Starship 101

Commercial space travel is our best bet for getting into space sooner.

There was an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation where Captain Picard makes first contact with a species that had just developed warp drive.  Due to social immaturities in their culture, their visit was kept a secret and space travel for that planet was postponed until they could take care of themselves.

We face a similar situation.  A significant proportion of our world population earns less than $1 a day, goes hungry, is uneducated, and is infected with preventable disease like HIV/AIDS and malaria.  How can we ethically spend billions on space travel, when we can’t take care of our own?

The answer is commercial space travel.  Once the Fortune 500 figure out a way to make money in outer space, capitalistic efficiency will drive technology to make it much cheaper and easier to travel in space.  I’m the worlds biggest space travel fan, but I don’t think it should happen at the expense of millions of starving children.