Jeff Bezos just stranded a satellite in the wrong orbit because his rocket company couldn’t get the engine right. Blue Origin admitted Monday that a “bad engine” doomed the New Glenn launch over the weekend, leaving the customer’s payload as the world’s most expensive piece of garbage. The richest man on earth — the guy who built an empire on warehouses where workers piss in bottles to make rate — cannot reliably make a rocket go up. He just spent another fortune learning that fact in front of everyone.
The mythology around these guys is that they’re visionary builders. Then you watch the actual product and it’s a multi-billion-dollar firework show that ends with a dead satellite drifting around the planet for the next century. Bezos has spent more on Blue Origin than most countries spend on schools, and the output is a slow-motion lawn dart. Meanwhile Amazon workers are still being timed when they hit the bathroom, still being fired by algorithm, still being told there’s no money for a raise. There’s money. It’s currently in low-Earth orbit with a busted thruster.
Every dollar that went into that engine came off a warehouse floor, and he set it on fire chasing a hobby. The ultra-wealthy don’t have ideas. They have insurance against accountability. A working rocket is innovation. A failed one is just rich men playing with matches over your head.