Prior to the mega-heat ahead, the overpowering news item this Sunday morning is Richard Branson-influenced mini-space flight with the look and feel of maybe the early Apollo events, or perhaps the first few shuttle flights (which apparentlyy got ho-hum after awhile) — a certain excitrment, but a big difference before was national, governemnt-funded projects, today though, as MSNBC‘s Stephanie Ruhle observed it’s now all about “branding.”

Space travel continues for the wealthy:

WATCH LIVE: @RichardBranson and crew of mission specialists fly to space on @VirginGalactic’s #Unity22. A new space age is here… https://t.co/kLI6mGCUro

— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) July 11, 2021

Branson is just the first of such wealth-based events — Branson’s Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. was today’s holding company; next week, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin LLC will fund his slip into space; and Elon Musk supposedly has a ticket already for a Virgin Galactic ride in the near future.
About the money (Wall Street Journal this mornning): Virgin Galactic said its tickets have sold for $250,000 each, and the company has collected $80 million in sales and deposits.

A good analysis of our current space program is at Space.com from last Friday — a must-read not only on what’s happening with today’s space plunge-upward, but also a history of humans in space, including this clip:

“I think the definition of ‘astronaut’ is up for grabs again right now,” Jordan Bimm, a space historian at the University of Chicago and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, told Space.com.
“What isn’t changing is that space remains an incredibly elite space. It’s just a different pathway there.”

And however the idea of an astronaut changes moving forward, the role will retain flavors of the astronauts who have flown to date, affected by both the military aura of the Cold War astronaut and the scientific agenda of the space station researcher, he said.
“It’s not like it sheds those identities each time,” Bimm said.
“It builds on them, like an extra coat of paint on an old wall.”

Yet how will the general public take this new rich affair? Pilots and crew is one aspect, but with an entire spacecraft full of way-wealthy asshole-passengers will the attention be focused, or people shifting to Netflix?
Time will tell, I guess.

While watching the Branson launch on MSNBC this morning, and not a ‘normal’ rocket blast-off straight up, but instead the spacecraft under the wing of a bigger aircraft whick took-off on a regular runway, the reporters covering the event spoke in similar tones of a history in the making. In this case, however, it’s one-sided on the money tree.
During coverage, host Ali Velshi cut to different correspondents at various points, but Stephanie Ruhle, a financial/economic journnalist, said the obvious bottom line was money.

I just caught a few points word-for word, first: ‘“Richard Branson is a true dare-devil,”‘ and then went on to describe Branson’s balloon trips, etc.
Ruhle hit the mark that this entire operation is for a ‘“small, small sliver of the richest of the rich.”‘

The flight was a success, and we’re off to the races…

Is that first-class or what?

The downer — because of the calamity of climate change, this excitement won’t last…

(Illustration out front: ‘Tower of Babel,’ a 1928 woodcut by M. C. Escher, found here)