For this assignment, I watched one of my all-time favorite films, WALL-E. Although this universe takes place in a dystopian world, many aspects of it are scarily similar to the world we live in today. Two aspects are the rapidly expansive world of space travel and robots. Billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have further developed the idea of commercial space travel. Blue Origin, an aerospace company created by Bezos in 2000, was founded with the goal of people living and working in space. Bezos has since joined the space tourism race, where he offers short trips to space for paying customers. Jeff Bezos’ first space tourists were the crew of the New Shepard’s first human flight in 2021.
Like the movie WALL-E, Space tourism has gained significant momentum in recent years—companies such as Blue Origin, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic. The spaceship that carries hundreds of passengers in WALL-E is called Axiom. While watching the movie, I noticed a lot of similarities, such as the idea that the Earth becomes unsustainable for human life, forcing people to travel into space. These Billionaires, such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, are aware that Earth may be livable, so they are discovering ways to live in space. The idea behind these space companies, such as SpaceX, is to make it possible for humans to live on other planets. The company’s broader goal is to ensure the long-term survival of humanity.
In the movie WALL-E, the ship is run by robots. These robots are highly intelligent and are able to perform human tasks such as teaching, cutting hair, and piloting a spaceship. Like the robots in WALL-E, robots are being programmed to perform jobs previously performed by humans. There is a scene in the movie where one of the robots tries to sabotage the plan to venture back to Earth. It makes me wonder about the future of technology and if robots, like in the movie, will turn against us.