(Originally published on Kiltr 8 days ago)
The rise and rise of Neoliberalism, that great catch-all, contemporary demon, crushing all which may have provided succour or hope to the huddled masses, transferring it instead to an ever more exclusive elite’s elite, 1%, 0.1%, 0.001%, appeared to find little point in expending vast amounts of time and precious money on the apparent vanities of space exploration. There can have been few more incongruous entries on its balance sheets than the billions spent by governmental space agencies on projects where the only payback was prestige or a much more nebulous and insubstantial 'hope for humanity'.
The rise and rise of Neoliberalism, that great catch-all, contemporary demon, crushing all which may have provided succour or hope to the huddled masses, transferring it instead to an ever more exclusive elite’s elite, 1%, 0.1%, 0.001%, appeared to find little point in expending vast amounts of time and precious money on the apparent vanities of space exploration. There can have been few more incongruous entries on its balance sheets than the billions spent by governmental space agencies on projects where the only payback was prestige or a much more nebulous and insubstantial 'hope for humanity'.
So neocons and technocrats strip mined every available asset, including of course human resource, for hedge funds, shareholders and the nefarious controlling interests of elite corporatocracy. On blindly they charged through the eighties, nineties and most of the noughties, with the will of a clunking fist, beyond boom and bust and trickle down deceptions. Hope, at least for 99% of humanity, slowly became an increasingly scarce commodity. Until the global economic crash of 2008, when against all sensible indications, scarcity quickened.
During those ‘boom’ decades, when the exponential growth for everyone pitch was still in ascendance, almost inversely proportionate to the rise of neoliberal economic agendas across Western representative democracies was a decreased investment in space exploration. Beyond the ‘golden age’ of a cold war ‘space race’, being unable to show any tangible quarterly monetary profits meant space was an increasingly untenable investment portfolio.
That relentless strip mining continued unabated though and has left our home planet in some peril, with precious dwindling resources and the first geological era determined by human action, the Anthropocene, dawning upon its inhabitants. ‘Business as usual’ was allowed to continue for so long, with regulation of markets growing lighter and lighter touch, finding alternatives now seems increasingly desperate. The US, China and now India have finally agreed to ratify the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement in a year where month after month global temperatures exceeded record highs. The 2DegreesC above pre-industrial temperatures, long a mantra of the climate change movement and cited in the Paris accord, regarded as an upper limit for a ‘safe’ level of global warming, is now looking less, not more, attainable. Efforts to engage the global community with the 2DegreesC target, ambitious as it seemed, may still be too little, too late.
A study released earlier this year by the US National Bureau of Economic Research used a ‘harmonisation’ methodology to reconcile and compare as many existing future energy outlooks as it could, from governmental, academic and industry sources. By synthesising the outlooks, adjusting for biases and allowing for growth in renewables in uptake of a general forecasted major growth in energy demand, the paper concluded that:
‘Global carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise under most projections and, unless additional climate policies are adopted, are more consistent with an expected rise in average global temperatures of close to 3DegreesC or more, than in international policy goals of 2DegreesC or less.’
This week a joint paper by Stephan Lewandowski, John Cook and Elisabeth Lloyd for Synthese also exposed some of the truth behind climate change denial, concluding:
‘There is considerable evidence that the rejection of (climate) science involves a component of conspiracist discourse...We provided preliminary evidence that the pseudo-scientific arguments underpinning climate science denial are mutually incoherent, which is a known component of conspiracist ideation. The lack of mechanisms to self correct the scientific incoherencies manifest in denialist discourse further evidences that this is not the level at which rational activity is focused, and we must explore to a higher level, looking at the role of conspiracist ideation in the political realm. At that political level, climate change denial achieves coherence in its uniform and unifying opposition to GHG emission cuts. The coherent political stance of denial may not be undercut by its scientific incoherence. Climate science denial is therefore perhaps best understood as a rational activity that replaces a coherent body of science with an incoherent and conspiracist body of pseudo science for political reasons and with considerable political coherence and effectiveness.’
Lewandowski et al find the motivating factors behind climate change denial conspiracy theory are in the science being incompatible with neoliberal economics of hydrocarbon investors. The study also finds compelling evidence for the idea being inversely 'projected' onto climate change science by prominent deniers, being that the science is driven by pools of ‘dark money’ aimed at undermining the world’s prosperity (when in reality climate scientists have transparent and relatively small sources of funding), while it is the denial movement which sallies forth from ‘dark-money-funded think tanks’ whose investors are almost without fail, when they can be traced, revealed to be hydrocarbon billionaires.
They are formidable foes with deep pockets, intent only on maintaining their position, ruthlessly and exploitatively gained, utilising every ill-gotten resource at their disposal to do so. It can seem a futile and wearing fight, one in which our home planet and its precious resources are lost in the battle, in the problem reaction, solution of perm-austerity for 99% of its inhabitants. The hope inherent in that golden age of space exploration can seem as distant as the stars it seemed we would one day, inevitably, reach.
Instead, now, as tech billionaire Elon Musk prepares to unveil further, at the 67thInternational Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, his grand vision to turn Mars into a ‘back up drive for humanity', our efforts look increasingly like last ditch, desperate attempts to undo or escape damage done. Musk is so convinced that if humanity is to survive long term we must colonise Mars with a million people, he almost emptied those deep pockets of his funding his aerospace company SpaceX in 2008.
One of the initial drives of SpaceX has been to develop next generation rockets in order to practically realise the possibility of travel to the Red Planet. Ahead of tomorrow’s keynote speech, entitled ‘Making Humans a Mulitplanetary Species’, Musk shared the first photos of a new rocket engine, being called Raptor, designed to be part of his ‘Interplanetary Transport System’, this morning. The photos are of the rocket’s first successful test firing.
The Raptor uses methane burned with liquid oxygen because methane is an affordable and dense enough fuel which is also readily available on Mars. Jeff Thornburg, a former SpaceX propulsion engineer, said:
‘You’re kind of looking at two things: What does the fuel cost, and if you want to use and develop exploration architecture...where can you live off the land? Now that you don’t need to take your propellant to get home as part of your camping gear and you can make it on Mars, you can take a whole bunch more stuff!.’
Musk has previously said he would like to land one of his Red Dragon spacecraft on Mars by 2018. He has also said his first major goal is to get 100 people and 100 tonnes of gear to Mars as part of the long term goal of colonisation to save humanity. Beyond that, the world knows little else other than some tech specs.
Tomorrow’s event description says Musk will ‘discuss the long term technical challenges that need to be solved to support the creation of a permanent, self-sustaining presence on Mars...(the) presentation will focus on potential architectures for colonising the Red Planet that industry, government and the scientific community can collaborate on in the years ahead.’.
India, set to overtake China as the world’s most populous country, will certainly be watching with interest. This week the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Mars Orbiter completed two years in orbit around Mars. ISRO is the fourth space agency to successfully send a spacecraft to Mars’ orbit and India became the first country to do so at the first attempt.
ISRO said this week the Orbiter has accomplished its planned mission objectives and all of its scientific payloads are in good health, with it continuing to provide valuable data regarding the planet’s surface and its atmospheres. The ‘payloads’ among other things, include a Methane Sensor, which is said to have collected ample data sets.
Perhaps then, in increasing and impending necessity, humanity is about to enter a new golden age of space exploration, this time with new players and far more pointed intent. The timescales involved for possible colonisation of Mars appear to take all too real account of the grim realities of climate science. What undermines the hope which should be inherent in the desperation is in it being driven by commercial interests. It is not too difficult to imagine a scenario where those who have denuded this planet of its resources, and perhaps its ability to replenish them, in a relentless pursuit of profit above all else, are the ones who will control access to, and will be the only ones who will be able to afford, an escape from the dystopia they have created.
For 99% of us, we live in faint hope of a last minute direction change. We live in hope of prying the grasping hands of neoliberalism from humanity’s tiller. Perhaps the beautiful and poignant, animated short film from Supamonks Studios directors Loic Magar and Roman Veiga, ‘Voyager’, released this week for viewing on Vimeo after a successful, award winning festival year, is closer to the truth of the only faint hopes most of us should have.
Drawing on the mythos of the first golden age of space exploration, in particular 1977’s Voyager 1&2 missions sent into space carrying gold plated copper disks full of images and sounds from Earth, like a ‘bottle into the cosmic ocean’, the film imagines one of the Voyager spacecraft crashing back to an immeasurably changed Earth and humanity in a not too distant future. Whilst trying to avoid spoilers, it is worth pointing out, amidst the film’s seeming pessismism, it concludes in a manner befitting the sentiment of Carl Sagan, who chaired the committee curating the content of the disks, when he said:
‘The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilisations in interstellar space’, adding that the endeavour said ‘something very hopeful about life on this planet.’
You can follow Elon Musk’s presentation live at 1.30-2.30pm (that's local time, GMT is 7.30-8.30pm) today, here, likewise, and video of the event afterwards enjoy:
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