# Why all the hate for Branson and Bezos, and their forays into space travel? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 20, 2021, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916 "2021-07-20T22:26:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2021, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/142 "2021-07-25T22:19:03Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > That’s pretty much NASA’s mission statement, though. Even back then they were NACA, their reason for existence is to do basic research and distribute the results to American industry, which takes that research and builds it into products. It’s fully expected that the value transfer is one-way. Lots of industries benefit from this. Well, duh. The point is that as a society we’ve chosen to starve this source of innovation by prioritizing tax cuts for the wealthy. That’s why I made this comment that you chose to ignore: > [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > We might have had Mars colonies by now. We might have solved climate change. Instead, we get to watch Scrooge McDuck amuse himself by taking a joyride to re-enact a mission that NASA already did 60 years ago, all for the sake of his own ego. What could NASA now be doing if we hadn’t kneecapped its budget to placate Grover Norquist? I don’t know, but I bet it would have been more impressive than shooting a billionaire into space on his own private dildo-craft. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2021, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/143 "2021-07-25T22:33:07Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > That’s why I made this comment that you chose to ignore I didn’t ignore it; it’s not something I thought was worth disputing. I think taxes should be increased on the ultra-wealthy as well (though taxes on unrealized gains are dumb). What I dispute is the idea that you can point to this particular end result and conclude that something is wrong with the way NASA has been operated. Ok, so one billionaire has built a dildo-mobile. At the same time, their research and commercial outreach enabled SpaceX to exist, and NASA and others have reaped rewards from that partnership. And that’s just the latest in many decades of research and development. One could argue that their research underlies virtually _all_ of modern aerospace in the West. So yes, I would like to see NASA get more funding (though I disagree that a NASA-centered effort is the best means of reaching Mars). Billionaires also aren’t the biggest obstacle to fighting climate change. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2021, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/144 "2021-07-26T15:58:15Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > It’s obviously that Bezos has an enormous amount of surplus wealth, and he gained it partially by using tax loopholes that aren’t available to the rest of us. Not at all. His wealth comes from unrealized gain on his Amazon stock. You likely have unrealized gain on your home, and quite possibly stocks. No one wants people taxed on unrealized gain. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Yes, and he paid 1.4 billion in taxes for the money he took out of Amazon for himself. > > And let’s be clear: NO ONE pays tax on unrealized gains, because that would be stupid. How would you like it if your stocks went up 50%, and you had to pay tax on the gains, then they fell back to normal again before you sold them? You would have been taxed for nothing, and your break-even stocks would now be huge losers. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2021, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/145 "2021-07-26T18:29:17Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Not at all. His wealth comes from unrealized gain on his Amazon stock. Do you believe he pulled off some magic trick to realize a $5.5B space mission using only unrealized gains? Be serious. The man controls a king’s ransom of liquid wealth. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2021, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/146 "2021-07-26T18:48:14Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > Do you believe he pulled off some magic trick to realize a $5.5B space mission using only unrealized gains? And he paid taxes on whatever money he took out of Amazon stock. Here’s [the ProPublica article](https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax) that much of the recent furor came from. For the period they cover, they show Bezos as having $4.22B in income and paying $0.97B in tax. That’s a 23% tax rate. The rest of the increase was unrealized. If Bezos wants to cash that out (and he probably will have to, since Blue Origin is still a money pit), he’ll have to pay tax on it. But not until he does so. Now, personally I think 23% is still way too low, given that I and many other middle-class people have to pay much higher rates. I think capital gains rates should probably converge on normal income tax rates as you get to very high incomes. But it’s not like it’s zero. It only looks like it’s close to zero if you include the unrealized gains. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2021, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/147 "2021-07-26T19:33:31Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > Do you believe he pulled off some magic trick to realize a $5.5B space mission using only unrealized gains? Be serious. The man controls a king’s ransom of liquid wealth. It was not a $5.5 billion space mission. The cost to fly on New Shepard is somewhere around $250,000, so that may be taxed as a personal benefit. . Blue Origin is not a personal vanity project. It is a corporation with a product and services to sell. New Shepard is only a small part of it. Blue Origin is making the engines for ULA’s Vulxan rocket, and they are currently building New Glenn, a heavy lift commercial orbital rocket. New Shepard has already earned $100 million in ticket sales The only thing Bezos might be on the hook for is the cost of his ride, unless he can declare a business reason for it. If he sells Blue Origin, he will have to pay taxes onbthe gain, if there is any. Just like everyone else. Elon Musk started out beng called a rich guy playing with rockets that blow up. Now, between ISS cargo and astronaut missions and other NASA launches he is saving taxpayers billions per year. He’s saving the space industry a whole a lot more, and through rideshare is making space research accessible to universities and smaller private firms. And Starlink will do more for rural internet access than the Biden administration’s $100 billion rural broadband infrastructure project. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2021, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/148 "2021-07-26T19:57:56Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > And Starlink will do more for rural internet access than the Biden administration’s $100 billion rural broadband infrastructure project. Well, [maybe someday](https://www.theverge.com/22435030/starlink-satellite-internet-spacex-review). > [@](#): > > Starlink requires near-perfect line of sight to its satellites, which are often fairly low in the sky. Trees, buildings, and even poles will easily obstruct the signal, so if you’ve got tall trees blocking the horizon there’s really no choice but to get up and over them. […] > > I am going to emphasize the line-of-sight requirement, since it is crucial to understanding what Starlink can and cannot do right now, and it’s an important reality check on what it might be able to do in the future. Like the similarly over-hyped mmWave 5G, Starlink is remarkably delicate. Even _a single tree_ blocking the dish’s line of sight to the horizon will degrade and interrupt your Starlink signal. […] > > Starlink’s solution to the line-of-sight issue is to [put more satellites into space](https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22405779/fcc-approves-spacex-starlink-lower-orbits-against-amazon-rival-objections), and, well, that’s not necessarily great. While Starlink has an army of devoted heart-eyed fans, it has an [equal number of critics](https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18642577/spacex-starlink-satellite-constellation-astronomy-light-pollution) in the scientific community who note that [blanketing the sky](https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/14/21043229/spacex-starlink-satellite-mega-constellation-concerns-astronomy-space-traffic) with tiny satellites will [interfere with astronomers](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21190273/spacex-starlink-satellite-internet-constellation-astronomy-coating) the world over. […] > > If Starlink could offer consistently fast speeds, it would be competitive with the fastest package I can get from my rural cable provider, which tops out at $200 / mo for 325 / 25 but is still not attractively priced compared to the services available in more populated areas. > > In my week of testing, Starlink was perfectly fine for anything that buffers […] > > Services that require a sustained, real-time connection, like Slack, Zoom, or gaming, simply weren’t usable for me, even when I was seeing the fastest speeds. I had high hopes that I could spend several days working over Starlink, and after just a few lost Slack messages and Zoom calls where my video dropped to low resolution and then froze entirely, I gave up. Many Starlink beta testers similar report experiences — consistent dropouts of a few seconds, every few minutes. […] > > Starlink is a truly remarkable feat of engineering, and the sheer force of will required to make it work as a simple consumer product shines through. It is, however, in everyone’s best interest to consider the trade-offs of having done all this work and putting all these satellites in orbit _simply to get internet access_ . Astronomers and [scientists are _very mad_](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/science/space-junk-climate-change.html)about this. Starlink should talk to them more. > > Second, all the people dreaming of Starlink upsetting cable monopolies and reinventing broadband need to seriously reset their expectations. At _best_ , Starlink currently offers reasonably fast access with inconsistent connectivity, huge latency swings, and a significant uptick in time spent considering whether you can just get out the chainsaw and solve the tree problem yourself. […] > > But even when it’s final, you’re still looking at a service whose near-term, best-case scenario is being competitive with a solid LTE connection. […] > > Starlink isn’t the happy end result of a commitment to “facility-based competition.” […] It is what happens when there is an _utter lack of competition_ . ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2021, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/149 "2021-07-26T20:14:31Z")
They are judging a system in beta test, with about 10% of the satellites up. They already have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and the full constellation will handle many millions. Why the cuurent beta test state is relevant is beyond me. And the reviewer says he pays $200/mo for rural broadband. Starlink cuts that in half. And if the guy is on satellite now, it’s geostationary with horrific latency. Starlink competes with ground cable for latency. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2021, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/150 "2021-07-26T20:27:49Z")
Yes, all your remarks are just echoing what the author of that article said, so I don’t think there’s any disagreement about the specs here. I think the fundamental point is that Starlink isn’t an inimitable overwhelming triumph of our current “free enterprise” system so much as an indictment of it. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2021, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/151 "2021-07-26T20:37:48Z")
That’s a strange takeaway. Rural customers don’t have good broadband because it’s very expensive to run fiber for long distances. Corporations have decided they’re unprofitable and the government has decided (for the most part) that the resources are better spent elsewhere. Starlink fills that gap nicely. Rural customers had been using geostationary satellite internet, or flaky ground wireless, but that left a gap for low-altitude satellites to move in. A couple players have tried previously, not found resounding success, but proved the concept. SpaceX drove costs down further and now seems to have found a winning combination. It’s true that there was a lack of competition, but again that’s because it’s fundamentally expensive to serve rural customers. A lot of them don’t get water or sewer either, but for some reason there’s not much uproar about that. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2021, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/152 "2021-07-26T20:46:03Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > It’s true that there was a lack of competition, but again that’s because it’s fundamentally expensive to serve rural customers. That’s the point, AFAICT. There’s a certain amount of bait-and-switch in simultaneously pitching “Market systems are innately superior because governments can’t accomplish difficult things like Task X cheaply!” and “Well, of course a market system isn’t going to accomplish Task X, it’s too expensive to be profitable.” > [@Dr. Strangelove](#): > > A lot of them don’t get water or sewer either, but for some reason there’s not much uproar about that. IIRC as a former rural inhabitant of an area without municipal water or sewer, that’s at least partly because for very many rural residents there are feasible standalone alternatives to networked utilities: namely, wells and septic systems. You can’t drill your own internet in your backyard. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2021, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/153 "2021-07-26T21:00:45Z")
I have serious problems with Comcast and others due to their effective collusion in urban markets, but that’s not what’s going on in rural areas. Infrastructure, whether fiber or water or whatever is just expensive. Sometimes it gets subsidized, sometimes not. But regardless, it’s not the customer paying those costs, it’s everyone else. Maybe in some cases we decide that’s worth it, but there’s always a limit. > [@Kimstu](#): > > You can’t drill your own internet in your backyard. True, but geostationary internet still exists. It kinda sucks, but wells and septic systems also kinda suck. Starlink is great because it brings people up to nearly landline speed and latency. It’s more expensive than cable in urban areas, but much less expensive in sufficiently rural areas. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2021, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/154 "2021-07-26T21:21:25Z")
Getting back to the OP, this came out recently: > **[Bezos says he is now willing to invest in a Moon lander—here’s why](https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/bezos-says-he-is-now-willing-to-invest-in-a-moon-lander-heres-why/)** > > "I think they realized it's why they lost." > **[Open Letter to Administrator Nelson | Blue Origin](https://www.blueorigin.com/news/open-letter-to-administrator-nelson)** From the open letter: > Blue Origin will bridge the HLS budgetary funding shortfall by waiving all payments in the current and next two government fiscal years up to $2B to get the program back on track right now. This offer is not a deferral, but is an outright and permanent waiver of those payments. This offer provides time for government appropriation actions to catch up. > > Blue Origin will, at its own cost, contribute the development and launch of a pathfinder mission to low-Earth orbit of the lunar descent element to further retire development and schedule risks. This pathfinder mission is offered in addition to the baseline plan of performing a precursor uncrewed landing mission prior to risking any astronauts to the Moon. This contribution to the program is above and beyond the over $1B of corporate contribution cited in our Option A proposal that funds items such as our privately developed BE-7 lunar lander engine and indefinite storage of liquid hydrogen in space. All of these contributions are in addition to the $2B waiver of payments referenced above. > > Finally, Blue Origin will accept a firm, fixed-priced contract for this work, cover any system development cost overruns, and shield NASA from partner cost escalation concerns. Well, that’s getting interesting. One of the reasons the Blue Origin moon landing proposal failed was because of the perception that BO had no skin in the game. In comparison, the SpaceX proposal used Starship, which is the center of their future spaceflight efforts. They’re developing it anyway and will have billions invested. The BO proposal didn’t have anything like that. So Bezos promises to chip in $2B, do additional pathfinding work, and shield NASA from cost overruns. Which is credible since Bezos can in fact afford to do so. I’m still not a fan of their proposal, but this does close the gap a bit. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2021, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/155 "2021-07-27T07:49:05Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Starlink fills that gap nicely. Rural customers had been using geostationary satellite internet, or flaky ground wireless, but that left a gap for low-altitude satellites to move in. A couple players have tried previously, not found resounding success, but proved the concept. SpaceX drove costs down further and now seems to have found a winning combination. See this article [Edit: already linked by **Kimstu**]: > **[Starlink review: broadband dreams fall to Earth](https://www.theverge.com/22435030/starlink-satellite-internet-spacex-review)** > > The reality is a lot more irritating. > Look, I know you’re hyped up about Starlink. I feel you. I also wish I could tweet a photo of Dishy in my yard to every telecom CEO in the game and tell them to try harder. > > But The Verge has long had a hard rule against reviewing products based on potential because the sad truth is that most tech products never, ever live up to their potential. And Starlink, judged on its capabilities right now, is simply not a real competitor to the long, long coax wire running from my house to the local cable company fiber plant. It’s not even a great competitor to my data-capped-and-throttled “unlimited” AT&T 5G service because I can reasonably work from home on that connection and I really can’t with Starlink. And in the end, Starlink’s traffic has to run over fiber in the ground anyway. > > It feels like we should all be more honest about what this thing can do, what we hope it can do in the future, and why our existing networks aren’t doing that already. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2021, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/156 "2021-07-27T08:04:53Z")
Yes, I read the article. There are better, more technical ones out there. I’ve said this before in numerous ways, but let me repeat: Starlink is not a replacement for cable. Starlink is not a replacement for fiber. Starlink is not for people who hate Comcast. Starlink is for people who _wish_ Comcast were there to hate. And for further clarity: Starlink is in beta. They literally call it the “better than nothing beta.” Only about 4% of the constellation exists right now, and due to the nature of orbital mechanics that 4% cannot be concentrated in certain areas. It means that people only see 4% of the satellites that they will eventually see. Right now, people are generally only in view of a _single_ satellite, and if that satellite passes behind a tree then you lose your connection. This will not be a problem when 25 satellites are in view. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2021, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/157 "2021-07-27T08:38:27Z")
Genuine question: Do those people in rural areas have cell phone coverage? If they do, they must have at least 4G internet access. I don’t know what the cost of that is, but 4G should be adequate for most purposes, except perhaps HD video streaming, and 5G should soon be available everywhere. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2021, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/158 "2021-07-27T13:02:13Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > Genuine question: Do those people in rural areas have cell phone coverage? > > If they do, they must have at least 4G internet access. I don’t know what the cost of that is, but 4G should be adequate for most purposes, except perhaps HD video streaming I’m in a rural area. I have DSL service from the phone company over the old phone lines, which is by modern standards very slow when it’s working, which it isn’t always. I can hotspot off a Verizon phone. In this area, that is at best about as fast as the DSL, sometimes slighly faster; but it’s often slower, and sometimes so slow that even basically text pages with Java turned off or mostly off time out before they’ll load. Satellite dish service is available, but I know people who tried that and went back to DSL because at least the DSL doesn’t go down when it rains. (Usually. Thunderstorm outages are pretty common; but that’s usually due to a tree falling on something someplace, or a lightning strike somewhere, not just to the rain.) I am not in favor of filling up the sky with satellites in an attempt to solve this problem, as that seems likely to cause its own problems. I have some hope for eventual extensions of the fiberoptic line the county’s planning to put in. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2021, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/159 "2021-07-27T13:06:05Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > We might have had Mars colonies by now. We might have solved climate change. Well, let’s not get silly about this. No, we wouldn’t have either of these things if Jeff Bezos paid more tax. ---
**Author:** ![Doofer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@Doofer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doofer)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2021, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/160 "2021-07-27T21:59:36Z")
Humanity’s problem is that we don’t know how to get along with each other. Outer space is irrelevant. We aren’t raising our children like John Lennon would have us. Instead we’ve raised selfish pride seeking consumer gnats. Musk, Zuckerman, Bezos are not doing us good. Jimmy Carter is more my hero. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2021, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916/161 "2021-07-27T23:11:39Z")
Um, okay…John Lennon abandoned his first child, and doted on the second, at least for the camera. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-all-the-hate-for-branson-and-bezos-and-their-forays-into-space-travel/946916.md?page=9)