BEZOS FIRST OF SORTS

WORLD’S RICHEST PERSON JEFF BEZOS GOES TO SPACE WITH BROTHER MARK BEZOS, WALLY FUNK AND OLIVER DAEMEN, LIVE STREAMED ON BLUEORIGIN.COM, TUESDAY, JULY 20, 2021, AT ABOUT 6:15 A.M. PST, FOR ABOUT 10 MINUTES

RICHEST, CLOSEST, OLDEST AND YOUNGEST GO TO SPACE

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

When Jeff Bezos turned to the side a bit and looked down onto the Earth from outer space, the richest person in the world was not the first human being to do so. Valentino Tereshkova was probably yawning a bit, although inaudible in Russian, having been the first woman, and still the youngest, at the age of 26 at the time, to be in space one day 68 years ago for 48 orbits and almost three days in duration beginning on June 16, 1963.

Bezos realized he had a losing argument about being first, so he took along his brother, Mark, the closest person to him, and Wally Funk, the oldest person to go to space, and Oliver Daemen, the youngest person to go to space.

But Yuri Gagarin was still the first human to orbit Earth on April 12, 1961. Russia has a long list of other firsts in space. Alexei Leonov was the first to spacewalk on March 18, 1965. And Dennis Tito was the first private space tourists in space, being taken on a Russian space craft all the way to the International Space Station where he stayed for about eight days.

Russia took seven more private space tourists passed the Karman Line where the Earth’s atmosphere gives way to the vacuum of outer space at about 62 miles vertical.

So when Richard Branson beat Bezos to space nine days earlier on July 11, 2021, the relentless entrepreneur was not the first. 

Of course, Elon Musk has not yet gone to space himself, but he was the first in space for a lot of reasons, while other private companies failed and failed again to send a commercial spacecraft into near Earth orbit.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) gave Musk a lot of seed money once SpaceX beat the competitors in the design and development phase of manufacturing space vehicles.

NASA has invested in commercial space companies while developing a government operated long term Artemis program meant to establish a permanent base on the Moon and land the first woman on the Moon, and then to eventually go to Mars.

China has made several advances in space exploration in recent years, including the beginnings of the Tiangong Space Station with the first module placed in space this year with the station fully operational hoped for by 2022.

Russia is probably still yawning inaudibly having consistently gone to space and serviced the International Space Station with astronauts and cargo supply ships over the years. Russia even sold seats on their rockets to American and Canadian astronauts after the United States Space Shuttle fleet was retired in 2011.

Oh, and China has also soft landed on the far side of the Moon and sent a rover to Mars.

Bezos, ah, Branson, Bezos and Musk or perhaps, Musk, ah, Branson and Bezos went to space with very different reasons based on their unique capitalist styles.

Branson is more of the showman needing the adrenaline fix the global attention gives him for another ill-gotten gain in his corporate portfolio.

Bezos is kind of going to space on his own spacecraft, like riding that Shelby Mustang down the Interstate after having the iconic car rebuilt piece by piece in the garage.

Musk is more directed, having specialized in electric power trains and solar energy, going to space under contract with NASA just seems like a logical extension of his business. Musk has a lot of fun sending other astronauts to space too, grabbing along the way the attention that Branson so desires. 

Bezos was the first to announce the trip, choosing the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, and thereby leaving himself wide open to the possibility of a second place finish.

Branson shows just how much of a competitor he is by launching ahead of Bezos. Branson once flew hot air balloons, even attempting to circumnavigate the globe on one after fastening a flight capsule underneath the hot air balloon. 

Branson always seemed to want to be a rockstar, making his first 50,000 British Sterling with the mail order record company, Virgin Records.

Branson ‘rockstars’ on the collective consciousness mosh pit like Musk smokes dope on live radio.

Bezos on the other hand has quietly become the dominant player on the world stage beginning with ‘mail order’ on-line book sales and just tumbling down the dice until Amazon controlled the on-line retail market on a global scale.

Bezos has a reputation for being a ruthless capitalist, squeezing everybody and then reinvesting what he squeezed from everybody into his corporate empire, like putting orange juice back into the can to make concentrated frozen orange juice.

Musk has been more of a ‘branding a generation’ of consumers by making the products the right way and striving to produce the best product line in the marketplace along the lines of Silicon Valley types like Steve Jobs, but you will not see Tim Cook going to space in a ‘Macsule’ any time soon.

Bill Gates is not in a hurry to reach the Karman Line either, eventhough he is from the same high security neighbourhood In Seattle, Washington as Bezos.

Space travel by any legal entity is a type of luxury that has gone on since the Danes left continental Europe in wooden ships to cross the Atlantic Ocean with no real sense of an end destination. Further back yet I know, like when our predecessors foraged for food amongst the planet’s animal kingdom, people explored their environments.

The Romans left Italy for Egypt, as well as for the United Kingdom and Israel, leaving behind armies to rule over the lands they conquered.

Christopher Columbus crossed the ocean blue with three ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina, commissioned by the Queen of Spain in August 1492. Columbus reaching the Americas was not the beginning or end of exploration, but the crossing was a significant milestone, nonetheless. The America’s were forever changed as the Spaniards did as much conquering as exploring.

Billionaires in space seems the ultimate popular culture fantasy that combines movie magic with game box theory and a gritty realism a bit further removed than what even Columbus could have imagined.

I like to think of all three billionaires in space like Steamboat Willie, Disney’s first animated cartoon. Willie was not the first to have an adventure going down the river on a mechanical boat, but he went down there nonetheless in a rather personalized style that turned into the lead act for an entertainment empire.

Commercial flights are a good thing, but the privatization of space will become a problem once near orbit is so cluttered with satellites that all the space debris starts colliding with satellites and taking out Internet service, as a result.

Musk seems to think space exploration is his moral duty to the next generation that will benefit from his efforts, while Branson seems to be just developing another global attention grabbing business venture.

Bezos already dominates the world markets, and he may very well intend to compete with SpaceX in the long term, perhaps just temporarily becoming space popcorn with Branson to remind NASA and space contractors that Blue Origin is very much in the commercial space business – it’s just that NASA chose to go with SpaceX first.