Not just alive when you get there, but also you have to return to have it count. It’s like when Mt. Everest was first successfully climbed. Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first documented ascent in May 1953. However, Norgay and Hillary likely weren’t the first to reach the summit; George Mallory and Andrew Irvine were seen making a final summit attempt in June 1924, but never returned. (Mallory’s body was found in 1999; Irvine’s partial remains were identified in 2024.) Norgay and Hillary did return, so they get the historical credit for the first to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.
Actually, mineral rights on Mars won’t be worth much, at least initially. There are the problems of transporting mining equipment to Mars and also the expense of lifting the minerals off the planet and shipping them to Earth. If there is any extraterrestrial mining, the extracting of minerals from near-Earth asteroids will probably be where the money is.
Upon examination of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson, it turns out the policies instituted by him were quite predatory towards UnitedHealtcare’s policy holders; designed to increase revenue and stock value. Anyone who has been stonewalled by a health insurance company will not be too sympathetic; Thompson’s actions as CEO caused a lot of suffering. What’s unusual is when a resentful person takes violent action it’s almost always the “do-as-told” front-line underlings who suffer, not the executives, like Thompson, who are actually responsible.
It’s like what the cartoon character Daria dryly commented at the (later found erroneous) news of the demises of Beavis and Butthead: “Well, it’s sad and unfortunate and all that, but … is anyone really going to miss them?”
Nothing new, even in 2002. Franklin Roosevelt once said about Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, "He may be a bas****, but he’s our bas****.”
And what Garry Trudeau had the character say is all too true. In American foreign policy, democracy is nice but stability (however that’s defined) is better.
Don’t you just know there will be a day when a robot will look around, contemplate the humans it views, and communicate to all the other robots the question, “What do we need these guys for?”
Not just alive when you get there, but also you have to return to have it count. It’s like when Mt. Everest was first successfully climbed. Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first documented ascent in May 1953. However, Norgay and Hillary likely weren’t the first to reach the summit; George Mallory and Andrew Irvine were seen making a final summit attempt in June 1924, but never returned. (Mallory’s body was found in 1999; Irvine’s partial remains were identified in 2024.) Norgay and Hillary did return, so they get the historical credit for the first to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.