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Jeff Bezos has officially become the second billionaire to launch himself into space in just two weeks. After stepping down as the head of Amazon, Bezos decided to take a leisurely trip beyond Earth’s atmosphere aboard a spacecraft that he financed with his Amazon wealth. This comes just after Richard Branson’s own space adventure on July 11. Cheers to them, I suppose?
Both Bezos and Branson engaged in suborbital flights, which take passengers roughly 50-60 miles above the Earth but descend before reaching the altitude needed for orbit. On his flight, Bezos brought along his younger brother, 50-year-old Mike Bezos; 82-year-old astronaut pioneer Mary Wallace Funk, who met NASA’s astronaut selection criteria in the 1960s but never got to fly; and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old student from the Netherlands who secured his ticket through an auction (the winning bid was reportedly $28 million, with Daemen being the runner-up).
While the exact costs of these billionaire space ventures remain unknown, it’s worth noting that both Russian and U.S. governments successfully sent humans on suborbital flights back in 1961—60 years ago—when the idea of an individual having enough wealth to replicate such feats seemed unimaginable. Yet here we are in 2021.
Bezos has accumulated his fortune amidst ongoing criticism regarding low wages and poor working conditions at Amazon warehouses, which intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic when employees reported rapid virus spread and a lack of protective gear that the company allegedly failed to provide.
But don’t fret—Bezos views his space travels as a philanthropic endeavor. He believes that expanding humanity into the solar system will allow for a greater number of innovators to thrive. “The solar system can easily support a trillion humans,” he stated in a recent interview. “With that many people, we could have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts, along with virtually unlimited resources and solar power. That’s the legacy I want to leave for my great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren.”
Naturally, social media had much to say about this. Bezos and his crew landed safely after a brief 15-minute flight.