Domination Versus Devotion: A Case Against Space Exploration

There is rea­son, after all, that some peo­ple wish to col­o­nize the moon, 
and oth­ers dance before it as an ancient friend. 

~James Baldwin, No Name in the Street

Like many “gift­ed and tal­ent­ed” first daugh­ters of my gen­er­a­tion, I went through a Greek myth phase in mid­dle school. The myths had it all—life, death, love, betray­al, friend­ship, blood­shed, revenge, the whole human gamut. This led me to learn the con­stel­la­tions accom­pa­ny­ing these great tales, spend­ing many a night in the ear­ly 80s lying on my back con­nect­ing the shin­ing dots in the sky.

So it may surprise—and maybe frustrate—you to learn that I am not a fan of space exploration.

Consider cul­tur­al con­text. The medi­an age of those who sub­scribe to my newslet­ter is 64. That means most of my read­ers were alive to wit­ness the Apollo Space mis­sions. They gath­ered around the fam­i­ly tele­vi­sion on that fate­ful night in 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong plant the first human foot on the moon. They were encul­tured in The Space Race, the 20^th-cen­tu­ry com­pe­ti­tion between the United States and the Soviet Union to achieve supe­ri­or space­flight capa­bil­i­ty. Being obsessed with space explo­ration was how one showed their patriotism.

Now con­sid­er Gen‑X, my peer group. I was in a mid­dle school class­room in 1986 when I watched a real rock­et car­ry­ing real peo­ple explode. Much ado had been made about the American teacher and astro­naut Christa McAuliffe’s first mis­sion. Every school in the U.S. tuned in, chant­i­ng along when T‑minus start­ed. Every stu­dent watched in hor­ror as the shut­tle explod­ed. Then, every teacher across this great nation qui­et­ly turned off the tele­vi­sion, wheeled the TV cart from the room, and it was nev­er men­tioned again. As we were decades away from learn­ing to process our trau­ma, no adult ever talked to us about the deaths we wit­nessed that day. 

Beyond that dread­ful core mem­o­ry, space explo­ration is tone deaf in our cur­rent cli­mate. Governments and pri­vate com­pa­nies pour hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars into mis­sions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. For exam­ple, it costs about $67 mil­lion to launch a SpaceX Falcon 9. With a phal­lic-shaped rock­et launch­ing approx­i­mate­ly every six days, that’s around half a bil­lion dol­lars year­ly. When mil­lions of peo­ple lack clean drink­ing water, access to edu­ca­tion, or ade­quate health care, spend­ing such sums on rock­ets and satel­lites is moral­ly indefensible. 

While pro­po­nents argue that these invest­ments inspire inno­va­tion, the real­i­ty is that they also entrench eco­nom­ic pri­or­i­ties that pri­or­i­tize spec­ta­cle over sub­stance. Remember in April, when Blue Origin sent six women into near space? The flight to the upper atmos­phere last­ed 11 min­utes and allowed the women to expe­ri­ence “micro­grav­i­ty.” A Blue Origin flight costs any­where from hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars (if you are a celebri­ty or friend of Jeff Bezos) to $28 mil­lion (if you are not). When told by a reporter that many peo­ple on earth were rolling their eyes at this “his­toric” sub­or­bital joyride, Gayle King, one of the pas­sen­gers, looked into the cam­era and angri­ly quipped, “Have you been to space?” Um, no, Gayle King. We have not been to space. We’re just over here try­ing to afford eggs and health care.

What I’m say­ing is this. Space explo­ration often rein­forces inequal­i­ty rather than mit­i­gat­ing it. The com­pa­nies lead­ing the charge into the cosmos—SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic—are owned by bil­lion­aires whose wealth is already unprece­dent­ed. These cor­po­ra­tions then promise to “share space” with the ultra-wealthy. Space then becomes the ulti­mate play­ground for elites, while the rest of human­i­ty is left behind to grap­ple with the con­se­quences of cli­mate change, pol­lu­tion, and poverty. 

This is not an argu­ment against curios­i­ty or sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery. It is a plea to rec­og­nize priorities.

There is always ten­sion between progress and preser­va­tion, but this cap­i­tal­ist impulse to har­ness every last resource or fron­tier is deplorable. There is a dif­fer­ence between dom­i­na­tion and devo­tion. I have no domin­ion over the cos­mos, but I will dance beneath the moon, hon­or the cos­mic con­nec­tion between human and nature, between mind and mat­ter. I will revere instead of exploit.