The Billionaire Space Race

Is any of this actually helping?

Jul 21, 2021

Here at It’s Not Rocket Science we’ve tackled everything from the speed of light to Santa; jet engines to moon bases. Some of this has been rooted in current events, some in plain boredom, but all have had one thing in common: getting humans off the ground. But through all of this research, all of the innovations, all of the funding, have we lost sight of the original goal? Will humanity’s newest space race be for the good of the species? Or simply adrenaline?

I am, of course, talking about the two billionaires that made a point to fly to space within mere days of each other. Each with their very own space company: Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin and Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic. Virtually every successful non-weapon government-funded project has made its way in some form to the general public. Supersonic planes spied on the USSR before they carried people from New York to London. Solar Panels were used on satellites years before any of us could put them on our roofs. Following this logic, the better we get at sending people to space, the more people are going to get to go. But will this just turn into ultra-wealthy people getting tickets, leaving the rest of us plebs here on Earth? How does this help anything but egos?

Here’s my take, that by subscribing I’m assuming you asked for, and it’s surprisingly not as negative as my intro may have made it seem. In short: the flights themselves don’t do anything for the space industry. You’re basically trading $10 million and 300 tonnes of carbon dioxide for a good view. I’ll admit, it’s an unbelievable view, but it’s hard to garner public approval if all that’s for just a handful of people. To put this into perspective, Jeff Bezos’ flight, with just 4 passengers, produced roughly 100 times more carbon dioxide than a 9-hour flight from Chicago to Paris and cost more than 400 Toyota Camrys. All this said I would still argue that, in general, they’re a net benefit to human space exploration. The innovation that comes with this should not be overlooked. And if this continues, a lot more little kids will look up to the stars and see a future among them (you just have to get a billion dollars first). Please, allow me to elaborate.

Think about a human trip to Mars. That objectively sounds super boring. Obviously, you’ll have great views when you’re near Earth, but once you’re far enough away it would just look like any other dot in the sky. So, you’ll be looking at nothing 90% of your trip. You’d probably want something else to do for 6 months—dare I say travel in comfort? Well, that’s exactly what these launches enable. To cater to commercial passengers, these companies have to make space easy and relaxing. Consider the lightweight materials that enable more comfortable seats and larger living spaces, the reusable rockets that make tickets cheaper, and even the control screens that have a better user interface than an Android. All of these technologies will exist without these flights, but they don’t get developed as quickly.

Additionally, there are more stringent safety requirements when designing for everyday people. Just like with planes. Commercial airliners are designed with safety factors of up to 5—meaning the components need to be able to withstand five times the maximum expected force. Fighter jets have safety factors of 1.05. Really. With lower safety factors comes less weight and better performance, but those don’t matter as much when you’re carrying a lot of people. There’s a similar story with space—the more we design for commercial use, the safer it becomes.

But that same argument can be used the other way. If we only focus on making space travel fluffier, we ignore all of the other advancements. Just because we have jumbo jets doesn’t mean fighter jets are obsolete. But don’t worry—NASA still plans to send satellites to a Martian moon, a helicopter to Titan (one of Saturn’s moons), and astronauts to our Moon all within the next 5 years. SpaceX is targeting boots on the Martian ground by 2026. All of these mind-blowing milestones haven’t gone away (and you can learn about them here and here).

The other point I want to touch on is public opinion. Just like the space race in the Cold War era, this has people talking. I’ve seen more press about this than SpaceX privately sending astronauts to the ISS. A large reason being there’s more bad press but I think this conversation allows people to take a step back and say, “what’s the point of going to space?” This internal dialogue is what rallied our entire country to send people to the Moon in 1969 with less computing power than an iPhone charger. [4]

Lastly, this proves that more private companies, not run by a DogeCoin shareholder, can get to space. We’ve seen how rapidly SpaceX has been able to change the game—and competition breeds innovation. The more players we have, the more they’ll try to beat each other, and, I would argue, the better our chances get of reaching the stars.

To conclude, I still think individuals doing it recreationally is like taking 100 private jets, flying them out of JFK, going until they run out of fuel, and landing at LaGuardia. Pointless and a waste of carbon. But it’s important to understand the good that comes out of it. Does this represent a flex of historic levels of income equality? Yes. Does it prove that the human ego is literally limitless? Yep. Is it pointless? I would argue no. It has the ability to drive innovation much more quickly than the old-fashioned way—as long as we make sure it remains for the right purpose.

Thanks for reading this week’s edition of It’s Not Rocket Science! Please let me know what you think in the comments and don’t forget to subscribe!

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