Down With the Private Space Race?

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Fareed’s Global Briefing "

As exciting as it is to see private entrepreneurs blast off for space, the burgeoning race between billionaires Richard Branson (who briefly exited earth’s atmosphere last weekend), Jeff Bezos (who is planing a similar trip later this month), and Elon Musk has its fierce detractors.

“Musk and Bezos have a grander rationale” than Branson, “which is that humanity needs to become an interplanetary species,” Henry Mance writes for the Financial Times. “Here I’m more sympathetic. We are screwing up our planet, and even if we weren’t, we could be wiped from it by an asteroid. Yet this is the worst possible time for their space visions. Are we really promoting space tourism while asking ordinary citizens to restrain their diets, travel and consumption to fight climate change? Will people be persuaded to cycle to work while billionaires are blasting into orbit?”

At the Boston Review, Alina Utrata suggests the space billionaires are capitalizing on a purported public good—fascination, inspiration, and scientific advancement—to enhance their private fortunes. Going so far as to compare the private space race with the British East India Company and a “global regime of racial violence” left partly in private hands during the colonial era, Utrata colors the billionaires in part as space colonizers.