I was pleased to see this editorial in The Wall Street Journal on July 23. I have been mulling this exact issue for the past few weeks. What is the point of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic placing civilians into space? Sure, it’s an exciting adventure for the space travelers, but as the op-ed points out, space flight is not as routine as taking a commercial jet from Houston to LaGuardia. Space flight is dangerous.
On November 18, 1978, The Reverend Jim Jones led the mass suicide of 918 of his followers in Guyana. It is generally thought that the people from the People’s Temple died by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. It was really Flavor Aid and had all sorts of drugs in it including cyanide, but the incident became the origin of the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid.”
Kurt Streeter’s opinion piece in The New York Times on July 29 describes the power asserted by gymnast Simone Biles when she said “no.” Ms. Biles had had enough of the pressure to perform, the abuse by team doctors and the abusive coaching by the Karolyis. We don’t know precisely why Ms. Biles decided at this moment that she had reached her tipping point. But she had.
