The space tourism industry is currently stuck in its billionaire phase.
Blue Origin launched first human spaceflight with billionaire Jeff Bezos the other day.
New Shepard, built by Bezos’ company Blue Origin, is designed to serve the burgeoning market for space tourism. The idea is to offer joy rides for the super-wealthy. The other 2 billionaires follow suit, planning to send passengers to Moon and Mars in the future.
Fantastic news? My heart aches when I read this.
In a world where millions of people are starving and child mortality in certain poor countries is on the rise, space travel for the extremely wealthy seems kind of surrealistic. Do we live on two different planets? It seems so.
People are willing to spend millions on developing joy rides with the newest technology. But there is apparently no money to help our human brothers and sisters, who are perishing due to extreme poverty and wars. In many parts of Africa people are getting sick and dying simply because they do not have access to clean drinking water .
We can send a space ship into the orbit, but cannot feed a hungry child. Where is our consciousness as a human race? Why do we always want more and more and more? We cannot even create proper conditions on Earth – so what makes us think that we could do it better out there in space?
The day I read in the news that billions were spent on digging wells with clean water in the poor regions of Africa, instead of developing space travel for the rich, I will be joyfully celebrating and giving thanks.
But that day has not yet come.
If we want change, we need to be the Ones creating a different world. A healthy, humane world. Nobody else will do it for us.
It is our duty.
It is our call.
I hope you are feeling it, too.