What the the current crop of super-rich space tourists have taught us
On space, the banal frontier.
They went to see the stars and all we got were selfies.
It was very much as expected, now we’ve reached the stage where novelty turns into irritant and where space excitement devolves into space oddity. This is the Trigger Happy TV stage where the owner of the newest technological marvel is just a fool shouting loudly in your favourite café or bar.
Where there used to be true explorers, pushing the envelope of what we thought was humanly possible, we now have daytime TV hosts and pop singers pushing the envelope of what humans find tolerable. Mediaites replace meteorites. Think stardust rather than space dust.
We’d been warned this would happen. At some point between the pioneer and the masses, we were always due to rediscover those formerly defined by the portmanteau “jetset” but who now might be called the “rocketset”.