Dot-com fallup

Newsweek breaks the news: Jeff Bezos is funding a space venture. Some dot-com CEOs buy basketball teams; some buy spaceships. Carl’s comment: “I guess he took to heart the analysts who pointed out that Amazon’s valuation required selling to other solar systems.”

Oh, and Neal Stephenson is working for the Bezos venture. That’s funky.

I was all set to feel smart about pointing out that Elon Musk, who founded PayPal, is also doing a private space company but Newsweek got there first. Alas. Still, it’s kind of a cool way to spend all that money.

The rest of article is a nice overview of the latest space company news, including notes on Burt Rutan’s new spacecraft and whatever it is that John Carmack is doing. I suspect most of the dot-com space companies will fail, but some may succeed, and it’s a heartening result of a generation of millionaire geeks.