Sending a car into space

The prose describing the debut launch of the world's most powerful rocket by a private company SpaceX left little to imagination — “The rocket thundered off in billowing clouds of steam while the launch shook the walls of press trailer.”  Founded by technology evangelist Elon Musk, SpaceX is among the select group of companies that are bravely exploring mankind's last frontier - space. The high price of moving matter around the solar system has been a deterrent but these companies are determined to bring science fiction to our doorstep — orbital hotels, low earth orbital tourism, robotic asteroid mining.  

Ever since eternity, man has wondered about the black expanse above our head. SpaceX and its exploratory peers are only scratching the surface of the gravest problem that mankind is facing: how to protect the earth and extend human habitation beyond it. However, as these pioneers attempt to open new territory, not just for entertaining the superrich but for the much more critical purpose of replenishing resources that would be exhausted on earth over the next century or two. This quest may be technically feasible after five or six decades, perhaps, in time to meet the needs of the population which would have by then reached 10 billion. 

However, experimental interventions such as the launch of the most powerful rocket by SpaceX tend to overemphasise the positive effects. The advancements are still so insignificant that they still leave us wondering about the black expanse above.  The next logical step after resource extraction — if it ever becomes economically feasible - would be an interplanetary economy, which is not known to be technically possible.  We are unlikely to govern the fate of stars just like the quest to indefinitely extend human lifespan will remain in the realm of science fiction. Though the baby steps of space entrepreneurs like Musk may be taking the world closer to an alternate source of resources, the concentration of these space evangelists in one part of the world should give us an idea about how inequitable this mining of resources will be.