For all that space bros tend to profess their lack of religiosity, there is something about their fervour for space that could justifiably be interpreted as religious. In ‘Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race’ (The University of Chicago Press, $24, ISBN 9780226821122), Mary-Jane Rubenstein picks apart the parallel religious mythologies behind the colonisation of Earth and of space.
The main characters are SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (the hare) and Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos (the self-described tortoise), with Robert Zubrin a major influence. Although distinct in their visions of Utopia, Musk and Bezos propose exploiting space for the benefit – nay, the salvation – of humanity. ‘Astrotopia’ argues that these characters are now peddling the same strain of Christian mythology used to justify the European colonisation of ‘empty’ land: a mythology asserting that men – or certain men – have been granted dominion over everything on Earth by...