Elon Musk gets a lot of s**t for his private space program. However, from a Copiosis standpoint, his accomplishment represents a massive humanity expansion.
Musk’s SpaceX represents a major historical event. Like the Wright Brother’s 1903 flight, what SpaceX accomplished equates to when the first proto-humans expanded out of Africa eight million years ago.
Expansion continued when early hominids migrated into present-day Europe and Asia. Then came our expansion into the Americas about 20-40 thousand years ago.
Next, humans devised watercraft and sailed out of sight of land. By the time Europeans developed the technology, by the 16th Century, ancient South Pacific Polynesians mastered the feat long before.
As humans, we’re restless. We move about. We explore. In some ways, I like to think the first question we ever asked was, “What’s over those mountains?”
Right now, the private spacecraft resembles a rich person’s plaything – just like the automobile 120 years ago. If history proves anything, in 100-150 years, space travel will seem as air travel today. In 100 more years, small, safe and easy to use private spacecraft may become the future version of today’s cars.
Given that Copiosis makes doing anything cost nothing, it’s possible these things might happen sooner — even within our children’s lifetime.
Who knows what benefits could come from aggressive, private space ambitions? In a different world, where people get rich by making the world better off, people like Elon Musk will be the object of admiration, not derision. That different world is Copiosis.
Ira Gershwin said it best in a lyric written more than eight decades ago. It goes: “and who gets the last laugh now?”
Thanks to people like Musk, I think it will be our collective humanity.