SPACE RACE: Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic has competition with Jeff Bezosbacked Blue Origin

During a speech at the Octane Tech Innovation Forum 2022 on May 10, Virgin

Galactic Holdings Inc. CEO Michael Colglazier took issue with the term “billionaire space race” after his company’s Richard Branson and rival Blue Origin founder Jeff

Bezos took highly publicized rides last year.

“The notion of two billionaires going to space and two billionaires going to space after 20 some years of working on their companies in general proximity to each other was just too much for the world of media to withstand, and thus was born the billionaire space race,” Colglazier said.

He good-naturedly pointed to a parody take on the development on “Saturday Night Live” that depicted the space billionaires in a skit called “Ego Quest” in October. It was “actually hysterical; they did a really great job with it,” Colglazier said.

But “after those two flights, the discussion went a little bit—a lot in my opinion— too much into billionaire space race.”

“Is that what this is for? Is it just to go up and come down and get an image or get a selfie? No, I think that fully missed the point.”

He said Virgin Galactic needs to continue emphasizing the advances it is making by taking people into space and returning them with renewed perspectives on planet Earth.

“We want commercial space industry growing and learning.”