Growing up, there were spacecraft blasting off into space every few years or so. There were the traditional manned rockets, unmanned rockets, as well as the installation of satellites, and the first space stations, think Skylab–of which there were four. I only remember one but of course I was a kid. And of course, the succession of space shuttles.

But in the last decade, there has been more and more missions to the international space station as well as “rockets” roaring into space for different lengths of time–days, weeks, even hours, with the advent of “space tourism”. Don’t know if I would use that term since it’s not like the travelers get to leave the craft and walk around exploring a planet until they have to return to the ship, like on a cruise.

So where’s the fun in doing it?

Photo by Edvin Richardson, Pexels

At the risk of being labeled a person with a case of sour grapes, I assure you, I don’t have that affliction. I don’t want to go to space. I love the planet Earth. In fact, I believe that as inhabitants of it, we need to care more about this planet instead of jumping up and down, wanting to be one of the first to be launched to another one.

Why?

First of all, what is their (wealthy businesspeople and celebrities) motivation? For the good of humankind? Because Earth is about to go belly-up? What?

And why are so many of these space-bound contraptions being flung into the wild blue yonder? And as I mentioned earlier, lately not by NASA but by rich entrepreneurs?

Sure, I understand that they might be bored and looking for a challenge but I don’t understand humankind. We have plenty of environmental and societal problems here on Earth. They (those who have had the opportunity to travel to space) seem to go gaga over what it looks like, the horizon and such. Yet some of these same folk pooh pooh the environmental woes that exist here at home–air and water pollution, rising sea levels and one of the things I can’t believe they (the businesspeople, nor astronauts) seem to talk about–space debris, junk, trash. How about that big, fat elephant in the room? Or should I say, out in space? I would love to know what’s going on with that.

I entertain so many possible solutions in my mind for these issues but I don’t have the financial wherewithal to be able to put any of them into action. Wealthy entrepreneurs and businesspeople have the platforms as well as influence to talk to the powers-that-be to devise solutions and the funds to back them up.

Space pollution?

Yes, it’s a thing. Ever since I was aware of spacecraft launches way back when, I always wondered about them. What was that tremendous amount and volume of stuff emitted that propels them into space? When I was a kid, my family used to joke about how it always seemed to rain around the time of a space launch. I used to think that it irritated the atmosphere. I believe many of them were launched in April, which back then was a rainy month so maybe that had something to do with it. It doesn’t seem to rain as much in that month like it used to.

Could it be contributing to climate change, maybe?

Not to mention those components of spacecraft that don’t disintegrate into the atmosphere but have later landed into our oceans. They haven’t always been recoverable.

I recall a story on the news where a piece of space junk which should have burned up before reaching Earth’s atmosphere did not burn up and crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2022. It was the size of a school bus! Another time, a piece crashed through a Florida family’s roof in February of this year so, as you can see, the burning up before reaching Earth doesn’t always happen. That in itself is a scary thought.

We need to be good stewards of this planet. In my opinion, before man first went up in space, the ramifications of how to dispose of what wouldn’t be returning to space, for example, the capsule, should have been one of the first conversations they had. Or did man simply think that space is so vast, there would never be an issue. Regarding space junk, I once heard the response, “Well, we’re not the only countries that go up in space and leave stuff.” So what? Is that a good enough reason for us here in the United States to leave ours there? I don’t think so.

That’s what I think Richard Branson, Elon Musk and the others should be trying to find a solution to. I’m confident that money could still be made in that endeavor.

We all know that many items that we use on a daily basis have been invented as a result of man and his space exploration. However, space travel isn’t necessarily an essential, especially if it is at the detriment of our existence here on Earth.