With SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin stepping up competition for space travel, not all are overjoyed. This week Richard Branson beat Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk Travel 50 miles into space on a Virgin Galactic rocket.
While excited, a sense of distaste for the commodification of space has gripped social media platforms, especially when inequality is widespread on Earth. A tweet shared more than 20,000 times reads, “I think my favorite thing this week was that Richard Branson went into space and absolutely nobody cares,” while another sarcastically claims that Branson “did the last year Government asked for a handout ”. “, But he just flew into space with a multi-million dollar rocket.
Eyebrows were also raised about the environmental impact. Jeff Bezos has expressed his belief that new approaches to combating climate change could lie in space. But traveling there could be counterproductive to this approach.
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The higher a spaceship flies, the more fuel it needs, and it also emits soot and CO2. The Blue Origin space probe runs on hydrogen, which is CO2 neutral, but carbon is often a by-product of its production.
Then there is the issue of boredom. Not just because of the perceived hedonistic whims of the unfathomable rich, but also in space exploration itself. Last year, communications research professor Linda Billings, who works with NASA, told the BBC that while the space agency was still doing “an enormous amount of work,” she agreed is that the response from governments and corporations is still dominated by “thank you, but we don’t care” responses.
For the average person, not much has been in the pipeline since the moon landings in the late 1960s.
“You might be waiting for someone to land on Mars next, but that didn’t happen,” said Zachary Goldberg, space research manager at Trilateral Research, a UK technology company.
Storm clouds and a rainbow appear over Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Aerospace Manufacturer building in Cape Canaveral (Photo: Getty / Mark Wilson)
Ironically, it’s a lack of public interest that sets the pace for giant tech companies led by billionaire bosses to enter the space travel market, he believes.
“Governments cut funding for space programs and created a loophole in the 1990s and early 2000s,” Goldberg says.
“Much of it had to do with public perception, governments felt that they couldn’t get public support for space development as it was in the 1960s and 1970s when everything was new and viewed as a human pursuit of knowledge and Discovery.”
While India is making advances in remote sensing and remotely collecting data on masses in space, and China is with a view to further exploration on Mars, after a successful unmanned mission – the collective frenzy that inspired the original space race just isn’t there.
This public skepticism may well have deepened. Especially since tech giants have entered space.
From inadequate working conditions, questions about tax levies, to diving into the crypto space, an industry that uses huge amounts of electricity to mine coins, criticism of the approach taken by Bezos, Branson and Musk is widespread.
And many argue that billionaire status and solid ethics cannot coexist. Out of this feeling came the #EatTheRich movement, a socialism-driven campaign that is now widely used as a collective hashtag on social media.
A 2015 Oxfam study found that 71 percent of the world’s billionaire wealth benefited from nepotism, inheritance, or monopoly. To top it off, a single ticket to Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which doesn’t yet offer tourist travel to space (scheduled to begin next year), will gross you a little over £ 180,000. So it’s no wonder we seem disinterested as people claim online that we just can’t afford it.
However, Joe Sercel, founder of California-based Trans Astra, which develops space exploration technology, cautions against underestimating the average person’s interest in space exploration. “The public instinctively knows that we are at a very important point in history if we are to enter space in an economically sustainable manner,” he says.
Sercel even suggests that the private sector, in charge, will ultimately speed up the accessibility and affordability process. “Sooner than we know, the average person will be able to travel in space,” he explains.
“Just like cars, color televisions and computers, it gets too expensive at first, but if innovations can flourish in the private sector, cost competition will bring prices down every year.”
Reflecting on the concept of “ethical” space development, he adds, “The key is to ensure that it is not dominated by unethical actors”. And he stressed that countries with better human rights records should also play a leading role. However, it could prove difficult to decipher which nations can truly enjoy moral superiority in terms of human rights.
Sercel also rejects the notion that space exploration is dominated by the ultra-privileged, viewing those at the top as simply driven innovators pulling themselves up by their boots.
“The private sector invests in small space companies with critical growth potential,” he says. “The founders of these companies aren’t fat cats, they’re middle- or working-class people like me. Fighting poverty is about creating opportunities. ”
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket takes off (Photo: Getty / Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images / LightRocket).
A viral tweet once spread the idea that once a Starbucks chain was viable for human habitation, it would appear on the moon in a flash. In order to avoid space monopolies, there have been interventions in space trade before.
“We saw this in the 1960s when the United Nations interfered with jurisdiction in space with the launch of the US and Russian programs, leading to an international consensus that no single country would have property rights,” Goldberg says. “Space is an area where international cooperation could really be successful without political controversy.”
Still how new activities such as tourism and the mining of minerals in space becomes a reality, legal and political tension can arise as someone claims ownership or sole use. Goldberg points out that Branson, Bezos and Musk “succeeded as businessmen, not as ethicists,” and urges vigilance, not resistance, on that front.
“We have to wonder what it means when these private companies want to put cell towers on the moon or build a hotel in orbit,” he says.
Instead, Sercel warns of the risk of overregulation. He assumes that some companies are ethical pushing for regulation when they are genuinely motivated by something else. “The big old aerospace companies lack the innovation and agility to compete, and they know it,” he says.
“Minimal but effective regulation is required to ensure that space’s resources are not wasted by bad actors, but these companies want over-regulation that gives them the advantage of [dominate unfairly]. “
On the flip side of ethical concerns, there is also the potential for inequality to be considered, says Goldberg. “Satellite technology can monitor climate change and provide rural areas with education or facilitate information sharing around political uprisings,” he says. “Technology can have a democratizing effect.”
As for the earth’s dwindling resources, the need is also urgent. “Access to resources on extraterrestrial bodies like the moon or asteroids might be something we have to do,” says Goldberg.
“As long as we change our approach, it is possible to distribute resources fairly, not just for a few. But are you wondering if space is just the newest toy for billionaires? That is still valid. “
