The Amazon founder may not be first to blast off but he has far more financial firepower. He’s even winning the public relations battle.
Within the next fortnight two of the Earth’s wealthiest individuals will attempt to fly into space. Richard Branson’s flight on Sunday aboard a Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. spaceship will be followed by Jeff Bezos’s rocket trip with Blue Origin LLC on July 20. In a summer not lacking in awe-inspiring spectator sports, this rivalry remains pretty unique. And it’s not without risk. It’s taken a couple of decades for both men to realize their ambition of going into space. Blue Origin was founded in 2000 and Virgin Galactic four years later. The critics will harp that they could have devoted their time and money toward more worthy terrestrial endeavors (and paying more tax). Their jostling to be first smacks of billionaire bravado. Yet the spectacle is unmissable. If seeing Earth’s majestic curvature inspires better care of this planet, then I’m all for rich folks taking a joyride into space. (At around $250,000 a ticket to fly with Virgin Galactic, this remains a rich person’s pastime.) And if Branson and Bezos’s space odyssey inspires even a handful of kids to attempt hard things, so much the better. I just hope nobody feels ill: Branson is planning to live stream his trip. While there’s symmetry in billionaires blasting off within days of each other, Branson and Bezos have followed quite different technical paths and they’ve done so with markedly different budgets.
