“Leaving Earth right now isn’t just bad optics; it’s almost a scene out of a twisted B-list thriller: The world is drowning and scorching, and two of the wealthiest men decide to … race in their private rocket ships to see who can get to space a few days before the other. If this were a movie, these men would be Gordon Gekko and Hal 9000—both venerated and hated. Maybe, I don’t know, delay the missions a bit until people around the world are no longer desperately waiting for vaccines to save them from a deadly virus.”
Rockets pollute a lot.
Can’t these billionaires think of better things to do with their money? Think of all the donations to climate change science they could do. Or think of the potential spending they could do on carbon capture technology, or some other technology to fight our climate crisis. Instead, the climate crisis rages on, killing more people every year, and the billionaires decide space tourism that pumps CO2 into the atmosphere is the thing to do right now.
Is it even possible to offer up “space tourism” for fun without jeopardizing the environment and making the climate crisis worse? Not anytime soon. But the media loves all this space talk, and damn the consequences!
I honestly don’t care which billionaire gets to space first. Focused on the all of us regular folks dealing with climate change, voter suppression, racism, kids without adequate meals, and those things
— Marshall Shepherd (@DrShepherd2013) July 10, 2021
Currently we have a situation in the world where 3 billonaires, all privileged white men, are competing for the title of Space Lord. In the case of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, their space ships have scientific purposes, at least to some degree. In the case of Richard Branson, he’s built a space ship that takes people to the edge of space and gives them a ride, and it’s all for fun/tourism purposes, and for him to make money. His first successful manned flight with himself on board occurred on July 11th, and he has 500 people signed up for future trips. He was asked recently whether his space travel will add to climate change, and he brushed off the concern. He said, “We have reduced the (carbon emission) cost of somebody going into space from something like two weeks of New York’s electricity supply… to less than the cost of an economy round-trip from Singapore to London,” Richard Branson said.”
So that sounds kind of harmless until you realize the impact of 500+ trips from Singapore to London. It’s a pretty enormous impact on CO2 emissions. See below for the carbon cost of a trip from Singapore to London. It’s enormous.
That’s a lot of burned fuel.
Read the Room, billionaires. This is not a great look for you right now, Space cadets.
