The richest men in the galaxy want to bring capitalism to space

The Blue Marble — this is the name of the first complete photograph of Earth, captured by the Apollo 17 spacecraft in 1972. For the first time, humanity could see itself from space as a singular, ordinary body. It was an innocent postcard compared to the image shared three months ago by billionaire Jared Isaacman, commander of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission. This mission, part of Elon Musk’s ambition to accelerate space exploration, provided a starkly different vision: a selfie with a planet in flames as the backdrop. This striking image marks a paradigm shift, one that Argentine writer Michel Nieva examines in his essay Capitalist Science Fiction: How Billionaires Will Save Us from the End of the World.

The author begins by reinterpreting the famous phrase attributed to Fredric Jameson and popularized by Mark Fisher: “It is easier to imagine an end of the world than an end to capitalism.” In this context, Nieva points out that those envisioning such scenarios are Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who have co-opted the rhetoric of hard science fiction — rooted in scientific plausibility — to persuade us that only they can save humanity.

“They care more about the epic narrative of a utopian discourse than with its realism,” Nieva explains via video conference from New York. “Under the guise of being strongmen and humanity’s only possible saviors, businessmen like Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk have commercialized space. Disguising their speculative greed in the face of the urgent threat of climate change, they propose environmentalist plans to rescue this society by taking it to other planets. And in doing so, they perpetuate the mechanisms of financial speculation. We are witnessing the golden age of capitalist science fiction.”

The original space tourist, engineer, and entrepreneur, Dennis Tito, paid $20 million in 2001 for a ticket provided by Eric Anderson, co-founder of Space Adventures, the first commercial space tourism company. In 2023, Branson’s Virgin Galactic sent its first three tourists into orbit for a few minutes at 50 miles above Earth’s surface, charging $200,000 each. Following the success of this venture, ticket prices increased to $400,000 for a 90-minute trip, according to Business Insider. Bezos has not disclosed pricing for Blue Origin, nor has SpaceX. However, SpaceX aims to take civilians (read: billionaires) on 72-hour trips to altitudes over 310 miles with its Falcon 9 rocket.

Tim Fernholz, researcher and author of Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the New Space Race, explains via video conference from Oakland: “The rates are so opaque because sending a rocket into space is still very expensive, although reusable rockets have significantly reduced costs. For instance, the recent launch of SpaceX’s Starship — the most advanced spacecraft for reaching the Moon — cost $40 million. Do the math on what each civilian crew member would have to pay to make it profitable.”

“The promotional spectacle surrounding this race is sometimes grotesque, whether it’s Bezos in a cowboy hat posing in front of a disproportionately large, phallic-shaped rocket, or Musk celebrating an electoral victory alongside Trump while wearing his Occupy Mars T-shirt [which mocks Occupy Wall Street],” says Nieva. The world’s richest man, who donated nearly $200 million to Trump’s campaign and is now one of his trusted allies, claims he will participate in the first Mars expedition — by 2029, he says — and will die there if necessary.

Fernholz is skeptical: “We might start seeing lunar bases in about 10 years, but it will take decades to reach Mars.”

Philosopher Yuk Hui, an analyst of the technological trends driven by mega-corporations, comments via email: “These entrepreneurs’ grand gestures are a corporate campaign to transform other planets into habitable spaces, so they can avoid worrying about the destruction of Earth — a destruction to which they themselves contribute greatly.”

In technological capitalism’s appropriation of science fiction language, a hyperfuturistic (and, therefore, one that is capitalizable) aesthetic is everything. José Fernández, costume designer for superhero films and Daft Punk’s helmets, is behind the aesthetics of SpaceX. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos enlisted writer Neal Stephenson, revered in Silicon Valley for his 1992 novel Snow Crash, to design his astronautical branch, says Nieva. In the race to accelerate the neoliberal future envisioned by science fiction, anything goes.

This has always been the case. When Galileo Galilei first observed Mars through a telescope in 1610, he had already imagined cities on the planet. Jules Verne, in his 1903 article The End of Naval Wars, noted that the science fiction author “writes on paper what others will carve in steel.” Notably, the first atomic-powered submarine, commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1954, was named the Nautilus, inspired by Verne’s vision that sailed far beyond the 20,000 leagues he had imagined. The great ideologues of hard science fiction have often hailed from the scientific world: Isaac Asimov (a trained chemist), Arthur C. Clarke (physicist and mathematician), Hal Clement (astronomer), and Robert Heinlein (aeronautical engineer).

Many of these figures have close ties to governments, the military, and, today, mega-corporations. They have served as ideologues, advisors, or even direct employees. Wernher von Braun, the Nazi engineer who became one of the founders of NASA, had former U.S. president John Kennedy read books by Arthur C. Clarke to convince him of the need for an aeronautical agency. Clarke went on to collaborate with NASA to launch the first commercial satellite into orbit in 1963. Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft with Bill Gates, was a devotee of Robert Heinlein, one of the writers who helped shape the image of the virile intergalactic entrepreneur. As a child, Allen read Heinlein’s Rocket Ship Galileo, a novel about a group of kids who, with their scientist uncle, create a lunar travel company — a concept that later inspired Allen as an adult when he founded Teledesic, the first satellite internet company. He was also a pioneer in planning low-cost space travel.

Jeff Bezos, a fan of Douglas Adams, wants to name his first rocket to Mars The Heart of Gold, in homage to the eponymous ship in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Musk’s main motivations for colonizing the red planet are rooted in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Martian Trilogy — a work also embraced by former U.S. president Barack Obama — and the philanthropic hero of Asimov’s The Foundation (1951), who predicts the inevitable decline of his empire and chooses to establish intergalactic colonies.

Robinson himself believes that “Mars is irrelevant to us now. We should of course concentrate on maintaining the habitability of the Earth.” He has even joked about the delusions his work has inspired, telling Bloomberg: “Musk’s plan is sort of the 1920s science-fiction cliché of the boy who builds a rocket to the moon in his backyard.”

But the result is far less naïve. According to Nieva, science fiction allows capitalism to create the most extraordinary fantasies: “Terraforming and colonizing other planets, extraterrestrial mining, a life expectancy of 1,000 years, intergalactic tourism, artificial intelligence that automates wage labor. Futuristic goods that will free humans from both planetary and their own biological limits, but which will only be accessible to the millionaire 1% of the population.”

Yuk Hui adds, “I won’t be the one to deny science fiction — I love it. But in the last decade, we’ve turned it into an indispensable tool to understand where we’re headed. That worries me. Beyond the fact that billionaires encourage this to support their discourse, it reveals the weakness of the intellectual discussions we’re having to solve the most immediate and real problems. What kind of future is truly desirable for humanity as a community? We can only find the answer if we keep our feet on the ground.”

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