There's a lot you can say about this latest broadside from Space fanatic Robert Zubrin, but he's resurrecting an old theme: social liberalism is eroding American education and sapping America's ability to meet the opportunities of the space age. https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/wokeists-assault-space-exploration/?fbclid=IwAR3_Po7CUtD4FqvLprDhpPkTkpds3VLtCYBR27S8Rh3-Rbks3LiXgA8ygi0

After Sputnik there was immense anguished handwringing about American society becoming soft and fat, blame was placed on rampant consumerism and an education system that placed more emphasis on "social skills" than hard sciences.

Space popularisers, conservatives and Cold War liberals all lambasted US curricula by comparing them with the Soviet education system. Soviet kids were diligently learning their equations while American kids fretted about how to have a good date.

Zubrin is trying to ressurect this association between conservative critiques of education and calls for increased space spending. I doubt it will work, his career has been one of flailing around, grasping for hot button social issues and trying to cram Mars into them.

One of the reasons I don't think this will work for Zubrin is that the "trigger the libs" conservatives who attack "Woke-ism" are looking to score easy points, they're not looking to get involved in a protracted, complicated campaign of space advocacy.

Sooner or later, all attempts to lobby for grand space projects run into a huge wall of apathy: Space exploration is (for the most part) extremely boring and takes years to prepare for and carry out, tying it to ephemeral hot-button social issues is doomed to fail.