Nowadays, space tourism is becoming more accessible to more people as inventions speed up the rate of progress in a seemingly unstoppable pace. It does have the pros of opening avenues of obtaining new resources and mitigating the overpopulation issue in today’s world. However, it also comes with its own set of cons which tend to overweigh the benefits. Some of the issues are the high unreliabity of space travel and the increased financial divide between the rich and poor.
On one hand, space mining holds unlimited potential for assets like minerals, metals and other inorganic precious materials. Asteroid mining may become fiction to reality and space travel by companies like SpaceX becomes dirt cheap relative to the present time. This all can happen with mammoth investments from the governments of the first world countries. Additionally, as we saturate this planet’s surface, competetion for more space increases which may exert tremendous pressure on the earth’s ecology and climate. Space tourism may induce space colonization and migration, which in turn, may reduce the stress from our planet.
On the other hand, space travel is extremely volatile and unpredictable as physical factors like solar winds and rogue asteroids may present challenges to the inadequate navigation system of the current age. Space tourism is big financial gamble with slim chances of success. The funding to these expedition, in my opinion, might be better used in other less fantastical aspects of our society like directly fixing climate change by carbon capture and more trees. Furthermore, space tourism might also exacerbate the current geopolitical and financial divide between population as only the ultra wealthy nations can afford space travel and profit from it, leaving the poorer ones behind.
In conclusion, space exploration and travel might not be the best possible place for our money. While they do hold promise, the chances unrealistic and have some major disadvantages for society as whole. This wealth might be used in a better way diverting them to fix more pressing and more present issues in the wolrld.