It was sad to see a 17-year-old girl in the #RoyalInstitution #ChristmasLectures this year preaching that billionaires have given us access to space and that Elon Musk is a great guy who will take humanity to Mars.
The reality is that it is governments who gave us access to space.
Billionaires, on the other hand, have given us space *pollution*, the shuttering of NASA and NOAA, wasteful vanity projects, and the extension of the category of 'astronaut' to encompass #KatyPerry.
#ElonMusk is meanwhile recycling 20th century boy's fiction sci-fi fantasies about techno-feudal rich-equals-superior inventors-cum-capitalists, not the least of which is E.E. Smith's 'Skylark' series.
In these male fantasies the rich industrialist hero's girlfriend sometimes does indeed get to be a passenger in his rocketship.
Juvenile pulp sci-fi was not supposed to be the roadmap for the future.