We are, at this very moment, living through what will likely be seen as one of the most important and keystone eras in humankind. We are finally taking the steps to move, as a people -- as a species, into space. This is something that will completely transform our species, forever. People millennia from now will wonder how this came to be - how the time that we're living through played out, how people responded to such change. The reality that most people are completely unaware would probably be quite disappointing.

One-off bursts of coverage are forgotten as quickly as they emerge. For instance, if we were to poll Americans on our recent achievements in space, what percent of Americans do you think would have any clue about what's going on? Even just of the Falcon Heavy in particular? I think a fair over/under would be 20%. In my experience it's a fair bit lower than that. And the biggest shame here is that people are just jaw dropped at seeing what we're achieving - which makes that ignorance all the more of a shame! Heck, YouTube is home of some the most negative and trollish commenting on the internet. See how people responded to this [1] video of the Falcon Heavy test flight. That a 'mere' technological achievement somehow brought out such strong and positive emotion from so many people, on YouTube of all places. Why aren't the media more actively tapping into that?

The media plays a very large role in deciding the zeitgeist of a time. And I think it's a shame that they've chosen to obsess primarily on divisive topics rather than on topics that unify people and let them see what we're actually doing. There are a good deal of people that formulate their world views based primarily on the news. But if you were to do that now a days you'd see nothing but negativity, divisiveness, and general nastiness. Yet in reality we live in amazing times when we're doing amazing things, but instead of focusing on that -- the media are taking the worst of the worst, and spending all of their time focusing on that to the point that the glimpses of what really is (and will) define this era are lost to the never-ending tidal wave of divisive or outrage driven news.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c

Remember, Falcon Heavy is far from the biggest rocket since Saturn. Even if you discount Space Shuttles - which still were quite a significant achievement even for our time - you still have to remember two flights of Energiya. That puts SpaceX work in perspective - yes, it's important and FH (when it flies) can lift the most, but don't expect comparison on the level of Apollo-11 or Vostok.