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What Next TBD: What Space Billionaires Cost Us

Slate Daily Feed

Slate

Society & Culture, Business, News

3.91.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2021

⏱️ 21 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Over the last decade, billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson have come to embody the future of space travel and exploration. What does it mean when the ideas and ambitions of a few powerful men come to dominate the conversation so thoroughly? Guest: Lucianne Walkowicz, astronomer at the Adler Planetarium and founder of the Just Space Alliance Host Lizzie O’Leary This episode is sponsored by Teamistry. You can listen here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

You see the earth from space that changes you, changes your relationship.

0:11.0

On Monday, I watched this video on Instagram.

0:14.2

I want to go on this flight because it's the thing I wanted to do all my life.

0:20.0

That's Jeff Bezos, and the video is from his account.

0:23.3

It's slickly produced, lots of camera angles, shots of the atmosphere.

0:28.6

There's a picture of Bezos as a child next to a model rocket with USA painted on the side.

0:33.6

And the point of this video is to announce that Bezos will be on board the first human

0:38.4

space flight that is rocket company Blue Origin is taking on July 20th.

0:44.6

That's the anniversary of the moon landing in case you missed that part.

0:48.2

And I was curious, when I got astronomer Lucien Walkowicz on the line, what they thought

0:53.9

about this whole announcement.

0:56.1

I, if you would as a very natural outcome, you know, I think if you were going to write

1:01.9

the headline, right, it would be like billionaire builds rocket wishes to ride rocket.

1:07.4

Lucien works with the Adler Planetarium and is a co-founder of the Just Space Alliance,

1:13.1

which advocates for more inclusive vision of space.

1:17.1

In the sort of framework in which Jeff Bezos has the means to like build himself a midlife

1:22.8

crisis sports car in a space, of course, he wants to go to space.

1:26.9

It's not just Bezos, Elon Musk has a space company, so does Richard Branson.

1:32.5

You know, there's this question that I have wondered for a long time that my producers

1:36.2

and I actually were tossing around even before this show got started, which is basically,

1:41.6

why do all the rich guys want to go to space?

1:44.8

I think that is probably different for different rich guys.

...

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