Thread by @opinion

By Tuesday, two of the Earth’s wealthiest individuals will have flown into space.

🚀 Richard Branson has already been on July 11 aboard a Virgin Galactic spaceship
🚀 Jeff Bezos’s rocket trip with Blue Origin is on Tuesday
trib.al/6oESsn5

It’s taken a couple of decades for both men to realize their ambition of going into space: Blue Origin was founded in 2000 and Virgin Galactic four years later trib.al/6oESsn5

Critics will say that they could have devoted their time and money toward more worthy terrestrial endeavors (and paying more tax).

Hopefully seeing Earth’s majestic curvature inspires better care of this planet trib.al/6oESsn5

While there’s symmetry in billionaires blasting off within days of each other, Branson and Bezos have followed quite different technical paths and they’ve done so with markedly different budgets trib.al/6oESsn5

They can’t even agree on what counts as “space.”

⭐️Bezos believes that space begins at the Karman line
⭐️But Virgin Galactic flies to an altitude of around 55 miles, surpassing the 50-mile mark at which U.S. military pilots get their astronaut wings trib.al/6oESsn5

Bezos’s New Shepard rocket takes off and lands vertically.

Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight system comprises a rocket ship that detaches from a carrier aircraft at around 45,000 feet, having taken off like a regular plane trib.al/6oESsn5

Virgin Galactic completed three piloted suborbital space flights prior to Branson’s flight.

Blue Origin has been to space 15 times, but never with people on board trib.al/6oESsn5

Bezos has sold around $1 billion of Amazon stock annually to fund Blue Origin.

By comparison, Branson has said he’s invested almost $1 billion in Virgin Galactic, which burns through around $250 million of cash yearly trib.al/6oESsn5

Though Bezos may have to settle for second in space, he has outplayed Branson by:

➡️Auctioning off a seat for $28 million with the proceeds going towards encouraging kids to go into math & science
➡️Inviting 82-year-old pilot Wally Funk to join him trib.al/6oESsn5

Of course, nothing compares to another billionaire space-nut: Elon Musk.

SpaceX fired a Tesla Roadster into space in 2018 aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket with a Starman mannequin in the vehicle’s driver seat. Musk’s next ambition is to send humans to Mars trib.al/6oESsn5