Every time a SpaceX rocket explodes, I wonder if we should tax the rich more | Francine Prose

The enormous expense of these rockets could have been spent on addressing the many crises that we face on our fragile planet

One strong argument in favor of heavily taxing the super-rich is that billionaires so often seem to have profoundly misguided ideas about how to spend their money. They waste it on solid gold toilets, or - like the Sacklers and the Russian oligarchs supporting Putin's war - they use it to do harm. Most commonly, they fund wildly expensive vanity projects that gratify their egos while solidifying their position as masters of the universe who are socially, economically and physically insulated from the rest of us.

Among the most ambitious and widely publicized of these programs is the spaceport, SpaceX, that Elon Musk has built in Texas's Rio Grande Valley, not far from the Mexican border. Musk founded Space Exploration technologies in 2002. His stated aim is to produce rocket ships capable of transporting a hundred passengers and large amounts of supplies and equipment into outer space - to explore the moon and eventually, Musk hopes, to colonize Mars. The first Falcon 1 rockets were tested in 2006. Twenty-six rockets have been launched in 2023 alone.

Francine Prose is a former president of Pen American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences