You know, research money is not coming from nowhere, you have to actually advertise what you're doing in order to get money. I even bet the the bigger the crowd is, the more money you can raise.
You know, if the public opinion is favorable to what you're doing, it get a lot easier to actually do it.
Anecdotally, I know many a kid who has taken an interest in space and rocketry after watching a SpaceX launch.
What empirical data have you to show that there is no correlation between space awareness (whether by Musk or anyone else) and STEM enrollment?
I was personally inspired to go to physics partially because of my love of sci-fi and all space related. That's completely orthogonal to the skeptical sentiment or lack of moon landings in my lifetime.
Real "space awarenes" comes with facts, not with hype. You can drive only so much motivation from outside.
It's the frequent meta comments like dimillian above about "hate" and "negativity" that I find negative and harmful. They try to steer the tone of discussion to direction that the commentator feel more comfortable with.
Wanting protect feelings from getting hurt even in discussions related to technology and science are absurd.
'Say only positive things or the fragile Mars mission will collapse.'
This claim is dubious. That you can sell people space exploration by hyping it up.
It does not show in money, or people going to STEM field. It probably increases interest for scifi books or videos.
> I'm sometime very tired of the pessimist sentiment here.
You want to be inspired/entertained as a consumer. People who must be constantly emotionally propped and mentally supported are not the ones who are willing to go and work toward Mars.