Commercial space travel is a completely new concept that the world has never had to worry about before. With SpaceX’s recent launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket, it has become clear that the lack of regulations for commercial space travel could prove to be dangerous.
While SpaceX has created the first fully reusable rocket, their launch showed the lack of responsibility by those coordinating the launch.
The selected payload of a Tesla Roadster car may seem like a cute or funny object to send into space, but the potential environmental impacts of this did not seem to be considered.
The car was planned to head toward Mars, with no explanation of what plans are for the vehicle once it arrives. If the vehicle has any bacteria on it, then life could be introduced to Mars via humans, making it difficult to determine where life potentially found on Mars originated from.
While the technology developed shows incredible promise, if SpaceX and other commercial space travel companies cannot show responsibility, then they shouldn’t be allowed to carry out these largely unregulated flights.
Leave space travel to NASA, which considers all possibilities and shows responsibility in their launches.
Andrew Warren Lloyd, Salt Lake City
