Jeff Bezos in India
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, has a laugh during a 2020 trip to India. (Jeff Bezos via Twitter)

Between an upsurge in antitrust talk and questions about worker turnover, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has plenty to worry about here on Earth. His plans to take a suborbital space ride next month on a rocket ship built by Blue Origin, another company he created, could conceivably add to the angst — and not just because of the regular risks of spaceflight.

Two petitions urging him to stay in space have attracted more than 100,000 signatures between them, and the tally continues to climb at a rate as rapid as a signature a second.

Both petitions were posted to Change.org two weeks ago, after Bezos said he and his brother Mark would board Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship on July 20 for an up-and-down flight from the company’s West Texas spaceport. Two yet-to-be-identified riders will join them, including the winner of a $28 million auction benefiting Blue Origin’s nonprofit foundation.

One petition has garnered more than 90,000 signatures. “Billionaires should not exist … on earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter they should stay there,” the petition’s author states.

The other petition has attracted more than 21,000 signatures, and makes claims that are even more out of this world. “This may be our last chance before they enable the 5G microchips and perform a mass takeover,” the author writes.

It doesn’t take much to get a petition started on Change.org, and considering the controversies surrounding Bezos and Amazon, it’s not surprising that his plans to go into space have generated some viral heat.

But both petitions are doomed to failure: Although it’s possible that the flight could end in tragedy — and some folks in the Twitterverse are perversely wishing for that outcome — there’s no way the world’s richest individual will end up being marooned on the final frontier. If we’re talking about suborbital spaceflight, what goes up is most definitely coming down.

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