Say what you want about Elon Musk but Irreal holds him in special regard because of a whimsical decision he made for SpaceX. Most observant folks know that Irreal is an admirer of Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels. Indeed, the name “Irreal” is from an idea in one of those novels as the banner at the top of every post hints. Those stories are about an advanced interstellar civilization in which “human beings” and sentient AI have equal status. There are several levels of AI intelligence, ranging from the barely sentient robots that performed routine chores to the super-intelligent “Minds” that ran the day-to-day operations of the Culture.
The Minds lived in—or perhaps had as their bodies—giant interstellar ships. The Minds, like Musk, had a whimsical sense of humor and gave their ships/bodies/selves quirky names such as So Much for Subtlety and Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence.
One of SpaceX’s innovations is the ability to recapture and reuse their launch vehicles. The recapturing of those vehicles is accomplished by landing them on drone ships. Here’s a video of a recent recovery:
Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship pic.twitter.com/CPoMMzPDgS
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 17, 2023
As you’ll notice, the drone ship is named Of Course I Still Love You. That name, like those of the other drone ships, was taken from the Culture novels. Take a look at the Wikipedia article on the drone ships for the other names. Musk has never made a big deal about this; he just named the ships and let those who knew where the names came from appreciate the humor.
For this alone, Musk deserves props from the tech community.