Billionaires in space

I’d like to say I’ve been a space enthusiast ever since the Mercury program (I wasn’t quite five when Shepard went up, 13 when Armstrong walked on the moon). I’ve enjoyed many space movies, such as the recent Apollo 11, last year’s First Man, Apollo 13 from many years ago, and Space Camp from 33 years ago, among others. I get the Smithsonian Air and Space magazine for the space articles. But I haven’t actually attended a launch. And I rarely check the NASA website. That tells you about my level of enthusiasm.

So when articles like this appear I at least pay attention.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote about the announcement that billionaire Jeff Bezos has released detailed plans for getting humans off earth and onto the moon and into floating cities in space. Bezos certainly has the personal fortune to make it happen.

Elon Musk, another billionaire, is working towards getting humans to Mars.

The announcement by Bezos included plans that look robust, fascinating, and impressive (I haven’t seen them myself). With their fortunes it is likely both men will succeed.

There are a good reasons for doing it. Getting colonies in space is good in case something happens to earth. I’ve heard that described as making sure all our eggs aren’t in one basket. Of course, there are the old reasons, such as humans should be in space to be there and to do science on site. There’s the practical reason, Bezos doesn’t have to worry that Congress will cut his funding. And the disappointing reason that our government has lost interest in space (this is more than the nasty guy, it was Obama who canceled the Orion capsule), so we are glad that someone is going to space.

But Sumner and I have a problem with billionaires going into space. They’re doing this rather than allowing themselves to be taxed enough that the government could do it. First, Sumner:

The real problem is that there are individuals with the kind of wealth and power to make that possible. The ultimate result of a system that channels all money into fewer and fewer hands, is that those hands make the decisions. Unchecked.

We have an economic system that allows individuals to secure the ability to make decisions for all of us, to profoundly alter the world and the future for generations. It’s not the first time. Previous generations of millionaires shaped transportation and communications in ways that defined where cities were built and how communities were formed. Millions of Americans, perhaps most, live where they live now because of decisions made by some railroad baron or industrial titan who defined the landscape a century ago.

Now billionaires are going further. And farther. What they’re doing is already altering the basic economics of access to space in ways that have only begun to impact everyday life. But the impacts will be profound. They will also be long lasting.

It’s easy to make fun of the nerdy exuberance of Bezos or the technocratic fervor of Musk, but they are genuinely on the edge of creating a future that is almost entirely under their control—a future that will greatly impact the future for everyone, everywhere.

In summary, they get to decide access to space and impose their choices on the rest of us.

So, based on that, here are my comments:
When Bezos and Musk pay for the ride they get to choose who goes into space. And since being a billionaire is, in my understanding, inherently supremacist, I can guess who they will allow to go into space. They’ll probably all be white and likely from the upper end of income earners.

I mentioned the need to get some humans off earth in case something happens to it. Alas, something – global warming – is happening to it and people like Bezos stand in the way of doing what we need to so the environment is protected.

Similar to words by supremacists everywhere Bezos is saying I am making it possible for humans to go to space. He isn’t saying he’ll support taxes so that we can go into space.



About that comment that billionaires are inherently supremacist…

Wealth-X says that San Francisco has the highest density of billionaires in the world – higher than New York, Dubai, and Hong Kong. The Bay Area Economic Council reports they Bay Area’s homeless crisis ranks among the worst in the United States. Those things happened together.

Walther Einenkel of Daily Kos says that in San Francisco there are about 375 homeless people for every billionaire.

I’ll add a bit of math to that. If each rich dude spent about 20% of their first billion – leaving $800,000,000 plus all their other billions – they could buy a half-million dollar home for each homeless person. I know the real estate market in the Bay Area is crazy. A half-million house in the Detroit area is a pretty snazzy hunk of house. In the Bay Area that might be average.