Billionaire space race: when pipe dreams become reality

We are used to metaphors about how the rich occupy a higher position than us. Being among the stars, living the high life – there are many idioms and sayings to convey their status. It’s a given that they are literally and figuratively above us. Maybe that is why the billionaire space race, and the recent successes of Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, have garnered little attention or consideration.

For billionaires, such aspirations and ‘competitions’ are nothing new. As in the early 1900s, when some of the earliest and most recognisable billionaires strove to construct the tallest skyscrapers or to facilitate trans-Atlantic plane travel, we now see the likes of Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos competing to make it to space while making a profit. And so far, they have been succeeding, and things look promising. The space tourism industry is estimated to generate over $3 billion annually within ten years – and fuelled by competition, the race will only get hotter.

On 11 July, Richard Branson boarded the Virgin Galactic rocket plane and reached a height of 85 km, achieving around five minutes of weightlessness. Soon after, on 20 July, Jeff Bezos and a group of passengers, including 82-year-old Wally Funk and an 18-year-old Dutch student, achieved another historic milestone: boarding the rocket New Shepard, reaching a height of nearly 100 km, and spending around 10 minutes in zero-gravity conditions. Branson might have been the first billionaire in space, but Bezos got the youngest and oldest person to ever go to space there with him.

Tech daddy Elon Musk, however, has different goals in mind with his company Space X. In terms of progress in the race, Space X has been very successful and is arguably in the lead. In 2020, a Space X rocket docked with the International Space Station and Starlink, Musk’s satellite producer, has produced over 700 satellites currently in orbit. This project serves both as a means to provide better broadband for disadvantaged populations, but also as a canny means of reliable income for Space X.

As we contemplate the expanses and possibilities of space while ignoring the troubles on Earth

Most saliva-inducing of all though is Musk’s development of a Starship in Boca Chica, Texas. This vessel may eventually be capable of making round trips to Mars, transporting 100 people at a time on the nine-month journey and facilitating Musk’s long-desired colonisation of the planet. Both Bezos and Musk have grand visions, and the fledgling space tourism attempts are simply the tip of the iceberg – and perhaps a means to fine-tune the technology and to generate hefty profits. The real and more idealistic motivations are far more disturbing.

Musk and Bezos claim to be guided by philosophies idealising human life leaving Earth and reaching for the stars. This is where it all gets a bit sci-fi – and some would say, romantic. Elon Musk endeavours to colonise Mars and establish human life outside of Earth, purportedly because he fears WW3 or some other catastrophic event destroying human life on Earth – or at the very least, setting us back hundreds of years. Such an event has never looked more likely, but we can only hope that Musk is not vindicated. Preparing for the ‘end’ while possessing the means to solve many of humanity’s ailments is a contradiction inherent in the billionaires’ space race.

Bezos is seemingly more optimistic, but nonetheless possesses similar aims to Musk in his ideas about space colonies. Guided by what some would call a pragmatic philosophy – that humans will simply exhaust the earths power and resources and that a jump to life in space would be the logical next step – Bezos is by no means grounded in reality. These larger-than-life characters and their profit-absorbing space race have garnered much media attention despite the fact that, for many of us, these developments will change little or nothing. They have been likened to the hare and the tortoise (Bezos being the latter and Musk the former), but their race has no clear outcome.

If the current trajectory of human development continues, little will change, even if we do achieve mastery over space travel

I for one, am incredibly disturbed by these events. Naturally, I find the idea of galactic travel and sci-fi-esque pursuits tantalising. The obvious romantic and idealistic inclinations of our billionaire space pioneers serve a useful purpose. These wolves have done well to disguise themselves as such hardy rogues and misunderstood intellects (especially in the case of Musk). Whether history will remember these men as the pioneers of mankind’s tender outings into the universe, or as the fools who embarked upon vanity projects while the forests burned and the seas rose is something only the future will tell.

More than ever, as we contemplate the expanses and possibilities of space while ignoring the troubles on Earth, the countless lessons innate to the allegorical world of science fiction literature should be dwelt upon. Even many sci-fi films contain valuable lessons and philosophies – it’s not rocket science!

Primarily though, we should remind ourselves that space will never be a panacea for human life (Elon Musk said that Mars would be governed by direct democracy) while Earth is still a place where such people can obtain such vast sums off the back of suffering and exploited workers. If the current trajectory of human development continues, little will change, even if we do achieve mastery over space travel. Even in thirty years’ time, will you or me be able to afford a ticket on a space plane?

Richard Branson expressed idealistic goals when launching Virgin Galactic’s rocket plane. In what he probably hopes will become a famous quote, he stated that he wants “people to be able to look back at our beautiful Earth and come home and work very hard to try to do magic to it to look after it”. How crass. If the requirement for achieving enough appreciation for humanity and planet Earth is to shoot yourself several hundred kilometres up into the atmosphere, you might be better off staying up there.