Bernie Sanders wants to bring socialism to space
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently sat down with Rolling Stone for a wide-ranging, rambling interview. The subject turned to Sanders's least favorite person on the planet: space and electric car tycoon Elon Musk. Sanders made a strange accusation against the SpaceX CEO.
“It’s no secret Musk wants to develop Mars. And by the way, the kind of riches that he could benefit from mining, literally mining, meteors is a huge amount of money. Do you know that? No one is talking about it. Right now, Musk and Bezos literally have the legal right to take rare minerals off a meteor for their own personal gain — which, to me, is literally beyond comprehension,” Sanders said.
Mining meteors? How does that work, exactly?
NASA defines meteors as objects that “enter Earth’s atmosphere (or that of another planet, like Mars) at high speed and burn up.” Meteorites are objects that survive to impact the Earth.
Good luck getting rare minerals from a meteor.
If nothing else, Sanders displayed as much ignorance of astronomy as he does of free market economics.
Doubtless, the senator meant mining asteroids for the rare minerals, a subject that is being widely discussed in space circles. Indeed, asteroid mining is a major plot point in this season of the Apple TV+ alternate history series For All Mankind.