The debauchery of this escapade is most highlighted by the mysterious bidder for the extra ticket. An anonymous bidder had paid US$28 million to receive the honour of boarding the ship, but cancelled last-minute due to  “scheduling issues.” To be able to casually toss US$28 million away showcases the dissonance between the pampered billionaire class and the workers who toil everyday. They create the wealth for the multinational corporations, yet they are continually abused and reap none of the benefits. Amazon exploits  workers and engages in non-consumer friendly practices, and is now looking to exploit optimistic spacefarers as well. Amazon has been notorious for coercing their workers into urinating in bottles to meet productivity quotas, having workers work over 12 hours a day, wage theft, busting unions, and astroturfing on Twitter – that is, setting up corporate accounts masquerading as employees to spread anti-union propaganda. While this space race made headlines, it was simply a reenactment that cannot compare to the technological advancements of the real space race 60 years ago. A reenactment that can confront the original would be the wealth inequality created during the pandemic. During the pandemic, over 650 billionaires had their net worths increase by over US$1 trillion. Pre-pandemic,  income inequality in the United States had already surpassed the times of slavery, and the increase in wealth for those profiting off the pandemic serves to exacerbate this issue. 

This Western hyperfixation on billionaires showboating into the atmosphere creates a sharp dichotomy with the development of high speed rails (HSRs) for transportation in Asia. Most notably, a 600 kilometre per hour maglev debuted in Qingdao, China, on July 20, the same day Bezos was making his trip. The maglev is a train that uses electromagnetic force to levitate contactless above a rail, and is capable of traversing 1,225 kilometres from Beijing to Shanghai in around 2.5 hours, a distance comparable to twice the distance between Montreal and Toronto. China is not the pioneer of such technologies – in 2015, Japan developed the L0 Series which had the capability to reach 600 kilometres per hour, though it was not available for commercial use. 

HSRs have long been an accessible, efficient method of long-distance transportation capable of reducing carbon emissions, and Canada is the only G7 country yet to implement them. The implementation of an HSR is a worthwhile discussion, despite the contention on whether or not it would be a viable or profitable investment for Canada. Even though the development may not be profitable, public infrastructure should be developed with the expectation of taking a loss, as long as it is beneficial to the public and makes transportation more accessible to everyday people. The presence of high-speed rail systems in other nations shows that Canada could develop something similar to build up our modern passenger rail service, increasing our ease of transport as well as being a step forward that Canada could take to reduce carbon emissions.

Most of the rockets produced during the billionaire space race expelled emissions into the atmosphere, by virtue of needing a propellant. Though sources have stated that the New Shepard did not produce carbon emissions, it’s also important to note that carbon emissions do come from its research and production process. The passenger capacity has been limited to only a few people, yet gases are still directly emitted into the upper atmosphere.

Further limitations include accessibility issues; spacefarers have historically required physical training, so there will be individuals who would be unable to handle the speeds of spaceflight. Even if this form of transportation is faster than current technologies, the previous caveats outweigh this hypothetical benefit.

An interesting outlook is provided by the development of these transportation technologies. In Asia, transportation was developed by the people for the people, applicable to everyday scenarios. In the West, this technology was developed by the people as well, the difference being that it is based on workers’ exploitation and that this technology is far from accessible to the ordinary working class – it is just flaunting wealth with subtext in the form of intangible empty words about commercializing space travel. 

There has been an increased focus on spaceflight in the media, consequently sparking pipe dreams like terraforming Mars and creating frivolous commercialized space travel. Inaction and hope for future technologies to act as a deus ex machina only serve to create complacency and distract from how our planet is quite literally burning up. Wildfires and record-breaking heatwaves are devastating Western Canada and the rest of the world, and this is only the harbinger of what’s to come. These pipe dreams are quite easy to drift into in the face of dire events, but it is also important to think critically, as these fantasies are illogical and antithetical to the solution of these problems – if technology could be utilized to terraform Mars to a habitable state, it should also be applicable to Earth. Our focus for research and development should be on the planet humankind is currently inhabiting, not trying to start a colony based around indentured servitude on Mars. A target for this focus, where the technology is attainable and where other countries have already adopted, is public transport, which will incidentally address pressing climate change and wealth inequality issues.

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There have been several occasions where AI has reinforced cultural prejudices, such as the classic “man is to computer programmer as woman is to homemaker.” The foundation of AI relies on machine learning and neural networks, and draws connections between the data it is fed. Problems arise when biases are present in the data fed to the neural networks, whether intentional or unintentional, as properly functional AI will retain the biases within the data from which it learned. AI is a very powerful tool, but it still has limitations if not used correctly. If it is given garbage, like incorrect information or biased data, then it will output garbage drawn from that data. A viral example from 2016 is Tay, the Microsoft chatbot that was meant to mimic the Tweeting habits of a teenage girl. Human engagement was used as the main source of the bot’s machine learning, and it took less than 24 hours for it to start spewing slurs and racist conspiracy theories. These issues highlight the importance of identifying bias in and de-biasing AI, as well as the issues that surround using unfiltered public interactions to aggregate data, which Apple clearly did not take into consideration. 

However, Apple’s mistake exhibits not only the limitations of AI, but another important issue pertaining to anti-Asian racism – the fetishization and objectification of Asian people. The word “Asian” being censored was no coincidence; it is reflective of browsing habits and the composition of online content. It is no secret that Asian women are treated as a post-colonial conquest by white men, prized for their neotenous features and perceived stereotypes of “submissiveness.” These stereotypes also translate to the LGBT+ Asian community, where femininity is a universal stereotype that Asians of all genders face: gay Asian men are portrayed as submissive and asexual, and Asian lesbians face similar stereotypes. The fetishization of Asians is so prominent that the word “Asian” became an automatically banned keyword, despite it being a qualifier for over half the world’s population. It is not just Apple’s services that reveal this issue; Googling “Asian” appended with any other popular social media brings up pages that gained popularity from exploiting Asian women.

Fetishization is problematic for the obvious reason that it leads to objectification, misogyny, and prejudice against other marginalized genders, and there are tangible manifestations of these problems. The saturation of Asian sexual content muffles real spaces and accounts for serious, diasporic discussion which can promote activism within communities as well as celebrate Asian culture. Additionally, Asian women experience violence from offenders outside their race at such overwhelming rates, that they are the only group of women who are more likely to face violence from offenders outside their race, a symptom of their rampant objectification and negative stereotypes. 

Women hold up half the sky, and while Apple made a mistake that they continue to ignore, they also presented a learning opportunity for how search trends and AI can reveal cultural and systemic prejudices that are rooted deep in our society and often not discussed. Some organizations that do report on and discuss current events pertaining to Asian diaspora are Asian Dawn and NextShark. The fetishization and dehumanization of Asian people is a serious problem, and how it is so easily uncovered with a Google search further emphasizes the gravity of this issue. 

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However, to simply say that China will be joining the Space Race with this development would be preposterous. The Space Race occured over 60 years ago, and one of the competing nations, the USSR, has dissolved since then – can there really be a definitive ending for such a competition? Space travel technology and our knowledge of space is far from perfected; there are still a lot of technologies to develop and space to discover. 

During the Space Race, the USSR was the first to accomplish many groundbreaking feats, yet America is often regarded as the winner. Some groundbreaking achievements by the USSR were the launching of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1; the first landing on the moon, Luna 2; the first animals put into space, dogs named Strelka and Belka; and the first man and woman put into space, Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova, on Vostok 1 and Vostok 6 respectively.

On July 20, 1969, America was appraised as the champion of the Space Race when they became the first to put a man on the moon. This feat is thought to be the pinnacle of America’s advancements during the Space Race, the reason they won, and the culmination of all previous space travel technologies. Though the USSR clearly accomplished a greater number of achievements first, this arbitrary milestone is the crowning achievement through our Westernized worldview. If such a view is so normalized, could a future achievement that greatly surpasses putting a man on the moon also be regarded as the culmination of all the preceding objectives, and become the new “winner” of the Space Race?

China plans on answering this rhetorical question, and there will be a focus on their aerospace capabilities in their upcoming 5-year plan. The China National Space Administration has more space missions planned out, cooperating with relevant countries and international organizations for the exploration and sampling of asteroids and Mars, as well as exploration on Jupiter.

Tianwen-1, another Chinese rocket, is currently in the midst of landing on Mars. The mission seeks to land a solar-powered rover on Mars to analyze the composition and environment of the Martian landscape, including the soil, potential water and ice formations, and the climate. Tianwen-1 is China’s first independent mission, as well as its first to carry both an orbiter and a rover. The intention for the ambitious Jupiter missions is to study the planet and its moons, Callisto and Io. Orbiters and flybys will be sent out to analyze chemical compositions and other physical properties of irregular satellites, as well as study Jupiter’s magnetic field and gravity’s effect on volcanic activity. While ambitious, if these missions are successful, they will provide great insight into the history and mechanics of Jupiter and its moons.

Considering the ongoing tension between the US and China, it is important to remember that science is a field that requires collaboration. It was through international cooperation that monumental advancements – such as the sequencing of the human genome and the quick development of COVID-19 vaccines – were made possible. China has managed to develop, innovate, and make breakthroughs despite these unprecedented times, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and political pressure from the United States. Since the pandemic’s spread, there has been an influx of anti-Asian hate crimes associated with politicians and other prominent figures freely bashing China as a means to deflect blame. Hopefully, proof of China’s competency and groundbreaking achievements can act as a catalyst for increased collaboration between the two nations, as well as the dissolution of negative stereotypes of Chinese technology and products, such as being shoddy and stolen. 

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