Looking at the vast majority of rich people out there, this is at least kinda inspiring.
Don't underestimate the motivational pull of such shows on kids. I'd rather the best brains of the coming generation to concentrate on space and aeronautics than on pushing even more intrusive ads on the rest of us.
I think intrusive ads / kids dreaming to become influencers and other bad things are just a temporary derailment, typical to current generations, and disappear as the internet related technologies and ecosystem become more mature and settled down. Future generations will be more inspired by space travel, like in the 50s/60s. There are already signs of this.
For that to happen, I believe the pictures must have been better. I watched the live stream and was quite underwhelmed to see how poor the footage was.
Nice to see someone doing something exciting and inspiring with their money. Much more inspiring than people whining about billionaires on social media.
your cynicism is outdone by a new method of getting into space for the general public, that will have implications for travel around the world, faster, cheaper and more energy efficient. try looking up sometime, instead of down.
Right, and billionaires have been able to hitch rides to space on Soyuzes for decades, now. This is the first time an American middle class person could save up the price of a median house and buy a ticket to space. (And some Virgin Galactic ticket holders did just that.)
Ironically, this is far more accessible than space has ever been. Hopefully it’s just a start. We want orbital flight and eventually flight to (and from) other celestial bodies to come down to this price (this is the goal for SpaceX’s Starship).
The global middle class(about 2 billion people) can afford to fly in an airplane once in a while, something only the rich could do 100 years ago. That's worth appreciating. Technology has never advanced symmetrically for everyone and it likely never will. The only recent tech I can think of that reached everyone rich and poor alike near simultaneously is smart phones.
Almost every major hard-tech innovation was once prohibitively expensive. Look at solar panels, cars, phones, computers, etc. The cost comes (way) down later on with economies of scale and perfection of the production process.
get over yourself. you think it’s going to be $250k in 10 years and the billions of people on the planet will not see benefit from the tech advances that come from that?
The Concorde was inflation adjusted $12,900 round trip and failed miserably.
It feels like every 10 years we bail out airlines when we hit a bad recession.
I would really question how much of a business model there will be for this at this price point once you don't make a headline by just taking a flight on it.
