As of today: one private company, two governments.
Sub-orbital doesn’t count, SLS has yet to fly…
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It’s the calling themselves “astronauts”. They are passengers.
It’s the wearing of superfluous cosplay “space suits” for the occasion.
It’s the giving themselves astronaut wings/medals for sitting in a chair.
I think all the celebration/commemoration/tchotchkes are just misdirection to remove the sticker shock of $250,000 for a 3-minute carnival ride. (“We signed in a book! I am Astronaut 082! I get to keep the uniform!”)
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A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Sir Richard out in space)…
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Okay, but when I recommended “firing all the billionaires into space”, I was not suggesting we bring them back.
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(Post deleted. I just realised that the US government does not currently have a crewed launch capability.)
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I already help several people here in Tijuana. It’s a sizeable amount of my income. Why am I even defending myself? I’m nowhere close to being a billionaire.
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China, Russia, and who else?
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If he wasn’t always hiding out, you’d think it would be one of the crazy things El Chapo might have tried. He had the cash.
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Agreed! Stuff like this is key to making the point where more and more people can reach space in their lifetimes. The attention these sorts of technologies can bring to STEM research and igniting the imaginations of younger generations to imagine a time, in their lifetime, where they, too, can visit space is priceless.
My parents’ generation imagined a world where governments made space travel cheap and plentiful. They failed, and I watch my uncle, a retired principal and educator, lament the fact that one of his lifelong dreams, to see the world from space in his lifetime, growing less and less likely because of it. If it takes billionaires to get us to where governments have failed to and allow folks like him to realize their dreams before they are too old to, then have at it.
Something awesome about the upcoming Blue Origin launch is their decision to take up Wally Funk, one of the Mercury 13 who tested as good or better than those male test pilots with “The Right Stuff” but weren’t allowed to fly because they were Women. NASA then denied her once they started permitting Women to fly because she didn’t have an Engineering Degree or experience as a test pilot. She was then “too old” to qualify for the shuttle. Now, Blue Origin is going to right a political wrong, and I couldn’t be happier. When she goes up she will probably be the most experienced pilot ever in Space!
Scott Manley did a great video about this flight, Wally Funk, and the upcoming Blue Origin flight last week:
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See also: Pegasus
Most of us are not vampiric ayn-cap types, or their Renfields who always seem to be around to defend them.
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I realised that the US government does not currently have a launch capability, so I’ve edited the post.
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Weren’t they mostly communists? Or do you mean the supercar designers?
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I feel slightly guilty about buying one of those charity tickets for a ride on this.
I’d still go.
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The better question is why is the person you were replying to making assumptive ad homs?
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I want to like this more than i do (no, really) so why is it that i feel a deep well of cynicism rising in my gorge? I guess all the PR gloss and the designer flight suits and brand awareness and the passengers listening to the latest tracks from whoever… and i still just see three unimaginably wealthy people competing to see who can pee up the wall the highest. Little boys with dangerous toys…
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I just hate the way it’s always written about as if even one lone billionaire businessman accomplished this feat all by himself rather than the logical result of funding research and engineering in a given area.
That narrative itself is so pervasive in our culture. I wish it would die.
I’m not even against private space travel/exploration.
But imagine the other things we could accomplish if we didn’t have to wait for some individual to make billions of dollars from other private ventures and then decide to care about it.
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And next time you wash the feet of the poor instead of buying a game or streaming a movie, remember that Branson could have that done for every poor person in America with no more effort than telling an aide he wants it done…and still never miss a single movie or game he wants to see, even if he had to pay to get them made first. 
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Your comment brought to mind this recent longish piece in The New Yorker, an exploration of how we value—or don’t value—past, present, and future activity. I can’t do the article justice, but if you can get past the paywall, I found it interesting reading.
Personally I don’t have much opinion either way about space travel; mainly the idea of it just doesn’t really grab me. But I’m not too fond of the idea of billionaires. I tend to fall in more with you and the idea of using resources to help people now. And to prevent any more climate change here on Earth.
On a group level, too, we struggle to strike a balance. It’s a common complaint that, as societies, we are too fixated on the present and the immediate future. In 2019, in a speech to the United Nations about climate change, the young activist Greta Thunberg inveighed against the inaction of policymakers: “Young people are starting to understand your betrayal,” she said. “The eyes of all future generations are upon you.” But, if their inaction is a betrayal, it’s most likely not a malicious one; it’s just that our current pleasures and predicaments are much more salient in our minds than the fates of our descendants. And there are also those who worry that we are too future-biased. A typical reaction to long-range programs, such as John F. Kennedy’s Apollo program or Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is that the money would be better spent on those who need it right now. Others complain that we are too focussed on the past, or with the sentimental reconstruction of it. Past, present, future; history, this year, the decades to come. How should we balance them in our minds?
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To be fair, Virgin Galactic has, too.
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