Thank you for taking the time to read this!
Much of the framework for this idea is derived from @anon68543914 contributing to the collab project from a few months ago. The gist is that fluffies are ideal for taking the risks in place of people because they are already abundant, and therefore expendable. The cost of a dead fluffy cadet is mostly the loss of gear, which may still be recovered by another fluff cadet. (lol)
The irony of the piece is that the author hates fluffies as a concept and finds their suffering amusing. Writing anything hugbox related became extremely challenging after dealing with the mobs of ignorance on the subreddit, and so it remains to this day!
But there is also irony in that things depicted as being so dense are used for some of the most complex undertakings imaginable in the frontier of space.
I’ve always enjoyed the dynamic of stupid getting smart things done, outside of my fluffy contributions, and so it would be a staple of this setting. If readers cannot abide by this, I trust they know I understand and encourage them to enjoy what they enjoy, freely. I just don’t need to hear about how this contradicts their headcanon in the comments!
As for the state of real life space exploration; believe me, I’m aware of where the money and focus went in the last few decades. The shuttering of the shuttle program was the death rattle of the greatest decades of human endeavoring, in my opinion. But it did not have to be this way.
With the amount of money that the United States had to fund its various conflicts over the last three decades, humanity could have reached as far as the first gas giants by now.