverage of the first non-governmental passenger flight to the space station.
While the weather was eventually the culprit that spoiled the privatizers party, the most dangerous part of the afternoon was that nine-mile ride the astronauts took to the launch pad... in a Tesla. Rumor has it that Elon Musk was at the wheel, in auto pilot mode, but there was no oncoming traffic so the worried astronauts made the trip successfully.
There were frequent references to the fact that this was the first mission to carry American astronauts to the space station from the U. S. in years and years. Little mention, however, was made of the push by privateers over a decade ago to cancel the NASA-operated space shuttle so that the privatizers, like Musk, can do what NASA did so well for years. Everything has to be done through private enterprise - private prisons, private traffic ticket collection agencies, private space flights.
Fox News, which spent several hours covering the aborted lift-off, also spent about as much time praising the commercial nature of the mission as it did the importance of the launch itself. Ah yes, if it weren't for our entrepreneurs we'd still be on the ground. But, as of 4:30 pm Eastern time, the Dragon was also still on the ground... and perhaps for some time to come.
