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Space Bananas

Updated: Mar 15

Drawn on February 22, 2024 | Published from Miami |

SpaceX bananas falling from the sky.
Space Bananas
"They say we learn from our mistakes, but in my opinion, that's a mistake... And if I'm wrong, at least I'll have learned something!" [1]

— Philippe Geluck, Ma langue au Chat, 1995.



Democracy does not come cheap — by design, its procedures uphold humanist values, not profits. If not a money-making proposition, then what good is democracy for? Unlike a dictatorship, which hoards stolen riches and power, democratic ideals gun for the expansion of human rights, leveling the field so that more people have a fair shot at life, liberty, and whatever self-fulfillment they choose to pursue.


And yet, paradoxically, despite themselves, democracies have been incubators of wealth, innovation, and power. Even through romanticized lenses, the world's greatest advancements — whether in literature, medicine, architecture, or engineering — if not invented, arguably flourish under their supervision. So what’s going on? Why does America, the wealthiest democracy, seem so determined to strangle itself with its own crown of laurels?


The answer to this enigma can be found in science.


Take the recently activated James Webb Space Telescope. A project not driven by dividends, but by a debt-inducing collaboration spanning continents. Billions of dollars pooled together to send a satellite drifting at the L2 Lagrange point, 1.5 million kilometers away [2]. With its hexagonal mirror and near-infrared instruments, the valiant machine peers into deep time, capturing light from distant galaxies in stunning detail, providing glimpses of the universe from before Earth even existed.


A pointless extravagance, lost on the money-obsessed — but with its true value immeasurable: secrets of the cosmos, images of gravity, and the knowledge that a discovery so hidden among the stars might one day change everything. Every nebula holds new chemistry waiting to be recreated. When black holes collide, spacetime ripples across the expanse into our neighborhood. Each measurement inches us closer to an age of prosperity — one that, only if shared, can truly improve our lives.


Subatomic theory led to semiconductor technology, which then enabled computational biology, ultimately making breakthrough CRISPR gene editing feasible for developing cancer cures. Discoveries as incredible as the Higgs Boson—achieved through extremely costly experiments like those at the LHC—could pave the way for unifying the forces of our universe, dawning a new age in solutions-unimagined and emancipating humanity. Where is the waste in that?


America once understood this poetry. But now? Now, its grand ambitions have been reduced to launching billion-dollar rockets with bananas as payloads, only to see them crash into the Indian Ocean [3]. A fruit that, in a final stroke of irony, has figuratively replaced Michelangelo’s David — not sculpted from marble, but duct-taped to a plaster wall and sold for the price of a house [4]. We cheer like yahoos when prohibitively expensive Starships explode as lauded achievements of our ingenuity [5], yet barely bat an eye when return samples from a probe’s deep-space asteroid impact reveal the humbling presence of 14 of the 20 amino acids used in terrestrial biology [6]. Thank you OSIRIS REx.


Filling gaps in knowledge is, as far as we know, infinite, which is probably why our ignorance brands these mission as futile.


We scold the scientists who cure diseases while celebrating blonde hillbillies who gain fame by denigrating them on live TV [more here]. For what? Our amusement? Where is our dignity? Where has our respect for progress — and the humility it brings — gone? As if celebrating accomplishments, we look to the heavens and toast the failures of shiny SpaceX cylinders that, with each new iteration and disintegration, bizarrely resemble the Space Shuttle more and more; physically underscoring how we have literally given the reins of power to people determined to reinvent the proverbial wheel — corners and all.


This is why we no longer build as many beautiful things as we once did. Those in power and wealth are too undereducated to see beauty, frequently willing to value-engineer every last ounce of it from our lives, until — until we no longer recognize beauty's intrinsic purpose; sa raison d'être. Architecture lost its ornament, urbanism its pedestrians, and music its harmony. What once required four dimensions to be understood has been distilled into a single axis — one where fewer people can truly experience anything beyond the superficial or articulate the deeper critique of concepts behind ideas. Instead, they gravitate toward shiny objects — trucker caps embossed with meme slogans like MAGA, yachts that blot out the horizon, and social media spectacles disguised as innovation.


But here’s the real tragedy: we are no longer just influenced by the wealthy. We are ruled by the stupidly wealthy — those who know little but dazzle us into trust with the sheer ostentation of their gilded accolades.


We have entered an era of intellectual regression, where a huckster’s word holds more weight than a scientist’s. Knowledge once freely understood is now repackaged and sold back to us. We are peddled solutions to crises we do not have — like the "world-ending immoralities of homosexuality" — while dictated to dismiss our true problems away, such as the generational doom from man’s acceleration of climate change. We are told that the greatest minds — who gave us vaccines, who decoded evolution, who built fission reactors — cannot be trusted. Instead, we are meant to believe a man who brews conspiracy theories as watery in substance as the diarrhea he tweets through, from the toilet.


There were many times when America ballooned progress through science and innovation. But now, the gap between culture, technology, and the public’s understanding of it has eroded into a chasm. The less educated are pushed toward outright distrust — not just of science, but of expertise itself. So today, in this void of knowledge, the loudest snake-oil billionaire wins.


Aggressive conmen and their algorithms have redirected our attention — our faith — toward the rich, the famous; prosperity-gospelers who guarantee salvation through hollow promises. They sell dangerous dreams: DOGE, an unchecked group tasked to reveal what we already had the means of checking; fairytales of colonizing Mars to escape a self-made apocalypse; the irresponsible wish to deregulate AI [7], multiplying the billions of those who already hold them; and, by advertising the anonymity of cryptocurrency as a safeguard for individual freedom, the obscuration of transparency — a conclusive deathblow to democratic checks, balances, and bodily security. Incredibly, it seems, rather than believe in centuries of reason and humanity, we seem ready to sacrifice it all for tax breaks!


Our obsession with fake conspiracies blinds us to the real ones, where every accusation is its promoter’s loudest confession. And in this deafening noise, the ultimate grift of those eager to gut democracy for a quick buck is to sell its most dysfunctional fantasy:


Representation without taxation — the blueprint for collapse that lays bare these scammers' despotic agenda [more here].


And so, we return to an old American archetype: the Oregon Trail showman, rolling into town with a wagon full of cure-alls and panaceas. Dr. Wizardstein’s Fantabulous Pharmaceutical Tonic Wonders of The Orient — guaranteed to cure everything from baldness to tuberculosis, now repackaged for the 21st century. The faces have changed, the branding has been modernized, but the scam remains the same. We no longer trust the scientist; we trust the salesman.


As to the why — why do we cling to the merchant? Why do we reject knowledge for spectacle? The same reason there is religion. After centuries of looking through telescopes, we’re now realizing the cosmos is anything but fine-tuned. It took billions of years for a single intelligent species to evolve the capacity to figure out that they live in the remote regions of a water-planet’s very thin surface, in a fragile film of atmosphere sandwiched between a scorching sludgy mantle and the fatal vacuum of space. The motions of the universe run perfectly fine without zodiac signs lubricating galactic gears. The vast, silent indifference of the cosmos is terrifying. And so, we recoil. We shield ourselves from that scary, indifferent truth with devotion — not to the stars, but to those who sell us comforting fictions.


"Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it." [8]

— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951.



We’re primates with superstitious temper tantrums; because, in spite of its enchanting beauty, the observable universe is a mysterious and nightmarishly hostile place. And so, we protect ourselves with piety — we cling to the strongest voice in the room, the biggest wallet on the block, the grifter with the best 'hustle.' The one who says:


"I know." [9]


But democracy is not a sales pitch. It is not a yacht party. It is not a banana taped to a wall. And if we continue down this path — trading wisdom for pageantry, knowledge for noise — then one day, one day soon, we may find that, ironically enough, the last thing left to sell is democracy itself.


And is that worth your trip to the Red Planet?



[1] Original French; « on dit qu’on apprend avec ses erreurs, mais à mon avis c’est une erreur… Et si je me trompe, au moins j’aurais appris quelque chose ! »

Geluck, P. (1995) in Ma langue au Chat.


[2] Howell, E. and Dobrijevic, D. (2022) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) - A complete guide, Space.com. Available at: https://www.space.com/21925-james-webb-space-telescope-jwst.html#:~:text=The%20%2410%20billion%20James%20Webb,peer%20deep%20into%20the%20universe. (Accessed: 21 February 2025).

[3] Wall, M. (2024) SpaceX starship launches banana to space, skips giant rocket catch on 6th test flight (video, photos), Space.com. Available at: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/spacex-starship-launches-banana-to-space-skips-giant-rocket-catch-on-6th-test-flight-video-photos (Accessed: 21 February 2025).

[4] Kuta, S. (2024) That viral banana duct-taped to a wall? it just sold for $6.2 million | smithsonian, Smithsonian Magazine. Available at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/that-viral-banana-duct-taped-to-a-wall-it-just-sold-for-6-2-million-180985523/ (Accessed: 23 February 2025).


[5] Starship failures:

At a rough cost of $8 billion to the taxpayer so far, as of this publishing date, Starship vehicles have been launched seven times, achieving four launch successes (57.14%), three total failures, and seven mission failures.

There have been no orbits, no compressed cabin, a banana for a payload, and the only technologically paradigmatic contribution has been a booster return demonstration—already performed by McDonnell Douglas' DC-X in 1991:


Addendum as of 06-03-2025:


Tracker (so far):

Launch failures: 62.5% (5/8)

Mission failures: 100% (8/8) — as the complete inability to meet all intended objectives (i.e., both the booster and Starship successfully completing their rentry/recovery, payload recovery, system performance like operating hatches and pressurizing the cabin, etc.) Partial success: 12.5% (2/16) — two boosters returns/recaptures out of 16 units launched (starship & booster).

Booster reusability: 0%


  • First Flight: April 20, 2023 — Failure, the vehicle was destroyed before stage separation.

  • Second Flight: November 18, 2023 — Failure, the second stage reached an altitude of 149 km before being destroyed by the flight termination system.

  • Third Flight: March 14, 2024 — Failure, the spacecraft experienced an uncontrolled roll during reentry, cargo door would not close, leading to the loss of the vehicle.

  • Fourth Flight: June 6, 2024 — Failure, the flight experienced an explosion.

  • Fifth Flight: October 13, 2024 — Failure, explosion.

  • Sixth Flight: November 19, 2024 — Banana payload, Failure, explosion and loss of control.

  • Seventh Flight: February 2025 — Failure, explosion, with a partial success of the returning booster.

  • Eighth Flight: March 6, 2025 — Failure, explosion, but with a partial success of the return booster.


[6] McCoy, T. et al. (2025) NASA Scientific Visualization studio, NASA. Available at: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14772/#:~:text=The%20Bennu%20samples%20exhibit%20an,developed%20a%20left%2Dhanded%20biology. (Accessed: 21 February 2025). Glavin, D.P. et al. (2025) Abundant ammonia and nitrogen-rich soluble organic matter in samples from asteroid (101955) Bennu, Nature News. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02472-9#:~:text=Here%20we%20show%20that%20Bennu,where%20ammonia%20ice%20was%20stable. (Accessed: 21 February 2025).


[7] Olga Akselrod, C.V. (2025) Trump’s efforts to dismantle AI protections, explained: ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union. Available at: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/trumps-efforts-to-dismantle-ai-protections-explained (Accessed: 23 February 2025).


[8] Arendt, H. (1973) The Origins of Totalitarianism. Spain: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. 350.


[9] Delusions of grandeur from:


Elon Musk:

"At this point I think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive on Earth."

Donald Trump:



All audio is AI generated.

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