The Guardian view on plutocratic Mars missions: escape velocity | Editorial

The race between wealthy tech billionaires to get to Mars is a distraction from mortalityFor science fiction writers ranged across the astronomical distance that separates Edgar Rice Burroughs and Kim Stanley Robinson, Mars has been a theatre of dreams, variously realistic. Now the tech billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are competing to see who will make it first there in reality. Bezos is spending a billion dollars a year out of his Amazon stock to keep his project going; Musk has announced