If humans managed to amass the money and technology to create a space settlement, would it be used as a  for all or simply a hangout for the bourgeoisie? That’s the question Dave Brody, science and technology writer for Space.com, tries to answer in his rebuttal against the film “Elysium,” which foresees what could be mankind’s greatest technological achievement as only exploitation and segregation.

“I tend to think a lot about the topic of wealth discrepancy,” said Neill Blomkamp, the film’s writer and director, in a statement. “I think the further we go down the path that we are on, the more the world will represent the one in ‘Elysium’… In Mexico City, in Johannesburg, in Rio, you have pockets of great wealth, gated communities, amidst a sea of poverty. And I think that’s where the cities of the U.S. are going to end up, too.”

The film’s stage is Elysium, a floating paradise for a half-million of the world’s wealthiest people. At 32 miles across and almost two miles wide, Elysium has it all: recycled atmosphere, a water ballast to create simulated gravity, and open space so ships can come and go freely.

The concept for Elysium is nothing new. In the 1920s was Herman Potocnika and Wernher von Braun’s proposed donut-shaped space stations, which gave their residents the effects of gravity by centripetal acceleration. Decades later during the summer of 1975, Stanford University held the seminal space colony design project, remembered by space enthusiasts today as a “Stanford Torus.”

These and other similar scientific daydreams became the perfect fodder for film and television. In 1962, “Planet Patrol’s” Galasphere 347 was a seemingly inflatable sky-wheel, and the 1968 “2001: A Space Odyssey” at least offered conceptual improvement with a larger-capacity paired ring. As time moved on, the films’ space crafts got closer to the dream envisioned by those who created the “Stanford Torus.” Finally came the film “Elysium,” offering a close Stanford Torus replica and giving space enthusiasts like Brody a bittersweet feeling.

“Far from exclusive playgrounds for the mega-wealthy, such space colonies were originally conceived as egalitarian engines for wealth distribution,” Brody says. While Blomkamp expects exploitation and class discrimination in a space habitat, Brody sees only opportunity and economic growth. With resources so abundant in space, there would be no need to further exploit Earth. “We imagined self-sustaining islands built, as much as possible, with materials and energy NOT raped from Earth, but from the unused bounty of the moon, asteroids and the all-powerful sun.”