Mashable’s series
If you wanted to ride on the first scheduled jet flight out of the U.S., on October 17, 1958, you had to be buddies with a wealthy tycoon. Juan Trippe, founder of Pan Am, stuffed the maiden voyage of his first Boeing 707, from New York to Paris, with friends and VIPs. Given that his friends included Vanderbilts and Whitneys, this was likely the highest net worth on any plane ever at that point — unless you count that time nine years prior when Howard Hughes, billionaire owner of TWA and Trippe’s nemesis, took his famous one-mile flight on the Spruce Goose.
You can hear echoes of Trippe and Hughes’ rivalry in the jockeying between space billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos. Branson took his
With such soap opera shenanigans, it’s no surprise many observers on Twitter rolled their eyes. The same argument deployed against the Apollo moon shots in the 1960s — space is too expensive when we have problems at home — were rolled out again. (Never mind that
However, that argument makes about as much sense as claiming that Juan Trippe ordered his first batch of Boeing 707s just so he could go on joyrides with his rich friends. In fact, what the Pan Am vs. TWA rivalry did in the 1950s would change air travel forever. The more Boeings they bought, the more ticket prices plummeted. The more people could afford to fly, the more service scaled up, until a trip to Paris was no longer completely out of reach for a U.S. middle-class household budget.
That’s the long-term plan for these companies’ orbital rides too, with the added challenge of building infrastructure in our solar neighborhood so that we don’t have to come back to Earth so soon. (Imagine if Trippe and Hughes also had to create Paris from scratch.) Space tourism isn’t all about providing joyrides for the rich and famous (Tom Hanks and Lady Gaga are among the
I have previously argued that
Does this mean Bezos, Branson, and Musk are immune to criticism? Absolutely not. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. I’ve written about how
It’s as clear as a space telescope that this trio of wealthy white dudes need to pay more than they are currently paying in taxes.
Meanwhile, it’s as clear as a space telescope that this trio of wealthy white dudes need to pay more than they are currently paying in taxes. Back when Trippe and Hughes were buying Boeings in the 1950s, they were on the hook for 91 cents out of every dollar over their first million. There were deductions and loopholes then as now, of course, and it’s
Still, that was a lot more helpful to all of us than the average 3.4 percent tax rate the richest Americans — including Musk and Bezos — paid on $400 billion in new wealth between 2014 and 2018, according to a
Again, this would not impede their space activities, and would actually benefit their business in the long run by creating more customers. America’s rising middle class in the 1950s, aided by government investment, was the source of its booming economy. We have enough data now to know that
So no, we shouldn’t freak out about space billionaires who are at least helping to build out the infrastructure of the future. But they too can walk and chew gum at the same time, using their immense wealth to lift more of us off the planet at the same time as they contribute to our social security and our infrastructure. Their increasingly sprawling wealth can pay for