As everyone knows, Jeff Bezos flew his penis-shaped rocket (aren’t all rockets shaped like a penis?) to the edge of space and then returned home. Naturally everyone celebrated this achievement. Just kidding, the internet mocked him mercilessly over it. Either people made fun of his rocket (it looks like a PENIS, hahahahaha) or they joked about him not being about to get into space completely. I am not going to jump on that bandwagon. Instead, I am going to take a different route. I will take the high road. I know, you are shocked.
First of all, I do not like Bezos. I agree that it would be nice if he did something else with his billions of dollars. Yes, he could solve homelessness (I keep seeing people say that it would only cost $28 billion to solve the homeless problem in America…I question what that actually means. Did someone just take the number of homeless people and estimate how much it would cost to build them all a tiny house?) or help eradicate hunger problems in the world. But, he has decided to put himself into space. I mean, I can think of worse things he could be spending his money on. He could be hoarding it (more than he is already). He could be buying all the art in the world and locking it away in a vault so no one could enjoy it. Instead he has decided to blow billions of dollars developing rocket technology in order to try and get into space. I am a fan of space, so I cannot be too upset with him.
It was only last year when SpaceX launched two astronauts to the ISS and everyone celebrated it. Isn’t SpaceX just Elon Musk’s space vanity project? How come we like that one, but not Blue Origins? For those of us who are fans of astronomy and the prospect of someday having humanity travel the stars, then we need people working on it. If SpaceX, Blue Origins, and Virgin Galactic are all innovating and attempting to come up with better solutions, while at the same time being rewarded with bigger government contracts once they have breakthroughs, then maybe we could actually see major changes in our space capability.
And finally, the thing that really bothers me about making fun of this launch is that this was not just Jeff Bezos. He had an entire team of people. Engineers designing the rocket (come on, there is someone on that team who purposely made that thing look like a dildo and then convinced Bezos that it was the perfect design, that person deserves some kind of award) and the numerous other scientists involved probably love seeing their hard work mocked all over the internet. Should they have focused their intelligence on something else? This is what they went to school for, so of course they would use their knowledge this way.
They only went to the edge of space. Is that super easy to do? Go ahead, show me the math that makes that happen. Everyone on the internet seems to be sooooo fucking smart. Also, you may think Bezos is a complete dickbag (he is, did you hear his speech after, ughhhh), but it does take some balls to hop in that rocket and fly up there yourself. Is it vanity? Absolutely! But it takes some guts. I mean, there are a bunch of you reading this post who refuse to get the COVID vaccine because you are “waiting to see the effects it has on other people.” And this billionaire hops in a rocket and says “hey guys, blast me up there and bring me back!”
Oh and he took Wally Funk with him. She is 82 and is an aviation pioneer who finally got to go up. I bet she is pretty fucking excited that Bezos chose her. Good for her. I choose to celebrate and be happy for something like this instead of being the petty, cynical asshole who mocks and rips everything.
