My love of space has always been nation-agnostic. I have worked with Americans, Europeans, Japanese and Indians on various space projects. After all, isn’t that what space exploration is all about – transcending boundaries, bringing people together and seeing our blue planet as a single unified whole? This might sound naïve to those who think they can own the stars, toss up personal effects into the cosmic commons and sell asteroid dust. But we can do better than to let the privileged few treat space like their own backyard to play out their expansionist dreams, insatiable greed and quest for infinite economic growth.
When Branson and Bezos rocketed up to the Kármán line, a week apart, in July, instead of feeling thrilled, I felt ambivalent. I wondered why. Perhaps it is my discomfort with one of them having sought funds from a nation state whose economy is powered by fossil fuels, despite his claims of being an eco-entrepreneur. Perhaps it’s my disdain for monopolies that wipe out small businesses (especially indie book shops) and clutter the world with tons of packaging waste. Or maybe it’s because the optics of their ‘me first’ suborbital race lacked the nuance and grace that one would expect from two ageing men, the kind that the legendary Jedi Master Yoda would approve of.
When I spoke to friends and colleagues around the world about the new and evolving billionaire space race, some seemed to think that it was great, even a marquee moment in making space more accessible. Others were less enthused, who found it ego-driven and narcissistic. Then there were those who got a laugh or two, like my Brazilian artist friend, who called them ‘space balls’.
One of the popular misconceptions is that these billionaires are risking their personal wealth to make spaceflight better. But if you look at what percentage of their personal wealth they have spent on starting their ventures, it’s a pittance. Compare it to how much they are benefitting from the generous research grants and multibillion-dollar contracts from the military-industrial complex. To prove the lure of state funds, consider this: a week after his suborbital jaunt, Jeff Bezos offered to cover up to US$2 billion in NASA costs if the American space agency were to award his company Blue Origin with a contract to make a spacecraft that could land astronauts back on the Moon. Three months earlier, NASA had awarded SpaceX, owned by rival billionaire Elon Musk, a US$2.9 billion contract to do exactly that, rejecting bids from Blue Origin and one other defense contractor.
For those who idolise such billionaires, I recommend they read Italian-American economist Mariana Mazzucato’s book The Entrepreneurial State to get a little more perspective. Her decades of research into the economics of innovation in high-tech industries attest to the primacy of state investment over visionary individuals. You might be surprised to learn, for instance, that Tesla, SolarCity and SpaceX, all founded by Elon Musk, have received close to US$4.9 billion of government support between them.
Now that we’ve set the record straight on the state-funded money pipelines that billionaires are tapping into, let’s take on the misplaced equivalency argument of, “How can you explore (space) when people are dying of hunger and disease?” I don’t agree with that argument at all. Solving problems on Earth and going to space can happen in parallel. Earth applications and space exploration have the power to inform and influence each other. I believe in reciprocities and concurrency. Examples abound to prove that space research and applications have improved quality of life on Earth, right down to the grassroot level. Satellite communications, Earth observation and global positioning is used for a wide variety of Earth applications covering just about every sector you can possibly imagine, from disaster management to agriculture. Satellite data, combined with sophisticated climate modelling, can help save lives. Fisherfolk at sea can receive weather and shoal alerts on their mobile phones. Farmers can tune in to lessons on agricultural best practices on television and have the local administration help them measure farm yield using satellite imagery and machine learning analytics. If the yield is less than normal, the farmers can claim insurance benefits.
It’s important to remain cynical when facing the well-oiled publicity machines of billionaires. At the same time, it’s also important to highlight what I think are the positive outcomes of their orbital enterprises.
Companies like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX are opening up access to space to anyone who can afford to fly on one of their spaceships. What happened to commercial jetliners in the last century will happen to commercial spaceflight in this century. These new space companies have propelled the aerospace industry out of the complacency that had kicked in because legacy space corporations such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin had been spoilt for decades with a constant supply of multibillion-dollar government contracts. With zero competition, the contracts kept rolling in, giving these companies little incentive to innovate or push boundaries.
New space companies have introduced fresh methods and mindsets from cross-over sectors such as commercial aviation, automobiles and information technology. This has helped to foster speed, agility, innovation and cross-sector pollination of ideas, trans-disciplinarity and passenger-centricity for human spaceflight. Kudos to the engineers and designers who worked on these fabulous human ferries that will carry paying passengers not just safely, but in comfort and style, to the edge of space. Making space more accessible is great, so long as we don’t lose focus on climate change and ensure that the demographics of our space-farers is not skewed to only include the uber-rich.
Article by Susmita Mohanty
Photo Credit: smartboy10