In the hopes that there will be a gazillion more Wally Funks of all ages headed to space in the not-too-distant future, we’re cooking up our own rocket design (see left). What saved us from a complete funk was, of course, 82-year-old Wally Funk, who was rejected by NASA four times but finally made it to space this week in the Blue Origin rocket.
Would we feel less rancor when it comes to the morality of these space trips if one of these billionaires was a woman? The same quandaries would apply, but at least give us a shot at making the right decision. One of the (many, so many) things that really get our goat is that it’s thanks to the ongoing systemic sexism that perpetuates the wealth and opportunity gaps that here we are, once again, with a bunch of men leading the most public aspects of the charge into new frontiers. The moral and ethical issues surrounding brotastic billionaires Bezos, Richard Branson and Elon Musk blasting off are well documented in this piece from The New Republic, “ The Billionaire Space Race Is a Tragically Wasteful Ego Contest.” This whole billionaire-bros-go-to-space thing is just generally offensive on so many different levels. If you haven’t already joined in the “fun,” check out this roundup of internet commentary on Jeff Bezos’s penis-shaped spaceship. Yeah, yeah, we know there’s some good engineering reasons for why the Blue Origin rocket looks like it does, but c’mon. Oh hi, how’s your week? Yes, we are feeling a bit on the ?side of things, how’d you guess? We think it has something to do with this thing (see right) being shoved in our faces all week. Things we’ve had it with this week include phallic rockets, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue…