Empty Space

 It used to be cute when Richard Branson used to try and fly his very expensive balloon to new and different heights. And lengths. It should be noted that while he wasn't entirely successful with all his adventures aloft, there was a certain eccentric millionaire quality to his antics. It brings to mind Howard Hughes, without all that obsessive hand washing. 

Let me set the record straight right here at the beginning: I am a huge fan of space exploration. I applaud the efforts of those pioneers who have broken free from the surly bonds that have us all stuck here on Earth. I got chills when I saw video taken from the surface of Mars. I shudder to think what beings from another solar system are making out of the reruns of Three's Company. 

And now back to Richard Branson. This past weekend, the billionaire shot himself into space. For a few minutes, anyway. After two decades of research and trials, the imaginatively names SpaceShipTwo took its highly anticipated trip outside our atmosphere. And shortly after, it turned around and plummeted back from whence it came, touching down on a runway not unlike the Space Shuttles you might remember from your youth. The "record" Mister Branson set was being the first human to ride in a space plane that he paid for himself. He wasn't the pilot. He wasn't the scientist. He signed the checks. All the suspense had been taken out of the moment by years of testing and failure. The risk Richard Branson took was that the photo op with Elon Musk would have come off more awkwardly than it did. 

I know, I know. This is the first step toward putting private citizens in space. Blah, blah, blah. Those who can afford it, anyway. Originally, Virgin Galactic was offering seats on its spaceship for two hundred fifty thousand dollars. That was before test crashes in 2014. Seven years and a successful celebrity launch and return to Terra Firma should make that price go up considerably. Along with the stock for Mister Branson's company. Second place goes to Jeff Bezos, who extorted twenty-eight million dollars out of his passenger for his very expensive flight into roughly the same bit of space previously visited by the SpaceShipTwo crew. 

Now I hear those voices from the past, the ones who insisted back in 1969 that we should be spending our money solving the problems we have here on our own planet. Back then there were wars going on. Racial injustice gripped the country. Our nation's economy teetered on the brink of recession. And yet we looked to the heavens. We sent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, to name just a couple, to check it out. They made it safe for eccentric millionaires to make a big show out of taking an abbreviated version of that trip fifty years later. 

Pardon me while I try and come up with the appropriate rection.

Yawn.