‘Ad Astra’ and the Disgrace of the Billionaire Space Race
What should be a grand accomplishment for the human species is stained by who is in the cockpit
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**Spoilers Below**
In the recent news of billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson going to space or planning to go to space, I find myself thinking of the film Ad Astra. You’d think the movies Elysium, Metropolis, or really any other Sci-fi movie that deals with similar themes of an immense wealth gap would come to mind, but they don’t.
Maybe films like First Man and Apollo 13 come to many peoples’ minds as they explore mankind’s highest achievements in space travel. These are very easily digestible films that have audiences intrinsically cheering for the characters to accomplish their amazing feats in space travel and portray space exploration as being synonymous with prospering. But in real life, this human achievement in potentially commercialized space travel isn’t having many of us cheering. The billionaire space race is a worldwide showcase of how much as a species, we are not prospering.
I find myself thinking of Ad Astra because of how it handles the subject of space travel and what it proposes the expansion of civilization will do to humankind. The ancient Roman poet, Publius Vergilius Maro, wrote the term Ad Astra to refer to humanities intrinsic want to reach for the stars and that the stars are synonymous with hope.
The film explores exactly that — hope. What does the hope from looking at the stars bring us?
Ad Astra is not a Sci-Fi epic like The Martian or Interstellar. Instead, director James Gray makes something more akin to Apocalypse Now, but in space. The film follows Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), a decorated Astronaut in the near future who treks across the unforgiving solar system to look for his missing father (Tommy Lee Jones), who is on a secret mission near Neptune in search of habitable planets. The film peeks to humankind’s wishes to explore, expand and prosper. The film is equipped with heavy themes of isolation, relationships and a look at the human condition.
The film is kind of a character study of how commercialized and easier space travel causes many people to struggle with isolation and causes them to regress to primitive beings. In one scene, Brad Pitt narrates through voiceover ‘here we go again, fighting over resources,’ before he is attacked by pirates on the moon. I find the regression of the human race the movie alludes to isn’t going to happen in space, but rather on Earth.
Elon Musk has claimed many different times that man was meant to leave Earth. And this is what makes their feat of space travel that much worse. In a time where the vast majority of the country fell into economic anxiety due to a worldwide pandemic, billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk increased their wealth seemingly faster than ever, while everyone else lost.
While the working class on Earth is seeing casualties in real time from climate change, like the collapse of the apartment complex in Miami which claimed the lives of 100~ people, massive flooding in Belgium, Germany and China that has claimed the lives of hundreds more, we’re expected to cheer on the very people that would have no trouble leaving the rest of us to die.
So when I think of the movie, it’s not so much the isolation that comes to mind, it’s the relationship aspect. Specifically, the relationship between those in the cockpit and their own employees. How are we expected to cheer for the men who have violated dozens of labor laws, union busted, refused to put air conditioning in their warehouses in favor of stationing paramedics outside for employees suffering from heat exhaustion and have had unreasonable daily quotas for delivery drivers causing them to pee in bottles while on the job?
It really feels like we’re living in the beginning stages of Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium where the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of humanity suffers on Earth.
Billionaires going to space feels like they’re rubbing our faces in our economic anxiety. They are flaunting the insane amount of wealth they have acquired while the rest of us wonder how we’re going to afford rent next month.
I’ve seen a lot of articles and coverage framing the criticisms of these billionaires traveling to space with accusations of jealousy or disingenuously pretending to suddenly not care about space travel. Space travel is cool. And the space race of the late 50s’ and 60s’ was universally beloved by both countries as it set a common goal for the populace to cheer as they witnessed an amazing feat accomplished by their species.
People don’t hate the action of going into space. They hate how it’s happening. They hate those in the cockpit. Jeff Bezos thanking his employees and claiming they funded his travel is just extra salt in the wound from a man who exploits everyone beneath him.
So when we watch these billionaires race each other to go to space to fuel their egos, it’s depressing because what should be celebrated as a major step in commercialized space travel is stained by it’s indictment of the wealth gap and power structures our civilization has bred, sustained, encouraged and defended at every turn.
At the end of Ad Astra, Roy McBride finds his father’s lifelong mission of attempting to find a planet with habitable life was a failure. The movie’s theme expresses that space travel is a necessary step for humanity in the future, but we can’t allow ourselves to regress from it.
The ending of the film shows Roy McBride finishing his long and lonesome journey where he comes back to Earth. His capsule opens and he’s met with the extended hand of another person. The hand is the only thing in focus, reminding us that as humans, all we have is each other.
Going to space is an exciting feat, but when the world’s richest and most gruesome exploitative profiteers are at the helm, it’s stripping the stars ability to be synonymous with hope and prospering.
