Let me ask y’all a question: Can a man have too much money? It seems like there are a mess of billionaires out there who have more money than they know what to do with. Some of them buy several mansions scattered around the world, while a few go out and buy their own island. Some buy worthless paintings, some that look like my 3-year old granddaughter painted it while blindfolded. And then there is one fella with more money than sense who just bought a seat on Jeff Bezos’ New Shepherd rocket for $28 million dollars.
The ride on the spacecraft sounds exciting, but my understanding is the trip into space will last only 11 minutes or so, depending on traffic. I’m no mathematician, but that’s about $42,000 per second to ride around in a tin can. Personally, I can find less expensive ways to travel. I can pay just $30 at Six Flags to get on a ride that will send me hurtling through the sky for 10 minutes, and I’m pretty sure I’ll return to terra firma in good shape. Now that passenger behind me may need to wash my partially digested chili dog off his face, but at least gravity would keep my lunch from floating around fellow rocketeers for an 11-minute flight.
I don’t know if the entire space fight is 11 minutes or that’s the amount of time you’re out in orbit. The blast-off is probably pretty dang fast, and re-entry can be fast if the brakes are faulty like those on my old truck. So what do you do for 10 minutes or so up in space? Not enough time to watch a show on Netflix. And I bet the Wi-Fi is sketchy up there. I reckon you can take some selfies while floating around in a vomit-filled space capsule.
I wonder if they’ll have a flight attendant serving peanuts and a beverage. For $28 million, they’d better have good beer. If they only offer Bud Light and Corona, I’ll never fly that airline again, I’ll tell you what! If I were on some expensive rocket ship, you’d better serve some good stuff like Dos XX or Lone Star or my space boot’ll be heading to Uranus.
If y’all are wondering if I’d ever go up in a rocket, that answer would be “no”. I’m not real fond of flying in an airplane. I get a bit claustrophobic on a plane, even after popping a few doggie tranquilizers and taking a few swigs on moonshine while standing in the TSA line. If there are no windows on Jeff Bezos’ starship, I’d be tearing at the heat shields trying to get out. No sir, I think I’d spend my money on some other ride, like It’s a Small World. I doubt I’d be ralphing up my lunch on that ride.
Another reason you wouldn’t see me purchasing a round-trip ticket from Bezos is pretty simple. When I heard they were going to auction off a ticket into space, I checked with some fella at my Wells Fargo who informed me that once the bid gets over $313.97, I’d best bow out of the auction. Even if some generous billionaire bought me a ticket on that rocket, I doubt I’d even open my eyes for 11 minutes. I would like to try out the toilet in space, but I’m thinking I would’ve emptied my bowels at about 20,000 feet.
I once went parasailing with my daughter off the Florida Keys. While she was having fun snapping photos of the coastline, I had a death-grip on that contraption. If my eyes weren’t closed in prayer, they were looking in the water below, searching for a school of sharks waiting for me to fall from the sky.
So, my answer to the question about having too much money would be: If you can afford to fly into space on a rocket that came from Amazon, then you have more money than brains.
Clint Younts likes to keep his boots on the ground – on his ranch – outside of Buda.
