Billionaires in Space

[Uncle Sparky]

[-Jrabbit]

Holy Crap! Jeff Bezos has donated $100 million each to professor/media commentator Van Jones and chef José Andrés.

Details:

New York (CNN Business)Jeff Bezos, the Amazon (AMZN) founder and world's wealthiest man, said Tuesday after flying to the edge of space that he planned to award $100 million each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef José Andrés.

Bezos said that Jones and Andres were free to do "what they want" with the money.

"They can give it all to their own charity," Bezos said at a press conference after his trip to space. "Or they can share the wealth. It is up to them."

The money, Bezos said, was tied to a "surprise" philanthropic initiative he wanted to announce called the Courage and Civility Award.

The award aims to honor those who have "demonstrated courage" and tried to be a unifier in a divisive world, Bezos added.

"We need unifiers and not vilifiers," Bezos said. "We need people who argue hard and act hard for what they believe. But they do that always with civility and never ad hominem attacks. Unfortunately, we live in a world where this is too often not the case. But we do have role models."

Jones, accepting the award, said that "sometimes dreams come true."

"You bet on me and I appreciate it," Jones told Bezos, later adding that it was money for him to "give to others who have a similar spirit."

Andrés, who has poured his efforts into feeding those in need around the world, said that the award itself "cannot feed the world on its own."

"But," Andrés added, "this is a start of a new chapter for us."

Anderson Cooper, who was anchoring CNN's special coverage on Tuesday, said on-air after Bezos announced the award that it was "quite a surprise."

"None of us knew anything about it," Cooper said.

The philanthropic initiative from Bezos comes as he and fellow billionaires such as Richard Branson, the Virgin Galactic investor, face criticism for spending their wealth on space tourism. Bezos has previously been criticized for not contributing more to philanthropy, but has donated billions of dollars in recent years to causes including climate change and food banks.Critics have said that the world's richest people should work to improve the conditions for people here on Earth, instead of flying off into space. Bezos and supporters of the space programs, however, have countered that both are possible.

"Well, I say they're largely right. We have to do both," he said in an interview with CNN Monday. "You know, we have lots of problems here and now on Earth and we need to work on those, and we always need to look to the future. We've always done that as a species, as a civilization. We have to do both."

Hey, it's only about 0.1% of his $211B fortune, but maybe this guy has finally figured out that it's a good idea to use his massive resources to do something positive in this world.

link: https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/20/media...ion/index.html

[Broken_Erika]

it looks like a....

[BeBMan]

Lots of people may have wondered about the size and specific shape of Bezos' ermm... rocket

[BeBMan]

My nephew had a nice office job at Amazon couple yrs ago. He was rather well off there, but also didn't like it too much from what I recall.

/cents

Probably there's lots of stuff to say about Jeff/Amazon, but at least they made shopping easier and saved The Expanse...

[EPW]

As someone who works at amazon, I will say it's not a fun place to work but I am personally against unionization.

[EPW]

40 minutes till launch

[ricketyclik]

Well, you know, it IS a comic

[N35t0r]

(Note that I already was sympathetic to billionaires spending money there, although I don't think there should be billionaires, I think it is a fair point that billionaires efforts could be replaced by a better functioning national science department/ministry).

JM

I agree. Better doing this than buying another massive yacht, with a second, smaller, yacht to act as helipad (what do you mean, he can afford to do that also? ).

One of the big problems with NASA is that they get a lot of earmarked funding from Congress, and there is a lot of pork going around there *cough*SLS*cough*. Unless you change it so that NASA can have total autonomy wrt their funding, you'll find it very hard to avoid this. And if you do manage that, then it's more likely that NASA's budget will go down, and congress will find another way to funnell spending into their districts.

If anything, we should be thankful that SpaceX up-ended the whole industry. Boeing several years ago was arguing (with a lot of political support) that they should be kept as the sole source of the commercial crew program, since they were the company with experience. They still haven't reached the ISS, and that is with SpaceX running laps around them. Imagine if they had been the only ones! (Oh, wait, I don't have to, look at SLS!)

[N35t0r]

'ruin astronomy forever'
lol, hyperbole much?

[Jon Miller]

(Note that I already was sympathetic to billionaires spending money there, although I don't think there should be billionaires, I think it is a fair point that billionaires efforts could be replaced by a better functioning national science department/ministry).

JM

[Jon Miller]

Fair point.

JM

[Donegeal]

It is very difficult to accomplish a big ticket mission (such as returning to the moon or getting to Mars) when priorities change every four or eight years as presidents come and go. NASA needs to be able to be independent of political whims and budgets. If it's not, then billionaires in space is the only way we'll get there.

[ricketyclik]

[-Jrabbit]

Dude, where do I sound upset? I made a simple, 1-sentence observation. Which you quoted in full.
For some reason, it totally triggered you, ranting for 3 paragraphs about things I never addressed.

GET. A. GRIP.