Rich Dad, Space Dad

Commercial space travels have slowed down in the past two years, but men who want to escape from earthly responsibilities, have not. The dads who abandon their children without any support and live like hermits in the desert are an increasing number. And we wonder why women don't want to form families and find "having a boyfriend embarrassing".

The Planet of Excuses

Who is worse, a rich dad who doesn't pay child support even if he can and spends everything on his egoistic self?

Or a poor dad who is not able to provide for his kids because of his low standards?

I propose putting all those millions of men on a separate planet where their excuses will be met with each other's understanding. If those beings don't understand the cost of living on Earth and Capitalism while procreating, they deserve exile to their outer world. Life on Earth is expensive for everyone, so it is x times more expensive when you have children. The arithmetic of sacrifice is clear.
Then, why even think of a family if you are not willing to pay your share?

Family is family until the children are self-sufficient. Right now, economic abuse is equivalent to sending your babies on the streets, without any food or education provided. That's a direct effect, that those rich and poor dads don't seem to acknowledge.

Orbiting the Idea of Himself

The old man we met in this story, let’s call him Commander P., hasn’t paid child support in 145 Earth days. He keeps count. On this planet of his own making, time stretches in strange ways. “The mother is so bad therefore I will punish our kids”, he mutters.

His oxygen tanks are filled with grievances. Each legal motion is a thruster burn, a way to stay in orbit, never descending, never touching down in the atmosphere of ordinary responsibility.
You will recognize him by his black-out sunglasses that are always on. Is it shame or just fear of light?

The resources he once sent back to Mother Earth, the funds meant for shoes, school lunches, the warmth of stability, have been rerouted to the war effort: lawyers, filings, endless transmissions through the family court’s static-filled channels. A space where kids are not even present and are almost anonymous.

He has become a man who fuels his spacecraft with resentment. And like all engines that run on bitterness, it burns fast and leaves only smoke.

The Planet of Perpetual Litigation

There is a peculiar microeconomy on this planet. Here, time and money are traded not for survival, but for vindication. The richer the grievance, the poorer the home world becomes.

Back on Earth, the data tells a grim story: according to the U.S. Census Bureau, roughly one in three custodial parents receive none of the child support owed to them. More than $10 billion in unpaid support drifts like space debris through the bureaucratic void.

But in the mind of the man in exile, this isn’t absence. It’s a mission. “I’m fighting for fairness,” he says. “For my rights.” And yet, no one seems to ask about the children’s rights, those small beings waiting on the blue planet below, counting down the days until transmission resumes.

Weaponized Satellites

Even though the number of real satellites sent into orbit has decreased in the last years, in this strange constellation of family courts and grievances, the children are often little visible satellites - bodies pulled between two opposing forces. One parent’s orbit of care, another’s orbit of control.

In countless testimonies, experts have noted how children are used as weapons -withheld, manipulated, reprogrammed to transmit the bitterness of one planet to another. These are not isolated meteors; they form a system, an entire galaxy of unresolved wars.

The family court becomes the command center — screens flickering, judges like ground control, endlessly recalculating trajectories of custody and support. And still, some fathers cannot land. They hover in the upper atmosphere of ego, blind to the wasteland below.

The Space Between Apologies

The hermit in the desert does not think himself cruel. He sees his exile as noble - the price of resistance. He is building, in his mind, a monument of righteousness. But the children, back on Earth, don’t see monuments. They see empty chairs. Missed birthdays. Unanswered messages.

They grow up learning that love, like gravity, can fail. That a father’s presence is not a given but a negotiation - sometimes deferred indefinitely.

Every dollar withheld is a lost connection. Every motion filed is a rerouted signal. He spends not only his income but his imagination on the idea that fighting is fatherhood. Meanwhile, the transmission of tenderness, the one thing only he can send, fades into static.

Descent and Re-entry

Sometimes, though rarely, a father returns to Earth. It begins with a flicker. A call answered, a message read, a small deposit made. The ship begins to slow. He feels again the pull of the planet that made him: his children’s laughter, their small voices calling across the cosmic silence.

It’s never too late to re-enter orbit. But re-entry burns. Pride burns. Old narratives incinerate on contact with the atmosphere. The only way back is to let the fire clean you, to understand that responsibility is not gravity’s chain, but its gift.

The child seeing his dad how he treats Mother Earth is the primary example for how he is going to treat others.

Dune for kids

Men who call primary parents "hungry for money" are the main issue. It's their children who are hungry without money. Narratives so ignorant are not only harmful to the children who depend on them, but also to the whole society. Unsupported and not taken care of babies become less useful to society and are just unfulfilled potential by their "unproviding" fathers.

That's why we should all have the best interest that both parents are doing their maximum for the future generations, on Earth.