Billionaires in space: essential innovation or ‘costly vanity project’?

‘One very small step for mankind, one giant ego trip for Jeff Bezos’

Jeff Bezos (second left) and his Blue Origin crew after flying into space
Blue Origin’s New Shepard crew (Oliver Daemen, Jeff Bezos, Wally Funk and Mark Bezos) after flying into space on 20 July 20, 2021
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

“One very small step for mankind, one giant ego trip for Jeff Bezos.” Last week, the Amazon founder became the second billionaire in a matter of days to launch himself into the heavens, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. Virgin tycoon Richard Branson had made the first suborbital tourist flight, on 11 July; but Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket flew higher, and crossed the Kármán line, the widely recognised boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.

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