hinder the progress of their space missions. ‘Because of this political stagnation, they can’t really get the level of organization needed to take us further. And it turns out, you need a totally crazy rich asshole to do it. Someone who is truly eccentric, someone who’s not making rational decisions’. 

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He is referring to Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and billionaire whose dream of going to Mars is now changing the game for NASA. By forming contracts with SpaceX to develop spacecraft for their missions, ‘they have saved NASA enormous amounts of money’ Oberg emphasizes. ‘As soon as SpaceX shows up, they prove you don’t need anywhere as much money to do this’. This remarkable reduction in cost is directly related to SpaceX’s approach in designing rockets that are reusable, which further reduces the waste that usually accompanies these missions. 

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Even though SpaceX is saving money, many people are enraged to see so many resources go into fleeing planet Earth rather than saving it. Especially with the emergence of space tourism. As a scientist, Oberg is deeply aware and worried about the poor conditions humans will have to face in the future, and he sympathizes with people’s exasperation. ‘These joyride spaceflight endeavours are kind of pointless. They are literally not going anywhere’ he scoffs. ‘Is that a really great usage of all that carbon?’. This is what has been referred to as the billionaire space race. 

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But Oberg  denies its existence altogether. ‘There is no billionaire space race. I think this is a construct of the media because it sells’. The way he sees it, ‘there’s a few people running what I would call a roller coaster to space, as a rollercoaster puts you back at the starting point without anything really happening in the meantime’. And then there’s Elon Musk and SpaceX; ‘If they are going to another planet to start a new branch of human civilization, not just a joyride, that’s a fundamentally different thing. I think that is worth spending the money on’. 

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There are many reasons why Oberg thinks we should go to Mars. ‘From a philosophical perspective, perhaps, it is important that humans reach another planet’. And although ‘the vast majority of resources should go towards things of immediate relevance to the human population on Earth’, he says, not putting money into pushing these kinds of frontiers should be out of the question. ‘This is a necessary part of how our civilization is developing. It is important for a lot of different reasons; societal, cultural, scientific.. One of them is perspective’ .

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Currently, SpaceX has a built prototype rocket for the mission located in a field in Texas. When asked if they will successfully bring us to Mars, Oberg smiles. ‘They simply can’t know, but it is worth trying. We always get entrenched, set in our ways. Earth is very set in its ways. Just look, we are faced with this super imminent global catastrophe and we are barely reacting to it. Clearly, we need a reset in our global thought process. Fresh starts are important’. 

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