So the new “space race” in America is about billionaire boys and their Star Trek toys.
Jeff Bezos, Sir Richard Branson, and Elon Musk have been busy getting into space and becoming astronauts.
Bezos – the now-former CEO of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post – made a big to-do about getting into space with his Blue Origin ship on the anniversary of the original moon landing. Of course, Sir Richard, of Virgin Group, beat Bezos into space by about a week with the debut of his own Virgin Galatic. And Tesla owner Musk has been focused on the ships he’s been launching all this time as part of SpaceX instead of becoming an astronaut.
So, yes, the media has been busy talking about how great this is and how this could harken a new fixation on space travel and space exploration. Get us to the stars! Get us back to the Moon. Get us to Mars so we can pick up all those drones we’ve been sending there. Some idiot even went so far as to suggest that we were “meant” to be in space. (Actually, no, our bodies were never physically designed to be anywhere other than on Earth. Ask any real astronaut if you don’t believe me.)
And while this is going on, there are the grumblings of certain people and certain groups who say that we shouldn’t be wasting our time in space or that our billionaire astro-moguls should have been spending their billions on their own employees and on solving the problems of the planet instead of trying to escape it. Endless grumbling and grips about Bezos acting more like Lex Luthor than Jean-Luc Picard, keeping his employees working overtime even during the pandemic while he parades about in his blue jumpsuit and goes off into space in his custom space capsule that looks like male genitalia. Oh why couldn’t he just spend that money on his employees and give them stellar raises and bonuses for the work they’ve done? Why can’t he give his money away to help the ills of the world instead of looking to the stars?
Well, I hate to break it to you, but that’s not what people like Bezos do.
Yes, American involvement in space has been a government effort. Our astronauts that first went into space and went to the Moon didn’t represent corporations. They didn’t go there for some tourism biz, although they were there to sightsee and collect some rocks and play some golf. The American space program was created because we were in a race with the old Soviet Union. They beat us into space in the 1950’s, first with Sputnik and then with Yuri Gagarin, and we did not want them to be the first on the Moon. So, yeah, we rushed things a bit. We went out there and we put the flag of the United States of America on the moon. Our footprints are still there. Our junk is still there.
But you look back at history and you see that it’s the private interests that take stuff and run with it. Orville and Wilbur Wright may have made the plane, but it’s private business – with government investment that goes on even today – that turned it into commercial air travel. Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile. He invented the assembly line that made cars consistently and effectively. The railroads that connected the country over a century ago weren’t forged by some government agency. Businessmen did that. And they did it on the cheap with imported labor. The government created the Internet, but it’s private business that runs it today, and we are reminded of it with every price spike and service outage.
Space is no different.
America was stupid when it came to space. We were. We put in a paper-pusher to run NASA and he turned around and retired our aged space shuttles with nothing to replace them. Nothing! There were no other ships ready to replace them. Everything was still on paper. So we either needed help from the European Space Union or the Russians... or eventually turn to Musk’s SpaceX. Thank you President George W. Bush for that astro-blunder!
So, yeah, American space travel is private now. We’re not making shuttles anymore. We’re really not making rockets. We’re making drones and satellites that we contract to put up in space, if not by us then by foreign countries. Our so-called “Space Force” still needs to bum a ride from someone to do its supposed job. “Buy American”, right? Or in the case of Sir Richard, better British than Russian.
Let’s get brutally honest here... Bezos and Musk are following a long American tradition of big money people putting that money into the future, even if it is at the cost of their employees and others. They both have a stake in the future of space travel and space tourism, letting other rich people and influencers go on joy rides to the roof of the world so they can call themselves “astronauts”, and then looking to the Moon and the other planets for commercial ventures.
Yes, they “could” spend that money on raises and bonuses and better working conditions for all their employees instead of just the elites. Then again, a lot of millionaires and billionaires “could” do that as well. Corporate executives and bank elites and hedge fund owners “could” put their money into making life better for everyone. Then, again, they could also spend that money on beanie babies, or tacky street art, or feed the starving, or house the homeless, or to buy billions of trees to reforest the world. They “could” do all those things... but they don’t because that is not in their nature.
And if they don’t pay taxes, it’s usually not because of some criminal activity but because they seduced governments to give them those tax breaks. Bezos knows that first-hand after the long-courtship of communities large and small in 2018. How many cities and towns and counties and whole states offered obscene tax breaks just to get that “second corporate headquarters” that never happened? Hell, one city here in Georgia offered to change their name to “Amazon”! So if Bezos and Musk don’t pay taxes, don’t blame them. Blame yourselves and the people you put in office.
Bezos and Musk are looking at space for business because that is what they do. Just like what the railroad magnates did in the 19th Century. Just like what the automakers and the airline execs did in the 20th Century. And just like what the big telecom people are doing in the 21st Century. Their nature is to minimize worker pay and work conditions to maximize profit. That is what they are told makes them successful businessmen. You want that to change? Cutting them off from space won’t do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment