I often lament the application of that term to trivialize what are actually the most important contentious issues in politics. Still there are moments when there is, perhaps, a genuine "culture war" issue - in the way pundits like to think of it - which is politically polarizing along partisan lines but isn't ultimately all that important.
The doomed discount sub story was maybe one of those. The Left (broadly defined) saw it as billionaire hubris that didn't deserve that much international attention and certainly not an extremely expensive international rescue mission given that normal people will pass on an ambulance for fear of the bill. Also the sub almost certainly imploded and the whole thing was just a PR/ass covering exercise.
The Right saw it, somehow, as Boris Johnson presented it.
No I don't know how they were "pushing out the frontiers of human knowledge," but early on many people were claiming this was primarily a "research mission" and not a dumb joyride. As with lots of right wing stuff I wasn't even sure where that idea came from, but it was, as Cokie would've said, out there.
