It's the _entire_ point of the piece. And it's not really all that much of a political statement. The message is pretty clear: don't send people to die in space for stupid-ass political reasons.

As a counterpoint, sending people to space for stupid-ass political reasons resulted in one of humanity's greatest technological achievements that allowed us to put the plaque up there in the first place.

Note the subtle difference between "sending people to space" and "sending people to die in space". (As explained in the thread, Soyuz-1 was hurried to launch for political reasons despite being unspaceworthy)

That doesn't counter GP's point, it reinforces it. The successful moon missions were all launched for political reasons, too.

He is pointing out that there is a difference between sending people to space for political reasons and sending people to space for political reasons in known to be unsafe aircraft knowing that the possibility of death is significantly above average. One is risking someone’s life for achievement and glory. The other is killing someone because your fragile ego can’t take the hit of not being ready on time for some stupid political deadline.

Yea, the point is why is there a random political shot at Pence? It makes no sense. It’s shoehorning a totally petty and not relevant potshot. Every space mission has been “political”, and of course everyone agrees you shouldn’t do a bad job at it.

Everyone sent into space was for a political reason. Whether or not you think it's a stupid-ass reason is more of a reflection on yourself than the message.

In this case the craft was not ready, it seemed to be widely known that the person who took that spot would die. I think that is an important contrast compared to "everyone sent into space"

Sure, in the case of Komarov. But that's not what we're talking about in this comment thread - we're talking about the inclusion of a random tweet about Mike Pence that could have been left out without changing the message at all.

Kinda seems off to ignore the actual example of the article ... but be concerned about the tweet.

What makes you think that Trump's administration is/will be "sending people to die in space"?

It's a warning to avoid making reckless decisions purely for political gain.

I feel like that childish "orange man bad" quote comes up as a reaction to anything potentially perceived as negative as if nobody could ever make a valid a comment, observation, write a story, whatever.

Yep, "orange man bad" is a thought terminating cliche [1]. Intended to position the speakers above his or her opponents, but without a hint of self-awareness necessary for efficacy outside of the echo-chamber. The label itself sounds so puerile that it ironically paints the speakers as mindless as the ones they're trying to paint as mindless.

"This is an insult that stupid people think makes them sound smarter than other stupid people," as I've heard before.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...

Thank you, that's a good description of how it plays out. I hadn't heard that term for it before.

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it

Generally I’ve found that those who forget history tend to condemn others to repeat it for them.