Elon Musk, SpaceX and the Parable of Space in Pop Culture

Last Saturday SpaceX, Elon Musk's space technology company, achieved another milestone: for the first time a private company managed to send two astronauts to the International Space Station. The United States recovered this strategic capability after nine years of using the services of the Russian Federation's space agency and their hyper-reliable Soyuz spacecraft.

For this mission, SpaceX used its reusable Falcon 9 rocket, whose propulsion system can be recovered and used more than once, significantly reducing the cost of each mission. This launch, by no means a minor one, is part of a much larger plan involving NASA and SpaceX, with the ultimate goal of creating a reliable space transportation system to send (and bring back) a crewed mission to Mars. The project's name is Artemis, and its next significant objective is to resume crewed missions to the Moon.

Space mechanics for millennials

Those of us who grew up too late to see Apollo 11's arrival on the Moon had to settle for the Space Shuttle era, near-space exploration, and robotic missions. Thirty-somethings grew up with the non-epic Space Shuttle, whose peaks of popularity were the Challenger disaster (which exploded 73 seconds after launch) and Columbia (which disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere).

Even so, the Shuttle was a symbol for millennials: from having its own Playmobil model to appearing in several movies like Space Cowboys, as well as appearances in video games like The Dig.

Without the competition of the Cold War, space exploration seemed stagnant. And while during that period the space agencies of Europe, Russia, and China consolidated their operations in space, none could compete with NASA's influence on popular culture, which had the full advertising machinery of American creative powerhouses behind it. And its role in the aerospace industry remains key both for its leadership in technology development and for that ability to mobilize the imagination of millions of people around the world.

But for many years, the decline of space as an imaginary place within mass culture somewhat defined an era: The Simpsons, Family Guy, all the Nickelodeon series and other youth-oriented content had a clear slice-of-life tone. The exception was Futurama, which became a cult hit although it couldn't compete with the success of its big brother, The Simpsons. There was also Battlestar Galactica, another cult series, and Joss Whedon's failed Firefly.

Elon Musk, the sci-pop mogul

Elon Musk's appearance on the space scene broke that inertia. The fact that a private company took on something that had always been the domain of nation-states sparked a new debate between those who wanted to see Musk fulfill his promises and those who wanted to see him fail. As we know, controversy generates engagement, and Musk turned out to be a master in the art of turning his technological devices into advertising artifacts. What better advertising than pushing the frontiers of civilization?

It's no coincidence that after SpaceX managed to recover and reuse a rocket in a launch for the first time in 2010, space once again became a narrative setting. Led by Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian, and Ad Astra, space and astronauts returned to movie screens. Alongside this, the small screen saw an explosion of animated series where space plays an important role, from Final Space to Rick & Morty, where science fiction tropes broke through the slice-of-life inertia.

In 2017, Silicon Valley's former golden boy, turned into Hank Skorpio, revealed his plan to colonize Mars. Since then, the red planet has been back on the horizon of possibility, both technically and narratively. In 2019, SpaceX took advantage of a test mission to put a Tesla electric roadster convertible into orbit -- Tesla being the electric car company also owned by Musk -- while it was live-streamed with David Bowie's music in the background.

Technology as advertising at its peak: even Musk himself became a machine for generating debates and controversies given his unorthodox way of running his businesses and his life. From smoking weed live on Joe Rogan's podcast or marrying pop artist Grimes, to naming his son X AE A-12 or even talking about "red pills" on his Twitter account. Musk is his own brand.

The next giant leap

In 2019, Donald Trump urged NASA's political leadership to accelerate its plans to reach Mars. The agency had already been working on a comprehensive plan, a new launch and transport system, and test missions to the Moon, complete with a space station. The motto? "The next giant leap."

With this new momentum and leveraging the synergy with private contractors like Musk or Boeing (one of NASA's historic suppliers as well as a manufacturer of military aircraft), the American president set the goal of setting foot on Mars before 2030.

This marks the beginning of a new era in space exploration and the possibility that, finally, those of us who grew up during the last vestiges of the space race may once again see such a techno-social machinery in motion. And see a human being set foot on Martian soil.

This article was originally published in Pagina/12 on June 4, 2020.