Space travel: Rich man’s selfish pollution of mother earth

A recent article in Canada's Macleans magazine caused me to write a letter to the editor - which, of course did not get published. There was nothing wrong with the article itself, but I found the content a bit thoughtless and from an environmental point of view very disturbing! The author was excited about the fact that a Quebec based travel agency is planning to make space travel more affordable to the average Tom, Dick & Harry. In plain words, they want to enter the discount space travel market. Until now, the sky has been our limit, now it's been expanded to space and in the near future, maybe even to Mars! So while this news may excite the people out there who have seen and done it all, I am asking myself and the rest of the world: "What price are we paying for this selfish pleasure of a few"? What are the implications to our environment and what do our authorities do about it? While our politicians are discussing the reduction of greenhouse gases, they give billionaires permission to legally add to the pollution. Does this make any sense? It certainly doesn't make any to me! Please find mentioned article below.

Mike Rekai’s exciting news that wannabe astronauts will soon be able to find cheaper flights thanks to Uniktour’s space packages is the final proof that rich aliens have taken over our planet and couldn’t give a damn about our fragile environment. We are entering the stage of final destruction it seems - no wonder the elite is already making back-up plans to evacuate to mars.

While the average population is trying to reduce their carbon footprint with hybrid cars, efficient appliances, R2000 homes, renewable energy and cycling to work, space travellers willing to pay $ 95’000 to $ 100’000 can legally add to the greenhouse gases. They will probably be rewarded with carbon airmiles. With their help in releasing stratospheric soot into the atmosphere, admiring the blackness of space may soon become reality for everyone on earth. For environmentalists, Virgin’s plans to send wealthy tourists to space once a day is already a horror scenario. The amount of fuel needed for one flight is hard to comprehend, let alone the planned many flights private companies are talking about! Space Expedition’s “bright idea” to take one discount tourist into space 4 times a day sounds like a cheap science fiction movie that will hopefully never become a reality. Seems the excitement of future space travel makes us ignore the fact that we only have this one world and that we are all breathing the same air. Selling it to a few privileged tourists who want to space out sounds a no-brainer to me. Why not rather build educational space centers for the general public, where one can experience the blackness of space, admire the curvature of the Earth and experience weightlessness in a virtual environment, run by solar power? I guess Richard Branson and his fellow selfish aliens find it more profitable to pursue the exclusive dreams of the wealthy, rather than that of the common homo sapiens.