The New Space Race

Like all good writers, I love convergence.

As I hinted in a previous post, I'm getting a bit obsessed about Ridley Scott's new movie, Prometheus.


Simultaneously, I've also been on a bit of a NASA binge, thanks to the rantings of Astrophysics Brother Neil DeGrasse Tyson.


But there's something else that just clicked for me this morning.

Consider this fake TEDTalk by the character Peter Weyland (nee Guy Pierce), the founder of the fictional Weyland Corporation that's funding the ill-fated exploration in "Prometheus" and will ultimately become Weyland-Yutani in time to employ Sigourney Weaver and her shipmates in the original "Alien".
 

Then consider this interview 60 Minutes did with Elon Musk.  Musk was one of the original founders of PayPal, then he founded the electric sports car company Tesla, and now he's created a company that's building commercial vehicles for space exploration.


As I'm being a fanboy and looking at the fake history of the Weyland Corporation online, is it really that much of a leap between Weyland and SpaceX?

And he's not the only one.  Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, is secretly financing his own private space vehicle company called Blue Origin.

Other net billionaires are also investing their money in similar projects.  And we can't forget Virgin Galactic.

I'm reminded of a quote I'd heard was from William Gibson, that it's getting harder and harder to write sci-fi because, essentially, we now live in a sci-fi world.

Where am I going with this?  Nowhere, I guess.

Except to Mars, of course, assuming my fiance let's me buy a ticket.  :-)

Or build my own.  :-)