Matthew Lynn Matthew Lynn

Branson vs Bezos: In praise of the billionaire space race

Richard Branson celebrates making it to space (Getty images)

They are rich boys with some very expensive toys. As Richard Branson completes his first space flight, it would be easy to dismiss the race between the Virgin founder and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to be the first billionaire in space as the self-indulgence of a couple of tycoons with too much testosterone and too much money. 

The competition will be seen by some on the liberal left as a symbol of widening inequalities. They will view it as the emergence of a plutocratic class separated from the rest of us, and as proof of the argument that space should be left to the public sphere. Of course there is an element of truth in all of those complaints. Yet the race between some of the world’s richest men to get into orbit is also a demonstration of what free market capitalism does best.

While the rest of us were absorbed, disappointingly as it turned out, in the final of the Euros, Richard Branson finally completed his goal of going into space. It is a long way from selling second-hand records by mail order. 

To explore space properly, it will have to be commercially viable

Over the next few weeks, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, will go even further, with a more ambitious flight. 

Elon Musk, the Tesla founder, hasn’t started riding in his own rockets yet, but it may only be a matter of time. The world’s billionaires have moved on from yachts, football clubs, and supermodels, and committed themselves to space exploration instead.

It would be easy to sneer at that. But there are three big reasons why it should be welcomed. First, it sets up a competition. The last great achievements in space came in the 1960s, when the race to get into orbit – and then to land the first man on the moon – was a proxy for the Cold War, with the Soviet Union and the United States, competing to get there first.

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