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Jeff Bezos launches with three crew members aboard a New Shepard rocket on the world’s first unpiloted suborbital flight from Blue Origin’s Launch Site 1 near Van Horn, Texas , July 20, 2021.
(Joe Skipper/Reuters)
The usual scolds are upset at Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson for their private space-travel ventures — today of all days, on the 52nd anniversary of the moon landing. MSNBC’s Talia Lavin gives us a textbook sample:
Jeff Bezos’ live Blue Origin space launch is the pinnacle of waste. Private space flight is possible because of the ultra-wealthy ignoring the rest of the world’s problems….doctor bills and rent remain unalleviated, and the racial disparities inherent in the refrain seem ever starker, enshrined in new voter-suppression legislation around the country and in the disproportionate death toll of the pandemic on communities of color. But a new “flying circus” has arisen nonetheless — another race to space, even more ludicrous than before, with a rarefied circle of lily-white billionaires serving as well-heeled ringmasters…