Space Exploration: Frontier Politics & Future of Man

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and arguably the most famous billionaire on the planet after Bill Gates, went to space last week. Earlier this month, Virgin CEO Richard Branson took his own getaway to the cosmos, breaching the nearest reaches of space in the craft that he bankrolled. After nearly 17 years of development and over a billion dollars invested in Virgin Galactic—which aims to begin commercial service in early 2022—Branson’s spacecraft, the VSS Unity, launched above the skies of New Mexico and reached an altitude of 53.5 miles. (Not to be outdone, Bezos reportedly went 13 miles further than Branson did.) All of this comes just months after the recent achievement of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and NASA, when the private/public partnership launched and docked a craft at the International Space Station. Read Full Article »