{"id":59800,"date":"2021-10-10T09:18:57","date_gmt":"2021-10-10T14:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59800"},"modified":"2021-10-10T09:18:57","modified_gmt":"2021-10-10T14:18:57","slug":"billionaire-space-race-the-ultimate-symbol-of-capitalisms-flawed-obsession-with-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59800","title":{"rendered":"Billionaire space race: the ultimate symbol of capitalism\u2019s flawed obsession with growth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Billionaire space race: the ultimate symbol of capitalism\u2019s flawed obsession with growth<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Image: courtesy of Tom Leishman\/pexels.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Mars ain\u2019t the kind of place to raise your kids, laments the Rocket Man in Elton John\u2019s timeless classic. In fact, it\u2019s cold as hell. But that doesn\u2019t seem to worry a new generation of space entrepreneurs intent on colonising the \u201cfinal frontier\u201d as fast as possible.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong. I\u2019m no sullen technophobe. As lockdown projects go, Nasa\u2019s landing of the\u00a0Perseverance rover<\/a>\u00a0on the surface of the red planet earlier this year was a hell of a blast. Watching it reminded me that I once led a high school debate defending the motion: this house believes that humanity should reach for the stars.<\/p>\n

It must have been around the time that Caspar Weinberger was trying to persuade President Nixon\u00a0not to cancel<\/a>\u00a0the Apollo space programme. My brothers and I had watched the monochrome triumph of the\u00a0Apollo 11 landing<\/a>\u00a0avidly in 1969. We\u2019d witnessed the near disaster of\u00a0Apollo 13<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 immortalised in a 1995 Hollywood\u00a0film<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 when Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks) and two rookie astronauts narrowly escaped with their lives by using the Lunar Module as an emergency life raft. We knew it was exciting up there.<\/p>\n