>For a start it implies that becoming a multi-planet species would be impossible without Musk or Bezos holding vast personal wealth. There is no reason to believe that

There is 50+ years of evidence that we will not become multi-planetary without private funding. The only reason NASA was funded enough to get to the moon in the first place was because of the cold war. Very unlikely it would have happened otherwise.

The soviet union was the first one to go into space and had far more of the outer space firsts than the US. They also had no market incentives to begin such projects.

It's ridiculous you could even bring up the cold war without acknowledging the major scientific and engineering breakthroughs done by communist societies.

Both the US and Soviet Union basically stole rocket tech and rocket scientists from Germany after WW2. The only reason the US and soviet governments supported and funded those rocketry efforts was due to the military and intelligence benefits.

> For a start it implies that becoming a multi-planet species would be impossible without Musk or Bezos holding vast personal wealth. There is no reason to believe that.[1]

I'd say there's significant argument that it is indeed impossible. Democratic governments as a rule do optimize for cost where currency is created by fiat. Private capital generally does in order to stay in business and not go bankrupt. There's tons of recent evidence showing that existing space business is incredibly inefficient in cost.

> You could, for example, use some of the money from a "billionaire tax" to fund NASA.

Alternatively, you could allow billionaires to donate some of their billions, untaxed, into non-profits which they control and which have humanity-benefiting goals like space colonisation or clean energy or medical programs.

There could be problems, however, with these non-profits hoarding vast amounts of resources long after the billionaire dies, at which point a wealth tax on the non-profit's unused assets might make sense.

To state it more accurately, a wealth tax will lower the odds that elon musk will colonize mars. even with his wealth... i think it's safe to say the odds are agains musk colonizing mars.

he doesn't pay income tax cuz he usually have income, no salary. he just has stock, and he lives off debt against the stock. he will be forced to sell stock to pay a wealth tax. he will have less control over his companies.

It's true, it's possible a nation-state could colonize mars. But there is a problem for the US.

Presidents come to office, scrap the previous adminstration's space goals, create their own new goals and then their's are scrapped by the next admin before they come to fruition. It takes more than 8 years (the max a president can serve) to really follow through on an ambitious vision for space.

Billionaires can stick with it longer.

The STS and ISS programs both lasted decades. ISS is still flying. It's shown to be possible to have generation-length projects.

Yeh, that true. It's just hard to create a sustainable program. STS was retired. ISS will be probably be retired in 2025.

George HW Bush wanted to go Mars then scrapped it when he got the price tag. In 04, George W Bush wanted to go to the moon by 2020. Obama scrapped the moon 2020 plan and planned to go to Mars by 2030. Trump is sending them back to the moon then Mars.

read "the case for mars" to get the story on the dysfunction at nasa and the presidents changing every 8 years. It's from the 90s and talks about how bush wanted to go to mars but the space station won out for the funding.