Today, another billionaire civilian touched the threshold of space when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his all-civilian crew blasted off from a launching pad in West Texas aboard the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket.
Jeff Bezos followed fellow billionaire Sir Richard Branson, who flew into the edges of space on July 12. Billionaire Elon Musk will be next in the billionaires’ space race as he launches his SpaceX project.
The all-civilian crew on the Blue Origin flight today included Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark, plus 82-year-old Wally Funk, who became the oldest astronaut to go into space, and finally 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, who became the youngest person in space.
Daemen was the first paying passenger into space when his father won a seat on the flight in an auction that ended at $28 million. Joes Daemen had a scheduling conflict and had his son, Oliver, go in his place. A scheduling conflict? You pay $28 million to go on this flight to space and suddenly there’s a scheduling conflict! Wouldn’t anyone have cleared their schedule to make that flight? What happened, “Oh, I forgot I planned to go to the store today so I can’t make the flight?”
The flight of the Blue Origin happened on the anniversary of the moon landing, which took place on this day, July 20, 1969.
Many critics of the Branson and the Bezos flights to the border of space have said that these billionaire trips are a massive waste of money and that amount of money could have been used to help so many people on Earth. While I understand that reality, I do believe that these flights by private sector business geniuses will lead to a rapid evolution of space tourism.
The government - NASA - designed space crafts for efficiency. What we have seen with Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin is the private sector designing spacecraft with the consumer/passenger in mind. Larger windows for better view replace the sliver of visuals offered the NASA astronauts on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo crafts. And that is just one example of how differently private sector business minds approach a project than the U.S. government.
It is easy to see how the private business approach to space travel is the beginning of the evolution of space tourism. Conversations include orbiting the Earth and trips to the moon. There is even a concept for an orbiting space hotel for those who want to vacation in space.
But let’s be prepared for the inevitable flaws in space travel, like you landed on the moon, but your luggage ended up on Jupiter!