The media is gushing over Elon Musk and SpaceX as if this feat of frippery has any meaning whatsoever to the poor and the suffering masses struggling to survive on this planet. You know what SpaceX reminds me of? In high school, we saw a movie made from the book “A Tale Of Two Cities”. In the movie, it showed King Louis XVI in all his finery shooting skeet using live pigeons as skeets. He’s being told his people are starving and it looks like he doesn’t care. He shoots another pigeon and says, “Nonsense! I love my subjects! Pull!” And another pigeon is released. Another pigeon is blown to bits.
Can we imagine anything different for private space travel? In fact, can we imagine anything different for space travel period, be it private or the government? We have very real problems on this planet that have not been solved. Instead of solving problems at home, we are trying to colonize space as if colonizing nations on here was not enough. Without pressing very real problems barely being paid attention to let alone solved at home, we seek to find other places to manifest the very same problems and destroy those places in the process. It’s almost as if the wealthy know they’ve ruined this planet and are quietly seeking a place they can build and create an interstellar gated community that won’t need armed security to keep the poor out of, since the poor couldn’t even get there anyway.
That’s quite a ways into the future, though. The actual reality is this: It’s just another skeet shoot for the king. The rich grow bored and look for new methods to entertain themselves. That’s what this is all about. Entertainment and self glorification. The ultimate narcissistic endeavor to write one’s name in the stars. “Look at me, everybody! I own a spaceship! And for a few million bucks, I’ll let you ride it for a few seconds in outer space!” The same wealthy willing to pay $1,000 for a slice of pizza adorned with truffles and gold dust will belly up to the ticket counter for that ride. It really is pathetic and pitiful that people are so jaded they can’t see any way towards happiness except spending vast sums on money on expensive thrill-seeking and trinkets. But there it is.
This would all be fine if we didn’t have a serious problem with the people impoverished by the greed of the people amassing the cash to do these things. If these people weren’t sending up spaceships using money snatched from the tables of the poor, fine. But no one can say that private space travel is worth people living in poverty. If Elon Musk wanted to do something spectacular, he’d have given the money to the poor instead of a spaceship to nowhere. Look, Musk is not solving any human problem. He’s not exploring any place we haven’t seen. This is nothing more than a bored king shooting live pigeons. With a spaceship.
Decades ago, NASA proved there is nothing on the moon than cannot be seen inside a vacuum cleaner bag. There’s more promise inside a vacuum cleaner bag because one might have vacuumed up a dime and a couple quarters by accident. The collective hallucination that colonizing Mars would be a good idea begs this question: To what end?! What are we trying to accomplish here? Or there? The deserts here on Earth are rainforests compared to Mars! You might as well be trying to establish a major city in the deepest dunes of the Sahara without any idea of where the water is going to come from. The difference is that the Sahara has breathable air. And the people suggesting the colonization of Mars are supposed to be our best and brightest minds?! Heaven help us!
Do these clowns even know the logistics involved in colonizing a planet such as Mars, which has no water or breathable air? I daresay these folks cannot accomplish moving their own homes without substantial error. Just to build the living areas will take countless ships launched to Mars and you can be certain a percentage of them will explode or be lost to accidents. And you’re talking about removing obscene amounts of fresh drinking water from this planet, when the United States cannot even supply clean drinking water to the people of Flint, Michigan!
This is a dystopian comedy! The logistics would cost trillions of dollars and remove vast resources from this planet just to chase the dream of a handful of people with, evidently, nothing better to do. Think about this. You’ve got people living in shantytowns because they’re poor but you want to build a nice little village on Mars?! That this does not provoke gales of condemnation is more astonishing than the fact people suggest it in the first place.
Let me say it bluntly. We need to put a stop to all space travel until people fix the problems here. It’s like this. When we were kids and wanted to go somewhere with friends, what did mom or dad say? “Have you cleaned your room?” If we answered no, we were told to go clean our room. Then, and only then, were we allowed to go somewhere with friends. Space travel is no different. If you haven’t fixed the problems on this planet, you don’t deserve to leave it for any amount of time. Period.
Space travel has become another form of utopian escapism for some people who want to close their eyes and pretend they don’t live on a planet with at least 5 simultaneous wars going on side-by-side with at least two famines. They want desperately to believe humanity is the humanity depicted in Star Trek. But it isn’t. And it cannot be until we face reality and devote that money to fixing the problems here. Look, you’ve got an economic system that doesn’t exist in the Star Trek series, for one thing. Ok? They’re not living in capitalism and trying to get venture capital funding for the USS Enterprise. But we’re talking about fantasy in terms of Star Trek and people are dying by the millions in reality. We need to face that truth and stop hiding our heads in the sands of the cinema screen.
Therefore, the answer to the question of space travel is a solid no. People may say Elon Musk can spend his money any way he wants to, but guess what? That doesn’t make him right or worthy of applause. If anything, he should be scolded for such grandiose wastes of money that could have saved thousands of human lives. Again, what human problem will SpaceX solve? Not one. This is just the attention-seeking antics of an adolescent who just got a brand new muscle car. That’s all it is. The ultimate muscle car for the rich. Meanwhile, the poor are hoping to just afford enough to eat.
I’m honestly sick and tired of hearing that people like Elon Musk represent some bright new future when some ballistic missile shot into space was done decades ago and poverty was not solved. For that matter, the NASA moon landings were done at the height of the Vietnam War. Did that “one giant leap for mankind” end the Vietnam War? Did it end the Cold War? No. It solved nothing. Moon rocks and dust look like concrete rubble. Big deal. So people can’t sit there and tell me space travel holds promise for humanity. The Space Shuttle came and went and two were lost to tragic accidents. Again, nothing of substantial worth was gifted to humanity as a result. No diseases were cured, no famines ended, no wars ended for all time.
People say, “But we need to get off this planet!” Oh? And why is that? Because you’re destroying this one, that’s why. But, one more time, the colonization of Mars will take such vast resources, it’d probably pauperize this entire planet to accomplish it. Some great solution you’ve got there, Mr. Navigator. You’re steering us right into the Bermuda Triangle. So, let’s have an end to this nonsense once and for all. #MuskWaste
“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
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