麻豆社

Elon Musk鈥檚 SpaceX company is hoping to make history tomorrow by becoming the first commercial organization to send astronauts up into space. Musk has described his long-term aim as being to grow a rose on Mars. And his Twitter feed illustrates this aim with a quotation from Queen鈥檚 Bohemian Rhapsody: 鈥淥pen your eyes, look up to the skies.鈥� To some he鈥檚 a visionary, a latter day Leonardo da Vinci; to others, more like Icarus, someone who will be brought down by his hubris.

And, of course, the commercialisation of space is highly controversial. Does private ownership really make sense when thinking about the vastness of the cosmos?

But my own thoughts on this are shaped by something that I don鈥檛 suppose has troubled Elon Musk - and that is that we are currently in the liturgical season of Ascensiontide, that period after Jesus ascends into the heavens following the completion of his earthly ministry. And there is a line about this in the first chapter of the book of Acts that has always struck me as important. 鈥淢en of Galilee鈥� it goes 鈥淲hy do you stand staring up into heaven?鈥� And what I have taken this admonition to mean is: stop gawping up into the sky and get on with all the practical work of living out the gospel.

Nietzsche may have been no friend of Christianity, but it seems to me he got it right when he said: 鈥渞emain true to the earth鈥�. From this perspective it is almost as if there is a moral purpose to gravity, keeping us together, loyal to our earthly home and to each other. Salvation is not some sort of escape pod for the elite few who are rich enough or religious enough to be transported to another world.

I suppose that鈥檚 also why there鈥檚 so much anger at Dominic Cummings. There are, of course, different views on the morality of what he did - and I, as it happens, am on the more understanding side of the spectrum. But after months of lockdown I also get why people are angry. Because his behaviour is seen as a violation of the basic 鈥渨e are all in this together鈥� principle.

And it鈥檚 this same basic principle that is at stake in the SpaceX launch. I know many will be excited by the thought of exploring new frontiers, to boldly go and all of that. But private space travel, with the purpose of colonizing Mars, looks like a fantasy of the super-rich who have given up on planet earth with all its environmental challenges.

That is my basic objection. Stop staring up into heaven. This is not a world we should be running away from. Let鈥檚 stay here and fight for it instead.

Show less