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
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“Living” with Covid-19 has been talked about since the pandemic first began.
This so-called “endemic” phase would see Covid-19 look more like influenza, with regular vaccine campaigns and a focus on primary care. Not eradicated, but managed trib.al/2ZghWvM
🇫🇷Paris is swarming once again with workers
😷Masks are dangling from wrists rather than noses
🎶Nightclubs are back open
It’s becoming clear that living with Covid will remain an elusive goal without a renewed boost to pandemic management trib.al/2ZghWvM
The reopening of Europe’s major economies is starting to hit a speed bump as cases rebound. Hospitalizations are on the rise in:
🇪🇸📈 Spain
🇫🇷📈 France
The more contagious delta variant is ripping through the continent trib.al/2ZghWvM
As someone who has spent decades thinking about money – saving it, investing it and spending it – @ritholtz has come to recognize several fundamental financial truths.
Luckily for you, he’s willing to share them: trib.al/cbCJdBt
Investing is both simple and hard: The basic premise behind successful investing is easily understood: “Invest for the long term, be diversified, watch your costs and let compounding work its magic.”
Not least, the value of fresh air. Better ventilation in workplaces, gathering spaces and other public buildings should be a post-Covid priority trib.al/r3TTvqC
Schools, offices and other indoor spaces need better ventilation in order to minimize the harm from:
🦠New coronaviruses
🦠Cold and flu viruses
🦠Every other sort of airborne pathogen trib.al/r3TTvqC
Covid calls for rethinking the way indoor air is controlled.
✅New guidance on safer ventilation in schools is urgent
✅State and local building codes should also be revised
✅Effective ventilation, which often requires more energy, can't be ignored twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…
Since the early 1990s, the very concept of inflation has ceased to be a driving force in politics or the economy.
That’s over. Whichever way you look at it, official U.S. data suggest inflation is the highest in 30 years, and rising trib.al/cgjfeym
June’s consumer price index is 5.4%, the highest in 30 years barring one month in 2008.
🚫🍲⛽️ Excluding food and fuel: 4.5% — its highest in three decades
🚫🏡🚗 Excluding shelter and used cars: 3.6% — still far higher than it’s been since 1993 trib.al/cgjfeym
Yet while it’s obvious the U.S. is currently battling inflation, it isn’t clear that it’ll last, and the market seems unconcerned.
The bond market’s best estimate of the average inflation rate for the next decade remains as low as 2.38% trib.al/cgjfeym
You don’t need to drive far from home to see lawn signs calling to “Unmask Our Kids."
This fall, schools will be open across the country. Some districts are requiring masks, some aren’t. Which side of the debate is right? trib.al/bRGAPoW
Although we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the harm done by Covid-19, we’ve done little to assess the harm that masks can do.
A recent letter in JAMA raised awareness about a crucial issue: Our kids are breathing air that’s full of carbon dioxide trib.al/bRGAPoW
Initially, the argument for masks was that they kept the wearer from infecting others. Nowadays evidence of the benefits is plentiful.
What the JAMA letter argues is that in considering whether to mask schoolchildren, we must weigh the benefits and risks trib.al/bRGAPoW