Commercial Space Travel Is a Giant Leap for the One Percent

If you can't afford the ride, stream the video.

Peter Garrison

Thursday, June 09, 2022 at 12:24 PM ET

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Blue Origin recently completed its 20th spaceflight for the New Shepard missions. [Courtesy: Blue Origin]

Key Takeaways:

The article clarifies that the "edge of space" and the title "astronaut" are arbitrarily defined (e.g., Kármán Line) and often misconstrued, with the FAA setting strict criteria for astronaut status.
It contrasts the technical strategies of Blue Origin (conventional vertical rocket) and Virgin Galactic (air-launched spaceplane), highlighting Virgin Galactic's technological limitations and scaled-back performance.
The author critically views the emerging space tourism as the "plutocratization of space," driven by the ultra-rich and marked by exorbitant costs, rather than a "democratization" as often claimed.

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We heard a lot in August 2021 about the “edge of space” and the life-changing effects of going to it. But wait a minute—does space even have an edge?

Space is everywhere. It permeates everything, as water does a sponge. In fact, the volume each of us occupies in the world is mostly empty space. What Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and their clients went to the edge of was not space, but the Earth’s atmosphere. And of course, the atmosphere does not have a real edge either; it just gradually gets harder and harder to detect.