I Want To Go To Space, But Not With Elon: The Problem with SpaceX

The prospect of space travel is closer to becoming a reality than it has ever previously been, but should we trust SpaceX to lead this revolutionary phase of human exploration?

I remember being asked as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up, and unlike most other children, my answer was consistent: I always replied that I wanted to be an astronaut. Fast forward to now, and that dream has clearly evolved. Life and interests have taken many turns, and my humanities-heavy degree doesn't necessarily put me on track to become an astronaut. That being said, space travel, and more broadly, our future as a galactic species is something that will always be a keen interest to myself and many others. With SpaceX, the prospect of an interplanetary future is becoming more of a tangible reality everyday.

SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk, has recently completed a series of tests on prototypes of its most promising spacecraft, named ‘Starship’. The Starship is 9 meters in diameter and 120 meters tall and is the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed. The Starship is supposed to act a fully reusable transportation system and Musk promises that it is the vessel that will ferry thousands of people on a six month journey from the Earth to a colony on Mars, a very ambitious plan. But the company has already conducted a series of high-altitude flight tests, aiming to assess the Starship's capabilities in various stages of flight, including ascent, descent, and landing. Back in April of this year, the Starship had its first integrated orbital test where it failed to make orbit, and right now it’s in the process of being approved for its second orbital launch. However, the launching of the spacecraft is only one part of the plan, SpaceX is hoping to establish a self-sustaining human colony on Mars that will be home to tens of thousands of people who will essentially be the first human settlers on The Red Planet. The company has outlined an ambitious roadmap that includes establishing research stations and propellant production facilities on Mars, and they plan to use earthly resources to do so.

If you’re asking “how the heck do they plan on establishing a human colony and building infrastructure on a planet that hasn’t seen liquid water since the beginning of its formation and has since been a cold dead shell of itself?”, then you’re asking a very valid question. An obvious challenge for human settlement on Mars is the planet’s atmospheric composition. With Ninety-five percent of the Martian atmosphere being composed of Carbon dioxide, and the rest mostly of Argon and Nitrogen, it is safe to say that suffocation would be a major risk for any potential human settlers who make the mistake of forgetting to put their spacesuits on before hopping out of the Starship. Separate from this, Mars’ thin atmosphere and lack of magnetic field for protection means that it constantly gets bombarded with radiation from solar wind, a human on mars would experience their average yearly dose of radiation on Earth, in just one day on Mars. This, along with its extreme temperatures and an atmospheric pressure that will make your blood boil in your veins, will make terraforming Mars challenging, to say the least. Don’t fret however because Musk already has some exciting ideas to make the planet more habitable for humans.

The biggest challenge human settlers on Mars must face is restoring the planet’s atmospheric pressure. Scientists at NASA have proposed a magnetic shield that would essentially offer the same protections that a magnetic field would. Mars would remain in the shadow of this reflective magnetic shield and be in protection from the radiation carried by solar winds. This would then allow its atmosphere to slowly but steadily thicken; the thickening of the atmospheric pressure would then result in a temperature increase. An estimated temperature spike of 4° celsius is all that would be needed for the frozen Carbon dioxide to melt, we would then see a snowball effect begin to happen as the increase in greenhouse gasses from the melted Carbon dioxide would increase temperatures on Mars enough to melt the planet’s frozen water at both of its poles. Optimistically, this could lead to Mars’ oceans being restored, taking us a few step closer to making Mars habitable. Of course this would be a slow and natural process but it seems sound right? Well, this is only one of the proposed methods of restoring Mars’ atmosphere. If you’ve been intrigued by the concept of terraforming other planets for a while now, you’ve probably come across a clip of Elon Musk quite apathetically proposing that an efficient way to terraform Mars might be to detonate nuclear bombs over its ice caps. This would melt the frozen Carbon dioxide on Mars’ surface into gas and a snowball effect similar to the one mentioned in the previous method would start to take place, the only difference in both methods is the level of extremity in delivery; with Musk’s idea leaning towards a much more catastrophic trail of events before conditions on Mars begin to change for human habitability.

SpaceX plans to deploy a fleet of Starships, each with the capacity to carry up to 100 passengers, these Starships will be engaged in regular missions, ferrying essential equipment, supplies, and, most importantly, people to build a thriving settlement on the Red Planet. In order to do this however, a mass production of starships is necessary, which is why SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell has already set the ambitious goal of building one rocket everyday; a goal which seems unreasonable to set and impossible to reach, but the Starship Gigafactories that SpaceX are already developing may be able to make this output a possibility. Ethical concerns arise however when aiming for this much output; with Musk having ties to cobalt mining and child labour through SpaceX’s sister company Tesla, it’s reasonable to question the sourcing practices that the legacy aerospace company will be engaging in to achieve this ambitious output. Though Musk claims that Tesla does “not source from artisanal and small-scale mining,” which is typically at risk of using child labor, nobody really knows whether or this is true or not. Dorotheé Baumann-Pauly, director at Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights; tells Forbes that “It is nearly impossible to separate the flow of ASM cobalt from the larger supply of industrially mined cobalt.”. It’s highly likely that people are being exploited somewhere along the supply chain, specifically in the sourcing of materials. Tesla still faces legal, financial, and reputational risks due to its failure to disclose how it is effectively embedding its commitment to respect human rights throughout the business and for failing to address documented child labor in its supply chain. It’s highly unlikely that with its insanely ambitious goals, SpaceX will not use even more extreme exploitative methods of sourcing materials.

It seems that everybody wants their flag on Mars, or on the Moon, or on whatever celestial body is first in line to be terraformed. It was just earlier this year that the ESA launched JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer), during which German astronaut Matthias Maurer stated that “It’s not only learning for the Moon, we also should keep in focus that we have European astronauts flying to the ISS” when being asked about what it is that we can gain back on Earth from the launching of JUICE. He didn’t stop there though, Maurer continued on to say that “We are in times that are really like a revolution in space, and so Europe needs to step up… we need to become sovereign, to become autonomous with access to space for Europeans from European soil… we should not forget that space flight is also a soft diplomacy power and we will see very soon that China will invite foreign astronauts to fly to their space station, so we Europeans are learning that in these times, it becomes more and more important to be on a level playing-field and space flight is definitely an important part in the diplomacy area.”. It seems that international collaboration is something that neither space agencies or private companies are interested in; and the neoliberal ideals guiding SpaceX's approach to space exploration echo the sentiments held by European astronauts. We also need to consider how Musk's towering presence and influence may shape space policy in unforeseen ways, his agnostic attitude towards the the idea of nuking Mars raises concerns about his long-term commitment to responsible space exploration; and while an individual's ambition can be commendable, it’s imperative to avoid a scenario where the direction of space exploration is determined solely by the interests and whims of a single billionaire. This is key in ensuring balance and fairness in shaping humanity's potential extraterrestrial future.

As SpaceX aims to potentially privatise extraterrestrial resources, questions related to equitable access to space exploration arise. Even though this post is titled ‘I Want To Go To Space, But Not With Elon’, I obviously wouldn’t be aboard the Starship with Musk. The reality is that if space tourism becomes a commercially available, only the wealthy elite will benefit from it and the rest of us run the risk of being erased in humanity’s journey as a galactic species. Some might think this is a pessimistic view on the prospect of interstellar travel and exploration, but SpaceX's success has continually reinforced the idea that privatisation is the pathway to unlocking humanity's cosmic future and establishing it as a interplanetary species. Its emphasis on corporate control risks concentrating power in the hands of a few wealthy individuals and astronauts themselves are already talking about space travel as a form of “soft diplomacy”. Those at the forefront of space travel aren’t concerned with preventing the emergence of an unbalanced, unregulated space industry dominated by a select few individuals and corporations, and this is a major problem.

These initiatives to develop space travel and terraform other planets raise an underlying issue, which is that human activity has had such a catastrophic effect on our planet that we are already in a search for a new home to continue the successes of the human race. Whatever the opposite of terraforming is, is what human activity has done to Earth; and so maybe the answer is not to go on a galactic search for a new home, but to address the more pressing earthly challenges that are currently being overlooked. Right now we are poisoning our planet and in doing so stripping it of the things which make it beautiful and unique, so maybe rather than utilising geo-engineering to terraform other planets, we should use it to “terraform Earth back into Earth” as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson puts it.

If we can’t create a just and inclusive future here, how can we ensure one beyond Earth's atmosphere? Instead of reaching for the stars, humanity needs to divert its attention away from interstellar travel and place an emphasis on repairing the Earth, because as the saying goes.. charity begins at home.