Why Christians shouldn’t be cheering the race to Mars

SpaceX will float on the New York Stock Exchange tomorrow, and investors are already speaking of it in superlatives.

Commentators are hailing it as the largest stock‑market début in history, a corporate endeavour of such scale that it seems to demand its own mythology. Only in 2026 could a rocket company be treated with the breathlessness usually reserved for a messianic movement.

For Christians, the excitement around rising share prices invites a different kind of attention. I believe our calling is not to cheer on the race to colonise Mars, but to reckon with the environmental and social crises unfolding on the ground beneath our feet.

That’s because in this imagined future shaped by SpaceX, fortune favours the wealthy. The dream of colonising Mars is, in truth, a luxury project for the rich, while the real moral work lies here on earth in the living conditions of the poor.

We do not draw nearer to God by getting physically closer to Mars. We draw nearer by turning towards one another towards the poor, the overlooked, the oppressed. By recovering a reverence for the natural world that sustains us.

Michio Kaku, the physicist, likes to remind audiences that some readers of scripture have long pointed to Ezekiel’s vision of “wheels within wheels” as an early attempt to describe strange lights in the sky. Yet in the life and ministry of Jesus, the focus is unmistakably earthbound. His heart was for the poor and dispossessed, especially those pushed to the margins. His vision of the Kingdom of God is one in which the meek inherit the earth, not plutocrats or billionaires. For Christians, the mission is not Mars; it is meeting God in Jesus Christ and stewarding this world responsibly as God’s creation.

Christians are invited to look not to the stars but to the soil to the places where life is fragile, threatened, and in need of renewal

1 Timothy reminds us that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (6:10) a warning that feels uncomfortably relevant in an age when markets are treated as oracles. If that is true, then Christians should be at the vanguard of prophetic action in the face of the cost‑of‑living crisis and the accelerating climate emergency. At Pentecost this year, members of Christian Climate Action engaged in peaceful protest, speaking truth to power and reminding the Church of England that its ecological commitments must be more than aspirations. They must become actions, targets, and habits of institutional repentance.

We should perhaps have the humility to learn from those in the developing world, where many live more faithfully to the Christian call to care for our common home than those of us who claim to profess it. Look, for example, at India where the Waste to Wealth Mission, part of the wider Swachh Bharat initiative, is transforming millions of tonnes of waste into tableware, building materials, and even fashion items such as trainers. This is a creative act of stewardship rooted in communal responsibility rather than technological escape. 

As SpaceX prepares for its historic market début, Christians are invited to look not to the stars but to the soil to the places where life is fragile, threatened, and in need of renewal. The Gospel does not call us to escape the world but to love it into wholeness. If the meek are to inherit the earth, then our task is clear: to resist the seduction of technological transcendence and to recommit ourselves to the patient, costly work of tending God’s creation and honouring the people who dwell within it.