Comment by dotancohen
3 hours ago
I get that there is a strong online movement to destroy the traditional American Dream value of "work hard, and become rich" but that does not apply in fields where money is not the motivator. No single astronaut has ever expressed financial gain as a motivator for moving into that profession.
Quite the opposite, many have given up fortunes and prosperous businesses to move into spaceflight.
You misunderstand the movements, they exist precisely because of a perception that "work hard" doesn't seem to always mean "become rich", many see rich (correctly or incorrectly) as a product of luck, connections, or other factors unrelated to work. The price of everything constantly going up makes "work hard" work less. They actually would like the dream to work.
Anyway, someone may not want to pursue spaceflight for the money, but everything involved in spaceflight still costs a lot of money, which has to be justified. So I think the phenomenon is still there; people still want to appear to be proving themselves through appearing to work hard and appearing to be needed.