Now I wouldn’t spend that much money on a short trip to the edge of space even if I had it. If I’m going to blow that much money at once, I’ll blow it on charity.
If I had the money to blow I wouldn’t give it all to charity… Some, sure, I can think of a few I like.
That being said, after getting my luxury bones fixed and getting out of pain, I’d just buy a house and pay off my car.
Then retire. Probably move somewhere tropical… Or isolated, haven’t decided. Maybe both is possible. All I know is a fiber (or future equivalent) would be mandatory.
Because if I have 450k to just blow, I’ve got way more in reserve.
It’s the whole “edge of space” thing that really pisses me off. When the billionaires started talking about creating their own space program, I was expecting corporate settlements on the moon or Mars–dystopian, to be sure, but at least humanity would be making progress to the stars. But no, let’s be content with charging people to get to the edge of space so they can go home and tell themselves they’re astronauts.
Rich people used to pay the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars to ride short distances on triplanes just so they could see the ground from above. That’s what this is. Soon, rich people will be going on trips to the Moon, and then middle class people will be able to afford it later. New technologies are always expensive at first but then get cheaper, case in point, the computer you’re using right now.
Also, I doubt a corporate settlement is gonna be any worse than any other settlement considering almost everything the colony actually needs will be produced in the colony itself after the first few years and the corporation can’t do much from all the way over on Earth if the colony decides to do something they don’t like. Colonization schemes have usually been private endeavors that get subsumed by the state anyway, been like that since the Americas. I support anyone who brings us to the stars, including rich people.
