Time tends to sand off the rough edges of any organization that wants to keep pulling in new members and that doesn’t need a framework of total control to protect itself from fizzling out early. It’s an evolutionary process, not just historical whitewashing. Though it’s also historical whitewashing.

Most of the energy from the rocket that launched the satellite went into pushing it fast sideways. If you wanted to slow it down enough to drop straight down, you’d just about need a second rocket to stop it.