Tech Troubleshooting in Space – Econlib

When astronaut Christina Koch, the first woman to fly around the moon, reported an issue from space that could have been copy-pasted from any IT helpdesk ticket, something clicked for Americans. Her grievance? “No joy seeing the device in the list of available devices when I attempt to re-pair it after doing the Bluetooth forget.”

Commander Reid Wiseman, orbiting Earth aboard the Artemis II mission, radioed Houston with a problem millions of office workers share: “I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working.” So much for old “one small step for man…”

Internet commentators found these moments painfully relatable and shared them widely. Why did those quotes about tech maintenance go viral in April 2026? Beneath the comedy lies an underappreciated cost of modernity: we are wealthier, and that wealth means we own more things. More things means more things that break, more things that need updating, more things that require troubleshooting guides, more passwords to forget and recover. Even billion-dollar space hardware runs the same glitchy consumer software we all use every day. There is a certain democracy of frustration here.

The old problems never went away, either. The Artemis program has been plagued by a malfunctioning toilet. Even as we layer on new technology, the ancient headaches remain. We still have leaky pipes and dead batteries. We also now have Wi-Fi dead zones, incompatible Bluetooth drivers, and cloud storage accounts we can’t access because we changed our phone number.

Wealth and Happiness: The Running Debate

This raises the question that EconLog readers know well: does becoming wealthier actually make us happier?

It’s one of the site’s oldest debates. Arnold Kling kicked it off as early as 2003, arguing from revealed preference that higher income must produce more happiness. Otherwise, why would people choose to earn it? David Henderson complicated the picture further, expressing skepticism about cross-country happiness surveys.

Scott Sumner, in his review of Tyler Cowen’s book on economic growth, accepted the broad finding that wealth and wellbeing are positively correlated but noted that the relationship runs through many indirect channels: better health outcomes, a cleaner environment, reduced violence, expanded human rights. Growth, he argued, should be the default policy posture even when we’re uncertain about its direct happiness effects.

More recently, Bryan Caplan staked out an interesting position: calling himself an economic optimist but happiness pessimist. He looks at the data and sees genuinely robust growth. He also looks at the data and sees that income barely moves the happiness needle. He concludes that we’re materially richer, and should be glad of it, even if survey respondents don’t report feeling much better.

I believe that progress is good and that people pursue higher incomes for a reason. Having more makes us better off, but the astronauts’ complaints illustrate the cognitive tax that goes with it. This helps explain, in part, why the happiness gains are not even larger.

Consider the distribution of the more-stuff burden across a typical household. Parents contend with a level of domestic complexity such as choosing among subscription services and managing multiple accounts. Fathers who once needed to know how to change the oil and fix a leaky faucet might now also serve as the de facto IT department: managing family passwords and troubleshooting the smart TV. Children face being locked out of their schoolwork because they’ve forgotten a password.

None of this is a “skills problem,” as the astronaut examples make plain. It is structural. The NASA crew has a team of engineers on the ground to handle their tech problems, while most of us have a four-year-old YouTube tutorial.

Our devices connect us and entertain us. I will continue to enjoy syncing my phone to my car stereo and flipping through the entire Apple Music library until something breaks. Are we happier today with more stuff? I believe we are better off, overall. However, to paraphrase The Notorious B.I.G., “more money, more problems.”

Featured image, “Illuminated in Orion” from NASA.