Yes, the political imaginaries matter, especially for explicitly political writers ranging from asimov to le guin who construct them very consciously, but the choice of space and its appeal is neither a casual accident, nor inconsequential...
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the canvas has properties that speak to the visceral technological drive... which I'd define at the primal level as the ab initio urge to see what matter does under extreme regimes... will it burn, will it float, what happens if I compress it like crazy...
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I'd contrast your "political imaginary" angle with a "promethean imaginary" angle. The urge to take the human condition/experience out of the narrow "natural" band it's evolved in, and re-situate it in the context of the full range of weirdness the material universe can dish out
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the overview effect is kinda made up, but I don't doubt that something in that neighborhood exists, simply from my own reactions to similar, more terrestrial experiences (first look at saturn through a telescope, first view of grand canyon, being out in open ocean etc)
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I don't think that vitiates the point about political imaginaries, however. Motives are complex. And some of these space exploring billionaires (notably ) have been explicit that this is in part a political project, not just a technical thrill.
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I think, in Musk’s case, the political imaginary may be a superficial cosmetic layer to socialize blow-shit-up material curiosity. His political imaginary is not particularly coherent or deeply considered. It’s random bits of Iain M. Banks and Douglas Adams glued together.
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Where I disagree is dismissal of this as "cheap thrill seeking behavior."
I think it's not only a valuable/ important behavior, it's existentially central to the human condition. It defines the frontier the way manners and myth-ceremony define civilizational institutional core.

