Rocket men: why tech’s biggest billionaires want their place in space

Forget gilded mansions and super yachts. Among the tech elite, space exploration is now the ultimate status symbolThe explosion could be felt 30 miles away. At 9.07am on 1 September, a SpaceX rocket containing 75,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene ignited into a fireball that could be seen from orbit, billowing black smoke into the gray sky around its Cape Canaveral launch pad.On board was a $200m, 12,000lb communications satellite – part of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg