Elon Musk is the only person who can actually reveal why Elon Musk hasn't followed in the footsteps of his fellow billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos and taken a quick trip to space. But The Atlantic's Marina Koren posited one theory — and it's a pretty simple one.
Koren spoke with Garrett Reisman, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California and retired NASA astronaut who also serves as a senior adviser to Musk's SpaceX. At one point, while Reisman was working on the company's plan to transport NASA astronauts, he said met with Musk to discuss crewed space flights, and suggested that they should run a test flight with a NASA astronaut and an astronaut employed by SpaceX. Having a "company astronaut" could energize the workforce, Reisman thought, but Musk reportedly simply looked at him and said: "Why would anyone want to go to low-Earth orbit."
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