SNL Rips Into Jeff Bezos and the Ridiculous Billionaire Space Race

In their separate discourses ahead of the historic (and very short) flights, both Branson and Bezos pointed out that space travel needed to become more inclusive and accessible. This meant that civilians should get to enjoy it, as long as they had a cosmic budget to pay for it. Still, it was a first step towards democratizing space exploration and turning space tourism into a viable concept.

Elon Musk and his SpaceX were – and remain – ahead of both Virgin Atlantic and Blue Origin, both in terms of discourse and actual progress toward the stated goal. Still, in the race of launching the first private customers into space, Branson won by being the first – and Bezos for being the most ridiculed.

Saturday Night Live (SNL) could not miss out on the chance of showing just how ridiculous and ridiculously expensive the whole thing has been so far. Host Owen Wilson took on Bezos himself, the space cowboy with a big mission and an equally big rocket, in a skit that played out like a trailer for a new Star Trek series, aptly called Star Trek: Ego Quest. You can see it in full at the bottom of the page.

Described as “a midlife crisis of cosmic proportions,” the billionaire space race is not without surprise allegiances (and the occasional spot of racing, which may or may not take out the International Space Station) and lurking dangers (Musk is the bad guy and he’s armed with photon torpedoes that he’s not afraid to use). It is just as silly as it sounds.

“Their mission: To sort of just fly around space goofing off” is how the skit describes Blue Origin’s New Shepard record-breaking flight. It’s the aptest comparison, considering the Bezos brothers spent the four minutes in zero gravity on a $5.5 billion mission, throwing skittles into their mouth and pretending to swim.

Just last week, former head of Blue Origin Employee Communications Alexandra Abrams, along with some 20 former and current Blue Origin employees, went on the record to say safety considerations were ignored in the rush to beat Branson and Musk to the finish line. Abrams said she “would not trust a Blue Origin vehicle going to space,” but she was happy the inaugural flight went off without a glitch, considering the fact that, in 2018 alone, over 1,000 problem reports related to the engines on the rocket were never addressed.

In other words, this was always an ego trip.