“Go where the pepper grows!” Was said earlier when you urgently wanted away an annoying or unsympathetic contemporary. That was the time when a boat trip to the pepper countries India or Indonesia was the furthest possible voyage imaginable. Then at the end of the 1960s the expression “Let’s shoot him on the moon!” to. Which brings us to the topic.
The Rockefellers of our time, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, are engaged in a tragicomic contest: not about who will shoot each other, but who will be the first to shoot yourself into space. You can’t really have anything against that, but the problem is: They both came back after ten minutes to continue working here on earth to ensure that this planet collapses in the not too distant future and becomes uninhabitable for humans.
From a business point of view, this is only logical: First you heat up the atmosphere with trillion Amazon parcels and rocket engines, and when it gets really uncomfortable, the top 10,000 super-earners can shoot themselves into space to find a few new planets or to colonize even free-flying stainless steel cities. Top plan!
No, this is not about business, but about incredible things for future generations. Thanks Jeff!
Bezos, who looks more and more like spaceship enterprise captain Jean-Luc Picard, of course denies his vain competition with Branson and invokes a purely altruistic motivation: It is about, said the Amazon billionaire, “a path into space erect so that future generations can do incredible things in space “. Exactly. Thanks Jeff.
He underpinned so much generosity with the fact that an 82-year-old ex-pilot and the 18-year-old son of an investment banker (the ticket price was agreed not to be disclosed) were allowed to fly in his spaceship – as the oldest and youngest person ever to have been in space .
But is there any space up there? After all, the ISS flies at an altitude of 408 kilometers, Branson’s spaceship has made it to just 86 kilometers, while Bezos has come 20 kilometers higher, only to make the bend again immediately. With such great deeds, of course, it is not communicated how much CO₂ the rockets have blown out before they pierced the atmosphere at a height of 50 kilometers. That would be really petty now!
After these commercial flights, the two soon want to start commercial space travel, in which not only investment bankers, but also the Müllers and Maiers from next door can briefly jet into space. That makes sense too. Firstly, there are no corona risk areas there yet and, secondly, you don’t need hotels, raked beaches or anything similar on ten-minute flights: pay, up, down – ready, next, please! A dream for every tourist.
Anyone who now says: “I would rather travel a few weeks to where the pepper grows, I know what I have”, simply did not understand the size of Branson’s and Bezos offer.