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\nAE: Who are the Space Barons?<\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 CD:\u00a0<\/strong>In the book I focus on Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Paul Allen. I think what makes them interesting is that all of them obviously have enormous wealth and come from a Silicon Valley background or ethos and saw space as a dynamic new frontier that was ripe for disruption and innovation. Their approaches are different, their personalities are different, but what unites them is that they made their fortunes elsewhere focusing on very different industries. Elon Musk has worked at PayPal and Tesla, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates and Richard Branson has a myriad of companies. They all have experience in business and entrepreneurship and going up against big industries like Amazon taking on Barnes and Noble and the book industry, and Elon Musk with Tesla taking on virtually all of Detroit. But I think Space presents to them perhaps the biggest challenge of all. It\u2019s the most difficult and I think the reason why they chose it is that it\u2019s something they\u2019re really, truly passionate about.<\/p>\nThese guys coming at these different projects from the perspective of entrepreneurs\u2026 it\u2019s right there in the title \u2018The Quest to Colonize the Cosmos\u2019. This is ultimately public-facing. The goal is to put people into space. <\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s right. Particularly with SpaceX and Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic that\u2019s their main goal. There\u2019s only something like 550-560 people who have ever been to space. In a lot of cases they grew up watching the Apollo era and seeing people in space. Elon said a year ago: it\u2019s 2018 we should have a base on the moon by now. That\u2019s clearly a goal of Blue Origin\u2019s right now. They clearly are focused on human space flight and getting people into space.<\/p>\nWhen Jeff is asked about this\u2014\u201caren\u2019t these tourism trips up to space just trivial, like going on a rollercoaster ride?\u201d\u2014he has two responses. One is that it\u2019s really good practice. You\u2019re not going to get good at something you do a half dozen or a dozen times a year. To really get good at space you have to launch repeatedly, to do it over and over again which is what they hope to do with these suborbital spaceflights. Then: when you get up there you have a few minutes of weightlessness, you unbuckle your seatbelt and float around the cabin of the spacecraft, you\u2019re able to look at the windows and see the curvature of the Earth: the globe without any lines delineating countries, the thin veneer of the atmosphere. People talk about that being a transformative effect. If these companies are able to get more people out into space and have that experience, where it comes to the point that you know someone whose gone to space or know someone who knows someone and that begins to spread, that could have a transformative effect on our society.<\/p>\n
Is it the sort of thing you expect will happen in our lifetimes?<\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think the first suborbital flights might be as soon as this year, might be next year. Virgin Galactic is gunning for this year, although they had a setback in 2014 with a fatal crash that killed a co-pilot. Obviously it\u2019s very dangerous and a huge challenge but they\u2019re getting close. I think Blue Origin is getting close as well. SpaceX has been hired by NASA to fly astronauts to the International Space Station. It now currently flies cargo and supplies and experiments to the International Space Station and its next step is to fly humans there.<\/p>\nIs it a trip you would take if you could?<\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When I met with Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, ahead of the meeting I went to the NASA archives and pulled the journalist-in-space application. A lot of people forget that NASA had a journalist-in-space program that was cancelled after the space shuttle challenger blew up. People remember the teacher who was onboard that flight because there was a teacher-in-space program. They also had planned to do a journalist-in-space program. So I submitted my application to Jeff and to Richard. I haven\u2019t heard back yet, though I don\u2019t think I want to be on the first flights. I\u2019ll let them fly a few times and get the kinks out and then I\u2019d consider it.<\/p>\n\n
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