Will the Real Lex Luthor Please Stand Up?
Since billionaire Richard Branson’s space-ride, speculation has revolved around the galactic ambitions of the world’s two richest Earthlings, Bezos and Musk. The motive for this unspeakably expensive hobby remains a mystery though it harkens of super-hero sci-fi drama, doomsday machines, mad scientists and world domination. You think I’m kidding? Read on.
October 4, 1957, 7:28 PM, a date that will not live in infamy but maybe should, was the day that the USSR launched Sputnik (Russian for satellite) into space and thereby launched the Cold War into the stratosphere. A month later, November 3rd, the Soviets sent a dog named Laika into space. It wasn’t until 4 tense years later that the panicked Americans managed to get a higher primate named Ham into space averting certain annihilation and world dictatorship from the communists and “evolving” the space race to the chimpanzees. Humans soon followed. Whew! That was close. Not!
Of course as cartoonish as it all seems now the fear was very real. That fear was of a military application which is where high technology inventions live or die. Outer space was the high ground so to speak and with nuclear weapons in their arsenal having the only spaceships not on Earth was indeed a frightening prospect.
The nonsensical space race to the Moon per order of JF Kennedy was to establish America’s dominance of space never relinquished, until now. Actually getting to the Moon was rather meaningless. (Personally I’ve always wished they faked it. That would have been quite a neat trick.) But the demonstration of advanced capabilities must have opened Russian eyes.
Anyway back to the three Lex Luthors. The first thing you must consider is the military application and its worth as a strategic/geopolitical weapon. As the theme for many James Bond flicks and Superman comics we all Dr No the drill. Crazed wealthy mad scientist…But how real could this be? Can these private businessmen hire out to any country or anybody who pays? Who’s laws govern the ships up in space? Their cargo? Passengers? Who owns outer space?
Or maybe these guys are just creepy guys with a weird fetish for spaceships and leaving Earth? I hope that’s the case. But it seems a bit out-of-character for the most successful capitalists ever to be involved in something so frivolous and unprofitable; unless they know where to sell billions-and-billions of $ in tourist tickets.
This is the stuff that NASA used to do and of course the incredible leaps of medical science and computer technology that evolved out of the race to the moon can’t be overstated. But the balance of lethal power has always been at the heart of it.
I can’t help but feel a little queasy about this power in the hands of a few brigand capitalists without restraint by law and regulation. I don’t see much silver lining for the human race at large. World security is for sale. It always had been but we little people didn’t know it. We do now.
If they’re just mad scientist billionaire grownups blowing some heavy coin on their man-toys. Well..ok then. LOL!