Musk’s Missing Mea Culpa
Commercial space travel launches astronomical consequences
Houston to Earth-dwellers: the first all-civilian crew aboard SpaceX’s Inspiration4 rocket has returned home. Each of the four commoners was dubbed a lofty human ideal as they embarked on their flight.
Commander Jared Isaacman, AKA Leadership, is the billionaire founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments. Dr. Sian Proctor represents Prosperity—she is a geoscientist and analog astronaut, and she uses her education to inspire others about space. Generous Chris Sembroski is a data engineer and Air Force veteran who works for Lockheed Martin. The moniker Hope was given to Hayley Arceneaux, a pediatric cancer survivor and physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
This apparent commentary on the human condition comes off as affected and out of touch. Despite its goal of raising $200 million for St. Jude, the journey has implications that benefit very few. Space travel is beginning to drive into the increasingly widening chasm between the über-rich and the rest of us.
Kris Young, space operations director for SpaceX, told crew members upon return: “Your mission has shown the world that space is for all of us and that everyday people can make extraordinary impacts in the world around them.” Extraordinary impacts, indeed, Mr. Young.
His statement compounds the crew nicknames in a manner that only serves to alienate common people. Similar to Jeff Bezos’s “You guys paid for all this” (his thanks to Amazon employees and customers for sending him to space), Young proves billionaires’ blatant disregard for the consequences of their actions.
Second-richest-man-in-the-world Elon Musk was recently given props for ceasing to accept Bitcoin for vehicle purchases due to environmental reasons. His rabid excitement about commercial space travel and multi-planetary civilization, however, undermines any perception we have of him being environmentally conscious.
Bitcoin uses 1100 kWH per transaction, which is enough to power the average American household for 45 days. The cost of Bitcoin mining is known—the cost of space travel at commercial levels is not.
Space travel leaves a carbon footprint about one hundred times that of passé aviation in an airplane. A pioneering 2010 study showed that the soot released by 1,000 space tourism flights could warm Antarctica by nearly one degree Celsius. This soot would accumulate three times higher in altitude than aviation by plane, and would remain in the atmosphere for years. It would also absorb the sunlight that should be beaming down to Earth, causing uneven heating and damage to the ozone layer—areas near the equator could lose about 1% of ozone coverage, while poles could gain 10%. Space travel is the only way humans have been able to pollute our final untouched frontier—the 14-mile mark in the atmosphere surrounding Earth.
Musk has set in motion an era of commercial space flight without regard to the environmental impact of such excitement and novelty. He and his cult following of aspiring young tech bros are extremely dangerous to a society that is already in serious environmental decline.
Elon Musk is someone who makes things happen—a dynamic entrepreneur who superficially claims to improve vague aspects of society like carbon emissions, or public transportation.
However, he has made some serious missteps for a centibillionaire who holds so much power. His greatly publicized opinions on COVID-19, cryptocurrency and environmentalism—combined with his preferred medium of Twitter—sow misinformation among those who follow him closely.
As space tourism remains a venture only for the wealthiest, what will happen to the 99% when these activities truly begin to leave their mark on our planet?