Reactions to Bezos’ and Branson’s atmospheric tours were swift and Swiftian. Some social media critics saw the start of a new Gilded Age of ego and indulgence. Some pointed out the Freudian undertones of the spacecraft’s shape. Some were dismissive, like author Stephen King, who tweeted, “A rich guy flew in a rocket plane. Let's move on.”

Some politicians, like U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman saw the launches as a distraction from more pressing matters: “Our social, political, and economic systems are built around the idea that tax breaks for billionaires buying leisurely space travel is more important than feeding, clothing, and housing all our children.”

The Vermont Senator was even harsher: “Here on Earth, in the richest country on the planet, half our people live paycheck to paycheck, people are struggling to feed themselves, struggling to see a doctor — but hey, the richest guys in the world are off in outer space!”

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NASA has not sent a space shuttle into orbit since 2011 and has seen its budget drop precipitously over the years from 4.5% of the federal budget in 1966 to about half a percent. Private space firms like SpaceX have stepped in to fill the gaps, contracting with NASA and other space agencies to launch satellites into space, shuttle astronauts to the ISS and more.

The growing concentration of wealth in recent decades has minted many new billionaires and made some like Bezos, Musk and Branson obscenely wealthy. It is estimated that the three men have a combined net worth of $400 billion, which is about the size of Ireland’s entire GDP.

These billionaires have big visions for what space can mean to humanity. “Those who attack space maybe don’t realize that space represents hope for so many people,” Musk has tweeted. He says the aim of SpaceX is “to make humanity multiplanetary,” including founding a permanent human colony on Mars. “We can have a trillion humans in the solar system,” Bezos once asserted. “Which means we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.”

The growing space tourism industry is expected to be worth $3 billion by 2030, and according to Morgan Stanley, the global space economy is expected to lift off from $350 billion in 2016 to over $1 trillion by 2040.

Veteran aviator Wally Funk, 82, who was blocked from becoming an astronaut by NASA because of her gender — despite proving she could qualify for the pioneering 1960s Mercury program — became the oldest person to go to space when she flew with Bezos on his New Shepard spacecraft.

The United Arab Emirates might seem an unlikely player on the global space stage, but the small Middle Eastern nation has sent up several satellites and Virgin Galactic recently signed an agreement with the UAE (which is a major investor in Virgin) to make the country a port for future launches.

The next big technology often begins as a luxury item for the rich (think enormous 1980s cell phones) before improvements and savings make it affordable and accessible for the average consumer. Private companies can often also figure out ways to make that technology more efficiently: SpaceX’s rockets are significantly cheaper than the ones made by NASA. All things being equal, we would probably prefer our billionaires to invest in new technologies that could benefit everyone rather than buying yachts, sports teams and other luxury goods.

The process of making things on Earth is hindered by one very powerful force: gravity. Take that away and we might be able to build better electronics, faster internet cables and maybe even artificial organs by shipping manufacturing into orbit and then sending finished products back to Earth for use.

A vacation up in the stars will still remain beyond the reach of most of us for a while. A Virgin Galactic ticket, for instance, costs between $200,000 and $250,000. Still, hundreds have already signed up for Virgin Galactic flights, and costs could start coming down as SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic develop more sophisticated reusable spacecraft.

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Billionaire Star Trek: Not long after Branson and Bezos launched themselves into space, Saturday Night Live launched the trailer for “Star Trek: Ego Quest,” a satirical Star Trek spinoff sparked by “a midlife crisis of cosmic proportions” that follows a “crew of random weirdos” on their adventures in low orbit.