Not if you peek into his bank account.
Billionaires In Space
- Thread starter Tony L
- Start date
Not if you peek into his bank account.
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
It’s the new feudalism where the current robber princlings can extract billions in wealth from the rest of society and avoid paying proportionate tax and career opportunities for the young include peddling bicycles as dhaba walas.
Ponty
pfm Member
So much bitterness. Does anyone really think world problems would be solved if these guys didn’t exist?! I’m not a huge Amazon fan but nobody’s forced to give them their money! The biggest issues the planet faces are overpopulation and increasing life expectancy, most problems stem from here.
Really looking forward to watching the missions.
Really looking forward to watching the missions.
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
I marvel at the epic pointlessness of it. It used to be super yachts now it’s space craft- Branson and Bezos will be moaning in a few years that “they’re letting any Tom Dick and Harry into space now”. When are Sir Philip Green going up and Prince Andrew going up?
Tony L
Administrator
It is the arrogant consumerism/massive carbon footprint etc for no reason in a climate where we all need to take collective responsibility for green issues that gets me. I’m a huge supporter of NASA and genuine space science, e.g. I consider the Hubble Space Telescope to be one of the greatest human achievements, possible the highest outside of the art world, but this is just the egos of billionaires that have apparently run out of imagination on earth. The commercialisation and oligarch access to the most wasteful and most environmentally destructive form of travel yet devised by humans. I’m not seeing any actual benefit here.
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
Meanwhile, Gates shows how it should be done:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57791538
A group of philanthropists, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are to provide £93.5m emergency funding to cover some UK foreign aid cuts.
They said the temporary funding would help save "critical projects" and ensure progress was not "wasted".
The government has decided to reduce this year's spending on overseas aid from 0.7% of national income to 0.5%.
It said the financial impact of the pandemic had forced ministers to take "tough but necessary decisions".
The group, which also includes the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, the ELMA Foundation and Open Society Foundations, said the emergency funds would help projects tackling preventable diseases and providing family planning and sexual health services.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57791538
A group of philanthropists, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are to provide £93.5m emergency funding to cover some UK foreign aid cuts.
They said the temporary funding would help save "critical projects" and ensure progress was not "wasted".
The government has decided to reduce this year's spending on overseas aid from 0.7% of national income to 0.5%.
It said the financial impact of the pandemic had forced ministers to take "tough but necessary decisions".
The group, which also includes the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, the ELMA Foundation and Open Society Foundations, said the emergency funds would help projects tackling preventable diseases and providing family planning and sexual health services.
NASA increasing outsource projects to private sector companies, like Space X. They can't carry the cost burden of space exportation alone. Arguably, it also reduces reputational risk. If we want to continue going where no one has gone before we will need the billionaires and their profitable companies.
gintonic
50 shades of grey pussy cats
he did get a ride in the vomit comet in about 2007 iirc. Not quite the same.
paulfromcamden
Baffled
I wonder if there's any link between agencies like NASA not being sufficiently funded and companies like Amazon not paying very much tax?
Rockmeister
pfm Member
He's American. It's amazing how Americans become a tad more 'religious' as death approaches.
Rockmeister
pfm Member
Exactly true. It's just a matter of scale.
It is not only Americans that hope God has a short memory.
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was founded more than 20 years ago. I don't suppose Bill Gates thought death was approaching when he was only 45!
US billionaire philanthropy is a well-established tradition. Many libraries in the UK owe their existence to Andrew Carnegie, for example.
(ofc there's some would say his generosity is all part of a dastardly plot with Fauci, Soros, the NWO, the Illuminati, the Lizard Royal Family and the Rothschilds to enslave humanity and implant microchips in us all).
US billionaire philanthropy is a well-established tradition. Many libraries in the UK owe their existence to Andrew Carnegie, for example.
(ofc there's some would say his generosity is all part of a dastardly plot with Fauci, Soros, the NWO, the Illuminati, the Lizard Royal Family and the Rothschilds to enslave humanity and implant microchips in us all).
Yes, we really hated Bill's license to print his own money in the MS-DOS days. Really, really crap product where we didn't have any choice.
Nobody dare mention the now dead cofounder of a very well known 'fruit' company?
Back on track to space. There has been a space-industrial complex centered around Nasa where nobody had any interest in it being anything but expensive. It made Nasa rein supreme without any competition and distributed loads of money to BoeingGrummanMcDonnel (or who ever) that didn't have to put in much effort. Talk about greed! Then some half crazy Californian IT-billionaires got the idea to send rabbits to Mars... I hailed the day SpaceX beat B to the space station. It's now pretty obvious it can be done for much less money.
monkfish
pfm Member
BG is not a god botherer.
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
And let us not forget who was the brains behind the early days of the US space programme:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun