Space exploration is now the ultimate status symbol: Despite the SpaceX rocket carrying a USD 200 mn Facebook satellite exploding at the Cape Canaveral launch base in Florida last September, technocrats are undeterred, writes Dan Tynan for The Guardian. For Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, its galactic ambitions that drive him. “One [path] is that we stay on Earth forever and then there will be an inevitable extinction event,” he said. “The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization, and a multi-planetary species.” Musk has previously outlined an ambitious timeframe for colonizing Mars that could see people on the red planet by 2024.

Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos likens the space industry to the early days of the internet when fiber optic cable laid for voice communications in the 1960s and 1970s ultimately paved the way for today’s data-driven economy. But while Musk views space as a plan B, Bezos believes in an unlimited future economy where much of our manufacturing takes place in space, sparing Earth from pollution.

“The guys who are rulers of the universe now are the nerds,” says longtime tech journalist Ashlee Vance. “They were all geeks raised on science fiction and the vision of space we had in the 1960s and 70s. Now they have the money to make this a reality.”

The biggest barrier to exploration was always the cost. While NASA estimates the cost of a successful shuttle launch at USD 450 mn, analysts from the University of Colorado had the number closer to USD 1.5 bn. Musk and Bezos are trying to save tens of mn of USD by reusing the expensive launch vehicles. “They are right to try and solve that problem,” says Silicon Valley Space Center managing director Sean Casey. “The space industry is the only one that grinds up its vehicles.” But while the 700 passengers who paid USD 250k for tickets into sub-orbit are still waiting six years after Branson initially predicted Virgin Galactic would take flight, Blue Origin’s rockets have not yet made it into orbit and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Stratolauncher won’t be fully operation for several years, it may take decades before a system that can propel man-made objects through space fast enough to reach a star over a human being’s lifespan is designed.