Nuclear fusion or galactic pollution, what's the conclusion for China's billionaires?
THERE ARE CHILDREN SOMEWHERE, I CAN SMELL THEM
In my youth, I wanted to be an inventor. I was glued to old movies on the telly about Thomas Edison, Barnes Wallis, Louis Pasteur, and of course Ian Fleming's fictional Caractacus Potts. All good, clean Sunday afternoon BBC TV.
After school I would race to my garden-shed headquarters to work on ideas for how to make my wooden go-kart steer using a joystick, and for how to make it go without my mate Gary pushing it.
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My rocket design never flew, but I remember watching a programme about Sir Christopher Cockerell, the inventor of the hovercraft. By utilising a few tin cans and a vacuum cleaner, he proved his floating contraption could work. Perhaps I was on the right track with those bean cans after all.
IS THAT ALL YOU DO MR POTTS, INVENT THINGS?
Bezos has been the latest to add fuel to the one-upmanship as the three rivals battle for space supremacy, with an announcement that on July 20 he, his brother Mark and an as yet unannounced passenger who bought a golden ticket for US$28 million, will be riding his Blue Origin rocket 100 miles into the air. They will then drift back to earth, after blasting out more than their fair share of pollutants, slap each other on the back, fill up the tank and have another go.
Musk has been nudged out of the limelight since the Bezos announcement, but Branson may have a plan to snatch all the fun from the pair of them by launching himself on his rocket-plane sometime over the July 4 holiday weekend - subject to Federal Aviation Administration approval. Sir Richard would need to push VSS Unity (the space plane) and VMS Eve (the tug that lifts the space-plane part way) to somewhere between 50 miles and 62.5 miles up or it doesn't count against Bezos.
NASTY SMELLIN' THINGS, MOTORCARS!
Eventually, their antics may take private citizens regularly to space as passengers, tourists and colonists. Musk fancies retiring on Mars in a colony, Bezos likes the look of the moon better and Branson, the least wealthy of the three, is winding up a suborbital roller-coaster. Personally, I think Branson has more of a future in bringing back supersonic travel.
TOOT SWEETS
So, what comes next after Bezos or Branson beat Musk?
Or, does this just mean Bezos beats everyone to the first real-life Iron Man suit?
Neil Newman is a thematic portfolio strategist focused on pan-Asian equity markets
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2021. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
