Virgin Galactic's Space Tourism Venture for the 1% Will Warm
the Globe for the Rest of Us

By Salvatore Babones

Truthout | News Analysis 
August 14, 2012

Submitted to portside by truthout
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10870-rising-inequality-global-warming-and-virgin-galactic

If two words can capture the extraordinary redistribution of
wealth from workers to the wealthy over the past forty years,
the flagrant shamelessness of contemporary conspicuous
consumption, the privatization of what used to be public
privileges and the wanton destruction of our atmosphere that
is rapidly leading toward the extinction of nearly all non-
human life on earth, all covered in a hypocritical pretense
of pious environmental virtue ... those two words are Virgin
Galactic.

Virgin Galactic, billionaire Richard Branson's space tourism
venture, is charging $200,000 a seat for a few minutes of
weightlessness and a view from outer space. The firm has so
far taken in $70 million in deposits from 536 passengers,
according to an August 1 report from Reuters.

Call me old-fashioned, but I personally find it morally
offensive that some people can afford to spend $200,000 on a
three-minute experience when others can't afford food. Food
first, luxury yachts second and $200,000 suborbital flights
last. That's my motto.

The explosion in private wealth, however, means that more
than a few people can afford those $200,000 flights. A study
paid for by the Federal Aviation Administration (that is, by
you and me) concluded that more than 1,000 people a year
would likely purchase suborbital space tours. The study
projects that 80 percent of demand for suborbital flights
would come from wealthy individuals interested in space
tourism, while business, research and government together
would account for just 20 percent.

Across the world there are now 11 million high-net-worth
individuals each with over $1 million in liquid assets,
according to consulting firm Capgemini. There are also about
2.8 billion people living on less than $2 a day, according to
the most recent United Nations Millennium Development Goals
report.

With the help of Virgin Galactic and other space tourism
providers, the 11 million at the top can literally look down
on the 2.8 billion at the bottom. As one "future astronaut"
is actually quoted as saying in Virgin Galactic's online
brochure:

"There are over 6 billion people on Earth. To be 1 of 6
astronauts in space looking down on them will be a very
special thing."

I'm sure it will be.

At least it will be a very green special experience - or so
claims Virgin Galactic. In various publications, they compare
the carbon footprint of a space voyage roughly to that of a
business-class flight from New York to London. Their best
estimate is that each flight will generate roughly 0.8 tonnes
of carbon dioxide emissions per passenger.

Of course, Virgin's New Mexico spaceport will be LEED
(Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) platinum
certified by the US Green Building Council. That is to say,
the desert lair that millionaires fly to in their personal
jets in order to catch their personal space flights will have
remarkably efficient heating and cooling systems. Three
cheers for the environment.

Low carbon footprints and fancy environmental certifications
are the latest vogue in environmental legerdemain. A tar
sands oil refinery could get LEED certification if it had
good insulation and waterless urinals.

It's true that the solid fuel rockets used by Virgin Galactic
produce relatively little carbon dioxide. Instead of carbon
dioxide, they produce black soot.

In the lower atmosphere, soot is washed to the ground when it
rains. In the stratosphere, it accumulates.

The stratospheric soot associated with space tourism would
have a global warming effect 140,000 times that of the
associated carbon dioxide emissions, according to a
simulation study published in Geophysical Review Letters.

A space tourism industry of 1000 flights per year "could
increase polar surface temperatures by 1° Celsius and reduce
polar sea ice by 5-15 percent," according to a summary of the
study published in Nature.

Space used to be a shared endeavor. When Neil Armstrong took
one small step for man, he took one giant leap for mankind.
We might question the wisdom of accelerating global warming
in order to explore the moon, but at least in some symbolic
sense we did it together.

Now we can do it alone. In its online brochure, Virgin
Galactic invites you to "see your world turn upside down."
"One of Virgin Galactic's primary objectives is to end the
exclusivity that has been attached to manned space travel, by
designing a vehicle which can fly almost anyone to space and
back safely" for $200,000.

I think I've just seen my world turn upside down. 

Copyright, Truthout.

[Salvatore Babones is a senior lecturer in sociology and
social policy at the University of Sydney in Australia and an
associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in
Washington, DC.]

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