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Narcissistic Billionaires Shouldn’t Play In Space — It Endangers Humanity
If the side effects of unbridled capitalism spread out to the final frontier, a chain reaction called the Kessler effect may inadvertently trap our species on a dying planet with no escape.
Imagine, a few decades into the future, living on a planet ravaged by climate change and nuclear warfare. After close to half of Earth’s population has vanished, firestorms rage on our land and large portions of it become uninhabitable. The accumulated soot in the stratosphere blocks the sunlight from reaching the surface, which leads to widespread crop failure and famine, as entire civilizations collapse.
In this hypothetical future, however, there could’ve been another way out for the sake of our species' survival, as the years had allowed humanity to figure out how to conceive the necessary technological resources to escape the planet and establish colonies elsewhere in the galaxy. But none of that matters either way — because the planet’s orbit has become enshrouded in a violent, impenetrable cloud of space trash that destroys any spacecraft and prevents any further attempt at space exploration forever.
