I wanted to see Jeff Bezos blow himself up today. I was cheering for catastrophe.
Nothing against Jeff personally - I don't know him, personally - but I find this post-pandemic spectacle of billionaires taking ego trips to "the edge of space" or to "the lower reaches of space" annoying.
What did today's launch cost? How many billions, including the cost of all the R&D and the years of previous missions? For what? A five-minute thrill ride up into the sky and then immediately back again?
The tv people kept talking about "space tourism," but that trip wasn't "tourism" (neither was Branson's, and Musk's isn't likely to be, either). It was a multi-million dollar amusement park ride, an adrenaline rush for the very, very wealthy.
"Tourism" would be if you stayed up there at least overnight, better yet, a week. If you loaded me into a cannon and fired me over Paris for 120 seconds, that's not "French tourism." Blasting off into space and immediately falling back into reentry isn't "space tourism."
For it to be "Space tourism," they need to reach orbit, dock with the International Space Station, and have the guests spend some nights on board. It's achievable, America, Russia, and China have all done it. Why can't Amazon?
The ethical questions are obvious - if Jeff Bezos and Amazon actually paid taxes, would he still have been able to afford today's ego trip? And are there better uses for that money - cancer research, pandemic relief, and world hunger all come to mind - than some billionaire's "space" shot?
I was hoping the ship would blow up, not to kill Jeff Bezos, but to put an end to this on-going spectacle of the tycoons' space race.
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