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Elon Musk at an award ceremony in Berlin, December 2020
Photo: Hannibal Hanschke / Getty Images
“Lucas Corta realized early on that he lived in Hell. And that the only way to change Hell, even to survive, was to become its ruler. "
Ian McDonald, "Luna - New Moon" (2015)
"When we think about what to do now, there is one thing we must keep in mind: the idea that we can go elsewhere when we've
ruined the
earth
is simply wrong."
Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson
in an essay
(2015)
Christian Stöcker, arrow to the right
Photo: SPIEGEL ONLINE
Born 1973, is a cognitive psychologist and has been a professor at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW) since autumn 2016.
There he is responsible for the "Digital Communication" course.
Before that, he headed the Netzwelt department at SPIEGEL ONLINE.
Science fiction about the colonization of the solar system is hugely popular right now.
In the "Expanse" series, also successful as a TV series, the moon, Mars and numerous asteroids are permanently inhabited.
The "Luna" trilogy by Ian McDonald, from which the opening quote comes, is about five dynasties that have become super rich with the exploitation of the moon.
An award-winning Mars trilogy comes from Kim Stanley Robinson, also quoted above, and a book on asteroid mining ("Delta V") by Daniel Suarez.
The list goes on.
Life out there is horrific
Most of these new works, mostly striving for a certain physical realism, have something in common: in them, life beyond earth is basically terrible.
People who have lived in space for a long time or were even born there cannot travel to earth or can only travel to earth with agony.
Their weak, elongated bodies cannot cope with gravity.
Death lurks everywhere, because outside the thin man-made protective cover there is only dust, vacuum, deadly cold or murderous heat.
It really is like this: We are optimized for life on earth, for nothing else.
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Rover "Perseverance" on Mars
Photo: NASA / dpa
If you want to know what it would be like to live on Mars, you should camp for a few days in a rocky national park in the American West and only leave your tent with a dry suit, helmet and breathing apparatus.
With Elon Musk, who, according to his own words, would like to die on Mars ("But not on impact"), I've been wondering for a long time why he doesn't even move to any rocky desert here on earth for a few months.
At least he could still breathe there.
Obsessed with the dark visions
And yet not only Musk, but also his co-billionaire Jeff Bezos is downright obsessed with personally reliving the rather gloomy visions of the authors quoted.
Bezos wants to build barrel-shaped space habitats that can accommodate up to a million people.
The giant cylinders, named after the physicist Gerard O'Neill, with whom Bezos once studied, would be "beautiful", believes the Amazon founder, "the people will want to live there."
For Bezos, the whole thing is even linked to an ideological conviction: "Do we want stagnation and rationing, or do we want dynamism and growth?" He asked rhetorically when presenting the plans in 2019 and was certain that it would be an "easy one Decision".
One could colonize the solar system "with a billion people".
In fact, the world population may begin to shrink again as early as around 2064, at just under 10 billion.
Luckily.
The old stories don't fit anymore
Elon Musk can hardly be blamed for having already given up the earth, after all, Tesla, the battery factories and the price he has awarded for technology for CO₂ storage are definitely concrete steps towards a decarbonised world.
But Musk also always argues that Mars can be colonized in order to create alternatives.
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Christian Stocker
We are the experiment: our world is changing so breathtakingly that we stagger from crisis to crisis.
We have to learn to manage this tremendous acceleration.
Publisher: Karl Blessing Verlag
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Karl Blessing Verlag
Number of pages: 384
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Here we see examples of a basic human problem: the old stories do not fit the new problems, but we cannot leave them.
Heroism, in myth and historical narrative, is often associated with conquering, exploring and discovering new territories.
But there are no more new territories with us.
Noah doesn't build dams
Heroes conquer, they rarely defend, and when they do, then against an external, overpowering enemy, not against their own inadequacy.
If heroes save something, they save other people, treasures or works of art.
Can you think of a famous story from literary history in which the heroine saves an ecosystem from human destruction?
Noah does not build dams, he builds an ark.
The heroic act consists of saving a few, not averting catastrophe for all.
In myth and religion, catastrophic annihilation events usually emanate from gods, people are helpless.
We, on the other hand, have created a situation over here in reality that does not appear in our stories: we ourselves are the cause of the catastrophe.
The exemplary narrative in which we overcome ourselves, not to conquer but to preserve, is missing.
There is no glory in prevention.
Aren't they already conquerors?
No wonder that super-rich men in particular like to follow the old pioneer myth: Where should they get their visions from if not from the old stories?
And aren't they conquerors themselves, already now?
The third American billionaire who is currently working on shaping the future has a different, more level-headed approach: Bill Gates' already sensationally successful book is even called "How we can prevent the climate catastrophe".
The flight to Mars is not included in it.
more on the subject
Corona and climate: nature knows no compromisesA column by Christian Stöcker
But Gates can't get out of his entrepreneurial skin either: an essential part of his grand plan to decarbonize the world are thousands of small nuclear reactors.
He coincidentally co-founded a company that designs such reactors (the company has not yet built one).
The book does not mention that this type of reactor has its own problems.
Rescue the system from within the system?
It is absurd to accuse the man, who gives away billions every year, of wanting to enrich himself by saving humanity.
But it is also evident that Gates suspects the answer to the question of how to prevent the catastrophe hidden in his own biography.
In fact, several times in the book he makes parallels to something "we did at Microsoft."
Neither Gates nor Musk or Bezos crosses the mind that the global economic structures that made them so rich themselves that they can now make plans for the future of humanity may be part of the problem.
The dogma of continued exponential growth, even in the industrialized nations, in which nobody would have to go hungry, freeze, suffer pain or be bored for a long time, has not been shaken.
Just because someone has become extremely rich in the system of global consumer capitalism does not mean that they are qualified to develop solutions to the vast problems that system creates.
The billionaires will not save us.
But there is one thing they can achieve.
By talking loudly about these topics, you are helping the global conversation turn to our most important problem: We only have this one planet.
The universe is not a refuge.
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