$pace

There's been much in the news about the commerical efforts of billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson to get, not to actual space, but to the edge of space (the Kármán line) ...



But anyway, what I want to say is that, despite all the frisson in the press about this, I think the commercialization of space travel is a bad idea. There's a 2019 article in Nature that expresses how I feel ... One giant leap for capitalistkind: private enterprise in outer space ... but it's pretty long, so here's just a bit from the abstract of the article ...

Outer space is becoming a space for capitalism. We are entering a new era of the commercialization of space, geared towards generating profits from satellite launches, space tourism, asteroid mining, and related ventures. This era, driven by private corporations such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origins, has been labeled by industry insiders as ‘NewSpace'—in contrast to ‘Old Space', a Cold War-era mode of space relations when (allegedly) slow-moving, sluggish states dominated outer space. NewSpace marks the arrival of capitalism in space. While challenging the libertarian rhetoric of its proponents—space enterprises remain enmeshed in the state, relying on funding, physical infrastructure, technology transfers, regulatory frameworks, and symbolic support—NewSpace nevertheless heralds a novel form of human activity in space. Despite its humanistic, universalizing pretensions, however, NewSpace does not benefit humankind as such but rather a specific set of wealthy entrepreneurs, many of them originating in Silicon Valley, who strategically deploy humanist tropes to engender enthusiasm for their activities ...

Makes me think of the original Blade Runner movie and the book from which it was adapted. In that scenario, the wealthy and genetically sound have evacuated to colonies in space, fleeing an environmentally ravaged Earth. Only the less fortunate remain.

There billionaires who plan to sell space could use all that money to do so much good here on Earth - climate change, poverty, disease, etc. But they would rather make a buck, while indulging their egos. Stop romanticizing them and their schemes.