The Space Charlatan
Space industry is like the subway. There are a lot of people coming and going, minding their own business. And there are chancers and pickpockets. Perhaps due to the right mixture of obscure tech—although a spacecraft isn’t technologically speaking more complex than a Prius, you can still make it appear complex without much effort—the high sums of money typically involved in space projects, and the awe rockets with their hypergolic fumes and satellites with their shiny metal parts still cause in people.
Not as efficient as crypto as a hotbed for scammers and fools to mingle together in such a perfect symbiosis, the space family is efficient enough to facilitate the blooming of white-collar opportunists and charlatans who make a comfy living out of it.
‘Charlatan’ is a word I particularly like as it means exactly the same in both Spanish—my mother tongue—and English, and it’s spelled and pronounced practically the same. From the dictionary:
Charlatan
/ˈʃɑːlət(ə)n/
noun
a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill.
"a self-confessed con artist and charlatan"
‘Self-confessed’ might be debatable, but the space industry charlatan is indeed a fascinating creature, for it adopts different skins and shapes as things unfold. A modern, capitalist chameleon.
When shit hits the fan, the space charlatan will shed its skin and get out of the rubble unharmed, ready to repeat the cycle with a slightly different appearance, twisting facts in a way it will depict them as visionary heroes with the boldest of visions. If things went south, they’ll make it appear as if the market did not understand their cutting-edge idea. The charlatan is never wrong: we are.
The charlatan spectrum is not homogeneous, and it shows different strata. The working-class charlatan is focused hard on trying to make themselves a name, but still a foot soldier: investor wannabes, junior due diligence advisors, and the like.
Higher-class charlatans are financially-stable ex-founders or executives with a long story of badly ended endeavors on their backs. A proper space charlatan has a pronctuary: a quick googling will lead to court filings involving them and their wrongdoings. For these top-notch con artists, companies, funds and leadership roles are all instruments for personal benefit. Vessels.
The space chancer is everywhere, as they seem to violate the laws of physics by being in different places at the same time. Conferences, symposia, podcasts. They tour the world. You pick up a rock and the charlatan is there to say hello and brag about their epic stories one more time. How they push the envelope, break the rules. Amen brother.
A hardcore skill of the space charlatan is the ability to manufacture themselves a past. If lucky enough to have had an insignificant role at the initial stages of a company that eventually made it big, they’ll milk it like an old cow until it yields the last drop. Those who do not happen to know the truth might drink their poison and innocently consume them as legitimate thought leaders.
The ultimate space charlatan writes a book after their nth failed gig, making sure they’ll market it like we’re lucky they’re willing to share with us ‘the inside story’.
The Charlatans also happens to be a band from UK. Their song ‘Blackened Blue Eyes’ goes:
A charlatan I
Noble and wild
Hustlin for tricks to help you feel loved
And we all need a shoulder to cry on
Once in a while