Who’s paying the price for billionaires to go to space?
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BEARDIE’S ON THE MOON
So, the exciting news is that Richard Branson’s SpaceShipTwo won the which-billionaire-can-first-get-into-space competition, beating Jeff Bezos’ New Shepard by a whisker. If Bezos is upset about it – which some slightly undignified twitter jibing suggested he might be – there is presumably consolation to be gained from glimpsing at his net worth, which is currently increasing by twice Branson’s entire stock of wealth, every week.
- “I was once a child with a dream looking up to the stars. Now I'm an adult in a spaceship looking down to our beautiful Earth. To the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, just imagine what you can do,” tweeted Branson, alongside a video of himself in his little space plane, earbud floating alongside his beard.
Now, I have three thoughts about this, and that’s leaving aside the question of whether Branson even got to space at all, because I don’t care.
Firstly, it’s pretty much irrelevant for anyone else to “just imagine” what they can do in the context of Branson’s flight, because the only reason he can do it is because he’s loaded. He didn’t cobble together a spaceship out of wire, lumber and genius like some astronautical Wright Brother, but out of years of expensive construction only accessible to someone who’s already insanely rich, and all built on decades of intense research.