A Young Tycoon Dreams of Outer Space
It never occurred to me, when I was nine, dreaming of the cosmos, that living on Earth was a privilege.
When I was eleven, my grand plan was to join the Benedictines. I'd made the mistake of touring a hilltop monastery on a bright spring day, when the promise of the life pastoral—slow days spent tending the farm, reading books, taking classes, and brewing beer—seemed unimpeachable. By the time I was twelve, though, I had undergone a change. By then, I knew I was not ordained for a life-long vow of chastity. It wasn't the first grand plan I'd given up. Go back a few years, to when I was nine, and you'd find me set on becoming an astronaut. Those plans ended in the third grade, when a well-meaning Mrs. Taylor encouraged me to take my dreams seriously, and explore a career that could lead me to space. She pointed me toward astrophysics engineering, as any good grade-school teacher will. Undertaking a bit of research, I discovered that astrophysics engineering involved two things, chiefly: astrophysics and engineering. And those two things involved one thing, chiefly, which was math. Thus I came to peace with the fact that I'd never be an astronaut.
Twenty years after shacking up with Mrs. Tycoon, I feel quite good about my decision not to be a monk. I'm also glad, most of the time, that I didn't grow up to be an astronaut. In my chosen life, I rarely poop in front of my colleagues, nor into a vacuum hose. And the places I thought I'd get to visit—the moon bases, the orbital cities—never materialized.
I wonder, though, if people realize how soon that might change. For the last few years I've been staring at my computer screen, watching a rocket fleet under construction in Texas, giant interplanetary vessels, 33-engine behemoths designed to ferry settlers to Mars. Whether that's exciting or dystopian is up for debate, but it's happening. This past Thursday I got up early to watch the test launch of a prototype ship. It didn't go perfectly. Things got explodey. But the next three ships in the test fleet are already built.
Elon Musk, the rocket builder, wasn't always a meme-spouting, Twitter-tanking, conspiracy theorist, living, like his would-be Martian colonists, in a carefully-crafted bubble. Once, he was the man who spent his PayPal payout proving that electric cars could go somewhere. Then he started SpaceX, and took over the launch industry. He earned his reputation as a man who would promise you the Moon, then deliver, years late, a serviceable, roundish asteroid. If you think a Musk Base on Mars is unlikely, you're right, but only because Elon likes to name stuff after his favorite Iain Banks novels.
Then there's Jeff Bezos, Elon's closest thing to a nemesis. (How sad for Jeff and Elon that, in a world where superheroes keep to the shadows, the supervillains have to be each others' nemeses.) Bezos, and his company, Blue Origin, want to move Earth's manufacturing into orbit. From a telescopic view, I get it. If strip mines are a given, then mines on the Moon would be nicer than ones in the rainforest. I wouldn't hate a world where happy robots toil in space, and twice a year a new pair of shoes comes parachuting down to me. The trouble is, I don't think that's what Bezos has in mind. If you know much about Jeff Bezos, you can guess that, in his fantasy, he's relaxing on a lush, green, carbon-neutral Earth, while you and I and the rest of the plebs are Up There Somewhere, sucking on oxygen bottles we bought from Amazon.
It never occurred to me, when I was nine, dreaming of the cosmos, that living on Earth was a privilege. I never considered that, someday, kids on the Moon might gaze upon Earth the way I look at at a superyacht.
Best case scenario, we let the space barons build their rockets. Then, when the ships are ready, we'll march the boys aboard. Bezos can make himself a palace on the Moon, and Mars strikes me as an ideal place for Musk and his fans to congregate. Meanwhile, here on Earth, we'll need to be more purposeful than we've been. We have an emergency on our home planet, and we can't send all the climate deniers to space; we'll have to outweigh them with accurate information, determined leadership, and empathy for those whose livelihoods depend on the status quo. While we're at it, let's commit to making Earth a refuge for all humanity, with a promise of shelter to all who need it. We may as well start now, while most folks are conveniently terrestrial. True, there are a lot of us, but we have the resources, and Earthlings are a creative bunch.
