Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is one of the most popular billionaires in history. His fame is understandable. Rocket ships and electric cars are cool. These and other technological innovations could change the human condition for the better. Musk is especially beloved in Texas, a state that has had its share of larger-than-life people, to which he recently moved.
Not everyone is impressed. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has often expressed disdain for commercial spaceflight as Musk pursues it. Musk, according to the far Left, should just “pay his fair share of taxes” and forget about dreams of conquering the heavens.
Recently, a Canadian writer named Paris Marx added himself to the group of Musk-haters in the pages of Time magazine. Marx offered a full-throated attack against electric cars and, indeed, cars in general. A proper future does not consist of people tooling about in electric cars with computer-driven self-driving features, enjoying the freedom of the open road first granted to the world by Henry Ford, another evil capitalist, over a century ago. The future should consist of catching the bus or a light rail train.
Marx reserves special disdain for Musk’s dreams of a Mars colony. People like the CEO of SpaceX have read too much Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov and not enough Ursula Le Guin, in his view. “Future visions cribbed from the pages of science fiction — often of the dystopian variety — and reshaped to fit the desires of the richest man in the world don’t serve the broader public.”
Marx does not get specific about which kind of future he prefers to the one proposed by Musk and others of a humanity spread out among the stars. However, his desire to ban the private automobile suggests that Marx favors something akin to the “Green New Deal.”
People who have decried space exploration as a diversion from earthly needs have been around since the dawn of the Space Age. During the debate over whether to fund the space shuttle, Sen. Walter Mondale, (D-MN), the future vice president and presidential candidate, took to the floor of the Senate and declared, “I believe it would be unconscionable to embark on a project of such staggering cost when many of our citizens are malnourished, when our rivers and lakes are polluted, and when our cities and rural areas are dying. What are our values? What do we think is more important?”
More recently, former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver suggested that the space agency stop trying to explore the heavens and instead devote itself to fighting climate change.
Mondale, Garver, and now Marx have engaged in a “false choice” or either-or fallacy, which holds that we can either explore space or help the poor and save the planet, but we cannot do both.
Except, of course, we can. Saving the Earth and exploring space are in fact linked.
One promise of space, besides Mars colonies and moon bases, is the prospect of mining resources from the lunar surface and asteroids. CitiGroup estimated that space mining will be a $100 billion-a-year business by 2040. Musk, by lowering the cost of space travel with his Falcon 9 and the Starship, is helping to bring space mining to reality. The wealth generated by mining the sky, which will include Helium-3 that can be used in future clean burning fusion reactors, will go a long way toward saving Earth.
Marx also misunderstands the nature of free markets. Neither Musk nor anyone else can achieve his desired future without the consent of hundreds of millions or billions of people and entities. A business cannot do anything unless enough people want to buy what it’s selling. Right now, Musk is selling cheap access to space and all that implies. Governments and private businesses are eagerly paying SpaceX for inexpensive rides to low Earth orbit and beyond.
The future Marx offers, on the other hand, can only be achieved by government fiat. People will not give up private cars except at the point of a gun. While Musk offers limitless freedom and abundance, Marx, like his namesake, offers only coercion and scarcity. Which future do you suppose most people prefer?
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration titled “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars, and Beyond,” and, most recently, “Why is America Going Back to the Moon? “He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.
