Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin officially opened the era of space travel. Although Musk made the first revelations to the public on space tourism, his two billionaires “colleagues” took action first. The prices to access this space travels are “stellar” sort of speak. However, reservations for tickets run out fast till the first 6 months of 2022. Meanwhile criticism and ethical objections on a potential waste of resources which could help humanity in other ways increase. We will now try to provide you with a bigger picture of what is going on. As always sit back and enjoy the read.
The price list
You want to go out for a ride in space, well prepare yourself to shell out millions! You got that right, millions. 28 million dollars was the auction price for the first flight in space on Bezos’ Blue Origin. The price included having the first ride with Bezos himself on the first launch on July 20th this year. The Bezos airline also announced a precise standard price for the next flights. He then added that starting from 2022 the program will be commercially operational.
2022 will also see the start of commercial operations of Virgin Galactic which plans, after the success of the flight with Branson himself as frontman, to make about 400 flights a year. Don’t worry though, Branson thought a little more about mere mortals. The Virgin Galactic ticket, in fact, “only” costs $ 250,000 and has already received more than 600 reservations, although we have to say that the company has announced that the price of flights will increase in the future. Elon Musk, on the other hand, seems to raise expectations and go a little further. For tens of millions of dollars he offers a tour of a few days on his Falcon9 rocket.
A legitimate question: why?
Public opinion finds itself halfway between admiration and criticism of the billionaires’ race in space. The reasons, whether good or bad, have their logic. Leaving aside the affordability issues for now, the most serious criticisms are of ethical and environmental nature. For years, politics has pointed out the enormous economic differences between countries and social classes. Not to mention the repercussions of entire productive sectors on the environment. Therefore, the public wonders if all the energies put into space travels cannot serve other purposes here on earth.
Hollywood has also mobilized with various social posts critical of space cowboys. Many important personalities have spoken out their concern and opinions. To name a few, famous director Rob Reiner who urges billionaires to clean up our planet. The political exponents of the American Democratic Party who increases the dose by urging billionaires to pay taxes “on Earth”. The response to these criticisms is equally sensible and thought through .When interview by a reporter Jeff Bezos hinted that the need to “conquer space” is linked to the need to move polluting industries and production processes out of our planet. Profits from these “rich individuals” could fund research to continue space exploration without depending too much on public investments.
Even Elon Musk, while not personally going to space, has openly stated on several occasions his reasons for colonizing space. For him conquering space as well as Mars represents stimulating objectives that will guarantee the survival of the human race in the future as we must not take too much for granted the “good health” of the Earth in a long-term scenario.
In the end, we can say that we can agree or not with space tourism, as it is still not yet clear whether it will have a positive impact on the history of humanity, but for now, it cannot be denied that we are making history.
