In the 1960s I was really quiet excited by space travel. Please, however, forgive me: I was 11 when Apollo got to the moon.
In my 60s I see almost no benefit to space travel. I see even less to claims by commercial organisations that our hopes lie in space, where we might escape the constraints that the planet imposes on us. The implausibility of ever moving people and products between space and earth without burning the planet we live on to the point of extinction makes such claims absurd.
So, how to view the current ‘space race', with Jeff Bezos in near space yesterday, following Branson a week or so ago, with Elon Musk always present in the wings? I have three suggestions.
First, this provides very clear evidence that markets are capable of misallocating resources. The investment being made in the activities of Bezos and Branson, in particular, appear to lack any logic.
Second, that markets exploit by extracting rents that those in receipt of them spend unwisely is clear. Bezos admitted that he went to space on the back of the Amazon workers whose basic rights he has been exploiting for so long. He forgot to mention that he might have also done so on the basis of taxes not paid where due. Branson has also willingly extracted rents from the state: it was not so long ago he was pleading for state funding for his airline. Then he went to space. You could not make such sequencing up.
Third, it is apparent that in the light of such failings we need tax reform. We need to tax the rich because they are rich. We need to tax them so that they do not abuse the planet in the way that these people are. We need to do so to correct their undue influence on markets. We need to tax rents because they are exploitative and that needs to be curtailed. We need to tax not for revenue, but to correct the failings that the gross, vain and abusive actions of these people represent. And that is reason enough.
Branson and Bezos have pursued conspicuous consumption to the point that they endanger us. It is time to seek redress.
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Branson also sued the NHS. Why anyone fawns over him is beyond me.
Plenty of people sue the NHS every year, if they suffer a loss from a breach of contract, or are injured through medical negligence. As I understand it, in Virgin Care’s case, they claimed that a procurement exercise was not conducted properly, and they lost out on a £80m+ five year contract as a result.
And what if you question the appearance of commercial contracts to provide NHS services in the first place? I do not want the US to manage to export its madness to this country but that is what it has managed. It has run out of a market at home and now seeks to be paid from our taxes for the provision of services which it then staffs with less qualified individuals or by re-negotiating contracts so that it can extract a profit from provision of that service. I have a big problem when Virgin gets involved in end of life and terminal care – these are individuals who are unlikely to be around enough to pursue a claim against poor service.
And the news media need to stop reporting these trips as anything than a totally selfish indulgence adding to climate change. The idea of developing a space tourist industry is beyond mad.
There are a lot of rich people in the world. These trips will be bought as presents, to celebrate birthdays or wedding anniversaries. It will be like Concord.
I found the whole thing offensive to be honest.
I mean what else could they have done with the money?
There is plenty do down here for goodness sake!
If the Human species, in fact all life on Earth, is to survive in the long term (> 10k years) it perforce will need to have spread through the local part of our Galaxy. Astronomic or geological catastrophe are certainties b such time scales.
Such endeavour is not possible by sending Humans into Space NOW.
If it ever does it will be via AI and robots they control and eventually some form of one way only voyages.
Such cavalier individualistic escapades by billionaires are supposedly to stand against the collective nature of the Chinese ‘Long Marches’ and Russian collaborations that have kept the space stations running.
Not much is said about the Moons Far Side’ soft landing and return.
And hardly anything of the Chinese Mars rover success.
Apparently we are only allowed to celebrate US , Hollywood, Billionaire Exceptionaliists, single handedly making strides (even as we know they are mostly fronts)
Meanwhile, the worlds CO2 rise refuses to level out – even after 18 months of Covid curtailed flights.
Image
https://research.noaa.gov/Portals/0/EasyGalleryImages/1/864/co2_data_mlo.png
This graph depicts the upward trajectory of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as measured at the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory by NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The annual fluctuation is known as the Keeling Curve. Credit: NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory
Yee ha! Let’s let the Reaper cut! let’s have super rich space tourists ripping daily holes in the stratosphere as we were just getting over the ozone layer damage of high flying supersonics amd cfc’s.
Think of it as evolution in action. There is only one planet where we can live at present. If we degrade our environment to the point where we can’t survive, we won’t.
The public does want more healthcare, education, police, justice services, environmental protection and much more.
But it also wants the fripperies of takeaways, mobile phones, alcohol, television channels, travel and now perhaps one day space travel. It’s a strange world that the price of all the fripperies seems to be coming down relative to incomes, and the essential stuff costs more.
Perhaps Bezos could step up and explain
From what I have read, this development of ‘commercial’ space travel is a precursor to off-world manufacturing, mining and other extraction of natural resources that the Earth will run out of. These ‘entrepreneurs’ are forward planning.
Have you the slightest idea of how absurd that notion is in terms of the environmental impact of getting people and goods into and out of earth orbit?
They are not forward-looking: they are recklessly irresponsible
Frankly, yes, I think it’s a terrible idea, given humans’ propensity for destruction of environments. But I am only paraphrasing comments made by an organisation supporting the building of the Space Ports in Northern Scotland. They believe it is inevitable that humans will try to exploit the resources of the Moon, Asteroids and Mars. The likes of Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are getting their companies ready to take advantage of it.
“We need to tax the rich because they are rich.”
I was sure that I could remember that at one time there was a tax rate in excess of 90% but before foot met mouth I thought I should try and check and found this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom#Income_tax_2.
Perhaps seeing that we are war again, albeit a different kind of enemy, we could bring back the WW11 tax rate? Imagine the squealing when HMRC turns up asking for 99.25%!
Oh well that’s the alarm. Time to get up and stop dreaming.
This is all just the latest example of conspicuous consumption. It’s not even genuine space travel, how many times did each billionaire space oddity orbit the planet: zero. Nothing but media hype.
It is magical thinking to believe the human race has any future in space. The US lacks the technology and manufacturing capacity. They rely on the Russians for the rocket engines to get into space currently and are well past peak empire.
We will all have to settle with what we have on this planet and ensure resources are exploited equitably and sustainably while trying to avoid wrecking our home and restoring biodiversity.
I agree with you; production of all that CO2 from project start to finish for those purposes is obscene.
I don’t think that outlawing all space work might be a good thing though. Despite the myths about Teflon and Velcro, there are benefits in technology from these major efforts.
Nice humans have always searched for knowledge – and that knowledge can help humankind make better decisions. Yes, it may be difficult to see any direct benefit from analysing soil on Mars. But I suspect no one would deny that the Hubble space telescope has helped us understand the universe.
Is that knowledge worth destroying life on Earth? Put like that, NO! But that is not the right question.
What absolute nonsense!
Satellites aren’t worth it. All that work on temperature measurement, geoanalysis and so on. Just not worth it at all. GPS isn’t worth it. Knowing where we are has no value. Being able to plan efficient travel is of zero benefit.
Or Starlink, OneWeb (or whatever the hell the thing UK govt has just invested in is called) has no value because we really don’t want to get broadband internet to those rural rubes now, do we? They might start looking up the bus schedules and thereby come to town once a month.
This all before we even get to that necessity of getting at least some of us off the planet before that asteroid with our name on it arrives.
We’re right at the beginning of what access to space can do for us. At which point Richard Murphy decides it has no value therefore we should tax it all out of existence. This being why planned economies don’t work of course. It’s always the 60 year olds signing off on the plans and they never do grasp the value of the trivia the young folk are playing with, do they?
Bash, if Hornby OO was good enough for me to play with as a child then why do you need Candy Crush anyway?
Oh dear….how to miss the point
People living and manufacturing in space is nothing like forwarding digital data from space
Try thinking before offering abuse next time