How media is Ruining Iberoamerican Space Advancements
Today I’m analyzing one of the most recent events in the space rocket industries and how media is giving the wrong impressions about it, affecting the industry’s public image. PLD an European rocket company and their MIURA-1, a rocket 100% spanish that promised to be a POC to its successor rocket MIURA-5.
What happened?
PLD had been planning the launch of MIURA-1 for a long time now, with many different rescheduling (something completely normal in this industry) but has been canceled due to different problems with the rocket. June 17 2023, PLD was decided to make it happen in Huelva in southwest Spain. A launch that was automatically cancelled by some umbilical wires not disconnecting by 100 milliseconds and causing the computer to automatically aborted the mission.
Again, this is something completely normal for companies in the industry. An event that showed PLD their robust systems, and security that they had developed. An event to learn from and a step that puts them closer to their final goal.
What’s next?
As we heard from PLD’s CEO, despite a lot of companies are supporting and encouraging them towards making a second attempt, we’re probably seeing another attempt after summer, due to the high temperatures in South Spain and massive amount of people near the coast in vacation that could unsafely cross the boundaries and result injured by the rocket or its effects, though he did say everything is subject to change.
Media Involvement
To see non-specialized media criticizing and spreading fake news about it it’s honestly heart-breaking. This only shows the lack of development among Iberoamerica’s Aerospacial culture. It shows the poor quality and ignorance that the media bombards to people, making them believe that we are way behind, when all of this is only part of the development process. As Richard Feynman presented to us, I ask to you: Scientists or artists, which one can better appreciate the beauty of a flower? Media is spreading its fake news and ignoring the high complexity that this takes, only appreciating the “beauty” available to them. This is a big step towards the development of Iberoamerican Science and it is extremely sad to see fake news about the causes of PLD’s launch last minute abortion and marking it as a resounding failure, with the only objective of getting views and selling fake information.
This is something thart not only affects the company, but the whole rocket industry. They have been one of the most recent example that has threatened the public image of the learning progress of the team @ PLD. It is discouraging to have a media cover like that. Only highlighting the wrong sides. It is a fight that has come a long way for. We have Elon fighting former American “heroes” that a couple years ago testified against Elon’s reusable commercial flights, and now it is a standard on the industry to reuse and they have had a result on reducing prices by a max of 65%. Though the testimonies were only a critique to the plan that Elon and SpaceX had, this affected the public image of the industry. Now it is the turn of Iberoamerican scientifics to have their fight against the media. As my good friend Miguel O’Hara would say, it seems like this is a canon event and we can’t interfere, it is still sad to see the lack of support that it has been provided.
