Index

Useless Goes to Space

Bezos and Branson going to near-orbit was a space-program first in exactly one way - it was the first time humans have sent “useless” to space. At least Branson was honest about it - there is nothing more useless than a tourist, whether on earth or in space.

The whole business of tourism is in fact taking people who are totally unprepared to places they have no business going for no reason other than they have money to spend on going. That was both Bezos and Branson in a nutshell. They both made Branson’s point for him - they proved it is possible for useless to be sent to space. NASA never bothered because they knew that after long enough in space, everything becomes useless anyway, and didn’t want to pay to ship stuff they weren’t going to use.

Now we have to wonder how long it will be before Branson builds a hotel and brothel in orbit. I’ll even make the first joke: “Mile high club? That’s nothing…” Of course he will have to rename Virgin Galactic, at least on the return trip. What happens in orbit stays in orbit? Ok, so he can skip renaming the company. I am sure that Branson will have no hesitation about following in the steps of a certain Trump grandfather.

And Bezos? He finally got to look down on all of his subjects. He is claiming to want space tourism business, although he says he wants it for longer-term goals. From the point of view of us peasants, the whole thing looks like dueling egos and little else, and unlike the NASA space missions, no one is talking about Tang or teflon as benefits this time. Nobody would believe them if they did.

While NASA was started so the government could hide behind it while building nuclear missiles, let us hope that Bezos, Branson, and (let’s not forget) Musk have more civilian-friendly futures in mind than the cynical government sorts that created NASA as a public relations duck blind. The problem is that we will never know until the bird shot clips our tail feathers.