A few days after our recent interview, science writer Joe Pappalardo took his 89-year-old dad to the Space X Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, so I tagged along. Before he’d entered the facility, the elder Mr. Pappalardo had never seen anything like it. At the entrance, he examined the message inscribed on the giant outer wall: “GATEWAY TO MARS.”
These kinds of declarative (and imperative) statements rouse something prelinguistic in us. For some reason, humans have evolved into conquerors, desperate for more territory. This is good. It’s one of our finest qualities.
So, father and son approached the hulking megastructures of Elon Musk’s aerospace wonderland, and Musk’s promises became more noticeable. Space flight, of course, but most impressively, the possibility of a safe return, rocket and
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