Billionaires in space

Comment, Sep 16th

Elite tourism is not ‘paving humanity’s way to the stars’, but elites’ escape from a dying planet

~ Andrew J Boyer ~

Jared Isaacman has become the first billionaire to space-walk, in a successful Space-X mission titled Polaris Dawn. The event has attracted headlines for very few reasons apart from the fact that he is an American billionaire and not a traditional astronaut. In similar fashion last year, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic completed its first commercial flight into space, with tickets costing upwards of $450,000 a seat. Then, of course, there’s Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which promises spots not only for space tourism, but also spots for living and working in space.

While some may find it inspiring that a businessman can buy their way into a cosmic joy ride, the rest of us are deflated by the feeling that even space is up for being commodified. Capitalists dismiss concepts like abolition, a moneyless society, mutual aid, and direct democracy as ludicrous and utopian, but the moment space is mentioned to a billionaire – their eyes become as sparkly as the Milky Way.

The idea of billionaires paving the way to space travel via space tourism spotlights the question, what do we consider as progress? An average justification for states and capitalism is that they allow large scale projects like space exploration, and that building rockets is impossible without command structures and a profit motive. But while this grandiose sense of progress is smugly praised and defended, poverty still runs rampant as ever, war and genocides rage on, ecological disasters sweep the globe, marginalised groups still face violence, and many people remain overworked and isolated from their communities. There’s clearly a difference in priorities.

In a sense, tourism (of any kind) has always been a privileged escape to a commodified destination, complete with an overly curated cultural experience. But the bragging rights one imagines gaining when they post their Nordic Fjord holiday photos on Instagram pale in comparison to the godlike feeling a wealthy member of the elite may receive when they gaze at planet earth from afar. Their joy isn’t to go ‘where no one has gone before’, but rather ‘where no one can afford to go’.

But such hubris falls on the cynical ears of generations concerned with Earth’s environmental destruction. With extreme heat becoming the leading cause of weather-related death, younger people have very little interest in nostalgic Apollo-style space travel, and would sooner use the cost of their theoretical space ticket to pay for housing, food, and education.

Wanderlust and the desire to travel is completely natural, and nothing to be ashamed of. Exploring space has been a dream (or at least a passing thought) for every human who has ever gazed up at the big dipper. But Jared Isaacman’s spacewalk isn’t some heroic accomplishment that will pave the way to our dreams. Instead it shows how, facing a threat to the survival of life on Earth, elites are already preparing to buy their way off-planet.