One Giant Step for Man(aging) Directors

How privatising exploration sacrifices its true objectives.

“Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” remarked billionaire Jared Isaacman as he, quite literally, stared down at the rest of us from a 700-kilometre elevation. Isaacman is the first non-astronaut to conduct a spacewalk — a tense venture made by space travellers beyond the safety of their capsules and into the freezing darkness of space — as part of the Polaris Dawn mission, directed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Musk’s private technology has enabled the new SpaceX Dragon capsule to cut some of the design corners that public space agencies, like NASA, would carefully tread around. This includes the absence of an airlock on the capsule, effectively rendering it naked to the abyss on the other side of the hull, and swanky new spacesuits that have been stripped down as far as possible. Despite these modifications, the Dragon capsule and its spacesuits were completely untested in the context of this spacewalk. While the Polaris Dawn mission was, on this occasion, a success, tales of ultra-rich white men exploring uncharted territories are becoming increasingly common, prompting the rest of society to assess the benefits of well-funded technological advancements with the consequences of privatising exploration.

For many, this story of the wealthy explorer harks back to last year’s OceanGate Titan submersible disaster. With the release of disturbing new images of the imploded sub at a recent US Coast Guard hearing, this tragedy serves as a chilling reminder of the failures of commercialised exploration. The footage depicts an almost unrecognisable warpage of carbon fibre, with scarred panels and shards of material acting as an eerie mausoleum for the five who died 3,700 metres deep. OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and billionaire Hamish Harding were among those who lost their lives. They had planned to dive down to the former ocean liner in the Titan submersible, which had malfunctioned just days before the accident. Rush claimed that the submersible was built with the technological expertise of NASA, Boeing, and the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington — all three of which stated that they had no involvement in the design or engineering of the sub. Despite lacking safety certification, a ticket for the Titan excursion set each of the deceased back $250,000.

Charging people to experience perilous marvels, like the Titanic shipwreck or outer space, encourages ‘extreme tourism’ — a travel niche which profits on the fragile egos of wealthy individuals seeking an adrenaline-filled experience over another Rolls-Royce collecting dust in the guest house garage. Surely the main purpose of exploration is to further human understanding — a large part of which involves conducting experiments on the International Space Station, including the study of plant growth under microgravity, investigating human health in space, and making astronomical observations. For those with deep pockets in their spacesuits, on the other hand, an ascent above the clouds is purely selfish, completely lacking in scientific endeavour — they just want to gaze upon that crystal blue sphere and live out their fantasies as fortune tellers with superior cosmic knowledge. In essence, they want to have what we cannot. 

Even if private explorations, like those of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn, can push the risk-reward ratio through technological advancement, the failures of OceanGate highlight that extreme environments do not discriminate based on net worth.  Additionally, the lack of regulation in such places causes billionaires to court danger at their own expense. Returning to the words of Isaacman, I wonder how pleasant the view of the Earth would really be if he had not paid hundreds of millions for it — better yet, if his feet were touching grass.  

Image by Amelia Freedman