What if you could just escape, not just to a new city or a new country, but to a new planet? Would it be far enough from everything? Would you finally be free? Obsidian Entertainment’s 2019 video game “The Outer Worlds” asks and answers just that question – and it just might make you glad you never escaped to that Martian settlement after all…
Set in the distant Halcyon solar system, filled with human settlements, “The Outer Worlds” is an acclaimed first-person shooter available on PS4/5, Windows, Xbox One/Series X/S and Nintendo Switch. You play as a character known only as “The Stranger”, released from stasis after your ten-year journey through space from Earth to Alcyone. Unfortunately, you are immediately informed that there has been a slight administrative error and the shipment of new settlers you were supposed to be part of has been lost in delivery – indeed, you are several decades late and the shiny new settlement you had been promised is… well, let’s just say it’s more dystopian than you expected.
As they board the ship to escape Earth and start a new life among the stars, each colonist must surrender their soul and that of their descendants to one of these corporations, effectively making them the property of the company that leased them their place on the ship. . While “The Outer Worlds” is a dark and satirical work of fiction, it does raise an excellent point about humanity’s future in space; who is paying for it? When the only currently known plans to build permanent human settlements on other planets come from private companies rather than government-funded organizations like NASA, perhaps we should ask what Exactly is it in for them?
It’s not entirely out of the question that space travel will become a possibility for civilians within the next 100 years, but whether it becomes financially accessible is a completely different matter. In case of SpaceX, the goal is to offer commercial space tourism on Mars and the moon, with plans to build a settlement on Mars in the next few years. However, once the novelty of having your own Martian bungalow wears off, would it bring the freedom and adventure promised by Musk?
SpaceX’s mission statement page opens with a quote from Elon Musk that states that “You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be amazing — and that’s what it means to be a spacefaring civilization. It’s about believing. .. the future will be better than the past”. The idea of escaping to an interplanetary settlement would undoubtedly appeal to many people: you could leave that job that makes you unhappy, you could start a new life, have a new name, experience a completely new lifestyle under a new atmosphere. But if science fiction has taught us anything, it’s to be wary of corporate aspirations.
Now, we’re not suggesting that the corruption and endless bureaucracy of “The Outer Worlds” Halcyon is meant to happen in the real world, but the satirical adventure game is meant as a cautionary tale about what could go wrong if private companies were to given too much control over people’s lives, down to the air they breathe.
In an interview with CNN business, Michael Meyer, the lead scientist at NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, said that “in the first 100 years that humans have a presence on Mars, the economic situation will be dubious.” So, right from the start you’re trying to entrust your future, and even your life, to a business that could end up failing while you’re stranded on Mars.
Spaceflight companies like SpaceX provide a lot of information about how and where they will produce the ships needed to carry would-be colonists. However, beyond some rocket schemes and vague quotes about it ‘believe in the future’, there’s not much clarity about what they intend to do once the settlement is established, or why they want to build it in the first place.
Second an interview released in 2013SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s initial goal was to build a greenhouse (dubbed Mars Oasis) on our neighboring planet, however the SpaceX project leaned towards more commercial spaceflight goals when Mars Oasis proved too expensive to be practicable. While Musk’s initial goal may be to further human progress, it is clear that the funding required to sustain a settlement on Mars will be astronomical. In other words, SpaceX engineers would need to find a way to ensure the deal is able to deliver some value to investors on Earth.
On the SpaceX website, the company explains why they chose Mars over other planets, saying the planet gets decent sunlight, shows potential for plant growth, and has noticeably weaker gravity than earth, making lifting heavy objects a simple task. . These conditions could potentially indicate plans for SpaceX to focus heavily on developing agriculture to offset the cost of importing food to Mars from Earth. On the export side, Martian ore is rich in naturally occurring minerals including iron, titanium, lithium, finite resources that Earth will eventually run out. If SpaceX were to be profitable for investors, it would likely need mining and agricultural industries to generate income.
This brings into question a number of factors about what would be expected of potential colonists moving to the Red Planet. After all, many of us who dream of escaping our humdrum lives on planet Earth don’t dream of working on a potato farm or a mine, even if there’s a free rocket ride for us. To entice people to leave their friends and family behind on Earth for manual labor, SpaceX should probably sweeten the deal for those individuals.
Would the SpaceX settlement be treated as an outpost, where workers would be stationed for a period of time (like an oil rig) while performing a short-term contract? Perhaps SpaceX would offer subsidized housing to those who join their manual labor force on Mars, similar to the idea of ”company cities” like The Bournville village of Cadbury – make the move from Earth to Mars more convenient for would-be colonists.
All of these systems depend both on SpaceX delivering on its promises to deliver the benefits and on employees surviving the first few months of their time on Mars to reap those benefits. With the previous enthusiasm of the company rocket launch failures and Elon’s sombre comments on the human cost of the missioncan we really be sure that the first colonists heading to Mars with the promise of a better life will actually survive long enough to enjoy it?
In 2017, Musk commented that the first colonists to reach Mars should do so ‘prepare to die’comparing the first Martian colonies to explorer Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to Antarctica: “Going to Mars sounds like that ad of Shackleton going to Antarctica. You know, it’s dangerous, it’s uncomfortable, it’s a long journey, you might not come back alive. But it’s a glorious adventure and it’s going to be an incredible experience.”
This view of colonists on Mars, for lack of a better word, expendable, is no anomaly when one compares the potential treatment of workers here on Earth. Several employees of Tesla, the other company that owns SpaceX, have complained unsafe working conditions and exploitation. It’s the same story at Amazon, the retail giant owned by Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, with numerous reports of unsafe working conditions AND dead workers at Amazon warehouses.
On the other hand, the prohibitive cost of getting new workers to Mars means that companies can’t afford to churn them out at the rate they do here on Earth, so it might make sense for companies to treat their personnel on Mars better, at least in the early days. of the settlement.
In creating “The Outer Worlds,” Obsidian Entertainment isn’t trying to tell us that fixing up space is a bad idea — for many of us, our inner rebellious five-year-old is still hopeful that if only given the chance, we could build a happy life for ourselves beyond the Milky Way. Instead, it warns us of the dangers of corporate greed to hold so much power over everyone’s lives under that big oxygen-filled dome (remember when they shut off the air supply in Total Recall?). Perhaps the almost cartoonish, insecure and dour Saltuna Cannery in the game’s first chapter, and its worn-out, miserable employees remind us that escaping Earth doesn’t necessarily mean an escape from the brutality of corporate exploitation.
Self life on Mars will be better than life on Earth, then we need to think critically about who is building that life for us, and whether it’s really for progress or just for profit. After all, maybe telling your five-year-old yourself that you do a day job you don’t like might be a little depressing to imagine, but think how much worse it would be to have to tell them that yes, you grew up to be a space traveler, but in reality living on Mars sucks way more than I thought.
The Outer Worlds 2 was announced during E3 2021 and will arrive on Xbox and PC at some point – we don’t have a fixed release date yet. When it arrives, we’re sure it’ll have darker warnings about the dangers of letting corporations control our destiny among the stars. In the meantime, check out The Outer Worlds on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
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Image Source : www.space.com