In the News: Bezos vs. Branson, Reaching for the Stars

Branson's VSS Unity. (Publicity still)

Has anyone been paying attention to the new Space Race? It used to be the U.S. and Soviet Union striving for leadership. Today it appears to be a battle of the egos. Sir Richard Branson, who turns 71 this month, may not have the big bucks his rival has, but 5.7 billion dollars is nothing to scoff at. 

Branson is set to be first to take flight into the earth's outer canopy, though it's unlikely he will ever be first as far as wealth goes. Jeffrey B currently makes nearly $150,000 per minute based on data from August 2020. Or $3,715 per second if you prefer. Total net worth is over 200 billion. 

Then there's Elon Musk with his SpaceX program. With a 162 billion dollar net worth, he's certainly got enough ka-ching to get into this game as well. And of the three programs, Musk was actually first to send people into outer space, having sent four astronauts to the Space Shuttle in April. What Bezos and Branson are doing is sending tourists, not astronauts. They themselves happen to be going along for the ride.

All three appear to be possibility thinkers. They dream big and have the resources to create things that seem larger than life.

Regarding Branson's flight tomorrow, it will be a very different kind of deployment. Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity will be carried aloft by a large jet called the White Night Two from which the space craft will be fired up and take off near the jet's highest altitude. It's unusual looking, something akin to a shuttlecock that you might use in badminton. It certainly conveys a sense of futurism when you see it.

It not only torques Bezos that Branson is going to be first into outer space, but that Branson is calling it "outer space" when to Bezos -- and some others -- it doesn't really seem like outer space. If I understand the debate, Branson is calling the altitude of 80 km as outer space, whereas Bezos -- who will soon take passengers via his New Shepard -- says scientists have named 100 km as the Karman Line.  I doubt that there will be any signs up there saying exactly where the border is, or people waiting up there to check their passports.

Inside the New Shepard's capsule. 

There was room for one more passenger on Bezos' flight so they auctioned off that seat and are being paid a cool 28 million for this privilege. The money will be donated to their non-profit Club for the Future which trains kids for STEM careers.

Bezos' rocket, the New Shepard, is named after Alan Shepard, America' first astronaut. I find it quite astonishing that Mr. Bezos' rocket is a reusable craft. The same rocket has made made more than a dozen flights already. This will be the first with passengers. The New Shepard was designed to hold six passengers and has plenty of windows so they can enjoy the view. The zero gravity experience will last only about three minutes, it seems, a little over nine million dollars a minute for that last passenger.

Bezos & his company Blue Origin selected July 20 as their official debut. That day marks the 52nd anniversary of man's first walk on the moon. There's a lot of symbolism in all these names and events surrounding the renewed space exploration mania.

Not everyone can afford a million dollar ticket to the rim of the atmosphere, so I personally hope they've set up video cameras that can turn it into an affordable Virtual Reality experience for the rest of us. What do you think?

Related Links

Lessons from the Virgin Billionaire

My Hero Jeff Bezos

Throwback Thursday: Six Degrees of Separation Revisited

Most of us have heard of the expression six degrees of separation. Wikipedia describes it this way:

Six degrees of separation (also referred to as the "Human Web") refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth. It was popularized in a play written by John Guare.

Funny thing is when I do a quick search on this story, WhatIs.com just told me the notion originated with Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains." Did Guare steal the idea from Karinthy without attribution?

I remember reading an article about Kevin Bacon being the most connected person in Hollywood, with all these charts and lines of connection to other actors and directors of disparate genres of films and maybe Broadway connections and who knows. The article explained how they used computers and Compiled all the Hollywood stars into a database to get a composite picture from which they could deduce conclusions.

As it turns out, this whole thing became a fad the resulted in the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game. If you really wanted to get into it, there's even a website now called The Oracle of Bacon where you can type in the name of any actor or actress and learn how many degrees away they are. Not only that, you can download the Oracle of Bacon app and have this invaluable info at your fingertips day or night. 

About seven years ago, with the advent of Web 2.0 and Social Networks, I began to wonder if six degrees of separation may have been reduced to five or four, or even three. Through Twitter, during Thanksgiving 2008, we were two or three degrees of separation from terrorists firing assault weapons in the Mumbai financial district.

I do not know how this (Six Degrees) plays out in the rest of the world, but for sure I would think that in this country we are three or four degrees of separation from anyone, at most. You are reading this, wherever you are. The convenience store clerk is two degrees from me. Her boy friend, that kid with the racy T-shirt and a smudge of chocolate on his chin, is but three steps away. And we all know how connected he is.

Many people have tried to verify this theory to see if it holds up. In August 2008 Microsoft claimed that after studying billions of electronic messages, they verified that any two strangers in the world were 6.6 introductions away from one another. According to their science you are less than seven steps away from Bob Dylan, Richard Branson, John Cleese and the Dalai Lama, though if you Twitter you can actually be one step away from the latter three, if you follow them... and two steps away if you follow me.

If we accept Microsoft's 2008 number of 6.6 as a benchmark, we can do another measurement in 2018 to see if people are getting closer as the world's population expands, or are we actually drifting further away from one another? I suspect that some people are getting burned out on all this connectivity, whereas others get juiced by the social engagement. What about you?

Meantime, life goes on... Dig it.

Is Six Now Three?

Most of us have heard of the expression six degrees of separation. Wikipedia describes it this way:

Six degrees of separation (also referred to as the "Human Web") refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth. It was popularized in a play written by John Guare.

Funny thing is when do a quick search on this story, WhatIs.com just told me the notion originated with Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains." Did Guare steal the idea from Karinthy without attribution?

I remember reading an article about Kevin Bacon being the most connected person in Hollywood, with all these charts and lines of connection to other actors and directors of disparate genres of films and maybe Broadway connections and who knows. I believe they used computers and plugged in all the Hollywood stars to get a composite picture from which they could deduce conclusions.

With the advent of Web 2.0 and Social Networks I have begun to wonder if six degrees of separation has been reduced to five or four, or even three? Through Twitter last November we were two or three degrees of separation from terrorists firing assault weapons in the Mumbai financial district, as it happened.

I do not know how this plays out in the rest of the world, but for sure I would think that in this country we are three or four degrees of separation from anyone, at most. You are reading this, wherever you are. The convenience store clerk is two degrees from me. Her boy friend, that kid with the racy T-shirt and a smudge of chocolate on his chin, is but three steps away. And we all know how connected he is.

Many people have tried to verify this theory to see if it holds up. In August 2008 Microsoft claims that after studying billions of electronic messages, they verified that any two strangers in the world are 6.6 introductions away from one another. According to their science you are less than seven steps away from Bob Dylan, Richard Branson, John Cleese and the Dalai Lama, thogh if you Twitter you can actually be one step away from the latter three... if you follow them... and two steps away if you follow me.

If we take the 2008 number of 6.6 as a benchmark, we'll see what Microsoft tells us about 6 degrees of separation in 2015. Will we be getting closer as the world population expands, or are we actually drifting farther away from one another?