Should we trust Elon Musk with Space?

Yet again, Elon Musk’s ‘SpaceX’ company has been breaking new ground in space travel. On the 13th of October, Musk’s Starship rocket launched into the sky from its base in Texas, before smoothly descending back into its launchpad in what has been called the ‘chopstick manoeuvre’, marking the first ever launchpad return in the history of space travel. This comes in the wake of rapid advancement in the private space exploration sector, which looks set to overtake national space programmes such as NASA in the near future.

While it may be easy to get wrapped up in excitement about the potential for commercial space tourism, an idea which not too long ago was limited to sci-fi, it is worth asking the question: how much do we trust billionaires like Elon Musk to lead it? Although Musk has enjoyed great financial success over the past decade, and is now the richest man in the world, his path to the top of the capitalist pyramid has hardly been ethical. 

Workers at Musk’s car company, Tesla, report that any attempts to unionise for better conditions are unconditionally crushed, while working conditions remain abysmal, with very long hours and workers often end up sleeping on the floor. Furthermore, in response to an accusation that the US ordered a coup against the president of Bolivia in order for Tesla to acquire its lithium supplies, Musk responded: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it”. 

With this in mind, should we really be putting the future of space travel into the hands of a man who has built his wealth on the exploitation of the working class and the global south? Or perhaps this is an inevitability of a neoliberal capitalist economy which gives so much power to so few individuals.

And on another note, is there not something disturbing about the idea of the natural wonder of the moon, the central feature of the night sky which has been spiritually important to almost every culture in history, becoming a vessel for resource extraction and privatised tourism? At what point do we draw the line between what is up for sale and what is not?

Perhaps moments like this should make us question how much profit incentives should be driving our society towards technological innovation, and whether instead we ought to prioritise the collective well being of humanity. After all, planet earth has more than enough capacity to support the human race, so it seems we should focus on our own pressing issues, such as war, poverty and climate change, before we start spreading our most toxic practices to other planets.