I know a lot of people shit on billionaires going to space when they could be doing more to help on earth, but I don’t see this as a failure of the individual billionaires. It’s a failure of government to tax properly.

Billionaires shouldn’t exist. If governments taxed properly, the middle class would be much larger and would have more use for the services provided by satellites and space industry and would self fund instead of requiring billionaires.

Space tourism will allow launch providers to increase their manufacturing capacity and thus bring the cost of launch down which will allow more countries to access space. More countries to put climate monitoring satellites in orbit to protect their populations. More companies can provide communications infrastructure in space and bypass censorship.

Accessing space is unquestionably a net benefit for all of humanity but there are better ways to maximize that benefit. Right now we’re minimizing it by finding it with billionaires.