An Optimistic Take On The Billionaire Space Race

Never keep all your eggs in one basket

It is a both a dangerous and unique time in humanity’s history. Everyone is divided, and unity proves elusive.

From the “Trumper” conservative right, to libertarians, to the liberals and the SJWs… They all do agree on one big “Policy thing” though.

Which is… Space doesn’t matter much, because there are just other more important things to worry about. And every version of human has those specific things they agree with and disagree with and that’s that. Most people could not care less about whether humans make progress in space, or whether we as a species ever develop the means to be interplanetary and space-faring.

Our discourse doesn’t much dwell on the desirability, not to mention the possible necessity, of advancing human space exploration in the event of an unavoidable catastrophe.

I believe this to be an oversight on our part.

I don’t especially like billionaires per say, but I feel like I can’t take a stand either way when I’m ordering necessities on Amazon, and saving up for a Tesla.

That’s up until the point that I can see that they’re investing into the advancement and over-all well being of our species. Okay don’t panic… I already know what you’re going to say, *gasp* “how does blue origin (who’s “spaceship” didn’t even make it to low earth orbit) advance humanity???”

The answer is: progress, is progress. If you’re moving forward, you aren’t going backwards. Even if it’s one small step at a time. That’s a hard truth. When you hyper focus on big milestones, it’s hard to see how far you’ve come since you started, which I find to be counterproductive.

I believe my generation (millennials) are entirely fixated on instant gratification (not entirely our fault 😅) and we can’t fathom throwing support behind something that probably won’t show tangible benefits in their lifetime. We, like every generation before us, and after us, are products of our environment and the conditions and events that take place while we’re growing up. Many stay fixed in their ways, using the “old dog, new tricks” analogy but there are still many others that break out of generational programming through self improvement or therapy or any of 100000 ways to change the way we think and react.

Being upset over the fact that these men who have more money then they know what do with, just throw their billions of dollars around in what seems like a frivolous way is not an easy thing to stomach and I totally get that (especially when the issues you care about aren’t being addressed). And recently, when it comes to anything where personal opinion is divided, I tend to keep my mouth shut regardless of where I stand because I don’t see a point in it. It’s incredibly difficult to change the hearts and minds of people who are set in their ways, so why bother? With this one exception…

For me, exploring and understanding our place in the universe is the one and only hill I’ll die on.

My personal lord and savior Carl Sagan said:

I’ve got a segment of that quote tattooed on the inside of my left arm, so naturally I’m biased when it comes to my feelings on the beauty and mysteries of our universe.

What I see when I see this so called “Space Race” is high net worth investor prospecting. 100k for 15 seconds of weightlessness doesn’t seem like great ROI, but if you factor in the sheer excitement of being up there… and the feeling described by many astronauts of realizing how small and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things… It’s a revelation that can change a person’s core beliefs. Maybe a revelation so grandiose that they’d be inclined to invest in humanity’s future as a space-faring, multi-planetary and prosperous civilization.

Neil Degrasse Tyson said it best. When asked if he felt small when he thought about the scale of the universe he said…

We are the universe, and the universe is within us. To seek the truths of our universe, is to seek the truth in ourselves.

It’s my fervent belief that If one day we all had the opportunity to see that for ourselves, we would drastically change as a species. Hopefully we’d realize that we’re all actually the same. Prejudices, border conflicts, religious extremism would all be things of the past. Then and only then can we start focusing and hammering down on social issues and tackling them as a species. I believe that only by working together can we solve world hunger, battle the climate crisis and all of the other existential threats the plague humanity. It’s just a stretch to have expectations that the biggest capitalists the world has ever seen will suddenly become altruistic and give all their money away to solve all the world’s problems. It’s not just a stretch, it’s ridiculous.

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