(airy music) - Believe it or not, the average American doesn't even have $500 saved (graphics swish) for emergency space travel.

Who woulda thought?

(airy cartoonish music) Hey everyone, Myles Bess here.

Journalist, host of "Above the Noise," and a person with no interest in going to space.

Like none.

I know, hold on, hold on.

Hear me out.

Earth is scary enough!

It's almost too much for my tiny human brain to fully grasp.

I mean, goblin sharks.

(suspense music) Look at it.

I didn't make this up, this is a real thing.

You gotta be kidding me.

So, when I see all these headlines talking about how three billionaires are basically running the space race these days for a profit, I need to take a deep breath (meditation music) and say like 12 namastes.

Namaste.

It's not working.

(laughs) Bezos, Branson, and Musk became (cash register clicking) billionaires by winning the capitalism game on earth.

And it gets my spidey senses tingling (graphics buzzing) when I think about them getting their hands all over space travel!

I'm never gonna make a trip into space.

And even if I wanted to, there's no way I could afford it!

Tom Hanks said that he was offered a spot to go into space, and even he wasn't willing to cough up $27 million.

And he's Tom Hanks!

That's Forest Gump!

I'm genuinely curious.

How will this new age of space travel benefit us?

The regular non-millionaires and billionaires stuck on this planet for the foreseeable future.

What can billionaires in space do for us?

(graphics fuzzing) (airy cartoonish music) Decades before space billionaires, decades before Amazon and Tesla, and the internet that made their billions even possible?

There was NASA, (triumphant music) a US government agency funded by American tax payers, and responsible (rocket whooshing) for all things space.

(cartoonish music) Their mission?

(triumphant music) To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity.

And boy did NASA deliver.

We got the International Space Station.

We got the Hubble telescope.

We got a fricking Rover on Mars.

And then, there's the more practical stuff we use everyday that has its origins with NASA.

Stuff like GPS and cordless power tools.

Just to name two.

And y'all, (chuckles) running a space program is hella expensive.

In 2020, NASA's budget was just shy of $23 billion.

And that's only a fraction of what NASA's budget used to be.

Back in their heyday, when we were sending people to the moon, it was around 4.5% of the overall federal budget.

Now, it's just under .5%.

But hey, $23 billion is still $23 billion.

And NASA doesn't even have a program to put astronauts in the space anymore.

The space shuttle program that had been launching astronauts into space for 30 years was retired in 2011 because it was too expensive.

And that brings us to the billionaires in space that we have today.

NASA still wants to send astronauts (soft groovy music) and supplies up into space.

So now, they get Musk on the phone and rent a seat on one of his shuttles.

(shuttle swooshes) The whole cost angle is a big reason why some people love the idea of for-profit companies like Space X, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin tackling space travel.

We're talking about one of the defining principles of free market capitalism here, folks.

No, no, no, no, not this principle.

I'm talking about the other defining principle, competition.

Oh yeah, there we go.

Perfect.

Companies compete, prices drop.

More companies get into the game.

They get more efficient at offering a better product.

Prices drop again, rinse and repeat.

But these space billionaires don't want to just be NASA's Uber driver, they want to jumpstart space tourism.

I'm talking like vacations in space!

I mean, imagine, a billionaire building some gross looking hotel and casino up there.

Could you imagine?

A ticket for a trip like this is going to cost millions of dollars.

(cash register dings) It's obviously totally out of reach for normal people like you and me.

(shuttle swooshes) What is the first step in creating a larger space economy?

Tourist means you need new workers, (cartoonish music) which means new businesses, which means you need places for these people to stay.

Now, you need space Tinder and space (graphics blipping) Door Dash, and you see what I'm getting at here?

And this new space economy could create new tech that can help the planet.

Like space-based solar power.

Solar panels capture sunlight before it reaches the atmosphere.

Convert it to microwave energy and then beam it down to earth for us to use.

(chuckles) Nuts, right?

But here's a potential problem with all of this.

Remember NASA's mission?

(pleasant music) To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity?

When for-profit companies are in charge of discovering and expanding, the benefit becomes how much money they can make.

They don't necessarily care about the humanity stuff.

We're only getting space-based solar power if there's money to be made.

Now, the US government is trying to influence what American companies do in space by investing in the ones that are trying to do things, you know, worthwhile.

Like, for the first decade of SpaceX, (shuttle swooshes) they burned through about a billion dollars developing their rockets, and about half of that money came from government contracts from NASA!

So, it's not a surprise that now, NASA's using SpaceX to get astronauts to space.

That was the goal from the beginning.

But pure space tourism, that's different.

That's just going into space for fun!

Like, I don't want space travel to end up being joy rides for super rich people.

And I don't want any cool new tech that gets developed to be so expensive that only rich people get to use it.

Like, I want a space iPhone, (space music) you know what I mean?

Like, that seems cool.

And if this new space economy really does get up and running, what does that mean for the environment when we have space rockets blasting off multiple times a day, every day?

Like Virgin Galactic, wants to send at least 400 flights up to space a year.

They're blasting offs, (shuttle swooshes) but then a couple of minutes and Zero-G, then coming right back down.

(shuttle swooshes) Now, that short trip puts out enough carbon pollution that it will be the same (engine revving) as if you were like driving a car around (car revving) the planet one time.

Imagine driving around the planet once.

That's a lot.

And with all this increased action in space, a new problem might surface.

Space junk.

(graphics click softly) In a nutshell, I did a fantastic episode on this.

But in a nutshell, you see what I?

Nevermind.

With all these new satellites and space stations, and space flights happening, the chances of a collision creating a chain reaction of other collisions, goes up.

So, picture a disaster scenario where there's this giant ring of debris (debris buzzing softly) that creates a barrier, preventing new launches from happening safely.

So, where does all this leave us now?

I mean, we had NASA, a part of the government, running things for a long time.

Now, it seems like for-profit companies are in charge.

Now, what's the best path forward here?

Basically, the only reason these for-profit companies can even think about (soft electronic music) doing business in space is because NASA blazed the path there first.

They did a big chunk of the testing, the researching, and safety tests, and the mapping, and all the important stuff.

(soft airy music) So at the end of the day, it doesn't have to be this binary choice between the government or companies running space travel.

Maybe they have different roles to play.

Private companies take over space activity in low earth orbit.

That's the area of space just outside of earth's atmosphere, where all our satellites and the International Space Station live.

NASA has been there and done that.

The path has been blazed.

NASA on the other hand, takes on the big, bold stuff in deep space.

Like sending a space probe out to explore Pluto.

There's no business case for doing that yet.

I mean, who knows?

Maybe Bezos thinks it's the perfect location for an Amazon distribution center.

But it's also important to note that a government-run space program doesn't automatically translate to something good for regular people.

Politicians control the money and can dictate (soft electronic music) what the goals and priorities are in space.

And the US ain't the only game in town.

China is wrapping up its space program, and just this year, they completed their own space station that's currently orbiting earth.

They're gonna want to explore space just like NASA.

What if that creates conflict?

What if we both want to build a settlement on another planet somewhere?

Are we gonna get into some kinda like space war or something?

And no, (light saber whirs) Luke Skywalker and The Force will not be of any help to us.

(chuckles) This is something completely different.

(light saber whirs softly) I mean, over a hundred countries did sign the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, including China and the US.

It tried to keep space exploration peaceful by prohibiting countries from building military bases and stockpiling weapons on other planets and moons.

But the treaty was written when colonizing space was just a pipe dream.

Like, they couldn't even imagine that.

When countries are actually in a position to build on another planet and start extracting resources, will they really think twice about the treaty?

It's unclear and it's kinda scary.

(chuckles) (suspenseful music) Just like those dang goblin sharks.

Look at it.

Just look at it.

That's creepy.

Ugh!

All right.

(airy cartoonish music) Thanks for stickin' around.

We did our best to try to break down this business of billionaires in space.

Now, I want to know what you think.

Are they really trying to make the future better for people like you and me when they're flying around up there?

Or, are their dollars better spent here on earth?

Tough question, but I know you got opinions.

Let me hear it.