The Imperialist Fantasy of Going to Space
By: Alex Mell-Taylor
Tags: Science Fiction, Space, Space Travel, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos

Billionaires such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have desired to go into space for decades, if not their entire lives. Bezos allegedly once considered naming Amazon MakeItSo.com after the catchphrase of Star Trek captain Jean-Luc Picard. Elon Musk once said in an interview that he wants to make “Starfleet happen.” It’s clear from multiple interviews that the technological aesthetic of that future has inspired them greatly in their work.

However, these two men run businesses that, while technologically impressive, are utterly divorced from the egalitarian principles the Star Trek universe claims to represent. It’s doubtful that the Federation (i.e., the main polity in the Star Trek franchise) would approve of the union-busting and hazardous working conditions present in both of their businesses. The progress narrative is something they cling to as a rationalization. If men like Jeff Bezos truly want to create a solar system with “a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einstein’s,” then we need more housing, food, education, and healthcare on Earth, not more spaceships.

The part of the Star Trek mythos that Silicon Valley kings want to replicate is not the Earth of the Federation — which is a democratic, post-scarcity society that has long moved past capitalism — but rather the endless exploration and conquest of space. When Marketplace asked Elon Musk to provide the reason for why we should go to space, it ultimately came down to excitement:

“…if you think about and sort of look ahead and see about a future where we’re out there exploring the stars and understanding the universe and the kind of things that you see in science fiction books and movies and reading books; that’s an exciting future and much more exciting than one where we’re just forever confined to Earth until our eventual extinction.”

Note that he’s not really talking about saving humanity — that’s simply the feel-good finish that’s put in a TedTalk presentation. The thing we should focus on here is this desire to explore the unknown and to make it your own. While that may sound harmless, the idea of laying claim to the frontier is a narrative that historically has had a very racialized and imperialist tinge to it.

When Europeans came to the “New World,” they found a continent ravished by the diseases they brought with them. We will never know the exact number of Native Americans that existed here before the European conquest. Still, some estimates place it as high as 112 million in 1492, with 90% succumbing to diseases by the time we reach 1650. European settlers conquered the lands on this slightly less occupied continent, and overtime, pre-First Contact America became reimagined by many white Americans as a pristine wildland untouched by man. As John Bakeless wrote erroneously in his book The Eyes of Discovery (1950): “the land seemed empty to invaders who came from settled Europe…that ancient, primeval, undisturbed wilderness.”

Of course, this perception was untrue with millions of Native Americans still existing on the continent, many of which became violently displaced in the process of Westward “expansion,” but that was not how countless White Americans portrayed their exploitation of this place. Many believed they had a God-given right or a “Manifest Destiny” to expand westward. Public figures such as President James Monroe made it a matter of US policy, addressing to Congress in 1823 that the US would “consider any attempt [by a European power] to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”

The continent of North America was the U.S.A’s to claim, and the U.S.A’s alone.

The cultural hero often seen depicted in this era was the cowboy, which, although based on a far-less glamorous, far-more diverse profession, has since been reimagined to be a white savior whose job was to create order in a lawless, savage land. Cowboys were played by men like John Wayne, who made a career portraying gunmen who protected white Americans from the outlaws and Indians “occupying” the West. The movie Stagecoach (1939) ends in a climactic battle where our white protagonists, led by John Wayne, have to shoot down attacking Apache forces until the U.S. Calvery ultimately saves them.

As a people, we never lost sight of the idea that exploration requires wiping away old paradigms and people to claim something as “new.” When we think of Space exploration, our go-to heroes are often captains such as Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) in Firefly (2002) or the rogue Han Solo (Harrison Ford) in Star Wars (1977)— all of which are updated Cowboy archetypes that spend their time with bounty hunters or making deals in futuristic, yet retro-looking saloons.

Similarly, back before the Mariner 4 flyby in 1964 revealed Mars to be a dead world, it was widely speculated that it was teeming with life. Some scientists even believed that Mar’s color on the infrared spectrum mimicked that of vegetation. This captured the popular imagination, and we were bombarded with stories of a lawless landscape tamed through brave exploration. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter franchise, for example, was about the titular hero and his adventures on Mars as a heroic warlord. The late 40s and early 50s were likewise littered with Mars-themed B-movies such as Invaders from Mars (1953) and Battle Beyond the Sun (1959).

Our evolving understanding of space has made it seem colder and less vibrant than our image of the cosmos sixty years ago. Still, that spirit of conquest and limitless possibility remains. Admirers of space no longer talk as much about encountering alien life, but, instead, how they can shape the vastness of space to their dominion. When, for example, Jeff Bezos laid out his vision for building out O’Neil colonies throughout the solar system — basically gigantic space stations with independent ecosystems — he talked less about how to create an ideal society and far more about how that environment would be shaped, saying:

“…these are really pleasant places to live. Some of these O’Niel colonies might choose to replicate Earth cities….These are ideal climates. These are shirt sleeve environments. This is Maui on its best day. All year long. No rain. No storms. No earthquakes…”

Much has been written about how rich Tech entrepreneurs are attempting to buy themselves a segregated society in the stars — away from our deteriorating planet's dangers. There may be some truth to that worry, but ultimately it’s far easier to build a bunker underground in New Zealand than it is to jumpstart a delicate, spinning deathtrap in space.

This is about control.

Space, by its very nature, must be a heavily regulated environment. The void is dangerous, and one poorly planned decision can lead to people being jettisoned to their deaths. Everything from the water these future citizens consume to their air they breathe will be tracked and logged by necessity. Every move a person makes can easily be monitored because, unlike on Earth, there is no elsewhere to run off to.

Space is also simultaneously lawless in the sense that the governments and regulations of Earth are very far away. All laws are only enforceable as far as your employer or owner wishes to acknowledge them. It’s an inherently authoritarian environment as citizens are now under the whim of someone who can rightly define dissent as illegality. In this situation, the outlaw isn’t some mercenary alien or rogue AI, but any person threatening the delicate ecosystem the rich control, as all challenges can be conflated into existential threats.

Space offers the rich the final frontier of ultimate control.