JULY 12, 2021 –
Yesterday, British billionaire Richard Branson made a suborbital space flight. Media outlets made a big deal of it, thanks to the fact that Branson himself—self-promotor extraordinaire—made a big deal of it. The hoopla left me unimpressed.
First, Branson wasn’t at the controls. He was a passenger—one of six. Second, although the flight was hyped as the “the first ever commercial flight” of its kind, according to a CNN Business report Branson’s $200 million spaceport in New Mexico, called “Spaceport America,” was built mostly with taxpayer dollars. Third—lest we forget—a Russian, Yuri Gagarin, was the first human to travel into outer space, and his flight took him into full orbit around the earth. That occurred when John Kennedy had been in office for less than three months and Richard (“Rich”?) Branson was only 10 years old.
Next up is Jeff Billionaire—I mean . . . Jeff Bezos will be the next billionaire making a space-shot. Flitting about in the background—actually, the foreground of Branson’s kitchen publicity photo shot (Ah, the common touch!)—is flighty Elon Musk, a space-shot even when standing (barefoot) on terra firma. Apparently, a high stakes commercial space race is now in full swing—while NASA begs, cheats, and steals for funding.
I have nothing against a billionaire—or three of them—for spending their bucks to humor themselves, and “compete” for paying customers. (I do question, however, the size of billionaire carbon footprints, given the amount of jet fuel and now rocket propellant they must consume.) But what falls flat is Branson’s appeal to the child in me; his insistence that if as a billionaire adult, he can experience actual space flight, then I can certainly dream about it. (Or something like that—his message was garbled by my comparatively limited imagination and . . . net worth.)
If Branson’s self-promotional flight yesterday was itself uninspiring, it reminded me of a time when all of humanity stood at the pinnacle of inspirational achievement. The Cold War was over 30 years old, and the hot proxy war in Vietnam raged on—in March 1969, 250,000 anti-war protesters had marched on Washington. Yet, on July 20 all of civilization put its sordid side on hold and gaped at TV monitors showing Neil Armstrong plopping his foot down upon the surface of the moon. Over half a century ago an enormous community effort—guided and funded by government (of, by, for the people)—put humans on the moon and brought then back safely. That achievement filled all of us with awe.
I felt a similar reaction when the Perseverance touched down on Mars and the engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California lifted the roof with their cheers. I cheered with them, as I watched the television in our living room.
But that was a rare moment in the current life of the nation. We have ceded collective effort and its reward—collective inspiration—to high-flying billionaires out to make a buck. Their sub-orbital self-promotion leaves me unimpressed and uninspired.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
