I liked this when I first read it.

I just wanted to add something I knew at the time but didn’t mention: there will never be “random people” going to space.

Even before the coronavirus, average people actually living in space was never going to be a thing — because it was simply too expensive, and we desperately needed the money here, at home, to deal with the climate emergency.

Now we have COVID and we’re going to spend the next five years cleaning up after it.

And after that, we’ll need to go back and deal with climate change, if we ever do; or if we don’t, which is my guess because as we have learned, people are extremely stupid and don’t react even to existential threats unless they are right there in front of them, we won’t have the cash to send “random people” to space as climate change will systematically eat all our lunches.