Chapter 7 You will be left behind

7.   We will all be left behind; you, me, your mother, your friends. Everyone.

They will not be offering us a scholarship to outer space, or to Mars, or anywhere but the kitchen, to do the dishes, create the food, and entertain them in servitude forever. The very goal of manned space travel is to get away from the masses, for the billionaires to free themselves of the workers, the poor, and people of color. 

Traveling to the vacuum of space costs some serious first-class money, and you and your mother aren't going to be invited. 

Manned space travel is the final battle in the class war they’ve waged against us. Next time you travel on an airplane, go look at first class and the flight deck. That is the space program.  Now chop off the back of the plane where we are all smushed together and throw it away.

That is the world they will let us have: crashing down, on fire, destroyed, and sapped of all its resources.

Another of Stephen Hawking’s famous quotes reiterates his position that we need to get off the planet relatively soon. "I don't think the human race will survive the next 1,000 years unless we spread into space."

The problems with Hawking’s solution is that while it may save a “seed” of human life--a few lucky specimens--it won’t save Earth’s inhabitants. The majority of Earthlings would surely be left behind on a planet increasingly unfit for life. 

Tina Nguyen

They will choose who gets to leave this place. They will make us pay for their escape with our sweat, our toil, our taxes, and our labor. They will use up our air, our water, and our resources. They will make sure that this planet is completely used up. And then, they will leave: a select few, the carefully-vetted wealthy, and their property. Off to start a new chapter, a new myth for mankind, without the pesky masses and our squalor. 

And you know who they are. Of course you do. They own all the banks and all the land and all the cities. 

They are the so-called Kings, Queens, and super-wealthy. They own the cops and all the troops. They live on islands and in penthouses and estates. They have ruled the earth since before the flutter of flags and borders on maps drawn with our blood. 

The idea of space is the idea that we, those of us left behind in gravity wells, will not be allowed to see the new maps, the new stories built on new worlds. 

The very idea of space is a future without the baggage of our oppression and suffering blemishing tomorrow’s history.