[P2P-F] Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [Debate-List] (Fwd) Elon Musk's bourgeois Mars

[Michel Bauwens]

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Subject: [Debate-List] (Fwd) Elon Musk's bourgeois Mars
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High Tech Fantasies: Elon Musk, Nuking Mars and the Colonization of Space
*By Vincent Emanuele <https://zcomm.org/author/vemanuele/>*
*
<https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/high-tech-fantasies-elon-musk-nuking-mars-and-the-colonization-of-space/>Source:
teleSUR English
<http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Elon-Musk-Nuking-Mars-and-the-Colonization-of-Space-20150924-0008.html>*
September 26, 2015

*“Life, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will
presently stand upon this earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its
realm amidst the stars.” – H.G. Wells *

During the 20th century, space was a key battleground in the Cold War
between the Soviet Union and the United States. By the 1980s, U.S.
President Ronald Reagan aimed to fully militarize the stratosphere by
developing the Strategic Defense Initiative
<http://www.britannica.com/topic/Strategic-Defense-Initiative> (SDI),
otherwise known as the “Star Wars” program.

Over the years, the broader “Star Wars” program was scrapped, but much of
it has been reintroduced in the form of new military technologies
<http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/obama-denied-the-death-star-but-he-still-funds-star-wars>
. For instance <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_satellite>, “As of
2013, there are 950 satellites of all types in Earth’s orbit.” In fact, “It
is not possible to identify the exact number of these that are military
satellites partly due to secrecy and partly due to dual purpose missions
such as GPS satellites that serve both civilian and military purposes.” In
other words, space is a thoroughly militarized landscape.

That being said, the militarization of space is only the tip of the iceberg
in terms of what the elites have in mind for the solar system and
humanity’s collective future. Today, there’s a growing number of high tech
billionaires and government agencies
<http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/the-coming-age-of-space-colonization/273818/>
who
are keen on colonizing space. Without question, today’s high tech
visionaries are quickly developing the capabilities necessary for
multi-planetary colonization.

One of the world’s most respected scientific agencies, the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has an official stance
<http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/hqlibrary/pathfinders/colony.htm> on space
colonization:

One of the major environmental concerns of our time is the increasing
consumption of Earth’s resources to sustain our way of life. As more and
more nations make the climb up from agricultural to industrial nations,
their standard of life will improve, which will mean that more and more
people will be competing for the same resources. While NASA spinoffs and
other inventions can allow us to be more thrifty with Earth’s resources, we
nevertheless must come to grips with the problem that humanity is currently
limited to one planet.

Undoubtedly, this view is shared by a wide range of intellectuals,
scientists, politicians and business executives. For instance, Elon Musk,
CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, was recently interviewed by Stephen Colbert
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LaXSXjMxWM> on his nightly program, “The
Late Show,” where Elon discussed space colonization, reusable rockets and
various other high tech developments.

Immediately, Colbert asks, “Are you trying to save the world?”

Musk responds, “I’m trying to do good things.”

Colbert then says, “But you’re trying to do good things, and you’re a
billionaire. That seems a little bit like either super hero, or super
villain? You have to choose one!”

At which point, Musk answers, “I’m trying to do useful things.”

After a few minutes of small talk, Colbert inquires about space travel and
colonization: “You sincerely think that men and women should go to Mars.
Why should we go to Mars? It’s uninhabitable.”

Musk nervously laughs and says, “It’s inhospitable, that’s true.” Then, he
goes on to suggest that Mars “is a fixer-upper planet.” According to the
Tesla Motors CEO, human beings “could transform Mars into an Earth-like
planet.”



*But how? *

“There’s a fast way and a slow way,” according to Musk. “The fast way is to
drop thermonuclear bombs on the poles.” The “slow way” is to pump
greenhouse gases into Mars’ atmosphere by potentially transporting said
gases from the Earth to the red planet. To put differently, Musk wants to
recreate the processes of global warming on Mars.

In a previous interview conducted in 2014 with Raw Science’s Crystal
Dilworth <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfNC3PQIGPg>, Musk proposed the
idea that human beings “need to bioengineer new organisms that are suitable
for Mars.” He went on to note that, “Humanity has already done this
throughout time with selective breeding. But that’s a slow process
[evolution] that requires hundreds of years, whereas with bioengineering,
you could make it happen much faster and with more precision.”

However, the physiological limitations
<http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140506-space-trips-bad-for-your-health> of
space travel are only one impediment: the main obstacle delaying space
colonization, at least in Musk’s thinking, is the economic costs of such a
project:

What’s the key thing to establishing a colony on Mars? It’s the cost per
unit, per man, the cost per person. I really think we need to get the cost
down to half a million dollars per person. And there’s going to be an
intersection of people who can afford to go, and people who want to go.

Interestingly, Musk’s comments illuminate a fundamental schism, one of the
main antagonisms in modern society: economic inequality. Again, if $500,000
(U.S.) is the low-end cost  per person to live on Mars, then it’s clear who
won’t be living there: the vast majority of the world’s population. After
all, who the hell has a half a million dollars?

Like many billionaires, Musk has created his empire with public funds, yet
virtually zero public input. “SpaceX, Musk’s space-launch venture is
dependent on government contracts (it is the recipient of a $1.6 billion
contract to resupply the International Space Station),” notes Barry Ritholtz
<http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-02-28/elon-musk-visionary-or-rent-seeker>.
Furthermore, “His car company, Tesla, received $452 million in government
loans; after the company paid them back, Musk suddenly decided that federal
investments and/or loans to promote alternative energy was a bad idea.”

In other words, Musk’s hypocrisy knows no bounds. His entire high tech
empire is the direct result of the public commons: satellites, roads,
bridges, electric grids, airports, water sewage facilities, public schools,
hospitals, and so forth. Without these elements, Musk’s technological
fantasies would be little more than entrepreneurial pipe dreams. Yet, he
shuns the public financing of green energy initiatives, unless, of course,
they benefit his companies.

In the end, the problem isn’t Musk – the problem is the massive
governmental and corporate entities that are in power, and produce
individuals like Musk. Who in their right mind would drop thermonuclear
weapons on Mars? Only the world’s best and brightest.

To the regular person, these ideas sound insane, because they are. Human
beings have been terrible stewards of the Earth, so why in the world would
people think it would be a good idea to reproduce our madness on other
planets?

If, of course, humanity lived in some sort of harmony, with equitable
standards of living and democratic institutions and political mechanisms,
space travel and colonization could be seriously discussed. But in a
society where the world’s richest five hundred families own more wealth
than three billion people, space colonization represents a new frontier of
inequality, alienation and segregation.

*Vincent Emanuele can be reached at vincent.emanuele333 at gmail.com
<vincent.emanuele333 at gmail.com>*

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of a Long-Distance Internationalist.
http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/from_coldwar_communism
_to_the_global_emancipatory_movement/ (Free). 2. 2014. Interface Journal
Special (Co-Editor), December 2014. 'Social Movement Internationalisms'.
(Free).3. 2014. with Laurence Cox, ‘Movement Internationalism/s’,
Interface: a Journal for and about Social Movements. (Editorial), Vol. 6
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Beyond, the Globalized and Informatized Cage of Capitalism and Bureaucracy.
(Interview). Interface: a Journal for and about Social Movements. Vol. 6
(2), pp. 35-58. 5. 2014. 'The Networked Internationalism of Labour's
Others', in Jai Sen (ed), Peter Waterman (co-ed), The Movement of
Movements: Struggles for Other Worlds  (Part I). (10 Euros). 6. 2015.
Waterman, Peter. ‘Beyond Labourism, Development and Decent Work’.
<https://escarpmentpress.org/globallabour/article/download/2338/2433>
Global Labour Journal, 2015, 6(2), pp. 246-50.

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