As early as the 1860s, Jules Verne wrote his novels From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon. This was a hundred years before the first lunar missions. Humanity has been looking up at the sky for a long time, wondering whether it might be possible to travel there. Even in the ancient Greek myth of Icarus, a man flies towards the Sun using artificial wings.

A new modern trend is the short space trips taken by the super-rich. A single space tourism flight produces approximately 50–100 times more carbon emissions per passenger than an intercontinental flight. The carbon footprint of a typical suborbital spaceflight is between 14 and 75 tonnes per passenger, whereas an intercontinental flight produces approximately one tonne of emissions per passenger. For flights into orbit, emissions can rise to as much as 650 tonnes per passenger.

It is a major issue of environmental justice that the capitalist system assumes that some people (the rich) have the right to produce 100 times more carbon emissions on a short pleasure trip than other people produce in an entire year. Does money give someone the right to consume more and pollute more at the expense of others? It would be reasonable to impose a substantial personal carbon tax on individuals who generate excessive emissions. However, some people have so much money that even a carbon tax would not restrain their consumption. Therefore, it would be justified to establish strict limits on carbon emissions and prohibit activities that generate excessive pollution.

Satellites, on the other hand, such as telecommunications and Earth observation satellites, are useful. They can be used to conduct valuable scientific research, provide geospatial data, secure communications, monitor the state of the environment and help prevent disasters.

In the future, we may also be able to obtain valuable minerals, hydrogen and other resources from space, potentially reducing the need for environmentally destructive mining on Earth. Mining on the Moon would not destroy an existing ecosystem, apart from the environmental impacts associated with the infrastructure needed to transport the minerals. We may also be able to obtain energy directly from space using solar panels installed there. An experiment has already demonstrated that this is possible.

The conquest of space, as envisioned by Elon Musk, is a problematic vision in many respects. As long as we fail to take care of our own home planet, there is little reason to look towards the sky with the ambition of conquering space. We must first protect Earth’s ecosystems and ensure the well-being of both nature and humanity before investing trillions in space exploration and colonisation. It is unethical and dangerous to dream of colonies on Mars while people and the natural world are suffering here on Earth.

Hundreds of exoplanets have been discovered, but not a single Planet B capable of replacing Earth has been found. Interstellar space travel remains a distant dream, and I believe it will take centuries before it becomes a reality. That is a long time, and humanity faces the very real possibility of destroying Earth in the meantime. If we do not take care of our own home, its 20 million species and its inhabitants, the conquest of space is irresponsible.

It is true that, in the long term, space travel may be essential to our survival because we face planetary catastrophes, such as the Sun eventually exploding as a supernova in approximately five billion years. Before that happens, we must relocate humanity, other species and entire ecosystems to another habitable planet, or to one that we have made habitable through terraforming. We could spread throughout the galaxy and take nature with us. We may learn to harness the energy of black holes and gravitational waves and discover entirely new forms of energy production.

In 1964, Soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev proposed what became known as the Kardashev Scale.

It is a method of measuring the technological advancement of a civilisation based on the amount of energy it is capable of harnessing.

Type I (Planetary Civilisation): A civilisation capable of sustainably harnessing all the energy available to it on its home planet (approximately 1.7 × 10¹⁷ W).

Humanity’s current energy consumption: The total primary energy consumption of the Earth is approximately 20 terawatts (2 × 10¹³ watts). At the current rate of growth, humanity could reach Type I status in approximately 100–200 years.

Type II (Stellar Civilisation): A civilisation capable of directly harnessing the entire energy output of its star, for example, through a Dyson sphere (approximately 4 × 10²⁶ W).

Type III (Galactic Civilisation): A civilisation capable of harnessing the energy of its entire galaxy and its celestial objects (approximately 4 × 10³⁷ W).

In addition to the idea of abandoning Earth, it is extremely dangerous if the conquest of space is controlled primarily by a single major corporation, namely Elon Musk’s SpaceX. In such a scenario, we would become entirely dependent on one private company, whose financial interests do not necessarily serve the interests of all humanity or the planet Earth.

Space exploration and the future expansion into space must be a common project for all humanity, governed by the United Nations, the scientific community and international space organisations. We must abandon national competition between the United States, Russia and China, as well as the purely business-driven approach to space exploration. Instead, we should establish a cooperative international space institution dedicated to serving the interests of humanity and the planet as a whole.

Daniel Elkama