Edwards wrote:My feeling of this type of stunt is that is no different to throwing a plastic bottle in the sea for advertising.
It is just something that was never supposed to be there and should have been recycled.
Err, no.
The sea is part of the eco system. Polluting it affects most things around you.
Space isn't. Pollution in space has zero effect on us down on earth - the only thing near earth orbit pollution makes difficult is more space stuff (and this isn't near earth orbit pollution).
Space is big, really big.
If you mash the earth up and put it into the same heliocentric orbit you'd struggle to find any of it. In fact it's so big that if you take a tea leaf out of a tea bag and throw it in the ocean you'll have polluted the ocean more than Musk has polluted the space inside mars orbit (where his car is).
And then there's the question of what is pollution. Anything out there is just rocks. Putting a car out there is no more pollution than putting another rock out there - something he'd have done had he put a lump of concrete in there instead (which if he had we wouldn't have pages of stuff about it).
Plus space is so big and there is so much junk already out there that there's a good chance that there are some car shaped rocks floating about somewhere!
Finally, sometimes the end justifies the means.
Musk has done more for sustainability on this planet than pretty much anyone else. He's made electric vehicles sexy, he's made home storage of energy sexy and he's made reusable rockets which pollute far less than any other rocket system in use.
He's got companies working on public transport systems and he's done more work in recent years to make vehicles safer than almost anyone else.
How has he done this? Through the very showmanship and self advertising people seem to have a problem with.
Perhaps you'd prefer an evil genius?
