Neil deGrasse Tyson comments on the ‘billionaire boys race’ toward space tourism

Astrophysicist and entertainer Neil deGrasse Tyson has been blowing our minds for decades. Whether he’s chatting about life, the universal laws of the cosmos, or debunking Pink Floyd album art — deGrasse Tyson is truly one of a kind.

Now — as space tourism becomes an ever-present buzz word on our little blue planet — Neil deGrasse Tyson seems to have found his next big talking point: Billionaires. In an interview with VladTV, deGrasse Tyson detailed his thoughts on what it means for the world’s wealthiest people to go gallivanting across the stars, and all the misconceptions along with that.

Never one to mince words, Neil deGrasse Tyson explains how space tourism will be the first way in which our civilization truly gets to space. More than that though, he details how the collective perception of these seemingly impossible feats aren’t exactly correct. When we think of billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson — what many don’t realize is that, at least for Bezos and Branson, their journey into space isn’t space as it has been traditionally established.

“The billionaire boys race is a race to commercialize sub-orbital flights. So the rocket goes up and falls back to Earth, and while it’s falling back to Earth — but before it enters the atmosphere in any significant way, you have a period of time when you’re weightless. The blue sky becomes dark because there’s no scattered light, there’s not enough atmosphere to scatter light (in order) to turn the daytime sky blue. So the daytime sky goes dark, the sun is there, the stars are there, and you’re weightless.”

All this is to say that these trips to “space” are really just brief, high-tech plane rides out of Earth’s atmosphere. Incredibly cool, but unable to provide much by way of exploration. According to Neil deGrasse Tyson then, Elon Musk’s space programs are much more substantial.

“That is a completely different machine than the one that goes into Earth orbit. That’s the one that Elon Musk has.”

Where others only scratch the surface, Musk sends his spacecraft into Earth’s orbit. This means that his missions last much longer, and collect much more data — and, most importantly, travel through space.

Regardless of label, the fact that humanity has its mind occupied with space is certainly a good thing. When asked about the prospect of tourism to the Moon, Neil deGrasse Tyson couldn’t help sharing a classic geek joke.

“Restaurants would be fine, but one thing is for sure, they’ll have no atmosphere.”

You can take the geek out of the dad, but you can’t take the dad out of the geek.