Bigger, Longer and with Vastly More Thrust: So Ends the Great Billionaire Space Race of 2021
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
The Great Billionaire Space Race/Penis Measuring Contest of Summer 2021 came to an end on Saturday just days before the season itself does. And we can finally crown a winner or, to be more precise, winners.
Richard Branson penetrated space first on July 11 aboard Virgin Galactic’s sexy suborbital SpaceShipTwo vehicle. The British ex-pat changed his plans — he was supposed to be on a later flight test — in order to beat rival billionaire Jeff Bezos to space by nine days. Bezos flew to space aboard Blue Origin’s phallic shape suborbital New Shepard spacecraft on July 20.
If coming in second to Branson was a disappointment, Bezos could take solice in the fact that his humungous net worth of $200.6 billion is 44.6 times larger than Branson’s $4.5 billion. Ah, the rivalries of the 1 percent.
And being first is not always best. It turns out that size and length does matter in space as much as in every aspects of life. Both Bezos and Branson, for all their wealth and their fame, came up short in both categories.
While Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic sent four people into suborbital space to float around for three minutes, Elon Musk’s SpaceX sent the four people into orbit for three days. They flew aboard a rocket that was bigger, longer and vastly more powerful in thrust than the rockets that launched Bezos and Branson on flights that required only three percent of the energy needed to reach orbit.
Musk didn’t fly himself; instead, he sent a surrogate, Jared Isaacman, the one billionaire to go to space this summer who nobody had ever heard of. Isaacman was smart enough not to invite a trio of his wealth friends to join him. If he had, the flight would have looked like the newest indulgence of the 1 percent in a world of growing wealth inequality.
Instead, he wrapped the flight in a blanket of populism and charity. He invited along a trio of averagenauts: Hayley Arceaneaux, a 29-year old childhood cancer survivor who works with cancer patients at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; Sian Proctor, an educator fulfilling her lifelong dream to fly to space; and Christopher Sembroski, an aerospace employee whose friend won the seat in a lottery but decided not to go. People like you and me, SpaceX commentators repeated over and over again during the pre-flight webcast.
The goal of the mission was to raise $200 million for St. Jude to fund cancer research. Isaacman started things off with a $100 million donation; the mission had raised an additional $60 million by the time the Crew Dragon splashed down off the coast of Florida on Saturday night. Musk quickly put the fund-raising campaign over the top by announcing a $50 million donation. Mission accomplished, in more ways than one.
So, we can now declare the Great Billionaire Space Race of 2021 over with Musk and Isaacman the clear winners. But, Branson and Bezos should not fret. Now that commercial human spaceflight is open, there will be plenty of work for everyone.
44 responses to “Bigger, Longer and with Vastly More Thrust: So Ends the Great Billionaire Space Race of 2021”
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That was a fun take on the restart of space tourism, through the prism of the 1%.
The 1% that throughout the history of the world have driven human progress and increased the standard of living so folks have both the time and ability to complain about them on technology that would have been seen as magic by our great grandparents. Remember it was only a mere forty years ago that the heavily regulated phone system consisted of phones wired to the wall and the government controlled Internet was limited to institutions, mostly universities, doing research for the federal government.
If you dislike those in the 1% then don’t use the services that made them billionaires, the low cost airlines, PayPal and Amazon.
Yes, they have billions of dollars now, but as history shows most of it will end up being donated to charities or their kids will create thousands of jobs by spending it foolishly.
ok I might be slow but really I am not seeing the connection between the 1 percent that started passenger aviation and the 1 percent here
as best I can see it the 1 percent that is going to space NOW is going there because they have a lot of money and time on their hand…but what they are doing when they get there is simply indulging their pocket book. there was nothing on this flight that in itself did anything of value for the money paid.
its going into space and saying “gee I am in space” and “look at me”
thats it
aviation from the start of passenger travel was far more then people who went into flight and then said “look at me I am flying” . it was all about going from X to Y faster then you could in any other venue…and then doing something at Y that was profitable or enjoyable…OK “I got there by plane” was some cool pictures…but then the folks went on to what they were doing
if they didnt have sex on the flight. I suspect that the flight consisted of four phrases 1) excitement on launch, 2) being ill, 3) looking out the window and 4) being bored but trying not to be bored
a cruise would be exactly the same way if you didnt have all the entertainment to go to
I am so far not seeing the connection here.
Direct analogies are always a difficult thing because the economic environments are different since as you point out there are no destinations for space travelers yet. But the connection is that instead of a single NASA designed path to space there were multiple paths funded by the desire of these billionaires to go into space.
That has moved flight into space from the government only category, as was the case with military aviation in World War I and the early mail service (1918-1925) to the stunt/PR aviation category of the late teens and 1920’s, which is what these flights basically are. In doing so there will be a stream of iterative improvements in the technology which will eventually mature, as it did with the emergence of passenger airlines in the 1930’s.
So private human space flight today is about where aviation was in the teens but without World War I to force its technological development.
But what will happen is that the desire of the super wealthy to do stunts in space, as well as implementing the visions of Dr. O’Neill and Dr. Zubrin, will provide pressure and funding to move the technology forward. Starship/ Super Heavy and the New Glenn are examples.
If Virgin Galactic recognizes the limitations of air launch, and drops its fixation on that technology, it could be part of that by organizing flights on Dragon and Starship/Super Heavy. Hopefully as Sir Richard Branson reduces his stake a more strategic management leadership team will look at the numbers and take it in that direction.
But continuing, this moving the technology forward will lower the cost of payloads to the Moon, starting the process of lunar industrialization that will be key to opening up the Solar System to humanity. As I noted before it will be started by robotic systems exploring and developing lunar resources and supply lunar research stations, but will eventually include humans when their presence on site to support the robotic systems makes economic sense.
The market driven expansion of the lunar economy will also expand the population of humans on the Moon until it makes sense for a permanent population to emerge. Somewhere along the line the costs should drop to the point where lunar tourism and lunar based human sports will become profitable. This will then generate the economies of scale to drop the costs further and you start of new iterative cycle of human spaceflight, just as aviation technology reached a tipping point in the 1930’s to start the airline industry.
It will be a long road, as long as the road from Vin Fizz to Southwest Airlines’ peanut fares. But at least the journey is starting. If we are lucky the new U.S. Space Force will play a road similar to the U.S. Army Air Corps and U.S. Navy did in the 1920’s to further promote the technology and move it forward.
Tom…maybe but if so, then the scale is really quite small. and really bodes ill for those who see “lots” of people in space in say the next 20 years…a lot of people were making a big deal of 14 in space at one time…but it was astonishing temporary (we are back down to whatever is on ISS) and even for that temp moment, was quite small. the only other frontier I see that small a number in is…well right now there are more people who are on long term stays underwater in one “boat” then have been in space, what this century? and there are probably what 40 or so of those from all nations…
so its really hard to work out a “breakout” manuever
the lessons from this flight seem somewhat sad as well. there is unlikely to be point to point flying using space anytime soon, because I bet all four of these folks were very ill. imagine what the PR would be for a 30 minute trip to say Japan from Texas if all the passengers are barfing their cookies and then a few die from heart attacks on the “back flip Manuever 🙂
worse with the exception of one of them the second sentence out of their mouths, at least on prepared statements was “Its good to be home” …which may just be rhetoric (and if so it was bad) but only one really talked about it as a fantastic ride .
so far the best pessimistic me can come up with is that this has more or less proven that ordinary people can go to space, or more correctly that people who are skilled in a thing, but that thing is not flying high performance vehicles can 1) handle one in space with todays automation and 2) can handles space as well or as bad as the “professionals”
but well pessimistic me does not see this as a big boom in space ops
Yes, it will be a very long road, as the theme from Star Trek Enterprise goes. But at least the journey is starting.
BTW if you go to the Space Show and listen to my recent interview, and download the papers, you will see the alternative vision I am proposing to the visions of Dr. O’Neill and Dr. Zubrin, a parallel course to the launch systems being developed that will support it for the long haul ahead for space settlement.
I do not see that much of a future for the point to point system Elon Musk is proposing, first because the cost/benefits of the reduced flight times will not be worth the extra price, the decline in global travel and global supply lines resulting from the Pandemic and the pressure of environmentalists and climate scientists over the increase impact that may result on the upper atmosphere from such a high flight rate. Like the SST, it will be hard to close the business and environment case for it. It represents an very outdated 1950’s mindset. That said, the U.S. Space Force may experiment with it, but I suspect forward positioning of supplies and 3D printing technology will also make that case difficult to support. There is a reason that the military airlift experts pushed for aircraft capable on landing large cargo on short runways and not supersonic aircraft.
Tom. I’ll go look for it. I see three limiting factors on the number of humans in space, much less the number who live there for really long periods (another set of limits)
1. it will always be cheaper to develop and keep robots in space then it will be to keep people.
2. Robots are oddly enough far more flexible and when they die, you just send another one
3. Robots work 24 hours a day and are as far as the defined task is, error free
we could easily redo the Apollo astronauts with a Boston Dynamics robot
True, but there is also the passion humans have for going to space that will bias the decision making IF the economics work.
That said, one of the reasons that lunar industrialization will be first is because the robots operated from the Earth with only a short time delay will provide at least 99% of the workforce needed.
One interesting point about human spaceflight is the ones that have been that want to go again. The astronauts of various nations that have flown multiple missions likely would not have flown but once if they didn’t like being there and believe in it. The majority of them could have gone back to their various careers without loss of income or prestige. Likewise one of the early orbital tourists paid money to go up a second time. The naysayers on human spaceflight will have their say, and the ones that pay to go will have their way.
ok but I dont see any driver for this…the space force folks are talking robots
I’m sure the folks who started airlines took early trips on their own services too. But the people who paid the retail price, early on, were all wealthy. There’s your connection.
I dont know that its a valid one. they went somewhere for a reason…this is just going into space and coming back…not productive
You **can** admire and appreciate what they achieve while at the same time believing they are under taxed and have far too much economic, political and legal power. Too much power in any elite group’s hands is detrimental to society in the long run. You end up with oligarchy, you erode the middle class and distort the rule of law. The Framers of the Constitution understood this. They tried to balance the power and influence of different interests and groups.
Under taxed implies that there is some optimal level of taxation, something for which there is no economic evidence.
It also implies that the government is capable of making spending decisions that are better for the economy than individuals. Do you believe this has been the case in the field, space, you are expert in?
Bottom line, do you believe that the money that has been spent in Mojave, and elsewhere, by billionaires would been better spent by NASA elsewhere?
Those are strawman arguments disguised as questions. You want simple yes or no answers where you can put people in little ideological boxes. These matters are far more complex than that.
Yes, forging tax policy is very complex, far too complex for slogans like “the rich are under taxed” to have any real meaning.
You need to define your concepts, like “under taxed”, first, not just use it as a slogan. Then you have to look at how the array of “solutions” will effect the economy.
Just raising the marginal income tax rate is not going to impact much the taxes these three billionaires pay. Most of Elon Musk’s wealth is in the stock he owns in Tesla and SpaceX and so it won’t impact him much, he would just shift much of his personal spending to be corporate spending as was common in the 1950’s when the top marginal personal income tax rates were in the 90 percent range. It won’t impact Sir Richard Branson at all, he already lives and is taxed in the Bahamas, having left the UK to escape its income tax.
As for Jeff Bezos, he would just stop selling off his Amazon stock to fund Blue Origin slowing its progress further.
Really all an increased in the marginal personal tax rate will do is hurt the employees of SpaceX and Virgin Galactic when they cash out their stock options.
As for the economy as a whole you might look at how the increase in U.K. income tax impacted it in the 1950’s and 1960’s as the best and brightest in business left for Canada and the United States.
You might also look at what happened in the 1990’s when a tax was placed on luxury yachts to “tax the rich” and it destroyed the small ship building industry in the United States instead.
If a tax policy is going to be effective it must leave ideology behind and be firmly rooted in economics and human behavior. Yes, taxes should be based on the ability to pay and be progressive. They should also be based on what the funding needs of government and their effect on the economy.
Which is why questions like who’s spending decisions will benefit the economy most and if you want one entity to monopolize funding of areas like technology development and science are not rhetorical but fundamental.
Slogans like “the rich are under taxed” are easy to write, but developing a functional solution that won’t damaged the economy and harm the average worker are not easy which is why tax policy is so complicated and difficult to forage.
The SOBs of the wealthy. Standard Operating Bullshit. Or trickle down economics. To sum up:
Well, you can’t change the tax system, can’t tax the rich more it would be so unfair, it won’t matter anyway, the only people it would possibly hurt is the average worker. The rich are just too valuable to expect them to pay more.
The wonderful thing about the tax system is that the rich don’t have to leave. They have designed a tax system that largely benefits them and is complicated by design. They can stash their money and profits overseas. Most people don’t have that advantage.
Branson lives in the British Virgin Islands.
I see you missed the point of my reply completely. Slogans are fun, but you need to study the underlying science, especially complex sciences like economics and sociology, if you wish to offer practical solutions to change tax policy. I tried to outlined the basic questions if you are interested in actually discussing the topic further without political bias. Economics, including tax policy, is suppose to be a science, not a political philosophy, and is if you look at data and models without bias and leave the philosophy out.
Yes, the game is rigged in Washington, it always has been. The Founding Fathers were the 1% of their era so that should be no surprise. But there has been a number of changes since than that has moved the nation towards the justice ideals outlined in the nation’s founding. Some came as a result of conflict, but most have resulted from campaigns that sought compromises based on solid arguments that supported the slogans.
I was offering you a pathway to explore tax policy from that perspective. I am sorry you are not seeing it that way.
BTW if I was going to tax the rich I wouldn’t waste time on an income tax, that is a dead end route too easily avoided by the 1% as I illustrated. I would approach it from the consumption direction with a national sales tax of 25%. Packaged food, healthcare (humans and animals), the first $1,000 of rent and first $300,000 of real estate sold each year would be exempted. The first $30,000 of purchases would be “free” in that everyone over 18 would get a monthly check for $625 to refund their sale taxes. For those like my late brother who lived on $1100 month from Social Security that would be a huge bonus. For the 1% it would not be noticed. I would also place a 25% tariff on imports other than food and healthcare to prevent the 1% from shopping outside to avoid the tax, which would be a boom to American manufacturing. BTW China already has a 25% tariff on automobile imports which was why Tesla had to build a factory there.
A consumption tax would be beneficial to the economy as it rewards hard work and thrift. It also discourages luxury consumption which helps the environment. The 1% would stopped being “under taxed” as they would be taxed on the luxuries they buy.
It is perfect, no it isn’t, but it would ensure that those who are wealthy pay more taxes IF they choose to spend what they earn. I expect that given the nature of human behavior they will.
The British Virgin Islands, like the Bahamas, have no income or corporate taxes, and so yes it is popular with the 1%. It is what drives their economy.
Sorry for the very long post, but I felt the points covered would be lost in a shorter one. Also it would make it seem like I am anti-tax which I am not as taxes are necessary for the functions of government, but they should be structured in ways that benefit the economy.
Thanks. At least someone understood what I was saying here.
Same thing you’ve said some unknowable N times already – Rich Men Bad.
Ha! Ha ha ha ha….I’m happy to not live in a country where criticism of the rich and powerful is banned.
Through the prism of his usual cranky leftist self I think you mean.
Wish we can listen to a recording of the SpaceX post-flight phone conference yesterday. Benji Reed mentioned that SpaceX is starting to build what looks like a healthy backlog for private Crew Dragon flights.
At this point, it looks like you will have a far higher chance of actually flying if you bought a Crew Dragon ticket rather than buying a ticket with Virgin Galactic 😛
That will definitely open up orbital space to a lot more people. You can do a lot of things up there. Three minutes of floating around in zero G isn’t that much time.
I dunno about chances being better of flying on Crew Dragon. The three averagenauts on this flight were there because a billionaire paid for their seats. And the cost was probably tens of millions of dollars apiece. That’s what Axiom has said they’re paying for the three billionaires who will be flying to ISS in January.
The flight opened the door for the wealthy and corporations to fly people to orbit. There will be contests and reality shows where lucky winners who are not rich will be able to fly. But, there’s only so much they’re going to be able to do to bring down the cost of orbital flight given the technology even with reuse. Super Heavy/Starship is probably the key to that.
As for suborbital, Virgin Galactic is charging $450,000 a seat for new customers. You need to be at least a millionaire to afford that. There was a raffle for two seats that you could enter. But, to make money Virgin Galactic will focus on the high net worth individuals. Whether they will bring down the price at some point is unclear. So far, the price has only gone up from $200,000. There may be only so far you can push that technology in terms of frequent flights.
We don’t know what Bezos is charging. He has said they are working their way down the list of bidders who vied for a seat on the first flight with Bezos. That bidding ended at $28 million. So, it’s a fair bet Bezos can charge quite a bit for those rides. Again, there may be only so far he’ll be able to push that technology in terms of getting a high fly rate. Given how conservative they have flown, Blue will probably focus on safety which will mean a relatively low flight rate. That limits your chance to really lower prices.
The desperate wealth envy does not suit you, Doug.
Well…that’s classic Doug for you.
If you ignore all the positive coverage I’ve given to what these people have achieved, then sure you must be right.
Thanks!
You missed the point, but OK. You’re entitled to that.
ha ha i get they missed the “point”
It isn’t even the 1-percenters I have a beef with aside from billionaires who aren’t space advocates…Bernie can soak them all he’d like.
What gets me are their mindless followers who would turn NASA Marshall into a ghost down…kill this…cancel that. We lost steel due to Reagan.
Libertarians drive on the Eisenhower Interstate—-but they don’t need gov’t. Talk radio stations get power from TVA while it’s hosts put down FDR.
Sickening. I want old and new space to do well…and employ many….And I’m glad the military is out of Afghanistan. Could it have been done better? Yes. Now time to triple NASA budgets, kill F-35 and the USAF…so Army gets A-10s in case we really need to fight again.
Neither the Interstate System nor TVA are in competition with the private sector, they are classic examples of what economists refer to as public goods and we need more of them.
Marshall got stuck in the 1970’s with its SLS and Orion design. If Marshall wants to survive it needs to stop clinging to the past and focus on developing the technology to build a lunar base along with a deep space transportation infrastructure while leaving launch systems to others.
The same is true of the USAF, F-35 is good as a piloted system, but technology moves forward and RPVs will end up being even more effective in future wars since they are cheaper and expendable.
The Interstate Highway System is certainly a public good. The TVA was more like a 1930s U.S. domestic version of a 1950s- or 60s-era nation-building project in a 3rd-world country. Given that about 3/4 of U.S. electrical generating capacity is privately-owned, the TVA very much competes with the private sector.
Anent RPVs, another reason for their coming pre-eminence in air combat will be their ability to maneuver at G-levels too high for human pilots to withstand.
Except the TVA was not only about the electrical generation capacity, it was also about flood control, river navigation, creating recreation areas and road building, all traditional public goods. The electric energy generated was just icing on the cake that helped pay the bonds used to finance it.
And it helped to end WWII by accelerating the production of the weapons grade Uranium needed for the atomic bomb. It’s one reason that the Germans gave up trying to build one as they didn’t have the electricity to “waste” on refining Uranium for such a high risk venture. The United States, thanks to TVA and the Grand Coulee Dam, had plenty of surplus electricity for war production needs.
Yes, developing nations tried to mirror the success of the TVA, but their command based economies could not take advantage of the opportunities presented like the American economy.
We are not mindless, we’re outraged at the bloat and waste of OldSpace in both its governmental and non-governmental aspects. Ghost towns are a natural result of a given locale ceasing to be of net economic value. Attracting government money and producing nothing of value is not economically useful. The tumbleweeds should roll through the deserted streets of Huntsville.
We didn’t “lose steel” due to Reagan but due to the USW and the very OldSpace-like managerial cadre of the U.S. industry from the 50s through the 80s. I had an up-close-and-personal look at “steel” from the inside in the late 70s. It wasn’t pretty. As the late Herb Stein famously said, “Things that can’t continue… don’t.”
That’s a national asset though. Now China has the capability we used to.
I’d say he pretty well nailed it.
On the contrary, it’s his usual suit of clothes.
You can admire what these folks do but still believe some of the things they do and the way they do it are pretty absurd.
Hurray for Billionaires!!!
Hurray for some of them, anyway.
What makes this funny to me is not the crass humor (ok maybe a little), but I can just see Elon Musk eating this up and giggling to himself when he reads it.
“Ah, the rivalries of 1 percent.”
Shouldn’t that be Ah, the rivalries of “the” 1 percent.?
Brilliant article.
Sorry, but Bezos and Branson did not go to Space. They just went very high. Now what Musk just did, well that’s on another level.