‘Making Life Multiplanetary’: Re-conceiving Dwelling in Space Tourism Discourse

Space engineering companies have been competing to offer civilians the unprecedented opportunity to visit outer space. In addition to advertising picturesque spacescapes, however, ‘NewSpace’ industries strive to re-define the cosmos as a potential site for human dwelling. The present chapter investigates the idea of inhabiting the cosmic environment as shaped by space tourism discourse. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis approach, it examines the texts of the three major companies operating in the sector: SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. Specific linguistic features—including lexicon, modality and pronoun use—are taken into account in order to expose some of the main ideologies that inform their promotional material. The analysis reveals an inherent ambivalence. Though celebrated as democratising access to space and benefitting humanity as a whole, space tourism actually promotes elitism. References to the popular imagery of the ‘Golden Age’ of space exploration are used to develop a rhetoric of nostalgia, which results in the re-enactment of earlier national competitions. In the face of the current ecological crisis, the finitude of Earth’s resources appears to justify the inevitable expansion of humankind into outer space, while the latter is turned into a new context in which to replicate capitalism.