Billionaire boys club reaches for the stars

While the world navigates an ongoing global health crisis, increasingly severe climate disasters and human rights catastrophes, a few of the world’s richest people took a joyride to space. Why? Because they could. Where does that leave the rest of us?

Words: Will York

The billionaire space race had three strong contenders in Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, but only one could claim the glory of being first to reach the stars. And despite hopes of offering space flights to everyday folk, space travel will likely remain a billionaire’s pastime with no commercial viability in sight.

On July 11 this year, Virgin boss Sir Richard pipped the race favourite, Amazon’s Bezos, by launching himself into space on his Virgin Galactic spacecraft VSS Unity. By reaching 86 kilometres above Earth, 14 away from the von Karman line indicating from the von Karman line indicating the edge of space, he became the first billionaire founder of a space company to make it to the stars.

Sir Richard took in the truly inspiring moment while looking down at Earth having his own Neil Armstrong moment: “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.”

Back in May, Bezos – the billionaire founder of Amazon and space company Blue Origin – announced he would be onboard his company’s first human space flight. The date was set for July 20, intentionally the same day as the Apollo 11 moon landing’s 52nd anniversary.

Both billionaires set out their intention to fly into space in the early 2000s – Bezos in 2000 and Branson in 2004 – yet only in the past few months have their boyhood dreams been realised. Bezos’s announcement set the race into overdrive, and Branson rushed his company to make the giant leap for himself.

IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE – OR IS IT?

Now that the world has realised flights to space are no longer reserved exclusively for astronauts, the next race will be how to make them commercially viable. One ticket for a one-hour trip on Virgin Galactic’s space plane costs $250,000 – and, according to one Australian academic, the eye-watering price tag will likely never budge.

Associate Professor Michael Brown, from the Monash University School of Physics and Astronomy, claims the cost of fuel is behind the unaffordable price tag, comparing the fuel and carbon emissions for a few minutes in space to the same ballpark as an entire long-haul flight.

"That huge amount of fuel per person means that orbital space will remain out of reach to the average household. Whether the technical hurdles can be overcome so shorter suborbital flights are within reach remains to be seen,” he says.

MUSK FOCUSES ON THE ‘LONG GAME’

Meanwhile, Tesla founder Elon Musk's SpaceX program has shown promising signs, according to Professor Brown.

"The most obvious development is SpaceX’s very large rockets, which they’ve ambitiously claimed will be used for crewed spaceflight across the Solar System… but how and when that transpires into commercial space travel remains to be seen.”

Just like at the turn of the last century, when motor cars became a status symbol for the elite, it now seems spaceships have become the latest toy billionaires can show off. In a truly neo-liberal effort, Branson, Bezos and Musk have outdone government space programs. But the question remains as to whether their intentions are truly for the advancement of human society.

Branson and Bezos plan to sell tickets on their flights, turning a profit and creating the space-tourism industry. Meanwhile Musk is on a mission to colonise a pollution-free Mars. Who will get to join him on Earth’s new colony?

Regardless, for now space flights aren’t exactly a ‘watch this space’ for everyday people, who will have to remain staring up at the stars.