研究所、轉學考(插大)、學士後-英文題庫下載題庫

       On September 18, 2021, the privately funded spaceflight Inspiration4 splashed down safely in the Atlantic after a successful three days orbiting Earth. Amid breathless press coverage of the event, journalists struggled to find the right words--and not just because the spectacle of spaceflight often defies description. Rather, no one seemed sure of what to call the Inspiration4 crew. Onboard Inspiration4 were four people, none of whom are a professional astronaut in the traditional sense. Whether they're called "amateur astronauts," "civilian crew," "space tourists" or just plain old "astronauts," though, it seemed like everyone agreed on the takeaway message of Inspiration4: the fact that these four individuals had left Earth on a privately funded flight meant that a new era had begun, one in which "anyone" could go to space. But is that really what the flight of Inspiration4 means? 

       The recent rash of billionaire-funded launches has raised the idea that spaceflights that are funded and crewed privately are making space more "accessible." In the case of Inspiration4 and other recent private spaceflights, it is true that they are providing access to space in the most literal sense of "access": they have ferried people who are not part of any state astronaut corps to space. But for most people, the word "accessible" doesn't just mean being able to go somewhere； something being "accessible" suggests that it has become attainable to people for whom it might not have been otherwise, specifically by breaking barriers to their participation.

       Looking at the billionaire-funded civilian flights thus far--not just Inspiration4 but also the recent flights of Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson-one notes that the crews have been drawn largely from a demographic that faces few barriers: wealthy, able-bodied, cisgender white men. As for the civilian astronauts who aren't billionaires, they tend to be people who are eminently qualified to go to space already. For example, Sian Proctor, the accomplished geoscientist and educator who piloted the Inspiration4 mission, was previously a finalist for NASA's astronaut corps. Wally Funk, who finally reached space at the age of 82 alongside Bezos, had excelled at the battery of tests administered to astronaut candidates during the Mercury program in the 1960s. At the time, however, astronauts were also required to have been military test pilots, which effectively barred women from the job. Even Chris Sembroski, who received his seat on Inspiration4 as a gift from an unnamed friend who had originally won it in Inspiration4's charity raffle for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, would have an advantage in becoming an astronaut through the traditional route: he served in the U.S. Air Force and graduated with a degree in professional aeronautics from Embry-Riddle University after leaving active-duty military service. Of the Inspiration4 crew, only Hayley Arceneaux, the 29-year-old physicians' assistant and cancer survivor who flew as the mission's medical officer, would not have qualified under NASA's current requirements because of her prosthesis.

       The narrative that billionaire-funded spaceflight is making space more accessible is not true beyond these specific, individual cases, however. If one argues that state-run astronaut selection processes are gatekeeping access to space, then billionaires selecting crews (including themselves) only substitutes an even less transparent arbiter of access in place of a national space agency. In a larger sense, today's billionaires not only inherited but continue to actively create a world rife with inequity---including barriers of racism, sexism, and ableism that have long barred people like Funk, Proctor, and Arceneaux from the astronaut corps. A world with billionaires in it- or orbiting it--is not an equitable one by definition.

       For space to become more accessible in a meaningful sense, we must embrace a broader definition of who can become an astronaut-without requiring that access to space be mediated by people with extreme privilege. There are glimmers of hope: in the past year, the European Space Agency (ESA) took a step in that direction by issuing an open call for people with disabilities to participate in the Parastronaut Feasibility Project, an effort to study the potential inclusion of people with physical disabilities in astronaut selection. ESA's move is an incremental one, but it sets an important precedent for creating a more capacious future vision of who can go to space–one that certainly pushes the bar for what people can demand of public space agencies such as NASA, which, unlike private companies, answer to the public. But ultimately, making progress toward an astronaut corps that looks more like humanity as a whole isn't just about picking outstanding individuals and making sure those individuals can have an amazing experience. As my fellow astronomer Chanda Prescod-Weinstein has argued, the barriers to people's full participation in space (from Earth or above it) are fundamentally a resource distribution problem. As she writes, "philanthropy isn't the solution to inequality, and we don't actually face a choice between basic human needs and exciting journeys into the universe." [excerpt taken and adapted from Don't Count on Billionaires to Get Humanity into Space by Lucianne Walkowicz, Scientific American]