For All Mankind is a pleasant fantasy
Space may have been the final frontier, but it was also the first frontier to offer no “wealth transfer”
It’s often said that humans are natural explorers, driven by the call to adventure into the great blue yonder beyond our known world, into realms on the map where the only words marked read “here be dragons”
This is bunkum.
The sad but more historically accurate motivator of our exploration of this world is that humans are avaricious monkeys that like to steal sh*t we didn’t do any work to make.
For All Mankind is a magnificent hymn to the myth of space exploration that never comes to terms with the realities of why we didn’t go further into space. Which stops an otherwise fun show from being great, and makes it much less science fiction than wishful fantasy.
The technical term for the socio-economic driver of most human exploration is a “wealth transfer frontier”. Through history humans have always had a frontier. A line beyond which you can march, ride or sail, kill any “foreigners” you find, and steal their sh*t.
These “wealth transfer frontiers” are a capitalist wetdream. You fund some horse warriors, or viking raiders, or conquistadors and they come back with more than the cost of the mission. Sometimes MUCH more. Repeat until profits dip below costs.
Space may have been the final frontier, but it was also the first frontier to offer no “wealth transfer”. You pay trillions for a rocket to the moon, it comes back with rocks. Yes, sure, you also got teflon. But the motivation for our avaricious society to repeat that exercise quickly trends towards zero.
And, no, mining “rare earth metals” from asteroids isn’t going to drive space exploration. Rare earth metals are only rare because they are metals we don’t go looking for. There’s nothing out there in space, so far, worth the cost of hauling back to earth. Don’t like it? Well that’s capitalism for ya, baby.
For All Mankind is a nice fantasy of the noble dream of space exploration. But if we were to project a real alternate history of human exploration, it would begin with encountering a less technologically developed alien race within spitting distance whose sh*t we could steal. And the rest of the future would look much like the centuries of colonialism behind us.
But, sure, other than being a total fantasy, For All Mankind is fun science fiction.
